ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
We've been rolling out a new series in recent weeks where host Scott Detrow sits down with fellow NPR hosts and reporters to hear what it takes to bring stories back from the field. I'm going to let Scott take it from here with the latest installment.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: A few weeks ago, my co-host Ari Shapiro, along with producers and a photographer and interpreter, set out for the Panamanian Jungle.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: We started this journey hours before dawn. We woke up at, like, 4 in the morning, and we left Panama City. People in Panama told me nearly daily that this is the only place that you can get from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic in just an hour. And so that's the first part of the journey. You drive from the city of Panama City to Colon, which is going north from the Pacific to the Atlantic. And then you start to climb up into these jungly mountains.
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SHAPIRO: You work your way around these narrow turns until you finally come to this village.
DETROW: I just want to hone in on the fact that driving from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean is the easy part of the trip.
SHAPIRO: Exactly. That's on the, like, well-paved, big, broad highway. It's easy.
DETROW: They had arrived in Limon de Chagres, a village on a river called the Rio Indio.
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SHAPIRO: The river is kind of the artery of this community. People fish in it to get food. They bathe and do laundry in it, and they go from one community to another. Somebody told me that before there were roads in this part of Panama, the river was their road.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOTOR REVVING)
SHAPIRO: And so we got into this very long canoe with a motor on the back. It was quite long and narrow, and then we started motoring along. And when we pulled over at this mud bank, I wasn't quite sure why we were stopping there, and then somebody explained it to me.
Olegario, what are you showing us?
OLEGARIO CEDENO: (Speaking Spanish).
DETROW: This was the spot on the river where Panamanian authorities planned to build a dam, a dam that could soon displace the people of Limon de Chagres.
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DETROW: So today, for our weekly Reporter's Notebook segment, we're on the road in Panama with my co-host Ari Shapiro. I started by asking how the fight over the Rio Indio Dam is connected to the main focus of that reporting trip, the Panama Canal.
SHAPIRO: The Panama Canal is running out of water. Panama is one of the rainiest countries in the world. People never thought it could run low on water, but every time a ship goes through the canal, more than 50 million gallons of fresh water, from a man-made lake called Lake Gatun, just dump out and empty into the ocean. And a couple years ago, Panama had a drought that was so severe, the canal had to reduce traffic by a third, which has a huge impact on global shipping.
So the canal authority has been looking for ways to get more fresh water to the canal, and they've basically zeroed in on one location where they intend to build a dam. And by building it, they are going to submerge entire communities. They've calculated that a little over 2,000 people will probably have to be relocated, and we wanted to go meet those people.
DETROW: And it's interesting because we're trying to do these feature stories, these textured pieces that really involve a lot of putting you on the scene, writing, reporting, interviews, things that all take time. But you're trying, in a trip like this, to crunch it into a shorter period of time because you're trying to get as much out of this trip as possible, right? And, like, sometimes that creates tension as you approach a story. Was there an example on this particular story where you're thinking, I really need to get this right and make sure we have enough time for this angle of this reporting?
SHAPIRO: One of the things that was challenging was when we went to Limon de Chagres, we were very aware that this is a community that can be suspicious of outsiders and understandably so because they feel like people have taken advantage of them. And so, our fixer, Andrea (ph), actually made a trip to the community ahead of our arrival, a week or two before we traveled, to introduce herself, to explain who we were, because we knew that when we got to Panama, we were going to have a very narrow window of time to come and visit these people and hear their stories. And if we showed up and they said, who are you, we don't trust you, tell us about your intentions and come back tomorrow - we just didn't have that flexibility. And so Andrea laid the groundwork before we got there so that by the time we did arrive, these villagers knew who we were. They knew where we came from.
And even then during the interviews, I made sure ahead of time to explain who everybody on the team was, what we were going to do with the story. I was very clear, we are not activists. We do not work for the Canal Authority. We are American. We're going to tell their story, but we're not here to argue their case. And I would ask, do you all have any questions for us before we start these interviews? - because it's important to me to make sure that these people don't feel like they are being taken advantage of...
