An explosion at a standoff between rival gold miners in Bolivia kills at least 5 people

SORATA, Bolivia (AP) — A powerful explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and 1-year-old baby, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of territorial disputes between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal.

The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups dispute 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.

Agudo had initially reported six people killed but revised the toll to five after firefighters finished recovering the bodies from under the rubble. The dead included three men, a pregnant woman and an infant, he said.

Bolivia’s deputy interior minister, Jhonny Aguilera, said the suspected perpetrator of the attack was killed by the explosion, which was detonated by remote control.

The predawn explosion at the mine struck a three-story house and set cars and tractors alight. The fires wrecked several other structures and cut electricity.

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Bolivia’s mining industry stands out for its huge sector of cooperatives — legal groups of artisanal miners — which drive 58% of mining production, according to the latest government figures. The thousands of groups also wield 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 at each other 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 adviser to one of them. Gold remains one of Bolivia’s main mineral exports, with almost $2.87 billion worth of the mineral shipped out of the country in 2023.