BOLIVIA: MINE CONFLICT IN ORURO LEAVES 16 DEAD AND DOZENS WOUNDED.
A conflict in the Bolivian department of Oruro resulted in at least 16 deaths and dozens of wounded in early October as two different factions of miners attacked each other with dynamite and firearms at the site of the world's richest tin deposits. On Oct. 4, conflict rocked the town of Huanuni in the department of Oruro, as unionized miners working for the state-owned mining company battled independent miners for access to Huanuni mine. The conflict, marking the most violent period in President Evo Morales' nine-month-old administration, led the president to replace the minister of mining and the head of the state-owned mining company. The country's top union group called for Morales to be prosecuted for the deaths, and the event joins several ongoing tumults in Bolivia that are putting political pressure on the president.
Huanuni turned into a battlefield
The conflict is centered on Posokoni hill, where mining groups estimate that there are 1 million tons of tin-- Bolivia's richest deposits. In the hill is the Huanuni mine, about 290 km south of La Paz and about 50 km from the departmental capital city of Oruro, where approximately 1,000 salaried miners working for the Corporacion Minera de Bolivia (COMIBOL) have access to the deeper, richer tin deposits. Currently, Posokoni produces about 10,000 fine metric tons of tin annually, a little less than half of Bolivia's production and 5% of world production.
About 4,000 more "independent" miners organized into cooperatives also want access to the mine and currently work shallower, less rich veins of tin. They are paid according to their production level, putting extreme pressure on the cooperativists to churn out ore. The unionized COMIBOL workers, by contrast, have an interest in mining more steadily, saying they can keep the community viable for 30 years while cooperativist mining, they claim, would deplete the mines in two years and leave Huanuni destitute.
Tensions between the two mineworkers' factions have been simmering for months, but they exploded into an open exchange of explosives and bullets on Oct. 4. Cooperativists advanced on Posokoni hill, attacking union miners, while the COMIBOL unionists fought back from the neighborhood below. Reports mentioned the two sides hurled dynamite and shot at one another. The cooperativists, positioned further up the hill, reportedly filled tires with dynamite and ammonium nitrate, known as anfo, which is a chemical that increases the explosion's...
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