El Salvador: No mining, no way

Here's a small section from yesterday's IKN38 that catches up with the mining scene in El Salvador. For more on the activist murders, click the link and visit the full CIPSES report.

El Salvador: Is this clear enough for you?

Here’s part of a speech made by El Salvador’s (popular) president, Mauricio Funes, on January 12^th 2010 and translated by CIPSES (15):

“There can be no misunderstanding; my government will not authorize any mining extraction projects.

“No one has convinced us that there are ways to extract minerals and metals, especially metals, without contaminating the environment and affecting public health. We are not going to [authorize extraction permits].”

Also, I expect Pacific Rim (PMU.to) was very glad to close successfully its $2.35m placement on January 14^th (16) because PMU was specifically mentioned by Funes in the same speech, in relation to the recent murders of three anti-mining activists opposed to the PMU projects in the country. Funes Said:

“I have personally given instructions to the Minister of Justice and Security and the Director of the National Civilian Police to investigate those cases,” Funes declared, pledging to shed light on “the motives that are behind these assassinations.” The president stated that those killed had “sacrificed their lives in pursuit of a better environment and a better quality of life for Salvadorans.”

So get your big red marker pen out and put a large cross in the country of El Salvador for anything concerning mining, miners and investment.

El Salvador's Presidential Election, March 15th 2009

Next weekend sees the presidential election showdown in El Salvador between the right-leaning Rodrigo Ávila of the ARENA party and the left-leaning Mauricio Funes of the FMLN party.

If the subject interests you, don't get your bias from that awful O'Grady woman and don't get it from the more respectable but still clearly biased UpsideDownWorld, either. As far as I'm concerned about the best place to watch proceedings is via an independent and experienced voice on El Salvador who follows the country's politics closely and has such a good reputation there that he's been an invited neutral observer on previous country elections.

So Tim's El Salvador Blog is the place for me. He's been blogging regularly already (the campaigns, the reactions, the collection of widely different opinion polls etc) and we're bound to get plenty more insight from Tim in the lead-up and the aftermath to March 15th. A highly recommended source of information. Here's the link to his blog again just to make sure.