Bolivia Miners Vow Fight to Death Over Tin Deposit

Bolivia Miners Vow Fight to Death Over Tin Deposit

July 14, 2004

Rene Villegas, Reuters News Service

CARACOLES, Bolivia - A ragtag battalion of impoverished tin miners patrol the hills surrounding Bolivia's paralyzed Caracoles mine, pledging to "defend until death" the site they seized two months ago to demand jobs.

Entrenched on slopes in the freezing cold at an altitude of 14,000 feet, members of four unemployed workers' cooperatives take turns keeping a 24-hour watch over a dusty road that snakes through the mountains. It is the only access route to the remote tin deposit in the Bolivian Andes that the army could use to force them out. "We don't know if they'll come, but they can come if they want ... We're not afraid of them," said Reynaldo Colque, a 22-year-old miner's son.

Some 700 unemployed miners armed with dynamite stormed Caracoles on May 4, halting production at Bolivia's third-largest tin producer and vowing not to move until they were given work.

The conflict is just one of several mine takeovers by rebellious workers in Bolivia, one of Latin America's poorest nations despite being among the world's top five tin producers.

World markets keep close tabs on Bolivia's tin mines as supply of the metal is tight and any interruption of shipments pressures prices upward.

But appeasing the miners could have wider implications for Bolivia's fragile democracy. Miners have long been at the forefront of protests and were protagonists in a bloody Indian uprising last year that forced the President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to flee to the United States.

The new president, Carlos Mesa, is still the target of protests but his government says it prefers dialogue to sending in troops. Miners have threatened more marches and occupations.

"The only way for them to take us out of here is dead," miner Luis Mamani told Reuters on a recent visit to the Caracoles region, now a no-man's land at the end of a treacherous mountain pass with hairpin curves and potholes.

Mamani says until a couple of months ago he earned "barely enough to eat" at a nearby mine called Argentina.

PROTESTERS WANT COOPERATIVE

Caracoles, some 110 miles south of Bolivia's capital La Paz consists of the Pacuni tin mine, a processing plant, two employee housing settlements, two small dams and an electrical generator. The state-run Bolivian Mining Corp., or Comibol, owns the mine but in 1997 transferred administrative and exploitation rights to private firm Barrosquira in a 20-year risk-sharing agreement.

The miners at Argentina, which Comibol rented out to cooperatives a decade ago, say Caracoles is a much richer deposit and they are desperate for jobs there.

"The Argentina mine they gave us is already depleted. What we produce there is not enough to live on," said Alejandro Santos, a 26-year-old laborer.

Mining was the center of Bolivia's economy from colonial times through the mid-1980s. But it has been in crisis for 20 years due to social upheavals, declining investment and a lack of clear mining policies.

The violent takeover of Caracoles forced out 223 Barrosquira employees and their families, who lived at the mine site. The conflict also forced Barrosquira to hand back operating rights to Comibol.

The protesters demand that Comibol hand over Caracoles to them so they can run the mine as a cooperative and have invited the Barrosquira miners to join them.

An official at Comibol, who requested anonymity, told Reuters by telephone, "We won't give in to that demand. Caracoles has a lot of potential and we can't let it be managed using obsolete systems."

Comibol is studying the possibility of creating a new business unit for the mine, in which the cooperatives of jobless workers and Barrosquira's expelled miners would have a stake.

Comibol says it cannot make any promises to restart the mine and offer jobs until at least mid-August because it has to do an inventory and audit together with Barrosquira that will allow them to cancel their contract.

The protesters, who claim to be going hungry, say they can't wait that long.

Some of the miners, worn down by the lengthy standoff, have given up before the negotiations begin with the company.

Rolando Escalante, father of eight, loads his belongings into a pick-up truck and prepares to leave Caracoles.

"I'm leaving because I don't want to scrap anymore for a bone."