“The women behind El Salvador’s historic environmental victory”, 11 Apr 17

…In a landmark recent ruling that sets a global precedent, the Latin American country banned metals mining nationwide following the defeat in a seven year dispute with a Canadian-Australian company over the El Dorado project, a proposed gold mining project in the north-central Cabañas region of El Salvador… According to Carolina Amaya, a feminist ecologist with UNES, a founding organization and active member of the National Table Against Metal Mining (MNFMM), the ban will shut down 25 mining projects that were in exploration phase, as well as an active exploitation permit with the transnational company Commerce Group…Given the imminence of the ecological and social threats of mining, women have been central to this struggle and this historic victory. Amaya, Antonia Recinos and Vidalina Morales are three of the women who have spent years fighting at the forefront of this movement…“The struggle against corporate mining power in El Salvador has the blood and sweat of women, which goes beyond a quantitative contribution... “It is women who have been mobilized in a majority at the local and national level to exert pressure on decision makers, even though they may not be the visible faces at the negotiating tables. While they have been a majority, they have been invisibilized by men, who have mostly been their peers on the struggle.”…But that victory has also come at a price. Both Recinos and Morales remember the assassination of comrades such as Dora Alicia Sorto, a member of the Cabañas Environment Committee who was killed when she was 8 month pregnant in 2009…