'This is why we need the eyes of the world on this case'
Interview with US writer and activist John Cavanagh on iconic Central American mining and water defenders struggle
Last week 17 members of the US’s House of Representatives wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging him to intervene in an extraordinary case involving five anti-mining activists in El Salvador who were arrested in January this year allegedly on political grounds. All five were active participants in an historic, globally unprecedented nationwide mining ban in 2017, which is now at severe risk of being repealed. Here, via email, I ask US writer and activist John Cavanagh, from the US-based Institute for Policy Studies, about what has been going on:
DH: Your recent press release said El Salvador “remains the only country in the world” with a ban on “metallic mining.” Can you clarify exactly what that means - that no mining of metals at all is permitted?
JC: Yes, no mining of any metals is permitted. Sand, gravel and crushed stones can still be dug up for construction, but no mining of gold, silver or other metals minerals. A few other countries have partial bans, such as Costa Rica, Argentina and Colombia, but El Salvador is the only country where the entire nation is a “no-go zone” for metals mining.
DH: That seems like a pretty astonishing achievement. Would you say that El Salvador, in saying no to an entire extractives sector - and a very powerful one, no less - is setting an example to many other countries around the world?
JC: Yes, it sets an extremely strong example, even more so because the ban was passed by a unanimous vote in the national legislature in a country that is as deeply divided politically as the US. Remarkable. However, keep in mind that El Salvador is a small country with one major river system that, if contaminated by the cyanide used in gold mining, would be devastating to the drinking and farming water of almost the entire country. Many water and mining experts have concluded that mining should be banned in places that are near critical watersheds, prone to earthquakes or typhoons, on indigenous lands, or in communities where the public doesn’t want mining. These criteria made it wise to end mining in all of El Salvador. In most other countries, they would make it smart to eliminate a good deal of their industrial mining, but perhaps not all.
DH: I understand the ban was enacted into law six years ago now. How much mining had there been in El Salvador before that?
JC: The country was opened up to gold mining in the late 1800s by a colourful gold-sniffing engineer from the US named Charles Butters, a man who was expelled at gunpoint from neighbouring Nicaragua in 1927 by the revolutionary Augusto Sandino. Butters helped perfect the use of cyanide in separating gold from the rest of the rock, and he made millions through several mines in El Salvador, and then mining spread to other communities across the northern half of the country. My wife, Robin Broad, and I interviewed many Salvadorans about these mines for our book, The Water Defenders. Several people told us they felt that Butters had made a pact with the devil. It turns out that the rock surrounding his first mine also contained sulphides, iron and several other minerals, so to this day, whenever it rains near the shuttered Butters mine, the sulphides in the old rock piles turn into sulphuric acid and leach iron into the surrounding streams and rivers, turning the water an eerie orange colour. It is the one area in El Salvador that gives us nightmares.
DH: That sounds absolutely appalling! It would be good to know how the ban came about and who was really pushing for it. Could you tell us a little about that?
JC: Sure. The win in El Salvador was the most remarkable of my 40 years of advocacy and activism. Robin and I have talked a great deal with our Salvadoran allies in this fight, and three things appear vital to the win. The first was that it began up in northern El Salvador in the early 2000s after farmers there were approached by “white men in suits” from the mining companies who promised jobs and prosperity as gold prices started to rise precipitously during those years. The farmers visited mines in nearby Honduras and went back to the remains of the Butters mine in the east and saw the devastating consequences on the rivers and land, as well as that the companies were keeping most of the profits for themselves. So they started organising locally and then nationally, and then they reached out for help from groups like mine, the Institute for Policy Studies, that knew something about mining corporations and global lawsuits. These people learned all about mining, did very creative education in their communities, and found a wide range of allies to work with, including several 100 groups around the world that helped put pressure on the mining corporations.
DH: What were the other things vital to the win?
JC: The second was that the groups fighting mining decided early on to cast their campaign in a positive frame: they were defending the rivers and water of their country. Their slogans were: “Water, not Gold” and “We can live without gold, but we can't live without water.”
DH: And the third?
JC: Finally, the groups at the core of the fight understood that in their politically divided country, they would never win unless they found unlikely allies. So, bravely, they reached out and won over two conservative Archbishops, an Environment Minister who had ties back to the death squad party during the Salvadoran civil war, a lawyer who went to West Point [the US’s most well-known military academy], and a governor from halfway around the world in the Philippines. This successful campaign has lessons for any community facing damage from large corporations.
DH: Important lessons indeed! I understand two mining companies sued El Salvador’s government in connection with this issue. Can you explain what happened there?
