Siglo XX (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

for "Twentieth Century") is a

tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

in Bolivia. It is located in the city of Llallagua in the province of

Bustillos Bustillos is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Edwin Bustillos (1964–2003), Mexican scientist *Juan Bustillos Montalvo (born 1955), Mexican politician *Victorino Márquez Bustillos (1858–1941), Venezuelan lawyer and politici ...

Potosí Department Potosí (; Aymara: ''Putusi''; qu, P'utuqsi) is a department in southwestern Bolivia. It comprises 118,218 km2 with 823,517 inhabitants (2012 census). The capital is the city of Potosí. It is mostly a barren, mountainous region with on ...

. Along with the Catavi mine, it is part of a mining complex in the area. It was acquired in the 1910s by

Simón Iturri Patiño Simón Iturri Patiño (1 June 1862 – 20 April 1947) was a Bolivian industrialist who was among the world's wealthiest people at the time of his death. With a fortune built from ownership of a majority of the tin industry in Bolivia, Patiño ...

, who was dubbed the "King of Tin." It was the site of continual labor strife, and many of its workers were active in the Union Federation of Bolivian Mine Workers (FSTMB). The mine was

nationalized Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to p ...

following the Bolivian National Revolution of 1952, when the

Revolutionary Nationalist Movement The Revolutionary Nationalist Movement ( es, Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario , MNR) is a centre-right conservative political party in Bolivia and was the leading force behind the Bolivian National Revolution from 1952 to 1964. It influenc ...

(MNR) and its allies overthrew the

military junta A military junta () is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term ''junta'' means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the national and local junta organized by the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invasion of Spain in ...

. Siglo XX and other mines were placed under the control of a new state agency, the ''Corporación Minera de Bolivia'' (COMIBOL). The Catavi-Siglo XX complex became the largest component of COMIBOL. On 24 June 1967, government troops under the orders of President

René Barrientos René Barrientos Ortuño (30 May 1919 – 27 April 1969) was a Bolivian military officer and politician who served as the 47th president of Bolivia twice nonconsecutively from 1964 to 1966 and from 1966 to 1969. During much of his first term, ...

and a new military junta marched on the mine and committed the largest massacre of workers in Bolivian history. One witness and subsequent exile, Víctor Montoya, put the casualties at twenty killed and seventy wounded. The incident was the basis for filmmaker

Jorge Sanjinés Jorge Sanjinés (born 31 July 1936 in La Paz, Bolivia) is a Bolivian film director and screenwriter. He founded the production group ''Grupo Ukamau''. He won the ALBA Prize for Arts in 2009. Film career Jorge Sanjinés brings highly political fi ...

's 1971 drama ''The Courage of the People''. In 1987, as part of an

economic restructuring Economic restructuring is used to indicate changes in the constituent parts of an economy in a very general sense. In the western world, it is usually used to refer to the phenomenon of urban areas shifting from a manufacturing to a service secto ...

deal with the IMF and

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...

, the government shut down production at Siglo XX. Mining operations are currently undertaken by members of several large cooperatives who work independently or in small groups.

References

Sources

* Jordán Pozo, Rolando: ''Minería. Siglo XX: la era del estaño''; in: Campero Prudencio, Fernando: ''Bolivia en el siglo XX. La formación de la Bolivia Contemporánea,'' La Paz: Harvard club de Bolivia 1999, S. 219-239

External links

Principales minas de estaño, Bolivia (span.)"Un Día Cualquiera en Siglo XX" (videdo)
{{Coord, 18, 25, S, 66, 38, W, display=title Tin mines in Bolivia Geological type localities Mines in Potosí Department