Gold fever: big mining companies circle as El Salvador prepares to reverse ban

El Salvador's Santa Elena mine once belonged to a US company, Butters Salvador Mining, which between 1904 and 1954 extracted 32 tons of gold from it. Abandoned by Butters during the country's lengthy and bloody civil war, the mine is now worked unofficially by artisanal miners, among them the 67-year-old José Hernà¡ndez. Hernà¡ndez began working at Santa Elena with his father at the age of 12 and continued until the 1980-1992 Salvadoran civil war, which claimed 75,000 - mainly civilian - lives and pushed many people to leave the country. Hernà¡ndez spent a decade living in the US before returning…