Bolivian Mining Cooperatives

Worker-owned mining cooperatives were first organized in Bolivia in the depression of the 1930s.  The number grew in the 1950s and 1960s after the populist MNR party nationalized the mines but struggled to maintain employment levels.  With encouragement from USAID, the government gave rural cooperative groups concessions to work marginal or depleted shafts.  In 1968 there were around 100.  An economic crisis in the mid-1980s led to the re-privatization of the mines in the 1990s and more cooperatives formed as a response to layoffs.  By 2008 there were 700 to 800 mining co-ops. As one author put it, “encouraged by successive neoliberal governments to buffer the consequences of massive mining dislocations, the cooperative mining sector flourished.” 

The largest growth took place after 2009 when the socialist MAS party passed a new plurinational constitution that recognized mining cooperatives as a pillar of the national economy, leading to the current count of around 2,500. In 2016 cooperative miners made up 90% of the mining workforce.

They are generally grouped into two federations. In the arid Andean Altiplano “traditional” mining cooperatives dig for a variety of metals and have been organized since 1968 within the Federación Nacional de Cooperativas Mineras de Bolivia (FENCOMIN). In 2015 a group of alluvial gold mining cooperatives in Amazonian areas formed the Federación de Cooperativas Mineras Auríferas de Bolivia (FECMABOL). Traditional mining is more manual, while alluvial gold mining is more industrial and capital intensive. 

Bolivian mine workers are known for their militancy, blocking major transportation routes with dynamite and fighting off police. Violence came to a peak in 2016 as the government tried to stop the cooperatives from making lucrative agreements with foreign companies, which could operate tax free under the nonprofit legal status of the co-ops. Striking miners protesting the policy kidnapped and killed a government minister, and the formerly supportive MAS government jailed a dozen cooperative leaders with charges related to the murder.   

In recent years organized violence, subcontracting to informal workers, and evasion of environmental laws have clouded the cooperative ideals that have long been at the heart of labor organizing in the dangerous and marginal sector. Critics point out that many membership practices fall short of cooperative principles – one study saw a ratio of 1 member to 4 informal day laborers in a co-op. Meanwhile the rising price of gold has led to increased smuggling across the border to Peru and Brazil. The mining federations continue to have political strength, but have an adversarial relationship to the center-right government elected in 2025. 

A conversation between Journalist Liliana Carrillo and researcher Elizabeth López Canelas in 2025 offers a good introduction to the topic.

Andrea Marston’s 2024 book Subterranean Matters: Cooperative Mining and Resource Nationalism in Plurinational Bolivia offers a broad look at the history and politics of the mining cooperatives.

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Recent writings illustrate the divisive political position of the cooperatives as agents of economic development and ungovernable antagonists to the state. 

During the presidential election crisis a focus increased on the environmental impact of the cooperative miners. 

A map from the 2015 report Oro: Análisis del subsector cooperativo en el departamento de La Paz shows more than 1,200 cooperatives in the Department of La Paz.

After Evo Morales and the socialist MAS party were elected to the presidency the cooperatives and the government had a complicated relationship, with both favorable and restrictive policies passed, and nationwide highway blockades and violent protests that included deaths of cooperativists, government workers, and community members.  Miners were a voting bloc that had put Morales in the presidency, and they were not afraid of him. 

This chart from Avila shows the waves of annual growth in the 1980s and then between 2006 and 2010

Earlier writings 

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