Bolivia: More Trouble from the Mines

Tin is Bolivia’s most valuable resource, yet the mines might just as well be in another country for all the prosperity they bring. Since nationalization in 1952, Communist union leaders, backed by a well-armed “workers’ militia,” have ruled the mines, and no government has dared call a halt to the appalling featherbedding, inefficiency and spiraling wages, which result in losses of more than $6,000,000 annually. No government, that is, except the present military junta headed by Co-Presidents René Barrientos and Alfredo Ovando Candia. Last May the two generals drew up a harsh but workable plan to rehabilitate the mines, then sent troops into action when the miners rebelled. Last week new fighting broke out at the country’s most troublesome mine, the Catavi-Siglo Veinte complex, 175 miles southeast of La Paz.

The battle started when miners dynamited the local police headquarters to protest a government edict reducing wages and laying off unnecessary workers. The government responded by putting the entire country under a state of siege and ordering 6,500 troops to the area. After a day-long skirmish that left 26 miners and six soldiers dead and some 100 wounded on both sides, the miners retreated into the mines.

The chief of the government’s Comibol mining enterprise declared that Catavi-Siglo Veinte was being closed “temporarily” because of “extremist agitators.” But the next day, Co-Presidents Barrientos and Ovando ordered the mining complex reopened. Troops had already rooted out the troublemakers and packed 300 of them off to government colonization projects in the country’s rugged north. Clearly, there was more behind the uprising than a local labor dispute. “Wages are not really important,” admitted one union leader. “What we want is the overthrow of the military dictatorship.”