Could gold miners persuade Bukele to reverse mining ban?

Anti-mining activist press conference in July

Environmental activists in El Salvador continue to be on alert for the possible resumption of gold mining activity in the country. Although the country was the first in the world to ban metallic mining within its borders in 2017, anti-mining advocates worry that preparations are being made in the current government to lift that prohibition.

One signal of the possible resumption of mining activity was the October 2022 creation of the General Directorate of Energy, Hydrocarbons and Mines within the ministries of the Salvadoran government.  More concerns were raised when it was learned that El Salvador had become a member of the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development (IGF), a global association of countries coming together on mining issues.  Joining the forum seemed a strange choice for a country which was the first in the world to ban all metallic mining operations. Then in 2023, the government allocated $4.5 million to “review and update” mining law in the country. 

Thus almost from the beginning of Nayib Bukele's first term in office and into 2024, environmental and community groups have continued a campaign to retain the ban on metallic mining in El Salvador.   Their ongoing campaign unites local communities under a theme of the necessity to prevent mining for the protection of the country's waters and the life which depends on them.  Since the mining ban could be reversed with a simple vote of the Nuevas Ideas controlled legislature at any time, opponents of mining are calling for a constitutional amendment to incorporate the mining ban into the country’s charter.

At a recent July 24, 2024 press conference, groups organized as part of the National Roundtable Against Mining, again warned against the possible resumption of mining: 

Pedro Cabezas, from the Central American Alliance Against Mining, indicated at the same press conference that environmental organizations are aware that “mining companies from the United States, linked to local companies and Honduran banks, are trying to establish themselves on our lands to carry out mining activities.”

Their concerns were amplified by investigative journalism in Revista Elementos which reported on activities in the region linked to Titan Resources Limited, a Nevada gold mining company which already has operations in Honduras.  According to the report, entities tied to Titan have acquired rights in the property formerly controlled by Pacific Rim, the Canadian gold mining company which fought a long legal battle against El Salvador trying to get the rights to exploit what it believed were veins of gold under the mountains of Cabañas.    

A February 2024 article in the Guardian titled Gold fever: big mining companies circle as El Salvador prepares to reverse ban describes other signs which worry local residents that foreign mining operations are once again interested in the region:  

According to Edgardo Mira, an environmental consultant, the government needs income sources after failed or controversial financial policies, such as approving bitcoin as legal tender. “Gold mining is extremely profitable,” Mira says. …

 [Luis González, the director of the Salvadoran Ecological Unit] says the mining industry is showing intense interest in these Salvadoran communities. “Since 2022, mining advocates from different nationalities started showing up in Cabañas, where Pacific Rim had explored the land to exploit it,” he says. “They’ve been approaching people to rent their land for much more than the market price.” 

The perceived need to continue to defend the environment against mining exploitation and contamination emerges in the context of the ongoing State of Exception in El Salvador.  In January 2023, El Salvador's government locked up five community organizers and environmental activists from the rural community of Santa Marta, alleging their participation in a decades-old crime during El Salvador's civil war.  But the circumstances surrounding the case suggest to many that the real motivation for their detention is to weaken resistance to metallic mining in the country and make possible the lifting of a mining prohibition.  The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Defenders declared that "We fear that the case is an attempt to intimidate those who seek to defend the environment in the country, and especially those who defend human rights from the negative impacts of mining" in a March 8 letter to the government of El Salvador.

Although the Santa Marta 5 were released in September 2023, ostensibly for reasons of their health, the government has refused to drop the charges and the threat of the prisons of the State of Exception continues to hang over the head of these activists.

In August 2023, Bukele also initiated a military siege of Cabañas. The Salvadoran president sent 7000 soldiers and 1000 police into the region, purportedly to root out gang members remaining free a year and half into the State of Exception.  One of the historic  leaders of the opposition to mining in the region, Vidalina Morales, saw her son get picked up and beaten by police without reason or cause.  Although he was soon released, it served as a warning of the power of a police state where no explanations are needed for your sudden imprisonment.

Despite the siege and the presence of security forces in the streets of their communities, the anti-mining groups have continued their activism, Morales told El Faro last October:

Do you think that the military siege is intended to put a stop to your environmental struggle?

To be honest, we have not received any kind of retaliation for our presence in the streets. At least until today. That does not mean that things may not change tomorrow. We have carried out our actions in the midst of this military siege. From time to time they have stopped us, they have asked us where we have traveled, especially when we traveled to San Salvador, because we have carried out most of our actions there. But they have not repressed us.

Morales also talked with journalist Danielle Mackey for an artice titled The True Cost of El Salvador’s New Gold Rush in the Guardian:

Mining has not yet returned, but in Cabañas, the fears that it may loomed large during the February presidential and legislative elections. For months beforehand, polls predicted an easy victory for both Bukele and his party, Nuevas Ideas. Even before the election, Nuevas Ideas held a supermajority in congress, a power it used to push through the administration’s agenda. Given the president’s apparent predilection for mining and the arrests of the Santa Marta Five, the people of Cabañas were worried about what Bukele and his supporters would do when the few remaining democratic constraints were gone….

Morales fears that a next round in the mining battle will be more harrowing than the first. “Before, we were hearing about evidence of activity by transnational companies,” she said. “But now, we’re seeing the threat come from the state itself – the state reaching out to companies and pulling them in, ‘Come to us, come to us,’” she said.

An expert on water resources and mining in El Salvador, Andrés McKinley, wrote an opinion piece in El Faro, explaining what is at stake if the mining ban is undone:

After almost two decades of persistent social struggle, uniting broad sectors of society and prioritizing the interests of the nation over petty interests, the citizens of El Salvador achieved the prohibition of metal mining in all its forms at the national level. This historic victory recognized that sustainable development and life itself were not feasible without protecting natural resources. it gave El Salvador the honor of being the first country in the world to analyze the costs and benefits of metal mining and exercise its right to say “ No.”

 Six years later, this great project of patriotic unity for the salvation of the country is being threatened by a government close to transnational mining companies and in desperate search for new sources of income for the State. Its rhetoric recognizes the importance of the environment, but its practice is based on the old paradigm which prioritizes big capital interests with slogans like “the environment cannot stop development.” There is little interest in the defense of water and ecosystems by the current government while the water crisis continues to deepen. The most important rivers are drying up, the most strategic aquifers around the country are running low and, according to the Ministry of the Environment itself, more than 90 % of surface waters are seriously contaminated.

And so the anti-mining activists continue to be on alert for any attempt to reverse El Salvador's historic mining ban.  They know that gold-mining is an economic proposition, and one way to deter gold mining companies in the first place is to highlight the high cost needed to overcome unified, grassroots opposition to miners' plans.