This piece originally posted in YES! Magazine. John Cavanagh contributed to YES! as part of a new “idea sharing partnership” between YES! and the Institute for Policy Studies.

Delegation protest at the site of Pacific Rim mine in Cabanas, El Salvador. Photo by Ron Carver.

Robin is standing in front of a church in Guatemala with some of the other members of the first international delegation on “gold mining and the defense of water in El Salvador.” We are 44 people from 12 countries who have come to support El Salvador’s right to stop environmentally destructive gold mining. We have come as allies of a coalition called the National Roundtable Against Metallic Mining (“La Mesa”), and we have traveled just across the border to Guatemala because the source of the Lempa River that supplies most of El Salvador’s fresh water is here in the Guatemalan hills.

Goldcorp, one of Canada’s largest gold mining firms, is building a mine here. The environmental havoc unleashed by this mine will affect not only Guatemalans, but also Salvadorans who depend on the Lempa’s waters as it meanders through El Salvador on its way to the Pacific Ocean.

Read the full article in YES! Magazine.