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In August 2026, the leadership of the Wargandí Guna reserve voted to enter a consultation and consent phase with the Panamanian government regarding the Interconexión Eléctrica Colombia-Panamá project.

Timber baron Guo Jian Zhang Zeng (El Chino) built the Mordí community a log bridge over the Río Chucunaque in Panama.

The 25-year contract between the Mordí community and Guo Jian Zhang Zeng's company gives residents few rights, including an inability to renegotiate prices for felled trees.

Three days after the author's visit in 2026, a powerful storm flooded the Río Chucunaque in Panama and washed away a log bridge that had been built for the Mordí community.

According to Mordí resident Mauselio Kastaña, the people of Mordí have serious reservations about the proposed Interconexión road project due to its potential impact on animals and sacred sites.

International Woodwork Corporation (I.W.C.) and its owner Guo Jian Zhang Zeng did not respond to multiple requests for comment for the September 2026 New York Times Magazine article.

Benjamin Goodman is a U.S.-based legal professional who grew up in the Panamanian village of Mordí with his Protestant missionary parents and now advises the village on legal issues.

Residents of the Mordí community in Panama say that timber baron Guo Jian Zhang Zeng (El Chino) tricked them into a one-sided, 25-year contract.

Logging concessions in Panama belonging to Guo Jian Zhang Zeng (El Chino) have been repeatedly cited for overcutting.

Guo Jian Zhang Zeng's company, International Woodwork Corporation (I.W.C.), exports wood paneling to China and works exclusively with Indigenous communities in Panama that control valuable timber stands.

Panamanian law was rewritten in 1994 to give Indigenous people control over their own land, an arrangement that encourages logging companies to work with these communities.

The Guna community of Mordí, unlike coastal Guna villages, sold its supply of mahogany, cedar, and almendro wood.

A segment of the Pan-American Highway was built in the 1970s in eastern Panama, an area that previously had no roads.

A timber baron known as El Chino, whose name is Guo Jian Zhang Zeng, began working with the Indigenous community of Mordí in Panama in 2006.

Biology professor Catherine Potvin believes the greatest concentration of very old trees outside the Amazon exists in the Gunayala and Darién regions of Panama.

The Guna community of Mordí is only accessible by water or on foot via an unmapped path.

The forests of eastern Panama have been deforested up to the boundaries of fragile protected zones and mountains like the Continental Divide.

Indra Candanedo, director of Alianza por Matusagaratí, stated that bridges are being built throughout eastern Panama, with some funded by local governments or private companies with little oversight.

Catherine Potvin is a professor of biology at McGill University and an expert on old forests.

Indra Candanedo, director of Alianza por Matusagaratí, stated that for decades, the separation of North and South America at the Darién Gap was maintained by Panama, Colombia, and the United States, which underwrote border-control programs and suppressed development.