Water or Gold? Cross-border Mining Threatens the Lempa River Watershed | Latin America's Open Veins: Mining and Resistance

Written by Jocelin Gregorio-Alarcon

On March 29, 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to win a decade-long court case against Oceana Gold, a mining and subsidiary company of the U.S. and Canadian mining company, Pacific Rim. The court verdict prohibits Oceana Gold from recuperating money invested in mining projects, as well as, outlawing metal mining within Salvadorian territory to protect further pollution of the Lempa river, El Salvador’s main freshwater resource [1].

Watershed area map of the Lempa River and its tributaries encompassing Guatelama, Honduras, and El Salvador. Image source.

The Lempa River watershed is an important hydrological resource for Guatemala, Honduras, and especially for El Salvador where it provides over 60% of the country’s freshwater. The Lempa River watershed in danger of being polluted by Guatemala and Honduras, who in recent years have encouraged more mining in their territories and within the watershed [2].

For Rodolfo Calles, representative of CRIPDES, a Salvadorian NGO that advocates for sustainable development, “El Salvador has already demonstrated that organization and social struggle can obtain good results, but the problem that exists with Honduras and Guatemala is that the mining companies are already exploiting mines.” Calles believes that the anti-mining struggle should be supported by various cross-border communities along the shared watersheds with additional support from international organizations to guarantee the human right to access clean water [3].

Cerro Blanco Mine Renews Conflict Between Guatemala and El Salvador

Recently the controversial gold and silver mine Cerro Blanco located near the Salvadorian border in Asuncion Mita, Jutiapa, Guatemala has reopened after five years of inactivity. The highly controversial mine previously owned by Goldcorp, a subsidiary company of Pacific Rim, was recently sold in January 2017 to Canadian mining company Bluestone Resources Inc. [4]. Bluestone Resources is “a mining development and exploration company focused on advancing the permitted high-grade Cerro Blanco Gold Project [5].” Bluestone estimates that Cerro Blanco will produce approximately 1,579,959 ounces of gold and 4,486,632 ounces of silver during the mine’s lifespan [6].

This map shows the approximate location of the Cerro Blanco Gold mine located in Southeastern Guatemala near the Salvadorian border. Image source.

Cerro Blanco is only 14 kilometres from Lake Guija, a lake shared between Guatemala and El Salvador located within the Lempa River watershed. Guatemalan and Salvadorian anti-mining activists worry that continued operations at Cerro Blanco will pollute Lake Guija with cyanide, a deadly neurotoxin chemical, and other toxic metals used in gold mining. The water from Lake Guija releases directly into the Lempa river [7].

A report on the Cerro Blanco mine by Mining Watch Canada, a Canadian anti-mining grassroots organization, claims that independent investigations found that the “surrounding soil and rock [at Cerro Blanco] has been found to contain toxic arsenic in concentrations exceeding health standards.” The Mining Watch report also claims that the Cerro Blanco mine Environmental Impact Assessment was approved by the Guatemalan government without citizen participation and uses incorrect data that underestimates environmental and public health risks [8].

Mining in the Upper Lempa river basin threatens the Trifinio Plan, a socio-economic and environmental agreement between El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala which is supposed to protect the headwaters of the Lempa river. The Trifinio Plan originally signed in 1987 was meant to create an economic development of the Montecristo-Trifinio cross-border region and protect the headwaters of the Lempa River in Guatemala and Honduras. Unfortunately, no clause in the Trifinio plan prohibits mining in the region, which is a loophole mining companies like Goldcorp and now Bluestone Resources take advantage of to mine in Guatemala and Honduras [9].

In Honduras, Aura Minerals Has No Respect for the Dead

On the Honduran side of the Lempa River watershed the San Andres gold mine located near La Labor, Ocotepeque has resulted in heavy metal water pollution throughout almost 20 years of mining operations. Throughout the years, community resistance against the San Andres gold mine has been building up in the surrounding communities. More recently, the Azacualpa community, located further up the mountain from the San Andres mine, joined the local resistance against Aura Minerals, the company that currently owns the San Andres mine to avoid being displaced from their lands. In 2014, resistance in the Azacualpa community turned violent when members of the community were attacked by the Honduran military [10].

Photo Credits: Louis Bockner, image found here

This past February 2018, community resistance against an expansion of the San Andres mine created public outrage when it was discovered that Aura Minerals, the Canadian mining company that currently owns the San Andres mine, was digging up graves and removing bodies from the Azacualpa cemetery without consent from most of the deceased family members. According to the locals, the cemetery lies above a large deposit of gold that Aura Minerals hopes to exploit as it expands the operations.

“When we showed up to observe the exhumation, they told us to get out, that it was private property. They told us if we didn’t leave, the same thing would happen to us that happened to Berta Caceres” said Miriam Varga, whose deceased husband rests in the cemetery. Varaga refers to Berta Caceres, a Honduran Lenca anti-mining activist who was assassinated in March 2016 for her involvement as the leader of COPINH-, an NGO that defends indigenous land rights from mining and hydroelectric dam projects in Honduras.

In a community that has spent almost two decades resisting mining operations that have resulted in countless death threats, killings, and kidnappings, Berta Caceres assassination served as a clear warning to anti-mining activists trying to denounce abuses [11].

For El Salvador, cross-border mining in the upper Lempa River watershed is a threat to its ban on metal mining and continued contamination of water resources.

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Referenced Work