FEATURE - Panama's Devil's Island aims to be new Galapagos
Date: 14-May-02
Country: PANAMA
Author: Robin Emmott
"I knew I had done wrong. But this? I felt as if I was being sent to hell before I had died," says Sandoval, who was sentenced three years ago for his role in a lottery ticket scam.
Coiba Island is Panama's penal colony, a dense jungle in the Pacific Ocean three hours from the mainland by boat and ringed with sharks. It is a place of exile for murderers and rapists.
In the oppressive wind that blows through the crumbling prison cells, prisoners whisper macabre stories of past cannibalism by inmates on Coiba. Prison guards are silent about the recently discovered human remains in the red earth alongside the prison's airstrip.
Panama's former military dictator Manuel Noriega sent political prisoners to Coiba for torture during his rule in the 1980s, inspired by French Guiana's notoriously brutal penal colony, Devil's Island.
It is little surprise the graves of prisoners who died on Coiba, the world's largest island prison after Australia, which served as a penal colony during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, are nameless.
But when Sandoval arrived on the island to serve his sentence, his initial reaction was one of disbelief, rather than fear.
"I saw prisoners playing chess in the shade of the palm trees, chatting and drinking coffee, and the atmosphere was very pleasant," Sandoval recollects with a wry chuckle.
Things have indeed changed on Coiba. Following the end of military rule in 1989 and pressure to clean up Coiba, plans are under way to tap Coiba's new status as a national park.
The 192-square-mile (493-square-km) island was made a national park by decree in 1991. It was only in April that the Panamanian government passed legislation formally securing Coiba's status as a protected area and giving police two years to close the penal colony.
NEW GALAPAGOS?
There are also plans to open the island to more tourism, following the model of Ecuador's Galapagos Islands.
"We would like around 30,000 visitors a year to enjoy the island's truly incredible ecosystems," says Lider Sucre, the director of the Panama City-based conservation group Ancon.
The largest island in Central America, 85 percent of Coiba is virgin tropical forest, making it the biggest virgin forested island in the Americas.
About 80 percent of the 1,053-square-mile (2,700-square-km) park is oceanic, filled with whales and rare tropical fish.
Coiba is perhaps best known among conservationists for Panama's last cluster of scarlet macaws, its bottle-nosed dolphins and the brown and white Coiba spinetail bird, the only bird of its kind in the world. Coiba also contains 17 species of crocodile as well as 15 species of snake.
Although Coiba Island is still a high-security prison, only the penitentiary's menacing headquarters, a cellblock known as "Central" and two beachfront prison camps are operating.
Under Noriega, the island, which was made a penal colony in 1919, played host to some 3,000 prisoners spread over 30 prison camps. Today, there are just 75 detainees.
"We have reduced the number of inmates since the 1990s," says Coiba prison chief Frank Pinilla. "The island's status as a national park is more important now."
ENVIRONMENTAL THREAT
The newest threat to Coiba is the increasing number of commercial fishing boats from Panama and neighboring Costa Rica, which trawl for sharks along the island's coast.
"The sharks make excellent shark fin soup for restaurants in the United States," says Clemente Nunez, the national park's director. "About 100 boats come to fish here every month, damaging the unique Pacific coral and depleting the shark community."
While the number of park rangers and coast patrols is increasing, the island faces further environmental degradation unless funding for the national park is increased, says the Ancon conservation group.
Coiba's national park is run on a $15,000 budget, a woefully small sum, Ancon says.
"The penal colony scared people off from settling on Coiba,
