Resisting CAFTA and Metal Mining in El Salvador

Resisting CAFTA and Metal Mining in El Salvador
By Leah Wilson
April 2010

On Friday, January 8, hundreds of people arrived in the rural town of Trinidad, El Salvador to hold vigil for the "martyrs of the struggle against mining." Five lives had already been lost due to violence against anti-mining activists. People came from across the country to demonstrate their solidarity with the victims and their rejection of metallic mining in their country.

Between musical groups playing traditional revolutionary songs and a young rapper from nearby San Isidro with a message of social justice, a young local priest spoke to the crowd: "Our family and friends are being murdered. Environmental damage has already been done. The harmony of our town has been torn apart. And this foreign mining company, Pacific Rim, has the gall to call itself the victim. Here, they are the criminal. How can they call themselves a victim internationally?"

But Pacific Rim is doing just as the priest described and has found its legal backing in an instrument of U.S. trade policy, the United States-Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Long before December 17, 2004, when El Salvador became the first Central American country to sign on to CAFTA, economists, members of the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party, and leaders of the Salvadoran social movements warned that the trade agreement would increase poverty, worsen labor conditions, and undermine national sovereignty. In the months before CAFTA's approval, popular mobilizations highlighted the people's rejection of the trade agreement. They were met with violent police repression and a multi-million dollar government funded pro-CAFTA campaign. The final approval by El Salvador's Legislative Assembly took place in a midnight session fraught with deal-making and surrounded by hundreds of riot police to keep the protesters at bay.

Almost five years later, basic living costs have skyrocketed as CAFTA has destroyed the already-neglected agricultural sector and one of the most insidious parts of CAFTA—the investor protection clauses—is just now being revealed. Chapter 10 of the trade agreement contains the articles that allow foreign corporations to sue governments for violating their "right" to profit. Economists like Raul Moreno from El Salvador's Foundation for the Study of the Application of Law (FESPAD) have been warning the public about these articles since the beginning. Moreno explains that these articles are "the real attack on national sovereignty. If a country takes an action or creates a law to protect its citizens, to protect its workers, or to protect its environment, a foreign company can now sue the country for infringing on their profits."

More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/resisting-cafta-and-metal-mining-in-el-salvador-by-leah-wilson