How El Salvador Became The World’s Most Violent Peacetime Country

Homicide statistics released late last year showed that El Salvador had passed a grim milestone: The Central American nation registered more homicides in 2015 than in any year during its civil war, which lasted from 1980 to 1992.

El Salvador’s Institute of Legal Medicine tallied 6,656 killings last year, for a homicide rate of roughly 116 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants -- the highest in the world for a country not at war, and more than a 70 percent spike from the year before. It should come as no surprise that tens of thousands of Salvadorans, including children, have fled to the United States and other countries in the region seeking refuge.

How can a Canadian mining company sue El Salvador for $301 million?

Friday morning, a delegation of anti-mining activists, along with one in a kangaroo costume, made a visit to the Toronto office of Industry Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. 

They were accompanied by a delegation from El Salvador, visiting as part of the Stop the Suits Tour, organized with MiningWatch Canada, SalvAide, the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network, the United Church of Canada and others. They were there to draw attention to a petition with over 175,000 signatures, asking mining company OceanaGold to drop its $301 million lawsuit against El Salvador.

Canadian mining companies banned in three Salvadorian municipalities

On March 29, Nueva Trinidad became the third municipality in El Salvador to officially declare itself a "territory free of mining" through a historic community consultation.

Canadian mining companies have had a brutal presence in El Salvador. Communities in the departments of Chalatenango and Cabañas have organized to prevent the entry of mining corporations into the municipalities.

This new strategy is a way to bring the current mining conflict against OceanaGold Mining Corporation (formerly Pacific Rim Mining Corporation) away from judicial courts and back to the grassroots communities.

El Salvador Farmers Successfully Defy Monsanto

The perils of ingesting food that has any contact with a Monsanto-produced product are in the news on nearly a weekly basis.

As Dr. Jeff Ritterman has documented, Monstanto's herbicide, Roundup, has been linked to a fatal kidney disease epidemic, and has also been repeatedly linked to cancer.

Recently, a senior research scientist at MIT predicted that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, will cause half of all children to have autism by 2025.

The right-to-water struggle continues in El Salvador

The Blue Planet Project has supported the call for the right to water to be recognized in El Salvador.

Unfortunately, IPS reports, "On October 30, right-wing lawmakers blocked the single-chamber legislature from ratifying a previously approved reform to article 69 of the constitution, which granted the right to water and food the status of a human right, thus forcing the state to guarantee universal access."

The Fight to Keep Toxic Mining Out of El Salvador

For miners, investors and artisans, few things are more precious than gold. But for human life itself, nothing is more precious than water.

Just ask the people of El Salvador.

Nearly thirty years ago, the Wisconsin-based Commerce Group Corp. purchased a gold mine near the San Sebastian River in El Salvador and contaminated the water. Now, according to Lita Trejo, a native Salvadoran and school worker in Washington, DC, the once clear river is orange. The people who drink from the arsenic-polluted river, she says, are suffering from kidney failure and other diseases.

International fact-finding mission on mining and water in El Salvador

Blue Planet Project campaigner Meera Karunananthan is currently on a fact-finding mission on mining and water in El Salvador. She is participating in an international delegation that includes people from 12 countries and 22 organizations.

On Friday, she was in the capital city of San Salvador. At the media conference that began that day, she spoke about international solidarity for the struggle to protect water in El Salvador and the leadership social movements in that country have provided to the world. That afternoon, she spoke on a panel along side Manuel Perez Rocha, who is with the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, and Vidalina Morales, a Salvadoran activist who has been leading the struggle against a Canadian-based mining company in her community.