On the last Saturday of December, just before midnight, the Arraiján City Hall ordered the demolition of the Monument to the Chinese Ethnicity and the dismantling of the Mirador del Puente de las Américas Park that housed it, without any consultation with its sponsors—the Chinese-Panamanian community—and supposedly without authorization from the Ministry of Public Works or the Panama Canal Authority.
However, Chinese-Panamanian organizations state that they met with her in June 2024 and March 2025, offering to cover the costs of structural repairs, but there was no response from the local authority.
This monument was erected in 2004 to commemorate 150 years of Chinese presence in Panama, highlighting their contribution to the construction of the trans-isthmian railway and the canal, up to their social, economic, and cultural contributions to the consolidation of the Panamanian nation.
The mayor argued that her decision was based exclusively on technical and safety criteria.
This demolition represents a continuum of events and statements that have occurred since the U.S. president took office at the beginning of this year, in which he accused China of having control of our Canal and threatened to recover it; to later somewhat qualify by stating that Panamanian ports were in Chinese hands and that the Embassy of this Asian country intended to be established on the shores of the waterway.
The national government, to please Trump, agreed to the return of U.S. military bases to Panamanian territory through an improper Memorandum of Understanding, as well as to cancel the country's participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, to which we had adhered in 2017.
Curiously, the U.S. has withdrawn visas to travel to that country from 3 leaders of associations of the Chinese-Panamanian community; and, in its national security strategy, it has clearly stated its objective to “reduce adversarial foreign influence (call it Chinese) from the control of military installations, ports, and infrastructures” and that “it is not possible to adhere rigidly to non-interventionism”.
It would not be surprising, then, that the mayoral action is merely an instrument to fulfill these geopolitical goals, violating international law.
One can tear down a monument, but not history or culture.
The truth is that several excavators and multiple police units (municipal?)...
