{"id":47816,"date":"2014-09-29T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=47816"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:43","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:43","slug":"the-fight-to-keep-toxic-mining-and-the-world-bank-out-of-el-salvador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/09\/the-fight-to-keep-toxic-mining-and-the-world-bank-out-of-el-salvador\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fight to Keep Toxic Mining\u2014and the World Bank\u2014Out of El Salvador"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of protesters recently gathered at the World Bank to shame a gold mining firm\u2019s shakedown of one of Central America\u2019s poorest countries.<\/em><\/p>\n

For miners, investors, and artisans, few things are more precious than gold. But for human life itself, nothing is more precious than water.<\/p>\n

Just ask the people of El Salvador.<\/p>\n

Nearly 30 years ago, the Wisconsin-based Commerce Group Corp purchased a gold mine near the San Sebastian River in El Salvador and contaminated the water. Now, according to Lita Trejo, a native Salvadoran and school worker in Washington, DC, the once clear river is orange. The people who drink from the arsenic-polluted river, she says, are suffering from kidney failure and other diseases.<\/p>\n

On September 15, Trejo and more than 200 protestors\u2014including Salvadoran immigrants, Catholic priests, trade unionists, and environmentalists\u2014gathered in front of the World Bank to support El Salvador\u2019s right to keep its largest river from suffering the same fate as the San Sebastian River. The event was co-sponsored by a raft of organizations, including the Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam America, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and the Council of Canadians, among others. Over the past few weeks,\u00a0similar protests<\/a>\u00a0have taken place in El Salvador, Canada, and Australia.<\/p>\n

Mining for gold is not nearly so neat and clean as the harmless panning many Americans learned about as kids. Speakers pointed out that gold mining firms use the toxic chemical cyanide to separate gold from the surrounding rock, which then leaches into the water and the soil. And they use large quantities of water in the mining process\u2014a major problem for El Salvador in particular, which has been described as \u201cthe\u00a0most water-stressed country<\/a>\u00a0in Central America.\u201d Confronted by\u00a0a massive anti-mining movement<\/a>\u00a0in the country, three successive Salvadoran administrations have refused to approve new gold mining operations.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the story should end. But it\u2019s far from over.<\/p>\n

An Australian-Canadian mining company, OceanaGold, is\u00a0suing the Salvadoran government<\/a>\u00a0for refusing to grant it a gold-mining permit to its subsidiary, Pacific Rim. Manuel P\u00e9rez-Rocha, a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies, explained the situation: \u201cOceana Gold is demanding more than $300 million from El Salvador. They are saying, \u2018If you do not let us operate in your country the way we want, you must pay us for the profits that you prevented us from making.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That sounds absurd, but it\u2019s true: The company is claiming that under the Central American Free Trade Agreement, it has the right to sue the Salvadoran government for passing a law that threatens its bottom line.<\/p>\n

El Salvador is now defending its decision to prevent Oceana Gold\/Pacific Rim from operating the \u201cEl Dorado\u201d mine near the Lempa River before the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, a little-known World Bank-based tribunal.<\/p>\n

As several protesters pointed out, El Salvador\u2019s decision is grounded in its need to protect its limited water supply. More than\u00a090 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the surface water supply in El Salvador is already contaminated, and more than\u00a050 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the country\u2019s 6.3 million people depend on the Lempa River watershed for their water.<\/p>\n

Francisco Ramirez, a Salvadoran who grew up in Caba\u00f1as, the region where the El Dorado mine would operate, spoke from experience about this reality. \u201cIf you look at the contaminated rivers in El Salvador, there are no fish left in the water. Not even toads, which are usually resistant to certain levels of contamination, can survive. We do not want that contamination to spread,\u201d Ramirez proclaimed.<\/p>\n

Ana Machado, a Salvadoran member of the immigrant rights group Casa de Maryland, another co-sponsor of the event, added: \u201cThe Lempa River is the main drinking source and an important source of livelihood for a majority of people in my country, including my family. They fish there. They clean their clothes there. If the company contaminates the river, Salvadoran life as we know it will end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Salvadorian immigrant and organizer with Casa de Virginia, Lindolfo Carballo, linked this lawsuit to larger struggles over sovereignty and immigrant rights. \u201cThis country created institutions to legally rob its Southern neighbor,\u201d he said, referring to the\u00a0\u201cfree-trade\u201d provisions<\/a>\u00a0that permit corporations to sue governments over public safety regulations they don\u2019t like. \u201cAnd after they rob us of our natural resources, after they contaminate our water and land, they tell us that we are undocumented, that we are \u2018illegals,\u2019 and that we have no right to be in this country. They have no right to throw us out of the United States if they are robbing us of the resources we need to survive in our own country,\u201d he alleged.<\/p>\n

John Cavanagh, Director of the Institute for Policy Studies, explained the goal of the protest: \u201cWe are saying to OceanaGold: \u2018Drop the suit. Go home.\u2019 To the World Bank, we say: \u2018Evict this unjust tribunal. It deepens poverty and stomps on democracy and basic rights.\u2019\u201d Cavanagh pledged to continue pressing the company to back down, promising that protesters would return to the World Bank in larger numbers when the tribunal makes its ruling in 2015.<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

Diana Anahi Torres-Valverde is the New Mexico Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 fpif.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of protesters recently gathered at the World Bank to shame a gold mining firm\u2019s shakedown of one of Central America\u2019s poorest countries. For miners, investors, and artisans, few things are more precious than gold. But for human life itself, nothing is more precious than water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}