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 Nosotros No somos terroristas. Somos ambientalistas, somos luchadores sociales. Somos de personas de la madre naturaleza.

 Vidalina Morales is in her 50s. She's soft spoken and welcoming. She's the last person you'd expect would need to say the words, we are not terrorists. But Vidalina is the president of the Asociación de Desarrollo Económico y Social, or ADES, a community based organization in El Salvador that carries out educational, environmental, and cultural projects.

The group became nationally famous for setting the alarm over mining projects that threatened El Salvador's rivers.

In 2017, their years of organizing helped secure a huge win. The government of El Salvador became the first country in the world to ban mining. Today, ye Buke, a man who likes to call himself the coolest dictator in the world, wants to reverse that ban. But first, he needs to discredit the activists who fought for it, and he's gone about it in a strange way, accusing five leaders in Hades of a decades old murder.

Over the past year, Vidalina has been fighting on their behalf, touring radio stations and TV channels to explain that these accusations are part of a smear campaign meant to weaken the environmental movement

 hasta hoy esta lucha le hemos liberado como comunidades, como organizaciones que han creído en este esfuerzo que han creído en la inocencia de nuestros compañeros y que sabemos que primeramente Dios y esta justicia salvadoreña, nuestros compañeros van a quedar libres.

Porque, pues este caso es un caso construido. Es un caso que a todas luces hay tantas irregularidades.

 All along we have fought this fight as communities, as organizations that believe in our efforts, that believe in the innocence of our comrades, and that know that first of all, God and then this Salvadoran justice system will set them free because this case is manufactured. You can see it is a case with so many irregularities

 The charges go back to El Salvador's bloody civil war. When violence tore through the country. An experience Vidalina remembers well. She was born and raised on the border between Honduras and El Salvador. In 1980, war broke out in El Salvador between the U. S. backed military dictatorship and the Frente Farogundo The FMLN, a Marxist guerrilla group.

To crush the insurgency, the army launched a terror campaign in the north of the country, where the guerrilla forces had their camps. Civilians were considered guerrilla collaborators and became targets for the army and paramilitary groups. A series of massacres occurred in the Cabanas region, killing hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children.

Several thousand survivors crossed the Lempa River and took refuge in Honduras.

 Fui testigo de cómo llegaron los refugiados a a los Hernández. Eh desnudos, porque huían,

 I witnessed refugees arriving at Los Hernandes naked because they were fleeing

 vidalina was 14 when she saw the refugees crossing the river.

 cerca enfrente de la casa de mis padres, instalaron un campamento para sanar a los heridos. Entonces yo también pude ver toda esa situación, verdad? Como cuánta persona llegaba este herida que quedaba perdida por los montes?

Porque del río lempa hacia la aldea, los Hernández hay más o menos un una hora de camino quizás más. Entonces, en ese camino, y como la gente no conocía, se perdía. Y el ejército hondureño también la masacraba la masacre en el cruce del río lempa fue fue apoyada por la el ejército salvadoreño

 Near my parents house, they set up a camp to treat the wounded, so I also saw how many people arrived wounded. Some had gotten lost in the mountains, because from the Rio Limpa to Los Hernandez, it's about an hour's walk, and people got lost.

The Honduran army also participated in the massacre. The Limpa River Massacre was supported by both the Honduran and Salvadoran armies.

 As part of a local Catholic group, she helped assist the refugees as they settled in a camp called Mesa Grande.

 Y una de las actividades era hacer mandados digamos, nos mandaban a al pueblo como nosotros le llamabamos a comprar comida, comprar pan a comprar cualquier insumo de alimentación para la para la gente esta. Y ahí colaboraba yo.

 One of the things I did was run errands. They would send us to the town to buy food, bread, any kind of food we could get for the people there, and I helped.

