User:Bengutman/sandbox

At the start of the 20th century, liberal reforms and an increase in government policies favoring foreign investment led to a decrease in nationalization of natural resources and an increase in ownership by private companies. Almost immediately following the change in Bolivian mining code in 1901 that allowed for the privatization of mines, a New York based company purchased "80 per cent of the mines in the Cerro de Pasco region of the central andes".[1] The newly formed Cerro de Pasco Corporation pursued immediate large-scale extractive mining, which contributed to a long-term change in the local eco-system. The need for large quantities of timber to build the mining infrastructure necessary to extract minerals, also caused high amounts of erasion and deforestation. Dames needed to produce electricity for this massive private project caused floods, which altered the land and damaged the natural environment. After centuries of extractive mining methods that severely damaged the local ecology the mountain continues to be mined for silver to this day.

Bolivia's cooperative mining sector, who's center is in Potosi, has been given many privileges included favorable tax treatment and exemption from labor and environmental regulations since the election of socialist president Evo Morales in 2006. After centuries of brutal Spanish extraction and forced labor, decades of foreign control and private investment in the late 20th century, and the failure of the state-run mining company COMIBOL led to the displacement of 25,000 miners following plummeting mineral prices in the 1990s, "informal, self-managed associations" began selling "unrefined product to private operators". FENCOMIN (National Federation of Mining Cooperatives in Bolivia) was a vital player in insuring the successful popular election of Evo Morales and also functioned as one of the leaders in drafting Bolivia's new constitution establishing a plural mining economy (state, private, and cooperative). However, over the last ten years much conflict has arisen between cooperative miners and state miners. In 2006, state miners and cooperatives clashed at Huanuni leaving 16 dead leading to the firing of Morales' first Mining Minister, a member of FENCOMIN. Most recently in 2016, Bolivia's Deputy Interior Minister Rodolfo Ilanes was tortured and killed, allegedly by a Bolivian mining cooperative. This outburst of violence has led to clashes between cooperative miners and the police leaving five miners dead and severing a decade of strong ties between cooperative mining and the Morales government.