President Nayib Bukele has overturned El Salvador’s seven-year-old ban on metal mining (the first such ban in the world) and renewed the assault on communities which campaign against mining. The five water defenders from Santa Marta, Cabañas, now face a new trial because of their opposition to gold mining.
This article draws on research by Pedro Cabezas, John Cavanagh and colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies and on reports by Mongabay and MiningWatch Canada.
Main image: montage by LAB based on a photograph by Cripdes of the anti-mining demonstration outside El Salvador’s National Assembly as it met to endorse Bukele’s overturn of the mining ban.
On 23 December 2024, the National Legislature of El Salvador overturned the country’s seven-year-old ban on metal mining. Populist president Nayib Bukele was from the first a vowed opponent of the ban, which he described as ‘absurd’. Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party now holds 54 of the 60 seats in the Assembly. Unsurprisingly the new measure was passed by an overwhelming majority.
In 2017 El Salvador had become the first country in in the world to enact a law banning all metal mining. The law passed unanimously, but it followed decades of patient work by local communities, the Catholic Church and civil society groups. Its focus at the time was a case brought by OceanaGold at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), claiming $250m from the Salvadoran government for loss of revenue supposedly caused by denial of a mining permit for the El Dorado gold mine in Cabañas province. Unusually for a tribunal where mining companies often win, OceanaGold lost the case and was ordered to pay costs.
Following Bukele’s re-election to the presidency in February 2024, the mining ban looked increasingly vulnerable, as the government struggled with a difficult economic situation, and retreated from its promotion of Bitcoin as the risky (and costly) deus ex machina solution to the country’s ills.
According to Reuters, Bukele stated on social media in November that the country had gold deposits worth some $132 billion, equivalent to about 380 per cent of El Salvador’s GDP. ‘This wealth, given by God, can be harnessed responsibly to bring unprecedented economic and social development to our people,’ Bukele wrote.
Water defenders targeted (again)
Less than three weeks after the new law was passed, the government ramped up persecution of a group of five water defenders from Santa Marta, Cabañas, who had been among the most effective campaigners for the original mining ban.

As LAB reported at the time, the five were originally arrested on January 11, 2023, and charged with murder of a woman 35 years ago, a charge that was accompanied with no evidence (and none has since been found).
A US-Canadian delegation organized by the Institute for Policy Studies and Share reported in detail in January 2024 on the original arrests, concluding that the case was intimately linked to the campaign for the ban on metal mining of which they were an important part. By targeting them the government could criminalize and deter communities and their leaders who dared to support the mining ban.
After nine months of campaigning inside El Salvador and globally, the Santa Marta Five were released to house arrest, a small, but important victory. At their trial on 18 October 2024 they were found innocent of all charges.
The Attorney General, however, appealed the innocent verdict. The appeals court has now ordered a new trial in February 2025 in a new court. So, campaigners are now calling for the government to drop the charges, withdraw the appeal, and let the five go free. At the same time supporters are campaigning to keep mining companies out of El Salvador.
Their freedom has been short-lived.
Renewed international campaign
Following the Attorney General’s action, 251 organizations from 29 countries released a statement demanding that the Salvadoran government drop the charges against the five Water Defenders and otherwise release them from prison to await their trial.
According to this statement: ‘Rather than investigate or prosecute those responsible for the dozens of cases of human rights violations and crimes against humanity that members of the Salvadoran military committed against the Santa Marta community (including the murders of the Lempa River massacre in 1980, where 30 people were assassinated and 189 were disappeared), the government is now re-victimizing the community by targeting their leaders, who have been outspoken against the policies of the current government. This further raises questions about whether the Attorney General’s true motivation is to attempt to silence these Water Defenders, especially in light of the current administration’s crusade to criminalize, persecute and demobilize its political opponents.’
‘The Salvadoran movement to ban mining and the Water Defenders who made it possible,’ the signatories state, ‘have been an inspiration to communities and civil society across the globe’.
The Institute for Policy Studies re-emphasized its support for the Water Defenders:
‘In light of these troubling developments, we affirm our steadfast commitment to support the ADES Santa Marta Five Water Defenders and the broader movement to resist metallic mining in El Salvador. We call on the San Vicente Sentencing Court to exercise the same objectivity that already resulted in a verdict acquitting the Water Defenders. The eyes of the world remain on El Salvador and on this politicized, unwarranted trial.’
Follow the gold
Despite the importance of pursuing acquittals for the Santa Marta Water Defenders, it is important not to lose sight of the reasons for their persecution:
- The new mining law passed on December 23, 2024, centralizes the decision making in the hands of the executive. It ignores international best practices, like requiring mining companies to submit an Environmental Impact Assessment for project approval. It does not provide for open and transparent information on mining activities nor does it require consultation and consent of the communities that will be impacted. And it leaves the high cost of mining closures and environmental remediation in the hands of the state while freeing mining corporations from responsibility for environmental crimes.
- El Salvador’s previous 2017 mining law that prohibited all metals mining was passed unanimously in the legislature. Almost four-fifths of Salvadorans opposed mining in a 2015 UCA poll. A new Central American University (UCA) poll in December 2024 found that 61 percent of Salvadorans oppose mining.
- The Archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas, along with 600 Salvadoran priests, a wide range of environmental and social movement organizations, and many in the communities that would be affected by mining have come out in opposition to new mining.
- IPS co-authored a piece for El Faro laying out 15 strong reasons why El Salvador rejected toxic gold mining in 2017 — and why it should not restart mining now.