AGAINSTidalina Morales realized something was wrong with the water near where she lived in 2004. San Sebastián River in El Salvador it appeared to contaminate the environment and disturb residents.
As part of a campaign to protect her home and the environment, Morales, 54, visited mining projects near the river to learn about the risks posed by the mining sector. “I was shocked at the extent of the destruction of their environment,” she says.
Since then, Morales has become the face of the fight against mining in El Salvador. Perhaps because she knew the power of the pro-mining lobby, she celebrated with her resistance colleagues only briefly when their country became the first in the world ban metal mining in 2017. Deep down, she says, she knew the fight was far from over.
Seven years later, her fears were realized when mining was reintroduced in El Salvador. On December 23, her convention voted for overturning a ban on metal mining, a move championed by hardline President Nayib Bukele, who prioritizes economic growth over environmental concerns.
The new legislation gives the government sole control over mining operations and bans the use of toxic mercury in gold mining.
Despite the regulations, however, environmentalists have vowed strong opposition, citing potential irreversible damage to ecosystems and public health. Other minerals released into the environment during gold mining include, for example, arsenic.
Cidia Cortes, an environmental biologist, says: “Arsenic levels in the San Sebastián River are 300 times higher than international safety standards. Acid drainage turns the water toxic red, contaminating the water, air and soil.”
Ddespite El Salvador’s history violence against human rights and environmental activistsas well as lawsuits filed by the state against them Luis ParadaA 64-year-old former army officer who spoke out against the army the notorious murder of Jesuit priests in 1989 he led the legal defense of the Salvadoran government when it was sued by mining companies in 2009.
Both lawsuits were filed by the company Commerce Group Corp and San Sebastián Gold Mines and Canadian mining company Pacific Rim, later bought by OceanaGold. International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, World Bank Tribunal, settled the first in favor of the state in 2011 and dismissed Pacific Rim’s $250 million claim in 2016.
Says Parada: “Winning both arbitrations was key to the mining ban. We won the last one in October 2016, and shortly after that, in March 2017, the country passed the law thanks to the momentum the communities had built after more than a decade of fighting against the mining industry.”
By then almost 80% of the population supported a ban on mining. Luis González, director of the environmental pressure group Salvadoran Ecological Unitbelieves the public still supports the ban.
“Although there has been a political shift, I believe people still understand that mining is bad,” he says. “We can still rally national support to reject this measure.”
Although the metal mining ban was a milestone of victory for the Central American environmental movement, the threat of “extractivism” was far from over. Just four years later, the government under Bukele’s administration decided to lift the ban entry into the Intergovernmental Forum on Miningand eventually they publicly accepted the idea.
“We are the only country in the world with a complete ban on metal mining, which no other country does. Absurd!” said Bukele on his X account last month. “This God-given wealth can be used responsibly to bring unprecedented economic and social development to our people.”
At the beginning of last year, authoritarian Bukele’s management focused on five environmental activists by charges of crimes committed in 1989 during the brutal civil war and of “unauthorized association”, a charge used by the government crackdown on organized crime. The detention was widely condemned as politically motivated.
Bukele’s pro-mining rhetoric did not come as a surprise. “We have warned since 2021 that mining interests are hunting El Salvador, and this has been confirmed when jailed five of our environmental leaders in January 2023,” says Morales.
Parada’s repeal of the mine law means both lawsuits and similar cases could be reopened. “With the mining ban being lifted, the country could be waiting for lawsuits from the defeated mining corporations to claim what they think is theirs,” he says.
Envital pollution of waterways is literally a matter of life and death for El Salvador. The Lempa is the country’s most important river, supplies about 70% of San Salvador’s drinking water metropolitan area.
Cortes fears that industrial mining could have a devastating impact on Salvadoran water. “The Lempa River as we know it could disappear,” he says. “This river needs intensive care to survive agrochemicals, mining and quarrying, as well as the four hydroelectric plants located in the basin.”
González also believes that the opening of mining projects could lead to dire consequences. “People who are already getting contaminated water will have even more contaminated water,” he says. “Heavy metals end up in everything from tap water to crops, meaning crops either dry up or absorb these chemicals, causing health consequences.”
At a recent press conference, Bukele asked if people could drink water from Lempa. “Who here can drink water from the river?” he asked, arguing that his government needed new sources of revenue to provide people with clean tap water. “We need money to clean our rivers.”
In October, El Salvador successfully completed the world’s largest debt conversion for river protectionit bought back $1bn (£800m) of its bonds at a discount, saving more than $352m. These savings will fund the Rio Lempa conservation and restoration program over the next 20 years.
The initiative, supported by the US International Development Finance Corporation and the Development Bank of Latin America and Caribbean (CAF), includes US$200 million in direct funding for the program, while US$150 million will fund a subsidy to fund it after 2044.
“The $200 million would represent a $9 million annual investment on the Lempa River for the next 20 years and could work to protect the water body,” he says. “But it wouldn’t even come close to making up for the damage caused by mining.
The environmental costs of mining can be astronomical. According to a 2022 Mexican Institute of Statistics and Geography studyit costs nearly $200,000 to clean up a ton of cyanide-contaminated soil.
“It can cost millions to clean up a cyanide-containing water spill, and acid drainage would cost El Salvador millions of dollars forever,” says Andres McKinley, a researcher at the Central American University José Simeón Cañas in El Salvador. “This is a battle for water, the heart of the mining industry.
Environmentalists warn that mining poses an even greater risk in El Salvador because of the country’s small size. But Bukele does not agree with that. “Countries like Qatar with half the area are rich from extractivism,” he says.
González says it’s not just size that threatens the country, but “the fact that El Salvador is the most densely populated country in the Americas“. It points to a completely different amount of water that is available Salvadorans compared to Canadiansfor example, with the other enjoying more than 40 times as much.
Environmental activists like Morales fear that government controlled congress and courts (after Bukele removed the country’s supreme court judge and attorney general) will make resisting the return of mining an uphill battle, but he believes it is a battle worth fighting.
Parada says: “It is highly unlikely that a Bukel-dominated court will rule against the government, so there is a need to turn to protest because that is the only way they will listen. People are talking on social media and soon there will be street protests.”
González fears that El Salvador will suffer an exodus of people caused by increasing environmental pollution — exacerbating the migration crisis already underway in Central America.
“Mining has a huge social and environmental impact,” he says. “Many will risk being poisoned.” [and] they live sick or have to leave their communities because of the heavy metals used by this industry.