DETROW: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: ...'Cause there's a big power differential there.
DETROW: Right. And if you are doing your job right, the story is going to look very different at the end of the reporting than it did when you were sitting in a room in Washington, D.C., thinking up the original angle, right?
SHAPIRO: Completely.
DETROW: You learn things. You observe things. You have conversations. The story changes. Was there something that jumps out to you that really changed this particular story as you got there and started talking to people and seeing it yourself?
SHAPIRO: I mean, there were two big things. One is that it turns out this drought was not directly caused by climate change. It was caused by El Nino, and the relationship with climate change is much more complicated. But the other thing is, before we went to this village, I talked to a former administrator of the Panama Canal who said, these are people living a marginal lifestyle - was his phrase. He said, They don't have clean, potable water. They don't have reliable electricity. So I was expecting to show up and find a place of poverty. And we rolled up. And the first person we met was this woman named Alejandrina Munoz.
ALEJANDRINA MUNOZ: (Non-English language spoken).
SHAPIRO: And she served us breakfast, and it was boiled yucca and eggs from the chickens that she raises and coffee from the beans that she grows with sugar from the sugar cane in her garden. She told us that everything she eats comes from her garden or comes from the river. People in this community describe their lifestyle as one of abundance.
MUNOZ: (Non-English language spoken).
SHAPIRO: They said, relatives from the cities come and take extra food off their hands. And when I said to her, well, the Canal Authority says they're going to give you luxuries, like running water and electricity, she said, I've got solar panels. I have a TV. I have a phone charger. Water from mountain springs literally flows out of my faucet. She was washing dishes in the sink. And so to the people who live there, this is not a life of deprivation. It is a life of abundance. They described it as the garden of Eden.
DETROW: I mean, it sounds so idyllic when you describe it like that and when you hear people like her talking about that. What, if anything, is this community doing to try and push back on this project?
SHAPIRO: They are organizing. When we arrived, dozens of people from the surrounding communities that would be affected by this dam had all gathered to meet with us, and they showed up with all of these things that they had grown on their land and set them on a table as if to demonstrate this is not just any patch of earth.
Wow.
This is the most productive fertile land you could imagine.
Wow.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
SHAPIRO: And rice - wow.
So this table was spread with rice and plantains and coconuts and papayas and yucca and on and on and on. They stood up, and they started chanting.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Chanting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Chanting in non-English language).
SHAPIRO: And some of these chants were, like, (non-English language spoken), like, our river's not for sale. We will defend it. And this is something that people told us they had been fighting for for years. And even some who felt like they would probably lose this fight said, at least I can tell my grandkids that I waged it.
DETROW: And in your reporting, I understand that you were able to get some information about this project from the authority that even the people in the village hadn't been told yet. Could you tell us about that?
SHAPIRO: Yeah, so the Canal Authority has chosen this site to build a dam, but it was very unclear to us whether that decision was final or not. And we went back and forth, and as we were in the village, people said to us, hey, your questions make it sound like this is a done deal. Is it? And I said to them, I don't know, but we intend to interview people from the Canal Authority, and we will share with you what we learn.
So after we got back to Washington, D.C., a senior official from the Canal authority named John Langman agreed to do an interview with us. And I was able to ask him, how final is this plan? And he said, we have selected it as the main anchoring project. And I said, so, like, it's no longer a question of whether the dam will be built. It's a decision that's been made. He said, it is a decision that has been made. Later in the conversation, I said, when do you plan to build it? He said, we intend to start in 2027.
And so then I share that information with our fixer, Andrea, who went back to the people in the village, messaged them and said, here's what we learned from the conversation with the Canal Authority, which is not news that these people wanted to hear.
DETROW: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: But it's information that I think was valuable for them to know.
DETROW: That is my co-host, Ari Shapiro, taking us behind the scenes of his recent reporting trip to Panama. Thanks so much.
SHAPIRO: Thanks, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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