Violence and impunity around mining in El Salvador

I apologize. I really don't pay enough attention to the battle surrounding the mining industry in Central America. I can't say that I will comment on the affairs any more so than I do now, but I will draw attention to stories that I find interesting such as this one with Le Monde diplomatique on El Salvador, violence and impunity.

The bullets buried into the walls of the room within a foot of their intended victim, in El Salvador’s northern town of Ilobasco. After the attacker had fled unrecognized into the dusk, the phone rang: “Have there been any deaths in the house?” The female caller used an anonymous number and refused to give her name. This time Alejandro Guevara had been targeted: the anti-mining activist had been receiving threats by phone and text message in the weeks before the attack. On 8 October 2013, five days after the shooting, he told the press: “This is a plan that we have seen since 2009 ... the same method they used when they killed our colleagues. This is the same structure operating to persecute us; it reveals the forms of suppression used against the environmentalists working in opposition to mining projects in the municipality. This has been happening all along, but here it is uncovered.”

I'd be happy to host guest posts from other academics on the subject of mining like I have in the past with Michael Dougherty at Illinois State University or on other topics that I don't touch on all that much.