Meanwhile, as the United States was coping with its worst mining disaster in years, two nations in Latin America were dealing with mining tragedies of their own. Those tragedies, however, had little to do with the dangerous work involved in mining itself. Instead, they shed light on the region's informal mining sector, where politics and crime can be as life-threatening as the actual job.

In Peru, on April 4, thousands of members of the National Federation of Informal Miners (Fenamarpe) blocked off the Panamerican highway, Peru's major north-south artery, at the coastal outpost of Chala. The protesters stayed there for days, completely halting traffic and isolating Arequipa -- Peru's second city -- from the rest of the country. Peruvian authorities had to call in the air force to airlift passengers and supplies in and out of the city of roughly 1 million inhabitants. 

Violent clashes broke out soon after the police arrived. Five people were killed and dozens injured in fighting that lasted intermittently for days. On April 7, the two sides finally reached a tenuous agreement to review the root cause of the violence: Urgent Decree 012-2010. 

Originally drafted in February 2010, the decree calls for the regulation of mining within a year, including restrictions on where mining activity can take place and the methods used. Specifically, the decree would prohibit mining in certain areas rich in gold deposits in Madre de Dios province near the Peru-Brazil-Bolivia border, and also outlaw some methods, such as dredging, which the government says has an irrevocable negative impact on the environment.

While the decree may improve the environment, it is also likely to eliminate work for the thousands of people who make their livelihoods mining gold in Madre de Dios.

"There are thousands of registered miners in Madre de Dios" said Americo Castillo Arteaga, the director of coordination for the National Federation of Informal Miners (Fenamarpe), an informal mine workers union, in a telephone interview with World Politics Review from Fenamarpe's office in Nazca. "And the number of non-registered miners is probably double the registered number. Our people live off of mining."

Official data on informal mining in Latin America is scarce. The financial rewards of the activity are not. It is big business in the region, particularly, in Peru. The country's Mining Ministry has placed the unofficial total of informal miners in Madre de Dios at 16,000, and speculates that there may be more than 100,000 such workers nationwide. Fenamarpe says that figure may be as much as 300,000. Data from El Comercio, a Lima-based daily, estimates that in Peru, informal mining is a billion-dollar industry, 70 percent of which involves the exploitation of copper and gold. 

Explaining why the miners protested at Chala, Arteaga told WPR, "The government has not fulfilled its promise to help us, so it was better to fight than die of hunger."

The conflict between informal miners and the government is a longstanding one and reflects a broader rift between Peruvian President Alan Garcia and local citizens when it comes to the exploitation of natural resources in the country. In June 2009, indigenous groups protested along a major highway at Bagua in northern Peru over presidential decrees that allowed oil and gas companies greater leeway to develop indigenous lands.The protests turned violent, leaving dozens dead and injured. On March 29, the Mine Workers Federation (FTM), a miners union with ideological similarities to Fenamarpe, announced an indefinite strike set to begin on June 30 this year. 

A Different Kind of Violence in Colombia

In the same week as the Chala clashes, a massacre near a remote mining outpost in southern Colombia showed that violent confrontations in the region's informal mining sector need not involve state authorities.

In the early morning hours of April 8, eight migrant workers were killed at a mine near the town of Suarez, in Cauca province. Unlike many of the murders in that part of Colombia, authorities believe the killings were related not to rebel activity, drug violence, or street crime, but rather to a battle for the rights to extract minerals from one of Colombia's many lucrative mines in Cauca province. 

In a bitter irony, the miners had come to Suarez to escape the hazardous mining conditions in Zaragoza, in Valle del Cauca province, Colombian daily El Pais reported on April 10. 

The murders reflect the perils that accompany informal mining, perils that go beyond the dangerous nature of the work itself. Criminal groups have been drawn to places like Zaragoza and Suarez because they can blackmail informal miners, who operate without the traditional safety nets of basic equipment, health care, and organizations to protect their rights as workers. Mine workers often receive threats via SMS, anonymous phone calls, and messages, demanding that they cease mining activity. 

According to reports from Colombian media, the lone survivor of the Suarez attacks said the perpetrators identified themselves as members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who, the survivor claimed, accused the miners of being right-wing paramilitaries. Yet the Colombian army dismisses this, saying the massacre was part of a turf war among informal miners who work in the area.

The tragedies in Chala and Suarez bring to light some of the hazards that mine workers throughout the Americas face on a regular basis. These risks have nothing to do with actual mineral extraction, but rather are the function of the unbridled global demand for minerals combined with the poverty and lack of alternative job opportunities available to the people who get them. When lack of security and regulation are added to the mix, the result can be deadly. 

**Eliot Brockner is a Latin America Analyst for iJET Intelligent Risk Systems. He is a regular contributor to LatAmThought.