Gold fever: big mining companies circle as El Salvador prepares to reverse ban

Legislation passed in 2017 put a halt to industrial mining but as the central American country goes to the polls, the government has hinted at its returnWords and photographs by Camilo Freedman in San SalvadorEl Salvador's Santa Elena mine once belonged to a US company, Butters Salvador Mining, which between 1904 and 1954 extracted 32 tons of gold from it. Abandoned by Butters during the country's lengthy and bloody civil war, the mine is now worked unofficially by artisanal miners, among them the 67-year-old José Hernández.Hernández began working at Santa Elena with his father at the age of 12 and continued until the 1980-1992 Salvadoran civil war, which claimed 75,000 - mainly civilian - lives and pushed many people to leave the country. Hernández spent a decade living in the US before returning to El Salvador after the 1992 ceasefire. He resumed mining - this time working Santa Elena independently. Continue reading...