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On Care for Our Common Home: Ecological Materiality and Sovereignty over the Lempa Transboundary Watershed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2021

Ainhoa Montoya Open the ORCID record for Ainhoa Montoya [Opens in a new window]
Ainhoa Montoya*
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies, Institute of Latin American Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
*
*Corresponding author. Email: ainhoa.montoya@sas.ac.uk.
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Abstract

For over a decade, Salvadorean grassroots movements and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) pursued legal innovations with the aim of protecting their water sources from potentially polluting industrial activities such as mining. They initially drafted bans on mining that would preclude the extractive-based development path embraced by neighbouring countries. Eventually, they scaled up their approach and devised a draft proposal for a transboundary waters treaty that addressed the challenges that the ecological materiality of international watercourses poses to national de jure sovereignty. In so doing, the transboundary watershed has become a useful heuristic, a spatial trope to which Salvadoreans have turned to substantiate their claims to sovereignty over the Lempa River waters that El Salvador shares with pro-mining Guatemala and Honduras – claims imbued with an ethics of care rooted in wartime politics and Catholic morality.

Spanish abstract

Spanish abstract

Durante más de una década, movimientos de base y organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONGs) salvadoreñas promovieron innovaciones legales con el fin de proteger las fuentes de agua de su país de actividades industriales potencialmente contaminantes como la minería. Inicialmente redactaron prohibiciones de la minería con el fin de evitar la senda de desarrollo en base a la extracción adoptada por los países vecinos. Eventualmente, ampliaron su enfoque y diseñaron una propuesta de tratado de aguas transfronterizas que tomase en cuenta los desafíos que la materialidad ecológica de los cursos de agua internacionales supone para la soberanía nacional de jure. De este modo, la cuenca hidrográfica transfronteriza ha devenido una figura heurística útil, un tropo espacial al que la ciudadanía salvadoreña ha recurrido para sustanciar sus reclamos de soberanía sobre las aguas del Río Lempa que El Salvador comparte con las naciones pro-minería de Guatemala y Honduras – reclamos que han sido imbuidos de una ética del cuidado que hunde sus raíces en la política de la guerra y la moralidad católica.

Portuguese abstract

Portuguese abstract

Por mais de uma década, movimentos de base e organizações não governamentais (ONGs) salvadorenhas promoveram inovações jurídicas para proteger as fontes hídricas desse país de atividades industriais com potencial poluente, como é o caso da mineração. Inicialmente, redigiram proibições à atividade mineradora, com o intuito de impedir uma trajetória extrativista, adotada pelos países vizinhos. Posteriormente, ampliaram sua ação, elaborando uma proposta preliminar de um tratado de águas transfronteiriças que abordasse os desafios representados pela materialidade ecológica dos cursos de água internacionais no que tange à soberania de direito em âmbito nacional. Assim, a bacia hidrográfica transfronteiriça tornou-se uma figura heurística útil, um tropo espacial ao qual recorreram os salvadorenhos para fundamentar suas reivindicações de soberania sobre as águas do Rio Lempa, compartilhadas entre El Salvador, de um lado, e Guatemala e Honduras, países pró-mineração, do outro. São reivindicações imbuídas de uma ética do cuidado enraizada na política de guerra e na moralidade católica.

Keywords

sovereigntywatershedminingcarepoliticsjuridificationsoberaníacuenca hidrográficamineríacuidadopolíticajuridificaciónsoberaniabacia hidrográficamineraçãocuidadopolíticajuridificação
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , May 2021 , pp. 297 - 322
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 I have kept a mixed policy regarding names. The names of those whose participation in public events can easily identify them have been maintained, whereas the names of those sharing ideas in the context of informal conversations or interviews have been anonymised.

2 Andrés McKinley, researcher at UCA José Simeón Cañas, speaking at the CMACC meeting at El Salvador's Asamblea Legislativa, San Salvador, 7 Feb. 2017.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 See, for instance, Sieder, Rachel, Schjolden, Line and Angell, Alan (eds.), The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Couso, Javier A., Huneeus, Alexandra and Sieder, Rachel (eds.), Cultures of Legality: Judicialization and Political Activism in Latin America (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 Ibid.

10 Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), La economía del cambio climático en Centroamérica (Mexico City: CEPAL, 2011), p. 94.

11 Ibid., p. 98.

12 Burgos, Hugo De, ‘La Pila de San Juan: Historic Transformations of Water as a Public Symbol in Suchitoto, El Salvador’, in Wagner, John R. (ed.), The Social Life of Water (New York: Berghahn, 2013), pp. 98–118Google Scholar.

13 United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), Report by the Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation on His Mission to El Salvador, UN Doc. A/HRC/33/49/Add.1, 3 Aug. 2016, para. 40.

