At least six people were killed early Thursday in a clash between rival groups of dynamite-bearing gold miners in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of territorial disputes between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal.
A powerful explosion thundered through the Yani mining camp as the two rival mining groups clashed over access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, some 150 kilometers (about 90 miles) northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Col. Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area.
“We’re continuing the rescue efforts,” Agudo said.
Prosecutors arrived Thursday at the scene, where the blast before dawn had ripped through the mining community, wrecking several houses and cutting electricity, authorities said.
Bolivia’s mining industry stands out for its huge sector of cooperatives — legal groups of artisanal miners — comprising most of the mining labor force and wielding political clout in the resource-rich country where they have representation in Parliament.
Cooperatives historically emerged in Bolivia as more established mining operations dismissed legions of workers in the risky, boom-and-bust business, compelling miners to organize themselves when commodity prices slumped and lay-offs loomed.
Over the decades, cooperatives have increasingly fought over the chance to extract minerals — hurling rocks and dynamite sticks among themselves and against unionized, salaried workers from Bolivia’s state-run mining company, Comibol.
Comibol came to dominate the crucial industry under former President Evo Morales, a socialist leader who governed the landlocked Andean nation from 2006 to 2019 and barred foreign companies from having a controlling stake in mineral extraction.
In Thursday’s clash, the struggle for control of certain veins of the gold reserve between two rival cooperatives had simmered for years, said Jhony Silva, a legal advisor to one of them.
Silva told Bolivian state TV that the dead bodies were recovered from under the rubble. He said there were reports of people still missing, without offering further details.
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