BOLIVIA: Miners Renew Support for Morales

By Franz Chávez Reprint | | Print |

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Feb 8 2007 (IPS) - Bolivia’s small-scale miners have once again thrown their support behind President Evo Morales after a conflict in which they virtually buried – even using dynamite blasts – a new tax on the mining industry that the government had planned on adopting.

Morales was forced to meet in person with the leaders of 7,000 miners who had marched into the capital on Tuesday, tossing bits of dynamite for effect.

The meeting took place late Wednesday in the vice president’s building, two blocks from Morales’ office, after two police officers were injured in clashes with the protesters.

In the agreement reached by the two sides, the members of mining cooperatives pledged renewed political support for the administration of leftist President Morales, who they had broken with last year.

According to the miners, the new tax planned by the government would have meant steep increases of between 50 and 160 percent, without considering the differences between their small undertakings and large mining companies, nor the fact that small-scale mines already pay another tax.

A clash between the police and miners who were defending their position in a city square in downtown La Paz with the use of dynamite, and the brief seizure of two anti-riot police officers and their motorcycles at around noon fanned fears of an even worse confrontation.

Terrified passersby ran for safety to escape the shock waves from the dynamite blasts, which could be felt 50 metres away, while the authorities decided to shorten the workday and take precautionary measures at public schools near the Plaza San Francisco, which the miners had occupied on their arrival in the city on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, a prosecutor released eight miners who had been taken into custody for carrying explosive materials.

After a six-hour meeting presided over by Morales, the new mining industry tax was scrapped, although the agreement reached with the miners, which was signed amidst applause, does not explicitly state that the proposed tax will be definitively abandoned.

“The new tax will not be applied, and other taxes will be sought, in order to boost revenues for the state,” said the president of the National Federation of Mining Cooperatives, Andrés Villca. But Mining Minister Guillermo Dalence said “the tax hike is under discussion.”

With its present wording, the pact will allow the current tax paid by the mining cooperatives to be kept in place, while large companies will pay a higher tax. The idea was to avoid encouraging other tax-paying sectors to take similar action.

The government also agreed to grant 10 million dollars in funds to the country’s 536 mining cooperatives, which represent some 55,000 independent miners. In addition, the cooperatives will now have two out of six seats on the board of directors of the state mining company Comibol.

The ministers of justice, labour and mining, Celima Torrico, Walter Delgadillo and Dalence, respectively, committed themselves to addressing the grievances of unemployed workers in Huanuni, in the western province of Oruro, who were left out of a programme aimed at incorporating cooperative miners in Comibol.

The programme was designed as a solution to a conflict over Bolivia’s richest tin reserves, which broke out last October.

The government also promised to improve and centralise the commercialisation of metals and to study the cost of the electric power used by the independent miners.

And in an unexpected political reconciliation, the miners ratified an earlier pact in which they had declared their support for Morales, who is one of the leaders of the country’s coca farmers.

The cooperative miners will once again support the changes promoted by Morales and his Movement to Socialism (MAS) after the breakdown in relations caused by the October conflict.

At that time, miners’ cooperatives attempted to seize tin deposits in Huanuni that were in the hands of Comibol, and 14 miners were killed in a dynamite battle between independent miners and Comibol employees.

Former mining minister Walter Villarroel, a leader of the miners’ cooperatives, was a close associate of Morales, but last year’s violence in Huanuni led to his dismissal.

“We will build the mining sector’s reconciliation with the government’s big project for change. They will once again become part of the process,” said Minister Delgadillo.

Villca, for his part, did not rule out the possibility that members of the National Federation of Mining Cooperatives could be assigned government posts.

“Future mining policies will be negotiated and agreed on with the cooperatives,” said Delgadillo.

The 536 cooperatives in the central provinces of Cochabamba and the western provinces of La Paz, Oruro and Potosí have a combined total of 55,000 members who run small mines that also provide jobs to another 5,000 workers as day labourers.

The origin of the cooperatives goes back to 1986, when the state mining industry collapsed after the international prices of tin and other minerals plunged, and thousands of workers were left jobless virtually overnight.

Many moved to fertile agricultural areas, especially the central coca-producing region of Chapare. But others formed small cooperatives to mine what remained of the virtually exhausted tin, tungsten and silver reserves.

Although the growing international demand for metals in the past few years has made mining more attractive, only a few of these independent miners have prospered, while the immense majority use the same mining techniques that were used in the 19th century, descending into the mines with a hammer and chisel to chip out a bare existence.

“We have achieved reconciliation between workers from the countryside and the city, and I want to express gratitude for the maturity shown by all,” said Morales, who was forced to personally step in to resolve a conflict that threatened to escalate further.

Even as he was speaking, the miners who had occupied the Plaza San Francisco set off at least 10 more detonations. Passersby and even some of the protesters complained, since the miners’ demands had already been met. “Stop! That’s enough!” people shouted as the blasts went off.

As the miners began to head home, the vice president of the La Paz Regional Federation of Mining Cooperatives, Jorge Franco, told IPS that the members of his organisation supported the pact signed with the government.

“We already pay taxes,” he said, pointing out that the miners currently pay between one and seven percent of the net value of the minerals they produce, depending on different factors, such as the price of the mineral in question.

José Flores Ticona, president of the Ascensión de Caracoles Cooperative, also underscored that the members of his group pay their taxes.

Under heavy rain, the miners left their improvised battleground, boarding trucks and buses that took them back to their remote homes in the regions.