JC: Fascinating question: how is it that global mining companies can sue governments? Well, it turns out that in the Wild West days of the 1980s and early 1990s, when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were peddling “free markets” as the solution to all of our ills, a few bad things happened. A key one was that globe-straddling corporations convinced governments to bend the rules of the global economy in their favour. Starting in the early 1990s, governments in richer countries stuck a new chapter in their trade and investment agreements with poorer nations that allowed corporations to sue governments when they felt governments took actions that impeded their future profits. So, when the water defenders of El Salvador raised questions about the wisdom of allowing gold companies into the country, the government put a pause on new mining contracts. Two companies that had been exploring for gold - and were convinced that there was a lot there - were furious and brought lawsuits against the government in 2009. Cases are heard in an obscure outfit that is part of the World Bank group in Washington DC. The Salvadoran water defenders had no idea how this tribunal worked, so they asked for help from our groups in Washington, and we started coordinating closely with them on researching the mining companies as well as filling them in on how the tribunal worked.
DH: Do some of those water defenders include the same five people who were arrested in January, and which prompted the recent approach to Secretary of State Blinken?
JC: I know that all our conversation thus far has been about fabulous organising and truly positive outcomes. Two other quick wow moments: the mining companies lost the lawsuits, so those were two other water defender victories, in addition to the mining ban. But now we turn to a harsh new chapter in this story. In January this year the Bukele government, which has been arresting 10s of 1000s of people and denying them due process of law, carried out the cruel act of arresting five men from the communities that beat back the mining companies. The five were charged with a crime that the government alleged happened 34 years ago during the brutal 12-year Salvadoran civil war. Tragically, the five detainees were all involved in the 13-year struggle against the mining companies, including the person who was the tactical genius in the fight: Antonio Pacheco. Antonio runs the non-profit ADES that was at ground zero of the mining fights. He was the one who bravely reached out to unlikely allies like the Archbishop of San Salvador, and recently he has been documenting steps that the government has been taking to test the waters on getting rid of the mining ban. Bukele was hence very strategic in arresting Antonio, and it is clear he wanted him out of the picture and to strike fear into movements that oppose mining. Alas, in a country that has abandoned the rule of law, there is almost no chance that Antonio and the other four will get a fair trial. This is why we need the eyes of the world on this case.
DH: That explains the members of the US’s Congress drawing Blinken’s attention to it. How do they think he might be able to help?
JC: That is a million dollar question. For most of US history, when members of the US government - either members of Congress or the State Department - made noises to governments in Latin America, those governments responded. That is part of the legacy of 200 years of the US viewing Latin America as its realm of influence, as its “backyard.” Most of that history is one of the US intervening in the affairs of other countries - a bloody and negative history. However, there is also a history of social movements in the US pressuring the US government to stand up for human rights in certain countries, and that is a positive history. What has changed in the last decade or so is that the US has turned away from Latin America as it becomes obsessed with China, and US aid is less important in Latin America, and US influence has waned. Bukele openly criticizes the US and has assumed a populist stance of criticizing it. So, we aren't sure what impact this letter will have, but Bukele is on shaky economic footing now, his finances are low after his idiotic embrace of Bitcoin, and he does need external assistance. So the pressure might help. That is our hope.
DH: How serious is the danger of the mining ban being repealed?
JC: The danger of repeal is greater than any of us could have imagined at the time of the 2017 unanimous vote. Bukele was elected in 2019 and quickly consolidated a super-majority for his party in the national legislature. And his government is short of cash, so even though companies only pass on 2-4 % of profits from a mining venture to the country where the mining takes place, the attraction of mining for Bukele is strong. The Salvadoran government has made overtures to global mining forums and a corporation has been approaching farmers in the heart of the gold region with generous offers to lease land, so El Salvador’s water defenders are on high alert. An authoritarian government with that much power can move fast. On the positive side, the water defenders did such extensive public education in the decade before the historic 2017 ban that a 2015 poll by the prestigious University of Central America showed that 79.5% of Salvadorans “consider that El Salvador is not an appropriate country for metallic mining”, so restarting mining would be unpopular, and Bukele enjoys being popular. Your question is one that is keeping a number of us up at night.
DH: One final question. Do you think of this as a kind of iconic water defenders case?
JC: This case of the five is iconic because it is in the one country that has banned all metals mining, the country that beat back corporate lawsuits, and the country that inspired 100s of global groups to join that fight as allies. And they are fighting for their freedom in the country with the most popular leader in the Western Hemisphere - a leader who is now on the warpath against democratic and human rights norms. This is a vital case for anyone concerned with democracy and human rights.
DH: John, thank you so much.