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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 TEGUCIGALPA 001847 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA/EPSC, WHA/PPC, AND WHA/CEN 
STATE PASS USGS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/28/2016 
TAGS: EMIN ECON PGOV PREL HO
SUBJECT: A REQUIEM FOR MINING IN HONDURAS 
 
REF: A. (A) TEGUCIGALPA 697 
 
     ¶B. (B) TEGUCIGALPA 1013 
 
Classified By: AMB Charles Ford for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). 
 
¶1. (C) Summary. Reforms of the new mining law in Honduras 
have reached a critical period of discussion in the Honduran 
National Assembly. An extreme-leftist group formed of 
politicians from the Union Democratica (UD) Party, certain 
NGOs, and the renegade Archbishop Luis Alfonso Santos of 
Copan, has poisoned the national dialogue, drawing the debate 
away from improving environmental standards and enforcement, 
toward banning all mining in Honduras. President Zelaya has 
publicly voiced his agreement with banning open-pit mining 
several times over the past six months. The president of the 
National Assembly commission on mining and the mining 
companies all believe that the measures the political left 
promote ) including banning open-pit mining for gold and 
silver and eliminating all tax breaks meant to alleviate 
depreciation expenditures - will be incorporated into a 
revised mining law, effectively killing the prospect of new 
investment in the Honduran mining sector. Paradoxically, 
reforms spurred by a desire to ensure environmental 
protection could in fact cause more environmental damage by 
reducing international investment in mining and fomenting 
local artisanal mining using mercury. End summary. 
 
¶2. (U) As explained in Ref B, a six year-old debate over 
reforming the Honduran mining law was effectively closed in 
November 2005. In a surprising show of unity, 
representatives of the Catholic Church and civil society, the 
private mining companies, and the federal mining regulator 
(DEFOMIN) agreed on reforms including mandating companies 
conduct broad community consultation before obtaining a 
concession for exploitation, a modified tax structure for 
companies, doubling the royalty tax paid to communities from 
1 to 2 percent, and new guidelines for areas not open to 
mining. The reforms were set to pass in the National Assembly 
in November 2005 but were shelved until after the November 26 
Presidential elections. Although the original parties to the 
agreement preferred to have the National Assembly vote on the 
reforms in their November 2005 form, the new head of the 
National Assembly Mining Commission, Arnoldo Aviles (a 
representative from the Nationalist Party), solicited 
suggestions for modifications to the draft law in a move to 
appease the new Zelaya Administration, which had promised 
during its campaign to ban open-pit mining. 
 
¶3. (U) Unfortunately for Aviles, he inadvertently opened a 
Pandora,s Box of anti-mining propaganda by resubmitting the 
reforms to debate. The political left and civil society - 
formed of politicians from the Union Democratica (UD) Party, 
certain NGOs, and the renegade Archbishop Santos of Copan - 
began shrilly accusing both the mining companies and Aviles 
of corruption, environmental destruction and sale of the 
Honduran patrimony. News stories began to appear accusing 
mining companies of unsafe environmental practices, 
targeting, in particular, Glamis Gold,s Honduran subsidiary, 
Entremares (see Ref A). (Comment. To place a half page 
article in a Honduran newspaper usually involves a payment of 
several thousand dollars to the publisher. Similarly, 
simultaneous street protests at several sites in Honduras -- 
including bus transportation, meals, and cash payments to 
protesters for their participation -- are quite expensive 
undertakings.  Many observers, including Minister of Defense 
Aristedes Mejia, have openly speculated that the civil 
society groups, in particular CAFOD and Caritas, which placed 
these articles and organized these protests must have 
received significant foreign financing. End comment.) 
 
