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PRESS RELEASE

Dated July 15, two thousand twenty-one, the co-owner families of the farm named “El SALITRE”, which is located in the Aldea los Planes, in the municipality of San Rafael las Flores, Santa Rosa, present three administrative options against the license to operate the mining right identified as Mining Right SEXT-015-11, “Escobal”, for the following reasons:

1. Our farm (El Salitre), can be found enrolled in the General Property Registry of the Central Zone, under the number ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-ONE (131), Folio FOUR HUNDRED NINETY-EIGHT (498), of Book THIRTY-FOUR (34) of the department of Santa Rosa, since February 22, 1905; and currently has a surface extension of FORTY-FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED FORTY-FOUR POINT SEVEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED EIGHTY-EIGHT ZERO ZERO METRES (44,544.758800m2).

2. The entity San Rafael Mining S.A. (today Pan-American Silver) owner of the “Escobal” mining project, built part of their processing plant, of their administrative building, the primary road towards the mine portals, and installed the scale to weigh the metal concentrate, inside the farm on our property, WITHOUT OUR AUTHORIZATION and much less WITHOUT US HAVING sold or given under any title, rights over it.

3. Due to the climate of terror and fear that the mining entity sowed in our municipality since their arrival, generating criminalization, imprisonment, physical attacks against those that oppose the mining project and including even a state of siege, during many years we stayed waiting for the mining entity to fulfill their false promises of coming to an agreement without litigation, but instead what we have received are insults and threats.

4. To protect our right over the “El Salitre” farm, we have turned to civil justice through an Ordinary Trial of Vindication of Possession, to regain possession of that which the mining entity illegally intends to strip from us. This judgment has been admitted and is currently being processed.

These clearly illegal actions, both from the mining entity and the Ministry of Energy and Mining, only confirms the innumerable public complaints from the communities, concerning the illegal granting of the “Escobal” mining right.

Faced with these humiliations, through administrative oppositions, WE DEMAND to the Ministry of Energy and Mines THE FINAL SUSPENTION of the license to operate the mining right of the operation named “ESCOBAL” that identifies with Mining Right ID SEXT-015-11, for violating our right to property rights.

San Rafael Las Flores, Santa Rosa, September 6, 2021.

More information to the email sandoval.sa1904@gmail.com and to the cellular 56124478