{"id":9146,"date":"2024-12-23T11:46:22","date_gmt":"2024-12-23T16:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9146"},"modified":"2024-12-26T12:12:50","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T17:12:50","slug":"el-salvadors-congress-approves-ending-ban-on-metals-mining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9146","title":{"rendered":"El Salvador\u2019s Congress Approves Ending Ban on Metals Mining"},"content":{"rendered":"
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele speaks after receiving Costa Rica\u2019s highest honor from President Rodrigo Chaves at the presidential palace in San Jose, Costa Rica, Nov. 11, 2024. (AP Photo\/Jose Diaz, File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

El Salvador\u2019s Congress approved Monday a law that would lift the country\u2019s seven-year-old ban on mining for metals.<\/p>\n

The law, proposed by President Nayib Bukele and passed on a 57 to 3 vote, would allow mining everywhere except nature reserves and sensitive watersheds. It\u2019s expected to go into law with his approval.<\/p>\n

The law bans the use of toxic mercury in gold mining, and would require private companies to enter a type of joint venture with the government to open mines.<\/p>\n

Environmentalists and the Roman Catholic church oppose the resumption of mining, citing potential damage to ecosystems, but Bukele called the ban \u201cabsurd\u201d earlier this year.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Archbishop Jos\u00e9 Luis Escobar Alas recently asked the president not to reverse the ban,<\/a><\/span> which has been in place since 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will damage this country forever,\u201d Msgr. Escobar Alas said in a homily.<\/p>\n

That view was also voiced by about 100 civic and environmental activists who protested near Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are giving us a gift, on Dec. 23, 2024, of pollution for our water, our land,\u201d said Adalberto Blanco, of the Permanent Roundtable on Risk Management.<\/p>\n

A poll released by Central American University Jos\u00e9 Sime\u00f3n Ca\u00f1as suggested that a majority of Salvadorans feel mining is not appropriate for their country.<\/p>\n

In November, the highly popular Bukele proposed mining gold. The county\u2019s unmined gold could be \u201cwealth that could transform El Salvador,\u201d he wrote on the social platform X. He has estimated the country\u2019s gold reserves are worth $3 trillion.<\/p>\n

At this point, exploration has revealed deposits of gold and silver, but has been was no large-scale metal mining. It\u2019s unclear what how large the country\u2019s gold reserves could be.<\/p>\n

Bukele\u2019s party controls El Salvador\u2019s Congress by a wide margin and his political opposition has been devastated.<\/p>\n

– AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

El Salvador\u2019s Congress approved Monday a law that would lift the country\u2019s seven-year-old ban on mining for metals. The law, proposed by President Nayib Bukele and passed on a 57 to 3 vote, would allow mining everywhere except nature reserves and sensitive watersheds. It\u2019s expected to go into law with his approval. The law bans…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/ea8d6de\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5763x3840+0+1\/resize\/980x653!\/format\/webp\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F1a%2Fa4%2F51a8880e1b0aaf0dc278c7f9309c%2F8634ef78a8a64556b9da090f06789737","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[189],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-borders-commerce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9148,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9146\/revisions\/9148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}