¶4. (U) The vitriolic anti-mining rhetoric has distracted 
attention from the real issue -- improving the Honduran 
government,s institutional capacity to enforce environmental 
regulations -- and instead seeks to vilify mining in general. 
The lack of well-trained personnel is a constant challenge 
throughout the Honduran government, including for the 
Ministry of Environment (SERNA), the agency responsible for 
mining oversight. Real discussions had begun on resolving 
training/personnel and technical issues before the political 
left polarized the debate.  SERNA does not have a laboratory 
adequate to its monitoring duties.  For example, according to 
Congressman Aviles, that lab cannot distinguish between 
cyanide (used in gold mining) and other sulfides (many 
naturally occurring).  Lumping these very distinct substances 
together, the lab therefore recently published absurdly high 
"cyanide" readings for a mine inspection, which opponents 
then cited as proof the company was "poisoning" the local 
 
TEGUCIGALP 00001847  002 OF 003 
 
 
town. Although the mining authority (DEFOMIN) has an 
agreement with ALS Laboratories of Canada to analyze samples 
collected in Honduras, such clarifications often come long 
after the damaging headlines and protests have had their 
effect. 
 
¶5. (C) Nor has the mining industry done itself a good 
service. The Honduran mining association (ANAMIMH) and 
managers of Entremares and Mayan Gold (both partly U.S.-owned 
companies) have admitted to econoff that they have not 
mounted a sufficient public relations campaign to tout the 
benefits mining brings to the Honduran economy, including 
employment, technology transfer and technical training, and 
tax revenues. Outreach to the GOH has been spotty at best, as 
they complain that their access to the Minister of 
Environment Mayra Mejia and Arnoldo Aviles has been extremely 
limited. They believe that both officials, but especially 
Minister Mejia, are simply capitulating to President 
Zelaya,s penchant for endorsing whatever policy appears to 
be popular at the moment. While Aviles claims to consult with 
the firms regularly, the firms report they have received no 
invitations to testify in National Assembly debates on 
mining.  Archbishop Luis Alfonso Santos, a left-wing 
firebrand viscerally opposed to mining and responsible for 
protests that include closing national highways, is 
reportedly invited to every Congressional mining debate. 
Mining industry representatives have also commented that 
Minister Mejia has met with Archbishop Santos on several 
occasions, while limiting her contact with the mining 
companies. 
 
¶6. (C) Entremares, country manager Eduardo Villacorta told 
econoff that his last meeting with Mejia, during the week of 
September 10-17, was largely unproductive.  This was the 
first time Mejia met with any representative of the mining 
industry in over 3 months.  The only concession she gave was 
that SERNA would not cancel Entremares, mining license. 
(Comment. That Mejia would give such an assurance after 
joining Archbishop Santos in defaming and accusing Entremares 
of pollution and causing birth defects in local children in 
the press exposes the current anti-mining campaign for what 
it really is: a populist political ploy by the ruling Liberal 
Party, the UD and Archbishop Santos. End comment.) 
 
¶7. (SBU) The political left is proposing the following 
additions to the reforms agreed to in November 2005: banning 
open-pit mining of gold and silver; eliminating tax breaks 
destined to alleviate the cost of depreciating equipment; 
raising the tax on gross income from the two percent agreed 
to in November to three percent (or roughly 17 percent of net 
income); and establishing a list of 18 triggers, any one of 
which could be invoked to cancel a company,s mining license. 
These reforms would likely halt new exploration and mining 
and could push newer operations in Honduras to pull out by 
making operations uneconomical. Additionally, although most 
of the 18 triggers deal with non-payment of financial 
obligations or violations of environmental regulations, they 
also include some provisions that are vague or could be 
arbitrarily applied, for example cancellation "due to 
judicial order" or "due to incompletion of work within the 
terms established in the law or unauthorized suspension of 
activity for more than six months continuously." Post 
expressed its concerns to Aviles that these regulations do 
not appear to be transparent and impartial and questioned 
whether they comply with Honduras' obligations under CAFTA to 
establish environmental regulations that provide clear 
guidance to businesses, level the playing field and provide 
for effective and impartial enforcement. 
 
