President Laura Fernández presented the granting of an artisanal sand mining concession as a provincial milestone during the Governing Council meeting in Nicoya, as part of the Annexation celebrations.
“I am very pleased to grant you Guanacaste’s first artisanal sand mining concession,” the president stated.
The concession is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the first of its kind in Guanacaste.
Fernández did grant the first concession to the Nacascolo Sand Miners’ Association, whose members had been extracting sand from the Tempisque River for years without authorization. The concession allows them to carry out their work legally.
In other words: the problem was real, but the milestone was exaggerated by the government.
The existence of concessions for artisanal sand mining is documented in public records. For example, according to La Gaceta on January 14, 2009, the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) had granted several “concessions for artisanal mining in public waterways” to the Tempisque Valley Artisanal Sand Miners Association since August 2002.
Files 3-2001, 4-2001, 5-2001, and 6-2001 corresponded to sites located in the Guanacaste canton of Carrillo. One of them authorized artisanal sand extraction in La Isleta, near Filadelfia.
In fact, The Voice of Guanacaste published a photo essay in 2019 featuring workers extracting sand in the concession area of La Isleta.
According to records, sand extraction concessions have existed in Guanacaste for at least 25 years. Photo: César Arroyo Castro.
Artisanal sand mining is documented in more recent official records. The 2023 mining assessment of the Chorotega region still included file 6-2001 from the Tempisque Valley Artisanal Sand Miners Association.
The granting of the concession marked the culmination of the government’s involvement in Nicoya. A video portrayed the sand miners as traditional workers who had been condemned for years to informality and this government as the one responsible for bringing them justice.
“For a long time, we were sand miners without a concession. We wanted to work legally; we wanted to do things right, but the doors were always closed,” said Elizabeth González, president of the association.
Fernández declared that “twenty years of injustices come to an end today” and promised: “No one will ever tell you again that you’re working illegally.”
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