 That's how she got in contact with the Resistencia Nacional . One of the insurgency groups that had a strong presence in the camp

 Esa fue como la creación de conciencia que yo fui creando, digamos, en esos tiempos, pasaron esos años. Hasta el 80, siendo una joven muy joven. Eh, mi vida da un giro diferente y me acompaño con el padre de mis hijos, eh? Él, él era un compañero. Era en ese tiempo, pertenecía al ejército guerrillero mi edad era en 18 años cuando yo me acompañé con él

 this is how my awareness began to grow. During those years, 81 to 88, I went from being a young girl to my life taking a turn. I got together with the father of my children. He was a friend, and he was part of the guerrilla army. I was 18 when I got together with him.

 in 1987, groups of refugees started moving back to El Salvador. Many of them resettled in Santa Marta. One of the communities they had abandoned when they fled, many of them resettled in Santa Marta. One of the communities they had abandoned, they fled to Honduras. All of the military scorched Earth campaigns are mostly over by then.

The war was still raging, and the refugees still feared the army's operations. It made people paranoid about infiltrators and spies. That's when a murder took place in Santa Marta. The rumor spread that a woman named Maria Ines Alvarenga was an army informant. One night, guerrilla fighters dragged her out of her house in front of her children and took her to an unknown place where she was shot and buried.

Her body was never found. Three decades later, that murder would be used by prosecutors to target anti mining activists and the organization Vidalina represents. Ah, this. As land defenders around the world know very well, an unsolved criminal case can easily become a tool for a repressive government to attack its opponents and destroy their reputations.

When the state wants to crush a movement, it can make any accusation stick. That's our story today, after this quick break. I'm Yesenia Funes, and this is Drilled.

 Midelina wasn't in Santa Marta when Maria Ines Aparenga was murdered. She didn't move there until 1996, but she still lives there today. Santa Marta is in the northern department of Cabañas, about four hours from the capital, San Salvador. It's a town made of scattered houses and a deep valley, along dirt roads that cars can barely get down in the raining season.

At the center of the community, there's a small church, a soccer field, a basketball court, and a tiny pizza joint. On the hills surrounding Santa Marta, small farmers grow corn, beans, cassava, and vegetables, and the community keeps a conservation area covered by a thick forest. During her first years there, Viderina was a stay at home mom taking care of her five children.

But as they grew older, she got restless. She felt she wasn't doing anything for her community.

That's when she got in contact with Antonio Pacheco, also known as Chico, the director of Hades.

 chico, yo aquí siento que estoy haciendo nada. Yo no sé si hay alguna posibilidad de de que me involucren en en alguna acción

 chico, I feel like I'm doing nothing here. Is there a possibility you'd involve me in any action?

 Antonio Pacheco had been an area commander of the guerrilla forces. He wasn't from Santa Marta, but he decided to stay there at the end of the war when the insurgents handed over their weapons. He created Hades because the community was getting almost no support from the state. The organization provided education for the children, built the town's water supply network, and ran agricultural programs.

It also launched a community radio station called Radio Victoria.

 Radio victoria presenta a partir de esta hora. Comunidad, comunidad día al día bien.

 Over the years, I got larger and started operating in other parts of the country too.

The organization moved its offices closer to cin, the largest city in ka. Antonio Pacheco came to talk to Vidalina.

 fíjate que acá hay una problemática que un tanto me está preocupando. Y hay que enfrentarla

 he said, there's a problem here that is really worrying me and we have to tackle it.

 A Canadian company called Pacific Rim was prospecting for gold in the region. He asked her to investigate. Was it true that mining was a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring prosperity to cabañas?

Or was it a threat to the water resources and the environment, as some people were saying?

 Entonces yo le digo, bueno, yo no tengo conocimiento en tema de minería,

 So I told him, okay, I don't know anything about mining.

 Vidalina wasn't sure she had the background to address the issue, but she started learning about mining. In the early 2000s, El Salvador, like a lot of other Central American countries looking to attract multinational mining companies, set new laws that made it attractive to investors.

They promised little environmental oversight, cheap labor, and big tax breaks. Companies could pay royalties as low as one or two percent. Gold, silver, and nickel companies, most of them Canadian, rushed in. In 2000, the San Martin mine started operating in Honduras.

And in 2005, the Marlin mine opened in Guatemala. Here's a promotional video the Canadian mining company Goldcorp made about how great it is to mine in Guatemala.