14 CEPAL, La economía del cambio climático en Centroamérica, p. 100.

15 Ballestero, Maureen, Reyes, Virginia and Astorga, Yamileth, ‘Groundwater in Central America: Its Importance, Development and Use, with Particular Reference to Its Role in Irrigated Agriculture’, in Giordano, Mark and Villholth, Karen G. (eds.), The Agricultural Groundwater Revolution: Opportunities and Threats to Development (Wallingford and Cambridge, MA: CABI, 2007), p. 101Google Scholar.

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17 Ribó, Alexandre, Quinteros, Edgard, Mejía, Roberto, Jovel, Reyna and López, Dina, ‘Contaminación de arsénico en suelos, sedimentos y agua en la región del Bajo Lempa, El Salvador’, in Libro de Resumen: VII Congreso de la Red Latinoamericana de Ciencias Ambientales (San Carlos: Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, 2013), pp. 566–75Google Scholar.

18 See Montoya, Ainhoa, The Violence of Democracy: Political Life in Postwar El Salvador (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 206–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 De Burgos, ‘La Pila de San Juan’.

20 El Salvador lacks a law that regulates the use of water resources, and related competencies are currently distributed among more than 20 institutions and regulatory bodies. UNCHR, Report by the Special Rapporteur, para. 25.

21 See Arsel, Murat, Hogenboom, Barbara and Pellegrini, Lorenzo, ‘The Extractive Imperative and the Boom in Environmental Conflicts at the End of the Progressive Cycle in Latin America’, The Extractive Industries and Society, 3: 4 (2016), pp. 877–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The Extractive Imperative in Latin America’, in ibid., pp. 880–7.

22 Centro de Estudios de Guatemala (CEG) and Oxfam Guatemala, La minería metálica en Centroamérica: Una valoración sobre impactos, transparencia y fiscalidad (Guatemala City: Magna Terra Editores, 2017).

23 CEPAL, La economía del cambio climático en Centroamérica, pp. 97–8.

24 This is the case, for instance, of the Colorado Basin shared by the United States and Mexico. See Nina Lakhani, ‘The Lost River: Mexicans Fight for Mighty Waterway Taken by the US’, The Guardian, 21 Oct. 2019.

25 Author interview with Marcos, CEICOM leader, San Salvador, 10 Feb. 2017.

26 Appadurai, Arjun, ‘Sovereignty without Territoriality: Notes for a Postnational Geography’, in Yaeger, Patricia (ed.), The Geography of Identity (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 40–58Google Scholar; Agnew, John, ‘Sovereignty Regimes: Territoriality and State Authority in Contemporary World Politics’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95: 29 (2005), pp. 437–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Globalization and Sovereignty (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009).

27 Agnew, ‘Sovereignty Regimes’, p. 440.

28 Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, ‘Sovereignty Revisited’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 35 (Sept. 2006), pp. 295–315; Humphrey, Caroline, ‘Sovereignty’, in Nugent, David and Vincent, Joan (eds.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 418–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Currently ratified by 37 member-states, it did not reach the 35th ratification, the minimum needed for a UN treaty to enter into force, until 2014. See https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=IND&mtdsg_no=XXVII-12&chapter=27&clang=_en, last access 22 Jan. 2021.

30 For instance, Mexico made compromises in reaching the 1944 Water Treaty with the United States to regulate water use in the Lower Colorado River. Anderson, Kirsten J., ‘A History and Interpretation of the Water Treaty of 1944’, Natural Resources Journal, 12: 4 (1972), pp. 600–14Google Scholar.

31 An instance of this is the ruling on the dispute between Argentina and Uruguay over the uses of the shared waters of the River Uruguay. McIntyre, Owen, ‘The World Court's Ongoing Contribution to International Water Law: The Pulp Mills Case between Argentina and Uruguay’, Water Alternatives, 4: 2 (2011), pp. 124–44Google Scholar.

32 Artiga, Raúl, The Case of the Trifinio Plan in the Upper Lempa: Opportunities and Challenges for the Shared Management of Central American Transnational Basins (New York and Paris: UNESCO, 2003)Google Scholar, available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001333/133304e.pdf, last access 22 Jan. 2021; Filippo Celata, Raffaella Coletti and Venere Stefania Sanna, ‘La cooperación transfronteriza en la región del Trifinio y la difusión de modelos europeos de gobernanza de las fronteras en América Latina’, Si Somos Americanos: Revista de Estudios Transfronterizos, 13: 2 (2013), p. 167.

33 Victor Bulmer-Thomas, ‘Honduras since 1930’, in Leslie Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 7: Latin America since 1930: Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 306–7; James Dunkerley, ‘El Salvador since 1930’, in ibid., p. 266; Carlos Gregorio López Bernal, ‘La guerra con Honduras: Del nacionalismo a la irracionalidad’, El Faro, 17 July 2019.

