Panama in Turmoil Navigating Crises at the Canal

Crisis in the Jungle

Directed by Sbastian Perez Pezzani and Guilaume L’Hotellier (2025)

Film Review

The shortest route between the Atlantic and the Pacific, the 83 kilometer long Panama Canal can accommodate 30-40 ships and roughly 1.5 million tons of cargo daily. At present its biggest crisis is the growth in the size of vessels seeking to use it.

The 33 meter locks can accommodate 32 meter wide tankers, so long as Canal employees go out in rowboats and use cables to escort them. When freighters are too wide or too heavy to navigate the locks, their cargo is unloaded onto trains that transport it across the Panama isthmus for collection on the other side.

The second major crisis is a two-year drought. To raise water levels on the ocean side of the locks, the canal draws 100 million liters of fresh water annually from nearby reservoirs. The present drought has reduced by 40% the number of ships the canal can accommodate, while simultaneously producing drinking water shortages for nearby residents. The latter organized a series of protests in 2023 to block visitor access to tourist sites.

The third crisis Panama faces is the thousands of migrants using the Darian Gap, the only land route from South America to North America, on their journey to the US.  The Darian Gap operates as a state within a state with human traffickers operating in broad daylight. The path is 62km long through mountainous jungle and can only be navigated on foot. After insuring their fitness to travel, El Clan (the traffickers) collects a fee from each migrant to spend the night in an open air shelter and to cross the river separating Columbia and Panama. El Clan guides only accompany the migrants the first few kilometers into their journey. Panama prohibits them from staying overnight and pays for a non-stop bus to take them to Costa Rica.