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By Jenny Peirce, CRISPAZ The names of community members have been change to protect their identities. For Liliana, 59, the name El Dorado conjures up images of pennies rather than gold. She remembers her father coming home from the El Dorado gold mine tunnels with one and a quarter colones wage for a day's work. That was in the 1940s, and now Liliana is tracking down the few people in the nearby communities who remember that mine, near the town of San Isidro, in the department of Cabañas. What they remember more than the grinding work are animals falling sick and dying near the mine after drinking from the rivers and lagoons contaminated by cyanide remnants. Now, the Canadian company Pacific Rim is planning to exploit gold here at El Dorado once again, joining what some are calling "a new gold fever in Central America." As the talk of gold grows louder, Liliana tries to bring the voices of past and future generations into the conversation with an industry that is growing notorious in the region. When the price of gold started to rise in recent years, investors turned their attention back to Central America, where long-identified mineral deposits can now be extracted with new technologies based on the leaching of gold using cyanide and the enforcement of regulations on the industry is notoriously lax. The El Dorado mine would be the first commercial-scale gold mine in El Salvador, but there are at least fifteen applications for mine exploitation permission currently under government review.
On a Saturday morning in June, about fifty people from San Isidro, near El Dorado, gather in a school classroom. Questions and rumors abound, but everyone has heard the good news-jobs, money, and new facilities are on the way. But the Titihuapa and Copinolapa rivers have started to dry out in the last few years, and farmers are concerned about their water supplies. Others have heard that mining towns in other countries have become magnets for alcohol and prostitution. Few of them know what the Oxfam-sponsored No Dirty Gold campaign is telling North Americans: that 20 tons of waste are produced to make a single gold ring.
People in this area have on average a fourth grade education, and both community activists and company officials try with difficulty to convey the intricacies of the mining operation. Pacific Rim circulates a colorful brochure explaining its commitment to environmental protection and gives presentations on the mining industry. This isn't sufficient to constitute community involvement in the decision, according to the Social and Environmental Development Association of Sensuntepeque (ADES). For them, the numbers speak for themselves: of a projected annual profit of $30 million for North American shareholders, 1% royalties to the San Isidro county government amount to $300,000 and 148 jobs for locals for eight years. Meanwhile, ten thousand people, mostly farmers, are left with questionable water resources and the risk of future chemical leakage and health afflictions. "This kind of project affects future generations," says Antonio Pacheco of ADES. "People have a right to know how it will affect them. Only a well-informed population can make a good decision." The El Dorado project plans to extract an average of 80,000 ounces of gold per year from the subterranean mine over a projected operating period of six years. The mining process would use eight tons of cyanide and up to one million gallons of water per day to leach the gold from the rock, which is blasted out of a subterranean chamber. The chemical remnants of the leaching process settle in a tailings pond-a lagoon fitted with a thick geomembrane to prevent leakage-and then decompose by ultraviolet rays into carbon dioxide and ammonium. Pacific Rim's Frederick Earnest, the manager of the project, explains that after community consultation, the company decided to gather rain water rather than draw from the local aquifers and rivers for the mine's operations. The company has undertaken an extensive publicity campaign to highlight its "North American" safety and environmental standards, although its environmental impact study cites the criteria set by the World Bank. The study determines that using current technology, there exist no long-term environmental risks, and the company is optimistic that the Salvadoran government will agree.
Gold Mines in Central America: A Tarnished Record In Guatemala, the struggle over mining is intensifying because of the right of indigenous communities to control natural resources in their lands, as stipulated in the International Labor Organization Convention 169. On June 18th, 2005, Mayan communities surrounding a proposed gold mine in San Marcos, Guatemala, held a referendum and voted 98% against the project. Although El Salvador has not signed on to Convention 169, the debate here is framed around similar questions, especially hinging on one key word-development. In Cabañas, Pacific Rim's plans to fund schooling and other community projects fits squarely into the development principles promoted by the World Bank: foreign investment and private sector incentives for education and other services. During the past decade, El Salvador has been the model student of the development strategies of the World Bank and the IMF, deregulating industries and courting foreign investors through emphasizing the minimal royalties that local communities such as San Isidro receive. For proponents of the mine, El Dorado would bring money to one of the most impoverished areas of El Salvador and could even stem the flow of young people migrating to the US.
Yet when Mr. Earnest explains on the local radio that Pacific Rim's primary purpose, "like any other company, is to earn profits for our shareholders," many residents aren't ready to hand over such influence on San Isidro's local services and development plans. "The government is corrupt here, and we don't receive anything, but we don't want the gringos involved," says Alejandro, a San Isidro resident who attended the workshop. Others are concerned that the company-sponsored training programs displace teaching resources from the local schools and only target potential mine employees.
CAFTA Raises the Stakes The potential implementation of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) would further weaken the existing environmental protections. Environmental stipulations at a gold mine in California, for example, are under attack by a lawsuit from a Canadian mining company, based on NAFTA's Chapter 11 - a chapter that is duplicated in CAFTA and allows companies to sue for profit loss caused by regulations. But the gold industry has a strong ally in the World Bank, which has loaned an initial $45 million to Glamis Gold for its mine project in northern Guatemala. Widespread community protests have been dismissed as being an "anti-development" campaign. When the police were brought in to control protests at the site in January, and local resident Raul Bocel was shot dead, Guatemalan President Oscar Berger said, "We have to protect the investors." Some church leaders are speaking up in defense of communities' right to decide the future of their land and resources. The Bishop of San Carlos in Costa Rica rejects the label "anti-development," for he envisions true development as based on "three pillars: agriculture, ecology and ecotourism." Guatemalan Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini of San Marcos received death threats after calling for Convention 169 to be respected and for local stakeholders to be part of the decisions about the gold under the soil.
In San Isidro, Liliana shakes her head and laments that many people, including church leaders, have already "been bought with caps and t-shirts," and that the prospect of money is dividing the community. Pacific Rim says it has consulted sufficiently and that some groups are simply spreading lies. Mr. Earnest is immediately suspicious of the mention of religious groups, saying "they are often fronts for environmentalists, because Jesus never said anything about mining." At the community workshop in San Isidro, many participants said this was the first they had heard of the environmental risks of the El Dorado mine. Jorge, of the nearby cantón Llano de Hacienda, wants an "impartial assessment with critical and scientific criteria." According to Mr. Pacheco, "We need maybe a hundred more workshops." He added: "People in North America must watch what their governments and companies are doing in other countries." Meanwhile, near the El Dorado site, a group of schoolchildren inaugurated a Pacific Rim reforestation project, reading a Prayer to the Tree and sipping soda under a company banner adorned with balloons and environmental slogans. Not far away, hundreds of core samples are stored, awaiting analysis of mineral samples from the earth below. Looking out at the hills near San Isidro, Clara isn't sure what to think. "All I know," she says, "is that the mine might bring jobs for a few years, but we will be left with the effects for many years after they are gone." Back to Faces of Trade homepage
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