34 Patterson and López, ‘El Salvador’, pp. 198–9.

35 On the formation and political struggles of Mesa Nacional, see Spalding, Rose J., ‘After CAFTA: Anti-Mining Movements, Investment Disputes, and New Organizational Territory’, in Contesting Trade in Central America: Market Reform and Resistance (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014), pp. 158–87Google Scholar.

36 Grandin, Greg, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (London and Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 The dispute consisted of a lawsuit filed by the Canadian corporation Pacific Rim before the ICSID, a World Bank institution that arbitrates disputes between private investors and the governments of host countries. For further details about the development and ramifications of this dispute, see Broad, Robin, ‘Corporate Bias in the World Bank Group's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes: A Case Study of a Global Mining Corporation Suing El Salvador’, University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, 36: 4 (2015), pp. 851–74Google Scholar.

38 Rather than weighing on social and environmental factors that were a concern for the Salvadorean government and the populations opposing mining, the ICSID dismissed the company's claim on the grounds that it had not met all the legal requirements necessary to obtain an exploitation licence. See Ainhoa Montoya, Rachel Sieder, Yacotzin Bravo Espinosa, Rupert Knox and María C. Pauchulo, ‘2006–2016 Pacific Rim International Investment Arbitration against El Salvador’, The Legal Cultures of the Subsoil Database, available at https://ilas.sas.ac.uk/research-projects/legal-cultures-subsoil/pacific-rim-international-investment-arbitration-against-el, last access 22 Feb. 2021.

39 For a more detailed account of this process, see Rose J. Spalding, ‘From the Streets to the Chamber: Social Movements and the Mining Ban in El Salvador’, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 106 (July−Dec. 2018), pp. 47–74.

40 See ‘La iniciativa legislativa popular en América Latina’, Convergencia: Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 52 (Jan.–April 2010), pp. 155–86.

41 Author conversation with Carlos, Cáritas member, San Salvador, 6 Feb. 2017.

42 Despite the notable increase of evangelical religiosity throughout Latin America since the end of the twentieth century, Catholicism remains the dominant religious affiliation in El Salvador, with 43.1 per cent of the population identifying as Catholic versus 38.5 per cent as evangelical. Moreover, the country's Catholic Church and evangelical churches are its most trusted institutions. Christian, Patricia B., Gent, Michael and Wadkins, Timothy H., ‘Protestant Growth and Change in El Salvador: Two Decades of Survey Evidence’, Latin American Research Review, 50: 1 (2015), p. 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP), Encuesta de evaluación del año 2016 y sobre los Acuerdos de Paz: Consulta de opinión pública de noviembre−diciembre 2016 (San Salvador: UCA, 2017), p. 146, available at www.uca.edu.sv/iudop/wp-content/uploads/INFORME-141.pdf, last access 22 Jan. 2021.

43 Author interview with José, member of Colectivo Socioambiental Cuidemos la Casa de Todos, San Salvador, 8 Feb. 2017.

44 Rachel Nadelman, ‘“Let Us Care for Everyone's Home”: The Catholic Church's Role in Keeping Gold Mining out of El Salvador’, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS) Working Paper, Series 9, Dec. 2015, available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2706819, last access 21 Jan. 2021.

45 While Costa Rica passed a mining ban in 2010, it only comprehended future open-pit mining (it did not act retroactively) as well as exploration and exploitation in protected areas; underground mining was, however, allowed to continue elsewhere in the country. See, for example, ‘Costa Rica Lawmakers Vote to Ban Open-Pit Mining’, Reuters, 10 Nov. 2010, available at www.reuters.com/article/costarica-mining-idAFN0912629920101110, last access 22 Feb. 2021. In Argentina, bans on certain forms of mining exist in some provinces but national pro-mining legislation remains in place. See, for example, ‘Factbox: Argentine Legislation that Targets Mining’, Reuters, 17 Aug. 2010, available at www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-glaciers-factbox/factbox-argentine-legislation-that-targets-mining-idUSTRE67G46320100817, last access 22 Feb. 2021.

46 Bebbington, Anthony, Fash, Benjamin and Rogan, John, ‘Socio-Environmental Conflict, Political Settlements, and Mining Governance: A Cross-Border Comparison, El Salvador and Honduras’, Latin American Perspectives, 46: 225 (2019), pp. 84–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 The number of projects varies depending on the source. See, for instance, Edgardo Mira, ‘Las amenazas ambientales y la necesaria gestión compartida de las aguas transfronterizas en la región centroamericana’, Perspectivas, 12 (Oct. 2016), p. 3.

