Afp
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, December 12, 2024, p. 23
San Salvador. After ending gang violence, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, took on a new challenge surrounded by controversy: reintroducing mining, banned since 2017, to transform a slow-growing economy.
He stated that it is absurd that mining is prohibited in the country that owns the gold deposits with the highest density per square kilometer in the worldso he will ask Congress, controlled by his party, to repeal that law.
Studies carried out in 4 percent of the potential area identified 50 million ounces of gold, valued today at 131,565 million dollars. This is equivalent to 380 percent of GDPBukele published in X on November 27, without revealing the authorship of those investigations.
If we make responsible exploitation of our natural resources we can change the economy of El Salvador overnight.he declared days later.
Bukele’s announcements set off alarms and some 300 activists, including Franciscan priests, demonstrated on Tuesday outside Congress and delivered a letter to the Legislature signed by the Ecumenical Forum (which brings together the Catholic and Protestant churches) and a dozen NGOs, which states that reactivating mining would be “an irresponsible decision.
“It is one thing to put a mine in the Atacama Desert (in Chile) and another to open an open pit mine in Chalatenango (northern El Salvador), where we have a high population density and there are few forest reserves. The harmful effect would multiply throughout the Salvadoran territory of the country, warned activist Pedro Cabezas, leader of the Central American Alliance Against Mining.
It implies tremendous risk, experts warn
Antonio Pacheco, leader of the ADES organization, assured that exploiting mines in the Lempa River basin, which supplies water to the capital, involves tremendous risk.
A group of organizations that fought for the law against that industry stated that mining exploitation would cause water scarcity and pollution.
Bukele published in X a map that locates the sites in mountainous areas from east to west, especially in the north, where the Lempa River passes.
At the foot of San Sebastián Hill, in the old mining area of Santa Rosa de Lima, where the American mining company Commerce Group saw its license revoked in 2006 due to river pollution, there are disagreements about Bukele’s plan.
While Rubén Delgado, a 55-year-old bricklayer, thinks that the plan would generate employmentJosé Torres, 72 years old, who extracts gold nuggets from mines that he opens by hand, is opposed for fear of losing his source of income with the arrival of mining companies and because the rivers are polluted.
Since El Salvador dollarized its economy in 2001, it has recorded an average GDP growth of 2.1 percent. According to ECLAC studies, 27 percent of Salvadorans live in poverty, and almost 70 percent of workers are informal. These factors, along with gang violence, have stimulated emigration.
Could generate income to pay debt
Economist Carlos Acevedo pointed out that with the 50 million ounces of gold the external debt of 31 billion dollars (equivalent to 85 percent of GDP) could be paid four times.
He assured that the main challenge is how to extract that gold in a socially and environmentally responsible waybut warned: There is no recipe that can generate growth overnight..
He highlighted that the experience with gold It has not been very pleasant in some countries, because mining companies pay only 2 or 3 percent in royalties. For this reason, he stated, Bukele’s challenge is negotiate differently with the mining transnationals.
