Bukele wants to undo El Salvador's ban on gold mining

Seven years after El Salvador became the first country to ban metallic mining within its borders, especially gold mining, president Nayib Bukele is calling the prohibition "absurd."  The Salvadoran president took to social media with a post on X to proclaim that El Salvador needs to exploit gold deposits in the country (translated here to English): 

GOD PLACED A GIGANTIC TREASURE UNDER OUR FEET: El Salvador potentially has the highest density gold deposits per km² in the world. Located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the richest areas in mineral resources thanks to its volcanic activity…

Studies carried out in only 4% of the potential area identified 50 million ounces of gold, valued today at $131.6 billion. This is equivalent to 380% of El Salvador's GDP.

The total potential could exceed $3 trillion, more than 8,800% of our Gross Domestic Product.

Tapping into this wealth could transform El Salvador:

• Create thousands of quality jobs.
• Finance infrastructure throughout our country.
• Boost the development of local economies.

And all this with modern and sustainable mining, taking care of our environment.

We are the ONLY country in the world with a total ban on metal mining, something that no other country applies. Absurd!

This wealth, given by God, can be used responsibly to bring unprecedented economic and social development to our people.

There have been signals in recent years that this action by Bukele was coming.  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.

At the same time, anti-mining activists began to find themselves targeted by the government.  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.  In a March 8, 2023 letter to the government of El Salvador 

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." 

The case against the Santa Marta 5 went to trial this October and resulted in a dismissal of the charges by the trial court.  Bukele's attorney general, however, appealed the acquittal, and earlier this week an appellate court reinstated the case and ordered the activists to be tried again, shortly before Bukele's announcement of support for gold mining.

In August 2023, Bukele also initiated a military siege of Cabañas, the department which is a hotbed of the anti-mining movement. 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.

The grass roots struggle against gold-mining in El Salvador which led up to the historic 2017 ban was often marked by violence against the environmental defenders.  Activists were regularly harassed and threatened. Several leaders in the movement were murdered under circumstances in which the government's explanation of "common crime" lacked credibility. 

The government under former president Tony Saca imposed a de facto moratorium on gold mining by refusing to grant a mining permit to Canadian gold mining firm Pacific Rim. The multinational company sued El Salvador for hundreds of millions of dollars in an international arbitration which El Salvador eventually won. 

Bukele's Nuevas Ideas party controls El Salvador's Legislative Assembly with a super majority, so there is little doubt that the country's mining ban will be repealed if that is what Bukele desires. But that is likely to only be the first step in a renewed struggle with local anti-mining activists fighting to protect El Salvador's water resources from degradation caused by gold mining.

It is too early to tell, but the decision to repeal the mining ban may by the least popular initiative of Bukele since the Bitcoin law.  A 2015 opinion poll of persons living in the municipalities most likely to have mining activity found that 79% believed that metallic mining should be banned in El Salvador.  The Catholic church had thrown its support behind the ban effort.  When the mining prohibition was passed by the Legislative Assembly in 2017, the vote was unanimous. 

The anti-mining movement remains organized inside the country, and enjoys considerable solidarity from international environmental and human rights advocates as well.

The Bukele regime has measures to put down any dissent with its plans.  Although Bukele proclaims El Salvador to be the safest in the Americas, his government maintains the emergency State of Exception in place.  Leaked documents from the National Civilian Police show that authorities have been compiling profiles on activists who protest against government policies.   Included in the leaked profiles were members of the Foro del Agua, one of the groups active in the anti-mining movement.

The ability of the government to sweep people into prison without access to an independent judicial process is an ever-present threat to those who might seek to challenge the arrival of gold mining companies.