48 Andrés McKinley, CMACC meeting, Asamblea Legislativa, San Salvador, 7 Feb. 2017.

49 Despite obtaining an exploitation licence in 2007, the formerly Canadian Goldcorp-owned Cerro Blanco suspended operations in 2013 due to technical difficulties. The mine's acquisition by the Canadian junior corporation Bluestone Resources in 2017 suggests, however, that it might eventually become operative. For further details about this mining project, see Montoya et al., ‘Cerro Blanco’, The Legal Cultures of the Subsoil Database, available at https://ilas.sas.ac.uk/research-projects/legal-cultures-subsoil/cerro-blanco, last access 22 Jan. 2021.

50 Author interview with Marcos, CEICOM leader, San Salvador, 10 Feb. 2017.

51 Villar, Pilar Carolina and Ribeiro, Wagner Costa, ‘The Agreement on the Guarani Aquifer: A New Paradigm for Transboundary Groundwater Management?’, Water International, 36: 5 (2011), pp. 646–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 McIntyre, ‘The World Court's Ongoing Contribution to International Water Law’, pp. 124–44.

53 Ashley Carse, ‘Watershed: Theorizing the Contemporary’, Fieldsights, 27 June 2018, available at https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1465-watershed, last access 22 Jan. 2021.

54 Author interview with Marcos, CEICOM leader, San Salvador, 4 June 2015.

55 Carse, ‘Watershed: Theorizing the Contemporary’.

56 A copy of the treaty proposal is available at Montoya et al., ‘Citizen Transborder Treaty Drafting’, The Legal Cultures of the Subsoil Database, available at https://ilas.sas.ac.uk/research-projects/legal-cultures-subsoil/2014-citizen-transborder-treaty-drafting-cerro-blanco, last access 22 Jan. 2021.

57 SICA is the organisation responsible for regional integration among El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize and the Dominican Republic. PARLACEN is SICA's parliamentary body.

58 For details of these experiences, see Spalding, ‘After CAFTA’, pp. 163–7.

59 Author interview with Antonio, JPIC friar, San Salvador, 4 April 2017.

60 See, for instance, Ballard, Chris and Banks, Glenn, ‘Resource Wars: The Anthropology of Mining’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 32: 1 (2003), pp. 287–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar; José de Echave, Alejandro Díez, Ludwig Huber, Bruno Revesz, Xavier Ricard Lanata and Martín Tanaka, Minería y conflicto social (Lima: CBC, CIPCA, CIES, IEP, 2009); Anthony Bebbington (ed.), Social Conflict, Economic Development and Extractive Industry: Evidence from South America (London: Routledge, 2011); Anthony Bebbington and Jeffrey Bury (eds.), Subterranean Struggles: New Dynamics of Mining, Oil, and Gas in Latin America (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2013).

61 From the late 1960s, in El Salvador as well as Latin America at large, liberation theology-minded priests promoted a progressive reading of the Bible that inspired a sense of solidarity with the poor, while encouraging poor people's critiques of the status quo and their emancipatory and transformative aspirations, largely channelled through their participation in comunidades eclesiales de base (ecclesial base communities, CEBs) and other organisations.

62 Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home [Encyclical], 2015, pp. 3–4, available at http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf, last access 22 Jan 2021.

63 Ibid., p. 70.

64 Todd, Molly, Beyond Displacement: Campesinos, Refugees, and Collective Action in the Salvadoran Civil War (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), p. 219Google Scholar. Emphasis added.

65 Binford, Leigh, ‘Migration, Tourism, and Post-Insurgent Individuality in Northern Morazán, El Salvador’, in Burrel, Jennifer L. and Moodie, Ellen (eds.), Central America in the New Millennium: Living Transition and Reimagining Democracy (New York: Berghahn, 2013), pp. 245–60Google Scholar.

66 See Montoya et al., ‘Five Municipalities Declare Themselves “Mining-Free Territories” through Popular Consultation Procedures’, The Legal Cultures of the Subsoil Database, available at https://ilas.sas.ac.uk/research-projects/legal-cultures-subsoil/five-municipalities-declare-themselves-mining-free, last access 22 Jan. 2021.

67 Author interview with Antonio, JPIC friar, San Salvador, 4 April 2017.

68 Author interview with Marcos, CEICOM leader, San Salvador, 10 Feb. 2017

69 Ibid.

70 Timothy Anna, ‘The Independence of Mexico and Central America’, in Leslie Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 3: From Independence to c. 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 77–94.

71 Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, p. 7.

72 Carruthers, David V., ‘Introduction: Popular Environmentalism and Social Justice in Latin America’, in Carruthers, David V. (ed.), Environmental Justice in Latin America: Problems, Promise, and Practice (London and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Ballestero, Andrea, ‘Capacity as Aggregation: Promises, Water and a Form of Collective Care in Northeast Brazil’, Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 35: 1 (2017), p. 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.