 Nuestra extensión territorial menos del percent del tenorio nacional. Nuevas oportunidades. Nuevas capacidades

 In Nicaragua, the autocratic government of Daniel Ortega became a major asset for transnational mining companies. Even the environmentally friendly Costa Rica was eager to dig into its mountains before backtracking and declaring a ban on open pit mining in 2010. El Salvador was no exception. Pacific Rim purchased land and drilled for samples.

They decided to start their gold operation on a 13 square kilometer site in San Isidro. The mayor and regional politicians were vocal supporters of the mine. Vidalina met with environmental organizations in San Salvador. She talked with experts.

She went with other community members to the Valle de Siria in Honduras, where Gold Corp was running a large open pit gold mine.

 Y así fue como fuimos expandiéndolo desde el para, eh enseguida, eh, ya fuimos haciendo como una un tejido. Llegamos a las comunidades.

nosotros visitamos el valle de siria en Honduras, porque la escasez del agua, el ruido, casas, casas hendidas.

Entonces la gente quedaba impactada. Eso fue haciendo que la gente tomara conciencia y se movilizara

 and that's how we've been expanding since 2006, creating a network across communities. We went to Syria Valley because of the water scarcity. We went to Siria Valley because of the water scarcity, noise, and damaged homes there. People were shocked. They raised awareness and mobilized.

 Vidalina made up her mind. Gold mines were a major threat to the whole region. Mining operations sucked up water resources in a place where access to clean water was already a problem.

They used dangerous chemicals like cyanide to separate the gold from the rock.

If a cyanide spill occurred, it could threaten the Lenpa River, which provides 60 percent of the water resources of El Salvador. Mining companies, as you would soon discover, were bad for communities too. Dividing the population and bringing in social unrest, violence, and death.

Opposition started to mount against Pacific Rim. Addis and other organizations mobilized people in Cabanas. They organized forums where the company experts were asked tough questions by local people. Santa Marta and other communities came to San Salvador to protest and the mining company pushed back.

 nos íbamos a plantar a San salvador, a la a los diferentes ministerios al ministerio media ambiente, principalmente. Yo recuerdo que varias actividades de movilización hicimos frente al ministerio de medio ambiente frente a casa presidencial en esos tiempos también con mucho miedo, porque también si nos agarraban, pues este nos capturaban y nos metían preso

 we would station ourselves in San Salvador at different ministries, the Ministry of Environment in front of the President's house too, with a lot of fear because if they caught us, they would arrest us and throw us in prison.

 Que radio victoria es un medio de comunicación alternativo que decidida a mimos las 10, 44 minutos desde la mañana 44 minutos.

 A major tool of the resistance against mining companies was Radio Victoria, Santa Marta's community radio station. Its mix of music, news, and commentary, and its large network of local correspondents, gave the radio station a large audience across Cabañas.

 muy buenos días, amigos y amigas, gracias por escuchar radio victoria en el 91. Como siempre, es un placer enorme acompañarles.

 Radio Victoria was one of Addis main projects at the end of the war.

 that was nineteen ninety three when we first went on the air and when we moved up to victoria

 This is Christina Starr. She's from Charlotte, North Carolina. Her real name is Wendy Wallace, but everyone in Santa Marta knows her as Christina, a name she has used since the war.

In 1988, she came to El Salvador to work at a trade union federation in San Salvador. The war was raging, and a year later, a death squad detonated a bomb in the offices where she worked. The attack killed 10 unionists and wounded 40 others. Christina was lucky. She had left the cafeteria where the bomb exploded minutes earlier.

Shortly after that experience, she joined the insurgency and became part of a propaganda unit filming some of the guerrilla's actions.

In 1991, she settled in Santa Marta and at the end of the war, she decided to stay. Because of her communications background, Hades asked her to help create Radio Victoria.

 mostly my role has been to look for the the projects that we have. I was never at the radio fulltime but i es part of the coordinating team so we had a collective that ran the radio [

and basically accompanying you know i never wanted to be two hands on because i didn't wanna be the gringa that runs the radio

 From the beginning, Radio Victoria became the voice of the anti mining front. Radio Victoria explained the dangers of mining to its listeners, By pointing to the environmental and social costs of the industry, it disrupted Pacific Rim's communication campaign.

 Estas condiciones determinan que industrias extractivas como la minería de metales preciosos, sean inviables económica, social y ambientalmente

 Public opinion turned against mining, but soon enough, the threats began. The radio hosts received warning calls on their cell phones.

