BRIEFS. metro

Gold mine allies protest against la prensa

Residents of Miguel de la Borda, El Guásimo and Río Indio in the Donoso district of Colón, staged a protest yesterday in front of the La Prensa building on Calle 12 de Octubre in support of Petaquilla Gold’s gold-mining project underway near their communities.

Two buses, each carrying 60 passengers, parked in front of the newspaper at about 5:00 a.m., while a man wearing a Petaquilla Gold sweatshirt refreshed the demonstrators with water from a cooler mounted on a pickup truck.

Luis Porto Carrero, a resident of Miguel de la Borda, said the demonstration was organized to protest the newspaper’s “policy against the company.”

“The newspaper has been dedicated to reporting on pollution and has never said anything about the benefits offered by the company to communities,” said Carrero, who revealed that the mining company had offered to finance the demonstrator’s trip to Panama.

Petaquilla Gold was sanctioned by the country’s chief environmental agency, ANAM, for damages inflicted to the local ecosystem.