The president of this remote indigenous village on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua has just returned from planting beans in the fields. Though casually dressed in a fresh white undershirt and jeans, it is clear he is deeply worried.

“Here we pass many things,” said Carlos Wilson Bilis, 31, speaking in the Creole English characteristic of the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua. “We pass the war, we pass the hurricane. Many things we pass here. And the government didn’t help us. Now he want to come and destroy us.”

This destruction, according to Wilson, would be the price Bangkukuk pays for the Nicaraguan canal, a $50 billion infrastructure project that would compete with the Panama Canal and allow passage of enormous container ships that can individually carry cargo equivalent to more than 12,000 tractor-trailers.

According to HKND, the Chinese holding company granted a 50-year concession by the Nicaraguan government to build the canal and its related projects, the 172-mile route will start along the Pacific shoreline in Brito, cut through Lake Nicaragua and the interior of the country, and cross autonomous indigenous territory before meeting the Atlantic Ocean at Punta Gorda, just south of Bangkukuk Taik. A deep-water port will be constructed in Bangkukuk that extends into the neighboring communities of Monkey Point and Wiring Cay.