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In El Salvador, a confrontation looms between Canadian mining companies looking for  precious metals,  and communities mobilizing to resist what they see as an incursion of their homeland.

The two companies, Au Martinique Silver (which has its head offices in Denver CO) and Intrepid Minerals, have been issued licenses to explore areas in the Department of Chalatenango by the Salvadoran government,  which claims that local permission is not necessary.
The basis for this claim is that while villagers may own the topsoil,  the subsoil and rock beneath their lands is national property, rights to which can be sold by the government for exploration and subsequent mining. 

This mining in question utilizes a cyanide extraction process that the targeted communities believe will destroy their reforested land, pollute their water supply, ruin their agriculture and make their communities, sooner or later, uninhabitable. They view the exploration and excavation of their lands as the biggest threat to their survival since the war ending in 1991.  They are extremely worried about the prospect of violence, which has occurred in parallel situations in neighboring Guatemala and Honduras, when security forces were called in to enforce the mining companies presence.   Despite their fear, they are prepared to resist what they regard as an illegitimate incursion of international companies, abetted by their own government. 

The history of these communities is dramatic.   During the war and for several years prior,  most residents in northeast Chalatenango were regarded by the government as a hostile population.   As such they were subject to a spectrum of “counter-insurgency” tactics ranging from harassment and detention, to rape and exemplary assassinations, to scorched-earth military campaigns and wholesale massacres.   This assault resulted in the temporary depopulation of many communities in the region, either to refugee camps in Honduras or as internal refugees scattered to other areas of the country.

These communities subsequently decided collectively to re-populate their villages  despite the threat of the very same military reprisals that had impelled them to leave.  In doing so,  they understood that they were risking their lives to return to their places of origin, and depended on their cohesion as organized communities to survive.   Many people perished.   Like so many villages in El Salvador,  the communities of Guarjila,  Las Flores, Nueva Trinidad, Carasque and Arcatao have rosters of martyrs,  those dead and disappeared whose painful history still lives in the hearts of those who survive them.

After the shooting war ended in 1991, the communities of Chalatenango have contended with the continuing economic war against the poor.    Free trade policies have bankrupted the farming population, leaving few options besides migration to the low paid maquilas in the capital, or emigration to the United States.   Meanwhile, the concentration of wealth and the increase in poverty now  exceeds pre-war levels.

In this setting, the communities view Martinique’s proposed mining project in the same light in which they see other large infrastructural plans such as Plan Pueblo Panama or a proposed hydroelectric dam: They are concerned it will benefit only a wealthy elite in their country and trans-national corporations with whom they are partnered, at the expense of damage to their own communities.

The mining companies maintain they are in legal compliance with all necessary laws.  The communities, on the other hand, view the  license as permission to exploit, sold without their consultation or permission, by a government that remains hostile to their existence. 

Mobilization against the mining project in El Salvador is local, regional and since November ’05, national.   Actions on November 16 in El Salvador were organized by the Popular Resistance Movement of October 12, a coalition of rural communities, agricultural collectives and labor organizations.  On November 16, thousands of Salvadorans took over principal highways, intersections and bridges at strategic locations across the country to protest the imposition of  infrastructure projects in their communities without their consent.

Their choice of date, commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the slaying of the Jesuit priests by the army, was not coincidental. Nor is the “October 12” in MPR-12:  Martinique mining is regarded as representative of the new conquistadors, and the social movement in El Salvador is committed to resistance.

Au Martinique’s communiques to the press, and presumably to established and prospective shareholders,  blandly ignores the local, regional and national firestorm of protest that has gathered around its miningproject in Chalatenango.  The company’s March 21, 2006 press release stated “...the companies are currently in negotiations with the community and reps and religious leaders to define relationships that will assure environmental compliance and community participation.”    The U.S. – El Salvador Sister Cities Network which has long-standing relationships with the communities in this region of El Salvador, understand that this statement belies the facts on the ground.   We also believe the consequences of this misrepresentation will likely cause Au Martinique’s investors to lose a lot of money.