Pedals To The Metal

The grassroots activists behind El Salvador’s recent mining ban

- Priyanka Borpujari

When Ana Dubón was 13 years old, she began to work at a local radio station, earning $2 a day. Contributing about $40 a month to the family made her feel like an adult. Her pride surged when she got to host her own show a year later.

Dubón lives in Guarjila village, in the Chalatenango department of northwestern El Salvador. While other young radio jockeys played reggaeton on their programmes, she spoke about injustices she was witnessing in her community.

“In 2005, at just 15, I found myself talking about something serious: mining,” Dubón, now 26 years old, reminisced when I met her last August. “I knew nothing about mines, but I had to learn it all to talk about it on the radio.” We were in the kitchen-garden of her rural home in Guarjila, and she was trying to not let her two-year-old daughter slip from her arms. The toddler won, and began to dig into the mud.

Dubón’s curiosity led her to an antimining protest about 90 kilometres away, in El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador. She reported a story there, bringing home recordings of protestors’ voices to her quiet village. That led her to produce a series of shows focussed on the environmental damage caused by mining, such as water pollution and deforestation. Dubón soon connected with people at other radio stations who were reporting on mining and other environment-related issues.

This March, El Salvador became the first country in the world to ban metal mining, through a vote in the legislative assembly. But this was not a decision taken by politicians overnight—it came about through a decade-long battle of grassroots resistance and collective campaigning, led by many women such as Dubón.