Chasing Gold
It's official: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele wants to reverse the country's mining ban. Activists are promising a fight.
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LISTENING: to my 2024 Spotify wrapped
FEELING: grateful for a new year
SEEING: my inbox pop off with endless deals 😵💫
Last week, I sat at my Thanksgiving Day table with the fam, enjoying my wine, when my aunt brought up some news about El Salvador. "The president found gold! The country is finally going to be rich!" I looked at her, confused. "Tía, El Salvador has banned mining," I said to her in Spanish. "If Bukele found gold, he's not supposed to touch it."
She looked at me even more confused. "Well, he wasn't looking for gold. He was looking for petroleum, and this is what they found. This is great!" I didn't feel like arguing at the dinner table. This was, after all, an aunt who voted for Donald Trump despite having crossed the border illegally herself just a few decades ago. So I let it go. And I turned to Google.
She was right: On Nov. 27, 2024, President Nayib Bukele took to X, formerly Twitter, to share that the gold reserves beneath El Salvador were valued at up to $3 billion. He called the gold a "treasure" gifted by God. He went on that mining and developing the resources could boost the country's economy and become a source of jobs. He noted that "modern and sustainable mining" could allow the country to tap the gold without harming the reserves. Hm. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Welcome to Possibilities, a creative climate newsletter on the possibilities that lie where crisis meets community. I’m Yessenia Funes, and I'm so proud that my ancestral homelands of El Salvador are the only lands in the world where it's illegal to mine for metals.