WHen Nayib Bukele launched his presidential campaign at the Eastern La Unión Ministry in 2018, stood up to the new foreign politician on a street full of supporters and promised a new airport. La Unión and the rest of the Eastern Region of El Salvador were neglected by governments, with a few infrastructure and poverty projects on a large scale.
Just one month after, an agent Travel to Germany To press for his project. He said: “Munich airport is interested in operating our new airport, which we will build in La Unión.”
A few years have passed and the airport plan appears to fade. Until last year: When the hard -line president prompted his re -election, his government began to evaluate the project quickly. After his re-election in February 2024, Bukele-who called himself “the most amazing dictator in the world” began-in clearing the road to a runway for the new Pacific Airport in one of the remaining few mangrove forests in the country.
For Al -Salvaduri government, the airport is not just an isolated project, but it fits a greater plan: “Bitcoin City”, and another ambitious promise from his government. Bukele imagines a tax -exempt economy, as the airport was a major part of making international investors and encrypted businessmen.
The Elmer Martínez family was among the 225 guided families of his community, Flor De Mangle, and the adjacent EL Condillo to provide an area for a runway 3 km.
Martinez, local actor for Movement for the peoples of grandparents from El SalvadorHis neighbors were first approached in 2022 by government officials. In the following years, they went through what they consider “predatory negotiations” for agricultural societies to sell their homes for “insufficient compensation”.
The mangroves suffered in the last century. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, At least 20 % Among the world’s mangrove forests has disappeared since 1980. Selfador is much higher: 60 % in the past five decades.
One of the last salty water forests in El Salvador, La Unión is part of Conservation zone. It summarizes abundant wildlife, including critically threatened with extinction Amazon yellow ((Amazona auropalliata).
Olga Tikhada, biologist at El Salvador University, says Managrav is a nutritional factories. “They feed the entire ecosystem and the societies that depend on it and absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide, which helps to combat climate change,” she says. “But it is fragile. Even small changes in soil salinity can kill them from the roots up.”
Studies indicate that the mangrove forests can It greatly reduces hurricane damage. Scientists have found that the removal of forests in Ghairo, Mexico, Destroy Because of Hurricane Otis in 2023. La Unión manags a similar preventive role, protecting coastal societies from the harsh weather events that are It becomes more frequent Due to the climate crisis.
The risk of building an airport on the previous mangroves exceeds environmental damage, as it can threaten the project itself. “Managrav is growing in soft, unstable soil,” says Techda. “Even if the sediments are stiff over time, the airport based on it in a very seismic country like El Salvador may be dangerously unstable.”
It indicates 2001 earthquake7.7 size disaster Pasture Parts of the mangrove forest.
While the government recounts La Unión Airport as Gamechanger for the region’s economy, critics argue that the benefits will be focused in a few hands.
A neglected agent. “Within 10 years, 50,000 jobs are expected to generate direct and indirect, which contributes 1.5 % to GDP annually, according to feasibility studies,” he said in an event. To lay the foundation stone, last month.
According to the president, the airport will be a major supplier to make Bitcoin an attractive place to live in Crypto -Nhusts and Will Line Line Line Express Train Will Connect the city to the airport and the port.
But many residents say they are closed from the opportunities that tourism giants will seize. “They tell us that this will bring prosperity, but we cannot invest. Adan Soussa, the agricultural factor who says it has been offered on $ 75,000 (58,000 pounds) for his home and a separate plot where crops are grown.
The growing cost of the land near the airport has almost impossible for small companies and local sellers to create themselves in the new economy, leaving many to think who will really benefit.
Land prices in the region increased by up to 3,200 % Since 2000, property has made non -investigative ownership for most of the population.
For Dimas Bautista, one of the founders of society and Fisher for life, the effect already strikes at home. “A few months ago, the government prevented us from passing through the construction site to reach Managrav, so we now have to take longer and more dangerous ways,” he says.
“The animals are already leaving. Those who cannot move will also disappear. And when they do it, our way of putting food on the table.”
The Bukele administration has followed a pattern of removing environmental restrictions, such as the reflection of the Salvador’s mining ban, One million dollars (770 million pounds) is an increase in construction projects Since his first term, the constant motivation of mono -culture crops such as sugar cane.
Tejada says Mangerves is an easy goal, as it is owned by the government and can be rented for private interests. “Many mangroves were owned [40 hectares] From the mangroves and returned with half of the mass of the forests.
Along with high sea levels and agricultural chemical pollution, activists say urban development that has not been verified is an increasing threat to El Salvador projects. The Bukele administration has already tracked quick major projects, including the railway line, which will link La Unión to the rest of the country. Specialists of maintaining rapid expansion are afraid to come at the expense of ecosystems that protect coastal societies for centuries.
For Martinez and his neighbors, the destruction of the mangroves is not only related to trees – it is related to survival. “They turned our house into a cemetery,” says looked at arid land where the spring of fresh water flows once. “First the forest dies, then water. Finally, we also do.”