AP News, February 17th, 2007
The ritual sacrifice of a snow-white llama Friday symbolically marked President Evo Morales' nationalization of Bolivia's lone operating tin smelter.
Swiss mining giant Glencore International AG owned the Vinto plant until last week and has threatened to seek compensation through international arbitration.
Morales says his government will not compensate Glencore for the Feb. 9 nationalization of the plant, located on a high Andean plain 110 miles southeast of the capital of La Paz.
"If they want to go to arbitration we are ready to face them," Morales said before the ceremony. "We have recovered for the people something that was once owned by the people."
An Aymara Indian shaman performed the traditional ceremony on the smelter's dirt floor as workers cheered and molten tin poured from the furnaces. The ritual was meant to bring good fortune to the plant.
Morales, Bolivia's first Indian president, nationalized his country's extensive natural gas reserves last year. His government has deemed 2007 "the year of recovering our mineral resources."
Until the 1970s, when Vinto was built, Bolivia exported mostly raw mineral ore, allowing other countries to reap the refining profits.
Bolivia privatized Vinto in 2000, and Morales has said that subsequent sales, including Glencore's 2004 purchase of the smelter, did not reflect the plant's full value.
While the nationalization retained all but a handful of smelter employees, workers were divided over the change in management. Some rushed to greet "Companero Evo" as he toured the plant; others hung back and wondered about the future.
"Anywhere in the world they'll tell you the government can't be a good administrator," said employee Oscar Leyton. "But we'll just have to wait and see how they do it. If they screw up here, they'll screw up the whole country."
