The Roman Catholic Church called on the president of El Salvador Sunday to not lift the country’s ban on gold mining.
Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas asked President Nayib Bukele to not reverse the ban, which has been in place since 2017.
“It will damage this country ceaselessly,” Msgr. Escobar Alas said in a homily. That view has also been voiced by civic and environmental groups.
On Wednesday, Bukele called the 7-year-old ban on metals mining “absurd,” and claimed unmined gold could be “wealth that might transform El Salvador,” in comments on the social platform X.
Bukele’s party controls El Salvador’s Congress by a large margin and his political opposition has been devastated, so a proper proposal to finish the ban is unlikely to fulfill much resistance.
In 2017, El Salvador banned all metals mining above ground and below. A broad coalition of sectors, including the Catholic church, supported the prohibition to be able to protect the small country’s water resources from contamination.
At that time, exploration had revealed deposits of gold and silver, but there was no large-scale metal mining. It’s unclear what its gold reserves might be.
Bukele on Wednesday proposed “modern and sustainable” mining that may look after the environment.
Environmentalists quickly criticized the president’s boosterism.
“It’s not true that there’s green mining, it’s paid for with lives, kidney, respiratory problems and leukemia that aren’t immediate,” said Amalia López with the Alliance Against the Privatization of Water.
Their concerns include the quantity of water needed for mining operations and the storage of water contaminated with heavy metals.
It marks a reversal for the highly popular and recently reelected Bukele, who during his first campaign for the presidency in 2019 said he supported the mining ban.
