ABSTRACT
During the year in which this book was being put to bed, the Government of El Salvador was engaged in a decision-making process whose outcome may well have far-reaching consequences for extractive industries within and beyond Central America. Elected in 2009, this government, controlled by the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) – the party that grew out of the guerrilla movement of the 1980s and 1990s – is the most recently elected of the left of centre administrations that have assumed power in Latin America over the last decade. On assuming power, the FMLN administration inherited a temporary ban on metal mining declared by the conservative Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA, Nationalist Republican Alliance) government that preceded it. While the calculations behind this ban were doubtless political as well as economic and environmental, they were also a response to the level of socio-environmental conflict that had surrounded mining exploration projects initiated during the 2000s. These projects appeared to mark the beginning of an expansion of mining on a scale never before experienced in El Salvador.
