Marcelo Rivera was born the eighth of nine children in Cabañas, El Salvador, and came of age during the political repression of the 1970s and the twelve-year Salvadoran civil war that began in 1980. After the Peace accords of 1992, Marcelo emerged as a key leader in the formation of a community library, the San Isidro Cultural Center, and the Friends of San Isidro Cabañas Association (ASIC), an organization dedicated to human rights, gender equality, community development, and defense of the environment. Working in close relationship with other communal organizations, especially the Association for Social and Economic Development (ADES), Marcelo and his comrades were among the first to raise the alarm when the multinational corporation Pacific Rim began exploring for gold in and around the abandoned El Dorado mine in Cabañas. Pacific Rim responded immediately to their protests with an aggressive public relations campaign, but as they learned more about the dire consequences that metallic mining would have for their communities, Marcelo and other activists eventually formed the National Working Group Against Metallic Mining in El Salvador. This coalition brought about an unprecedented partnership between political parties on the right and the left, forged in response to the dangers of metallic mining for the Salvadoran people. When it became clear that Pacific RIm’s plan to proceed with extraction would be delayed indefinitely, the company took El Salvador to court, suing the country for $250 million in lost investments and future profits. At the same time, the company ramped up its intimidation campaign against water defenders like Marcelo, his brother, and their colleagues, who began to receive death threats and were being tracked and followed in their daily activities. On June 18, 2009, Marcelo disappeared from a bus stop outside San Isidro. His family searched for 12 days before receiving a tip as to where his body, bearing marks of torture, could be found. He was thirty-seven years old when he was killed. Marcelo and other murdered water defenders from Cabañas live on in the victories of the anti-mining movement in El Salvador and beyond. Pacific Rim—now Oceana Gold—lost its case against El Salvador at the World Bank in 2016, and El Salvador became the first country in the world to ban all forms of metallic mining in 2017. They are also present in the continued vigilance of the anti-mining movement against threats to the mining ban and in the movement to pass a law in El Salvador that would both codify water as a basic human right and prohibit the privatization of water. With environmental justice movements across the Americas, these movements declare that “water is life.”