December 2, 2013 Posted by Alex Blair
Despite the acquisition, opposition to mining in El Salvador is widespread (and justified).
Pacific Rim Mining shareholders approved selling their company to Australia’s OceanaGold for $10.2 million on November 21st. The new owner will inherit legal and human rights troubles in El Salvador and all of Latin America. Since 2009, Pacific Rim has been suing El Salvador for not having granted it a mining permit since a presidential ban on mining was adopted, despite widespread opposition to mining across the country.
“Salvadorans ask that this project be stopped,” Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas recently told CBC Radio. “Ask those transnational companies to stop committing terrible injustices and exploiting the people of El Salvador. We are not very happy about this judicial dispute; they are asking us to pay them millions.”
The deal would rescue a sinking Pacific Rim Mining, but for Salvadorans it’s raising fears. Prolonging the unjust arbitration process will cost El Salvador, which is the smallest and most densely populated country in Latin America, millions of dollars.
“If it comes down to it, I think it is better to pay the money, than to pay the consequences,” Archbishop Alas said.
He’s referring to the devastating environmental and health consequences of mining in a country where 90 percent of the surface water is heavily contaminated and 20 percent of its rural population lacks safe drinking water, according to the World Bank. With El Salvador experiencing a clean water crisis, reopening the country to mining would threaten two-thirds of the Salvadoran’s water supplies, affecting health, agriculture and livelihoods.
Back in 2008, Monseñor Fernando Saenz La Calle said, “It is not right to risk the health of the population so that a few who do not live here can take 97 percent of the juicy profits and leave us with 100 percent of the cyanide.”
More:
https://politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/oceanagold-bails-out-pacific-rim-mining-but-el-salvador-is-not-for-sale/
(How impressive, seeing Trump as he tries comically hard to appear god-like to Bukele.)
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