 The language was very much like gang members you know some of the terms they used and they were very vulgar.

So the asunción they were getting money channeled to them to carry out these threats thats the assumption.

 This wasn't a small thing, since the gangs in El Salvador were known for their cruelty. Then, the killing started. First, it was Marcelo Rivera, a teacher, community leader, and environmentalist.

He had been one of the first to sound the alarm bell when Pacific Rim began prospecting in the region.

 He you know he was a performer and he would come to our we would have these community arts festivals for our anniversary and he would always come and he was pretty close to us

 Rivera was tortured before he was killed, and his body was thrown into a well. This had a huge impact on those who were opposing the mining project.

 and the death Threat said you know you better shut up same thing happened Marcel happened to you

 Later that year, two other activists, Ramiro Rivera and Dora Sorto, were gunned down.

I'm Amy Goodman. We begin today with El Salvador, where, for the second time in a week, a prominent anti gold mining activist has been assassinated. On Saturday, 32 year old Dora Alicia Recino Sorto was shot dead near her home. She was 8 months pregnant, carrying her 2 year old son. Son Soto and her husband were both active members of the Cobania Environment Committee, which is campaigned against the reopening of a gold mine owned by the Vancouver based Pacific Rim Mining Company.

Last week, Ramiro Rivera Gomez, the Vice President of the Cobania Environment Committee, was shot dead by heavily armed men, despite having been under 24 hour police protection.

 Meanwhile, the death threats against Radio Victoria's staff kept coming. People would bang the doors of their homes at night and caught guns.

I was really scared and you know i didn't know if we should shut down the radio or what we should do but you know people at the radio weapon to on the the only way we can resiste this and that's what we're gonna do

 One day, Christina talked to one of the radio hosts, a young man called Oscar.

 and I said aren't you afraid aren't you scared yeah. You know so much of your life to something it's your life and to not do that to kind of lose your life so you know this is this is whats important and what we have to do

 The three murders were never thoroughly investigated, but for the activists, there was no doubt that they were the result of the anti mining protests.

Despite the threats and the killings, the environmental defenders kept going. They brought on board new allies including El Salvador's, Archbishop, a prominent churchman. Monsignor San Z was also a chemist, and he worried that the use of cyanide by mining companies could cause a major environmental disaster. They also convinced both right wing and left wing politicians to join them. 2008, the government decided to stop approving permits for new mines. It wasn't a ban, yet, but President Antonio Saca said he wanted to better understand the impact gold mining was having on the country's water sources before approving any more permits.

Pacific Rim filed a complaint against El Salvador using a legal tool known as Investor State Dispute Settlement. We've covered this many times in Drilled, but it's a quasi illegal system that is meant to protect companies from governments and enforce free trade agreements. In practice what it does is help companies scare governments away from environmental and human rights legislation and push forward harmful projects, even when activist pressure works and governments reject them.

Pacific Rim claimed that El Salvador, by not allowing it to move forward with its gold mine, had violated its rights. The company asked for 350 million to cover the revenue it was losing as a result of the government's refusal to grant its permits. This, of course, did nothing for Pacific Rim's popularity in El Salvador.

In 2016, the tribunal made a rare ruling against the company, and El Salvador won the dispute, but not before spending millions fighting it. 2017 marked the end of the struggle. In an unprecedented decision, El Salvador's government approved a law that banned all mining for metals in El Salvador.

 Fue un día histórico, dijeron los diputados y es que el pleno legislativo aprobó la ley de prohibición de minería metálica normativa que implica la prohibición de la explotación y exploración minera en territorio salvadoreño en el salvador.

Transcription

In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass an outright ban on mining. It was an effort to protect the country's water, and its people. Now, self-proclaimed "coolest dictator in the world" Nayib Bukele wants to bring mining back to boost the economy, which took a major hit thanks to his embrace of Bitcoin as the national currency in 2021. The activists who helped pass the ban are standing in his way. The solution? Accuse them of a decades-old unsolved murder. The activists go on trial this week. Reporter Sebastian Escalon brings us this story, narrated by Yessenia Funes.

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