SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador’s congress on Monday approved a law that would lift the country’s seven-year-old ban on mining for metals.
The law, proposed by President Nayib Bukele and passed by a 57-3 vote, would allow mining everywhere except nature reserves and sensitive watersheds. It is expected to be passed into law with his approval.
The law bans the use of toxic mercury in gold mining and requires private companies to enter into some kind of joint venture with the government to open mines.
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Environmentalists and the Roman Catholic Church opposed the resumption of mining, citing possible damage to ecosystems, but Bukele called the ban “absurd” earlier this year.
Archbishop José Luis Escobar Unfortunately, the president recently asked not to reverse the ban, which has been in place since 2017.
“It will damage this country forever,” said Msgr. Escobar Alas said in a homily.
That view was also expressed by about a hundred civic and environmental activists who protested to Congress.
“They are giving us the gift of pollution of our water and our land on December 23, 2024,” said Adalberto Blanco of the Permanent Roundtable on Risk Management.
A poll by the Central American University José Simeón Cañas shows that a majority of Salvadorans believe that mining is not suitable for their country.
In November, the very popular Bukele proposed winning gold. The province’s unmined gold could be “wealth that could transform El Salvador,” he wrote on the social platform X. He estimates the country’s gold reserves are worth $3 trillion.
At this point, exploration has revealed deposits of gold and silver, but there has been no large-scale metal mining. It is unclear how large the country’s gold reserves could be.
Bukele’s party controls El Salvador’s Congress by a wide margin and his political opposition has been devastated.
