Comibol

Comibol, the Mining Corporation of Bolivia (Corporación Minera de Bolivia). On 2 October 1952 the government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro established Comibol as an autonomous public corporation. The government's objective was to centralize control over approximately 163 mines and mineral properties nationalized by the April 1952 revolution. These different mines produced zinc, silver, gold and tin. In a short span, Comibol became the single most important source of foreign exchange for Bolivia. However, while Comibol subsidized nearly every other bureaucracy and allowed for spending in education and other areas, the government did not reinvest in the enterprise, thus allowing it to suffer a severe process of decapitalization.

Under the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR), the mine workers federation (Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia—FSTMB) enjoyed worker comanagement in Comibol, a fact that accounted for slight improvements in working conditions but also both politicized the institution and eroded its finances. Efforts to end worker comanagement often led to violent confrontations between workers and the state. In 1964 the military coup that ended the MNR's twelve-year revolutionary experiment also terminated worker comanagement through outright repression. Over the course of the next eighteen years, several military governments attempted to downsize Comibol through the use of force, periodically stationing troops in mining districts to prevent worker unrest.

Military repression failed to bring Comibol workers under control. Paradoxically, in 1985 Paz Estenssoro, the very person who had established Comibol, accomplished what years of coercion had not. In launching his New Economic Policy (NPE) he downsized Comibol considerably, firing 23,000 mineworkers and closing nonproductive mines. The NPE also called for the privatization and decentralization of Comibol.

See alsoMining: Modern .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Melvin Burke, The Corporación Minera de Bolivia (Comibol) and the Triangular Plan: A Case Study in Dependency (1987).

Additional Bibliography

Bedregal, Guillermo. COMIBOL, una historia épica. La Paz: Fondo Editorial de los Diputados, 1998.

                                   Eduardo A. Gamarra