The mining site of El Dorado is located in the municipality of San Isidro, department of Cabañas, at 65 km east from San Salvador, and with one of the highest poverty rates of the country. Humid subtropical forests compose the area, and in the past it has been seldom used for occasional small-scale mining and underground mining. Forty years after the exploitation of the El Dorado mine between 1948 and 1953, in 1993, Mirage Resource Corp. began drilling underneath the mine. Roughly 46.000 of solid rock were drilled, mainly to extract gold and silver. Since 2002, Pacific Rim became responsible for the project and commenced procedures to obtain concessions allowing the exploitation of the deposit [1]. Local communities were never in favour of the project, given the environmental impact this would have in their territory. Although the company ensured that the water supply would not be affected, it was estimated that the exploitation would require more than 36.000 litres per hour (more than 10,4 l/sec). During the exploration activities, some negative impacts were already visible, such as the reduction of accessibility to fresh water or the contamination of some watercourses, which affected the health of inhabitants and livestock. The Environmental Committee of Cabañas reported that 10 springs of natural water draught close to the explorative operations sites. This information was double-checked and confirmed by the Ministry for Natural Resources. A part from the cyanide used for processing gold, Salvadorian investigators found concentrations of arsenic way above what for example allows Canada in two rivers close to the project area.

The extended local opposition was confronted by groups that benefitted from the company’s presence, who, according to a report [2], was paying some Mayors in the region to foster “local activities with the objective of gaining local consent to the project”. These activities divided and polarized the local population, and increased instability and insecurity. After initial threats to defenders of the local population, who were there since 2006, following the suspension of the project two years later violence escalated. In the summer of 2009 there were the first murders and threats, which continued the following years. As of today, at least half a dozen deaths among those resisting the projects have been related with the presence of Pacific Rim. 

For example, on June 18, 2009, Cabañas de El Salvador leader Marcelo Rivera was kidnapped and found dead three weeks later [5]. On December 24, 2009, vice president of the environmental committee of Cabañas de El Salvador Ramiro Rivera Gómez  was machine-gunned and killed [6]. On December 29, 2009, 32-year-old Cabañas Environmental Committee member Dora Alicia Recinos Sorto and her husband, community leader José Santos Rodríguez, were kidnapped by hitmen while returning from doing laundry at the river. Dora was killed while José was detained and tortured by having his fingers cut off with a knife [7].

Pacific Rim accuses the Government of El Salvador of denying the concession of exploitation of the El Dorado mine to the company because this refused to bribe the President Tony Saca. The opposite version, however, goes that Pacific Rim did not comply the necessary requirements to obtain the licence: it never completed the viability study, it never confirmed having acquired the property of the pertinent lands nor the authorization for its exploitation, and finally it never had its environmental impact evaluation approved.

At first, the company tried to benefit from the Free Trade Agreement between the US, Central America, and the Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR), and moved its subsidiary in the Cayman Islands (where it got more favourable fiscal conditions). Although this fiscal strategy did not work in the end, they could access the World Bank tribunal, the International Centre for the Settlment of Investment Disputes (ICSID), thanks to a clause in El Salvadorian law (after that it was amended) that allowed companies to recur to arbitral tribunals. The company, recently acquired by Oceana Gold, an Australian-Canadian mining company involved in similar conflicts in the Philippines, sued El Salvador for 301 million dollars – the profit they esteem they lost as a consequence of the exploitation permit denial.

To the cost that the claim will entail for El Salvador, one needs to add what the Government spends for defence, which is estimated to be around five million dollars. Moreover, and despite the fact that the transnational corporation uses and argument the fact that its activities would entail a benefit for the country in terms of employment and development, the financial structure of Pacific Rim allows it to avoid paying taxes in El Salvador. Several public figures, such as the Salvadorian Human Rights Ombudsman, have expressed their concern with the events and evidenced the relation between the victims and the activities in which Pacific Rim is involved. However, the intellectual culprits have not yet been identified.

The local opposition to the project ended up generating a national movement against mining. Hundreds of communities and people have joined the Mesa Nacional Frente a la Minería Metálica (National Roundtable Against Metallurgic Mining), which has succeeded in gaining international recognition and support, and made El Salvador the first country of its hemisphere to suspend metallurgic mining. In 2008 and 2009, both the incumbent and elected Salvadorian presidents agreed publicly to deny the extension of the exploitation licence to Pacific Rim. More recently, the new president Sanchéz Cerén even declared that: “mining is not viable in El Salvador”. [3] After the wave of murders related to the company’s activities, several lawsuits were filed before the Public Attorney of the Republic and the Attorney for the Defence of Human Rights in El Salvador. But given the evident lack of investigation, the case was presented before the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights, which in one proceeding ordered the Government of El Salvador to adopt immediately the necessary precautionary measures to guarantee the security of those opposing the project. [4] 

An opinion from the PPT In a hearing that was held in Geneva in June 2014, the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) listened to the testimonies of Saul Baños, of the Mesa Nacional Frente a la Minería Metálica of El Salvador. In line with the evidence brought before the judges by this witness, the Tribunal recognized the actions of the transnational corporation as another example of violations of human and people rights. In line with its full judgement of Madrid, in May 2010, and just a few months before the session that was subsequently held in Mexico in December 2014, the PPT underlined once again how transnational corporations, including Pacific Rim, systematically violate human and peoples’ rights to their own profit. In the same line, the PPT recognized in this widespread practice the current shortcoming of international law, namely the impossibility of accessing justice and obtaining a remedy that is increasingly becoming an unbearable burden for affected communities, as well as for the laws that are supposed to give them shelter. In the same spirit, the PPT acknowledged the necessity to improve international legislation, including through a binding treaty on transnational corporations, and/or a peoples’ treaty, in order to hold transnational corporations accountable for their actions.