Word: comibol
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Saul Villegas, a director at the Bolivian Mining Corporation (COMIBOL), the operative wing of the Mining Ministry, seems to agree. "We know that we lack know-how and that we need investment to pull this off," says Villegas, pointing out that the government has formed a scientific committee made up of auto experts and representatives from car companies worldwide...
...occupied the mines and forced people back to work. Miners have a history of violent confrontations with the military which intensified beginning in the 1940s when the miners' union was first formed. Major mines were nationalized in 1952, and pressure from miners working for the state-owned enterprise (COMIBOL) led to other left-leaning reforms by the new government. In the mid-1960s a foreign financed "rehabilitation" plan phased out miners' participation in COMIBOL's management, but it took a series of massacres by the military government of Barrientos to impose this change...
...chief of the government's Comibol mining enterprise declared that Catavi-Siglo Veinte was being closed "temporarily" because of "extremist agitators." But the next day, Co-Presidents Barrientos and Ovando ordered the mining complex reopened. Troops had already rooted out the troublemakers and packed 300 of them off to government colonization projects in the country's rugged north. Clearly, there was more behind the uprising than a local labor dispute. "Wages are not really important," admitted one union leader. "What we want is the overthrow of the military dictatorship...
...huge Cat-avi-Siglo Veinte complex, where thousands of well-armed miners had barricaded themselves. At that point, the miners requested a 48-hour truce. Barrientos insisted on unconditional surrender. He then summarily canceled all union wage increases granted since last Aug. 31, 1964, and gave the Comibol state mining company freedom to hire and fire any workers it chose...
...sooner was Lechin out of the way last week than Barrientos announced a sweeping program to put Comibol on its feet. As a starter, the bullet-hard air force general tossed all top union leaders out of office, called for new union elections within 40 days, and before the week was out, exiled 36 more Communist and leftist union bosses to Paraguay. To make sure the orders would be enforced, he put the country under a state of siege and ordered a military draft of all Bolivians between the ages...