BOLIVIA: Rising Demand for Tin Holds Out Hope for Impoverished Highlands

By Franz Chávez Reprint | | Print |

Franz Chávez

ORURO, Bolivia, Apr 26 2004 (IPS) - The tap tap tap of the hammer and chisel in networks of underground galleries in Bolivia’s Andean highland region could give way to the pneumatic pounding of powerful hydraulic rock drills if tin mining makes a comeback.

Bolivia’s mining industry took a nosedive in the mid-1980s, and more than 30,000 workers lost their jobs. But today, the price of tin has climbed back up to over four dollars a pound.

In September 1986, the miners with their hard-hats, carbide lanterns and cheeks swollen by wads of coca leaves left the mining camps in droves with their families when they were laid off by the governmental Corporación Minera de Bolivia (Bolivian Mining Corporation – COMIBOL), after the price of tin sank to two dollars a pound.

Then-president Víctor Paz Estenssoro, in his third term (1985-1989) at the time, closed the tin mines to prevent the government from racking up huge losses, after the state had depended on the country’s mineral resources for centuries, and at a time when the country was pulling out of runaway inflation of 25,000 percent a year.

Without any alternative employment, thousands of families left the cold Andean highlands in the western departments (provinces) of Oruro, Potosí and La Paz.

Many settled in the subtropical central Bolivian department of Chapare, where thousands of families began to grow coca for a living, despite the persecution to which they are subjected under Bolivian anti-drug laws and U.S. anti-narcotics policies.

In Bolivia, where coca leaves have been chewed for centuries, only the plantations in the Yungas region of the department of La Paz are legal, as coca there is grown for ”traditional” uses.

Bolivian law allows a total of 12,000 hectares of coca to be grown legally in that region. But according to the U.S. government, a total of 23,500 hectares are under coca cultivation in this country, the third-largest producer of coca after Colombia and Peru.

Some miners stayed behind in the camps and labyrinthine galleries that burrow 200m beneath the mountains, organising themselves in cooperatives, and working in deplorable conditions.

Without modern equipment, ventilation or oxygen, the miners enter the tunnels with just a hammer and chisel, using the same techniques that were used decades ago to extract the mineral from the stone. They work from 8:00 in the morning until nightfall.

When prices are low – like in the mid-1980s, when tin plunged to just a dollar a pound – the miners earn as little as 25 cents a day.

Now that prices have rallied, they make up to 12 dollars a day selling smelting plants the minerals they extract in an artisanal manner, in a country where the minimum monthly salary is equivalent to 50 dollars a day.

But the conditions are dangerous and harsh, the air in the mines is highly toxic, and many miners suffer chronic health conditions and die young.

The resurgence of demand for tin and other minerals produced by this country of 8.2 million, South America’s poorest, is a consequence of the drop in international supplies, the increasingly strict environmental policies of Europe, which is gradually abandoning lead, and the move to replace lead in the electronics industry.

But it could take months for large-scale exploitation with modern equipment to get underway in Bolivia because the new prices ”took (the mining companies) by surprise,” jolting them awake, said Antonio Salas, an academic in the city of Oruro.

During the colonial period, silver was the mineral of greatest interest for the Spanish conquistadors in Bolivia. Tin enjoyed a boom much later, in the mid-1970s, when the price climbed above seven dollars a pound due to the high demand from industry in Europe and the United States.

The international tin market crashed in 1985, and in 1986 the state-owned COMIBOL shut down its mines and camps in the highlands of western Bolivia. However, some of the mines continued to be run on a small to medium scale by private companies and cooperatives that extract small quantities of tin, lead and zinc.

As a result, ”the country lost its mining vocation,” Salas told IPS. The languishing state-owned mining industry drove many skilled workers to emigrate, and they lost their abilities to dig underground galleries and operate drills in narrow tunnels.

Many of the skilled workers who stayed in Bolivia are over 50, he added, and no longer have the strength and stamina required by the demanding work in the mines.

Gróver Simbrón, the president of the National Chamber of the Mining industry, which represents 350 companies with a net worth of between 20,000 and 100,000 dollars, is confident that the government will channel resources to the industry, which employs around 3,500 workers today.

”The government is aware of the new boom in mining, and we have to take advantage of this opportunity,” Simbrón said in an interview with IPS. Tin, bismuth, zinc, antimony and gold are all experiencing price hikes that are promising for Bolivia’s mining industry.

According to Salas, processing and extracting the tin from millions of tons of waste material abandoned by COMIBOL at the mines would generate immediate revenues of around 100 million dollars for the cash-strapped state.

The business opportunity, however, is apparently being ignored by the financial sector. No bank has offered the mining industry credit, despite the current prospect of profits, said Salas and Simbrón.

The resurgence of tin is the sole hope for Bolivia’s depressed, impoverished western region, said Salas, who insisted that the government should support it by eliminating tariffs on imports of equipment and providing incentives for the technological upgrading of the mining industry.