Yes, that's right. In our country we consider, and the population in general has expressed the idea, that mining is not viable because of its impact on natural resources. As I said earlier, El Salvador is in a very precarious environmental situation. This forces us to generate policies and laws to conserve the few natural resources that we have left. Yes, it's true that gold is good for economic development, but who will that development profit and benefit? Will it be the people, the countries, or multinational companies?
In El Salvador, of every $100 the companies earn through their mining exploitation, they only leave two-thirds. Then when they leave, everything they leave behind is destroyed and polluted. Who then will help resolve the environmental problems that we are left with? Well, it's the government and the population.
If you take the San Sebastián mine, the mining company left the water completely contaminated. The population has to pay for it, including $10 a day for a barrel of water. So what's better? I think it's better to leave the gold in the ground rather than extracting it and causing greater social problems.
The day a company says that it will exploit this gold and that there will be no destruction of the forests, that it will not destroy our land, and that it will not contaminate the water, then we'll think about it, but we've not seen any instance like that yet. Even Canadian companies have done it.
I know that if in El Salvador the situation were better, we would be here presenting a totally different story, but there is a problem in El Salvador, and we want there to be a law to completely prevent mining.