¶8. (C) Comment: Post also finds it very suspicious that only 
gold and silver mines were singled out for the ban. Gravel 
and aggregate mining is also carried out in Honduras through 
open-pit mining. If the concern was truly over the method of 
mining -- instead of the refinement using cyanide-leach heaps 
-- then all open-pit mining should have been banned. A 
complete ban on open-pit mining is impractical, however, as 
it would bring construction to a standstill since supplies of 
sand and gravel are invariably open-pit mined.  Moreover, 
such a broad ban would be politically difficult, since 
certain wealthy Hondurans (such as Liberal Party power Jaime 
Rosenthal) have gravel and concrete operations that rely on 
open-pit techniques.  Of greater concern is the possibility 
that gold and silver mines have been singled out because 
politically-powerful Hondurans intend to take over these 
potentially lucrative operations if or when the international 
mining community is chased out of or loses all interest in 
Honduras. End comment. 
 
TEGUCIGALP 00001847  003 OF 003 
 
 
 
¶9. (C) Post suggested to Aviles that the Congress focus on 
strengthening regulations and monitoring of leach-heap 
operations, rather than banning open pit mining entirely. 
Aviles agreed in principle, but expressed his conviction that 
there is no political will to seek such a reasonable outcome. 
 "The industry has been demonized in the eyes of the public," 
he said.  Trying to win this battle has been "like swimming 
upstream," Aviles said, "and eventually your arms drop and 
the current takes you."  Aviles told Post he is too tired to 
continue a fight he is convinced he will lose.  Better, he 
thought, to accept this law now and repeal it in a few years 
when a credible oversight mechanism has been established and 
passions have cooled.  "What we do today, we can undo 
tomorrow," he said.  That, we pointed out, is precisely what 
would-be investors fear. 
 
¶10. (U) Political support for the agreement originally 
conceived in November 2005 is sparse. Mining Commission 
President Arnoldo Aviles told econoffs that even though 
Cardinal Andres Rodriguez and President of the National 
Assembly Roberto Micheletti have publicly favored the 
November 2005 agreement, most legislators are afraid of the 
consequences of crossing both President Zelaya and Archbishop 
Santos. (Note. Archbishop Santos organized anti-mining 
protests in July 2006 that blocked several key points of the 
Honduran road system. Although Cardinal Rodriguez publicly 
reproached him for those actions, Santos continues to hold 
the threat of severe civil disobedience over the heads of 
politicians. End note.) Aviles believes that the only way to 
return to the consensus of November 2005 would be to convince 
President Zelaya to back off his support of an open-pit 
mining ban and instead endorse the original agreement. 
 
¶11. (SBU) The efforts by the political left to conquer and 
decapitate mining in Honduras, ostensibly for environmental 
concerns, could paradoxically worsen environmental conditions 
in several areas of Honduras. U.S.-owned Mayan Gold is 
already suffering an invasion of part of its mine. The 
artisanal miners, numbering over 120 and actively supported 
by the local mayor and business leaders, are using mercury to 
extract gold from the ore they collect. The mine is located 
on a watershed that feeds into the Choluteca River, the 
primary river system in Southern Honduras. Shrimp farmers 
located near the mouth of the river are already noticing 
increasing levels of mercury in the water. (Note. When 
Caritas accused Mayan Gold of causing the pollution the 
Honduran Prosecutor for Environmental Crimes cleared them of 
wrong-doing, finding instead that the local miners had 
illegally invaded the land and were the source of the mercury 
poisoning.  With the exception of a one-day show of force in 
which artesanal miners were rounded up and expelled or jailed 
for a few hours, the GOH has taken no actions to address 
either the ongoing theft or the unfolding environmental 
disaster. End note.) Given that there has been significant 
gold exploration and four operating gold mines in Honduras 
over the past six years, ANAMIMH fears this sort of behavior 
could spread to other current and potential mining sites, 
many of which are located near watersheds. 
 
¶12. (C) Comment. The Honduran National Assembly most likely 
will incorporate changes to the national mining law that 
would severely harm current mining operations and kill the 
prospect of new investments in precious metals mining in 
Honduras. The full intent of these actions is murky. At a 
minimum this initiative is yet another example of political 
pandering. Post does not have evidence that this is a 
concerted effort to make space for local businesses to fill a 
gap left by retreating international companies. Post 
believes, and has explained to GOH officials, that the 
ultimate effects of adopting this anti-investment and 
politicized legislation will be to put the Honduran 
environment further at risk and to worsen an already shaky 
investment climate. End comment. 
 
Ford 
 
FORD