This is the part of the old article the concern me and may be where Ortega is basing her argument and gets her additional power. Is the area around Las Cristinas a real forest?

Chavez had promised during the election campaign of 1999 not to touch the forest: “Our thesis is that the exploitation of the resources cannot go against the future life… if we have to cut the forest in order to get to the gold, then I will stay with the forest,” Chavez said, according to them, in 1997.