South American Silver (SAC.to) talks in Spanish to Spanish media, but strangely, bizarrely, weirdly seems intent on keeping all English speaking stakeholders in the dark about developments at its Mallku Khota project in Bolivia. So let’s help things along by directly translating this report out late yesterday from EFE via Bolivian media source Opinion.com:
Indigenous community holds Canadian Mining Company Engineers HostageBolivian indigenous community members in the Andean Potosí zone have held hostage two engineers from the Canadian mining company South American Silver (SAC.to) and stopped a commission of local authorities from accessing the location via road blocks, according to government and company sources.The governor of the Potosí region (department), Félix González, told EFE that he had sent fiscals (lawyer/judges), regional legislators and social service managers to the zone where the kidnapping took place to converse with the indigenous with a view to liberating the two people.The Potosí indigenous took as hostage the engineers Fernando Fernández and Agustín Cárdenas to demand that the Government free their leader, Cancio Rojas, accused of kidnapping and torture, and to reject the operations of the company in the zone.Rojas left prison last night, but is being kept under house arrest and is investigated for violent aggression towards other indigenous locals and the taking hostage of police officers over a period of several days.González has preliminary information that the Mallku Khota indigenous, from where the company operates, have taken to two hostages to another community but is waiting for official word from the commission on site.The governor said that the zone is “high risk” and rejected the idea that Bolivian President Evo Morales, of the same Aymara origins as the indigenous of the region, could travel to the region, some 350km south of La Paz, as the natives ask so that he can hear their demands.More than 80 police officers, reporters, fiscals and employees of the company arrived at the company camp site at Sacani, 20km from Mallku Khota, but could not go any further because the indigenous had blocked the roads and were detonating dynamite to threaten them.A source connected to the company currently in Sacani, told EFE that authorities were looking for a peaceful solution to the conflict and that a indigenous leader had told fiscals that the two engineers were in good health.The Canadian mining company is conducting explorations in the region to determine its potential for silver and indium, its main minerals, although there is also gold in reduced percentages that the indigenous want to mine for themselves.