This report was written by Guido Bilbao and produced for the Pulitzer Centre. Guido Bilbao is an Argentinian journalist who has lived in Panamá for fifteen years. The Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting is an innovative award-winning non-profit journalism organisation dedicated to supporting in-depth engagement with under-reported global affairs. Some of the work behind this report was also supported by the US Rainforest Foundation and by the Panamanian Alliance for Conservation and Development. It was produced as four separate special reports in the Panamanian daily newspaper La Prensa. I am grateful to Guido and to the Pulitzer Centre for permission to provide a link to this important report in this website.

I recommend this report as one of the most important current-day illustrators of the development process and the way that process operates in so-called developing countries. It draws out the similarities between the current extractivist model of development and the 500 year old piratical and theft-based model of development. The report relates specifically to Panamá, but the style of development that it describes is just as pertinent to many other Latin American countries.

Read the full article here: http://pulitzercenter.shorthand.com/atlanticconquest/index.html