Before the recent waves of Venezuelan immigrants, most discussions I've seen about the topic was related to preserving the jungle, but some people for sure made snarky comments about keeping colombian gangsters out.

Nowadays, most of the attention are definitely on the Venezuelan immigrants that come to Panama without much money or much of a plan.

But if the government signed a deal to construct a highway, I predict it would be mostly environmentalists protesting in the street than xenophobes.

One big reason why there is no road is to prevent the introduction of foot and mouth disease in Central and North American cattle and horses.

Also, man-eating parasites known as screwworms.

Interestingly, reading this thread has made me realise that roads more-often-than-not are a path for exploitation (equally as you might describe them as a path for opportunity).

Without roads, you cannot build mines or forestries within the area to extract the resources from the land. Just interesting because I've never thought about roads in this way.

Feels like not building roads is a good thing if preserving the land is the intention.

The US Forest Service agrees with you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadless_area_conservation

On that topic here's an interesting article about the Ambler Mining District in Alaska - massive mineral deposits that would require a road through pristine wilderness to access:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-27/ambler-ac...

and

https://archive.ph/WP14Q

Guyana and Venezuela are two neighboring countries and they have no roads crossing their common border.

Same context: a thick jungle.