Canadian Gold Company Sues El Salvador for $100 Million
Paul JayCEO and Senior Editor, The Real News Network
Posted: June 20, 2010 10:41 PM
Canadian mining company, Pacific Rim, is in court suing the government of El Salvador for 100 million dollars. It claims that by not awarding the company an exploitation permit for its proposed gold mine, the tiny country is in breach of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (known as CAFTA). Canada is not a signatory to the trade agreement, so the Vancouver-based company is filing the suit through it's US subsidiary, Pac Rim Cayman, which it moved from the Cayman Islands to Nevada in December 2007.
In the slim coverage that has come out around the case, few have attempted to answer the question as to how the case got this far? How did the dispute travel from the hills of Northern El Salvador to the halls of Washington, DC?
One year ago today, teacher Marcelo Rivera disappeared. His body was found two weeks later at the bottom of a well, miles away from his home in the town of San Isidro. His body was found with clear signs of torture, such as missing fingernails. San Isidro is also home to Pacific Rim's flagship property, El Dorado, which the company has been fighting to open for years. Rivera was a key leader in the grassroots anti-mining movement that has stood in the way of that mine.
Why did so many of the people of San Isidro oppose the Canadian mine? Ask Marcelo Rivera's brother Miguel, who was in Washington, DC last month for the start of the CAFTA hearing at the World Bank. He's not allowed to participate in the trial, nor even sit in on it, despite knowing the case better than any of the DC-based lawyers in the room.
While in DC Miguel goes from meeting, to interview, to press conference, being asked to provide details on the various ways he and his community feel they have been affected by the proposed mine. He tells of radio journalists receiving death threats, a priest attacked while driving his car, mayors admitting they accepted money from the company. The stories are endless.
Miguel describes the gold mining process including the use of cyanide, release of heavy metals like arsenic and mercury, loss of water access - El Salvador is already tied with Haiti for the least access to potable water in the hemisphere. He tells of how he and his brother decided to oppose the project after a trip to a gold mine in neighboring Honduras. He talks of the horrific skin defects he saw on the babies in Honduras' Siria Valley.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-jay/canadian-gold-company-sue_b_618318.html
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