Keys to the case against five environmental leaders in El Salvador and their relationship with mining

Five environmental leaders in El Salvador, known as “The Santa Marta 5,” were recently acquitted in a judicial process linked to a crime that occurred during the armed conflict that devastated the Central American country between 1979 and 1992.

Antonio Pacheco, Miguel Gómez, Alejandro Laínez, Pedro Laínez and Saúl Rivas were imprisoned for 21 months, accused by the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office of the kidnapping and murder in 1989 of María Inés Alvarenga, for allegedly collaborating with the military during the height of the civil conflict.

According to Salvadoran Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado, the defendants were “former” guerrilla commanders during the war, linked to the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, a leftist party that governed El Salvador for 10 years after the war.

Social organizations and activists considered that the arrest of the leaders in January 2023, with Nayib Bukele already in the presidency, was persecution for their activism against mining, centered in Cabañas, in the north of El Salvador, the territory where Santa Marta is located.

This area was devastated at the time by the fight between guerrillas and the military, but then it managed to recover and since then it became a highly organized community, which even managed to form a network of communities to start an anti-mining fight, which concluded in 2017 with the approval of the Metallic Mining Prohibition Law.

That was a world milestone, as El Salvador became the first country to definitively prohibit this practice, with Santa Marta being the epicenter of anti-mining activism.

From that community emerged the Association for Social Economic Development (ADES), an organization to which some of the accused who have been released belong, performing tasks, including legal advice on human rights issues.

“Instrumentalization of justice”

“The accusation was just a manipulation of the judicial system to persecute environmental activism, and an instrumentalization of justice to criminalize water defenders who warned the country about the dangers of reactivating mining,” the Social Economic Development Association said on Tuesday. (ADES), in a statement published after the release of the environmentalists.

This is the first time that a process of the Salvadoran civil war ends with an acquittal, where in addition, those accused ask to investigate those who prosecuted them.

The accused, now over 60 years old and with chronic illnesses, have requested the Judicial Investigation section of the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador to investigate the peace and investigative courts. in the country for not having analyzed the case.

“Those deprived of liberty are suffering a series of extremely inhuman conditions in open violation of the Penitentiary Law and International Humanitarian Law,” said Antonio Pacheco, one of those acquitted, at a press conference.

Additionally, in 2023, a group of United Nations special rapporteurs expressed his “fear” that the case was “an attempt to intimidate those who seek to defend the environment in the country, and especially those who defend human rights against the negative impacts of mining.”

Also, 185 academics and lawyers, and 13 legal organizations from 26 countries they sent a letter opened to the Attorney General of the Republic of El Salvador, Rodolfo Delgado, to “immediately abandon the case against the Salvadoran Water Defenders.”

“The lack of evidence has been compounded by the lack of procedural guarantees. Growing evidence suggests that this case against the anti-mining activists of Santa Marta is not random,” they noted.

The Bukele government has not responded to allegations from national and international human rights organizations about the possible criminalization of environmentalists for their anti-mining activism.

However, its inhabitants caught the attention when the Salvadoran government sent a strong military contingent to the area last year to supposedly pursue members of the Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha gangs.

Why do they say they are persecuted for their activism?

For organizations and activists, the process against “The Santa Marta 5” has to do with the government’s apparent movement to rethink the anti-mining ban in the country.

In October 2021, the Salvadoran Parliament, with a pro-government majority, approved the project of the General Directorate of Energy, Hydrocarbons and Mines for “the review and update of Mining and its regulations.”

Additionally, that same year El Salvador became a member of the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development (IGF), an entity that supports countries committed to the exploitation of mining to ensure that this activity ” support its sustainable development goals.

Two facts that do not make sense for anti-mining activists, since this practice has been prohibited in El Salvador since 2017. Then, they began to organize against the new Directorate and El Salvador’s accession to this forum, but they did not manage to massify its activism because five of its members were arrested.

“There is compelling evidence that President Bukele wants to eliminate the 2017 unanimous vote in the Salvadoran legislature to ban mining, a measure that would endanger the country’s water supply and violate the public will,” concluded a group of US experts. and Canadians in a report published in January 2024 by the Institute of Political Studies.

For analysts, there are two reasons why El Salvador could reverse the mining ban: for an economic issue, being that it is the most indebted country in Central America with 87% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) compromised, and for its relationship with China.

China is a country that has important reserves of mineral resources, and also “leads the world production of many of them,” according to the University of Navarra.

Although there is no official position on the matter, China is getting closer and closer to Latin America, with its Belt and Road initiative, a program of international investment to develop infrastructure, energy and mining projects in the region.

In El Salvador, China has built a library, a recreational park in the coastal area, and will soon build a stadium. In addition to other projects related to water treatment.

The Voice of America made a request for comments to the international press department and requested an interview with the head of Economy, María Luisa Hayem, to clarify whether El Salvador intends to reactivate mining, but at the time of publication it has not received a response.

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