Seven years ago, El Salvador banned all mining for metals to protect its water supply. But now the government seems to be making moves to reverse the ban – and environmental activists are in the firing line

On the afternoon of 17 May 2023, in the rural El Salvador state of Cabañas, Vidalina Morales’s mobile phone rang. It was her 33-year-old son, Manuel, but his voice sounded strange. “They have me here in the police station,” he said. He’d been arrested while playing football with friends on a local field. Morales tried to breathe. This had long been her worst fear: that her loved ones would be targeted on account of her work.

Morales, 55, is one of the most visible leaders of the Salvadoran environmentalist movement. About 5ft tall and slight, with long black hair wrapped into a sensible bun, she often wears the blouses and long skirts traditional to rural Salvadoran women. As the president of a development organisation in Cabañas called the Association for Social and Economic Development ( Ades ), she is also familiar with the halls of power. In March 2017, she and her colleagues, after years of activism, won a national ban on metal mining , the first such ban in the world. Mining posed an existential threat to the Salvadoran water supply. Worldwide, the industry often overrides local laws and regulations and leaves violence and environmental destruction in its wake. For Salvadorans, a ban was the only way to protect their resources.

Voters reward Bukele for gang crackdown that has transformed security in central American country

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has won a thumping victory in elections after voters cast aside concerns about erosion of democracy to reward him for a fierce gang crackdown that transformed security in the central American country.

Thousands of Bukele’s supporters clad in cyan blue and waving flags thronged San Salvador’s central square to celebrate his re-election, which the 42-year-old leader termed a “referendum” on his government.

Enlarge / Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador. (credit: Kellys Portillo/APHOTOGRAFIA/Getty Images)

Bitcoin's price has plunged in recent days, briefly falling below $30,000 on Monday evening and again on Wednesday morning. Nayib Bukele, the bitcoin-boosting president of El Salvador, sees bitcoin's low price as a buying opportunity. He announced on Monday that El Salvador had purchased another 500 bitcoin. With one bitcoin worth around $31,000, this represented a $15.5 million bet.

Bukele has made the embrace of bitcoin a signature of his presidency. Last year, El Salvador became the first nation in the world to make bitcoin legal tender alongside the US dollar. In an effort to encourage adoption of bitcoin, El Salvador launched wallet software called Chivo and offered Salvadorans $30 if they gave it a try.

Bloomberg calculates that El Salvador has accumulated a total of 2,301 bitcoins since it started buying them last September. Most were bought at prices above $45,000, so this nation of 6 million people has lost tens of millions of dollars speculating on bitcoin.

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