Tinhorns

It's like "West Side Story," only without Lieutenant Schrank and with better weapons:

President Evo Morales replaced Bolivia's minister of mines and also the head of the state mining company Friday following clashes between rival bands of miners that left at least 16 dead and more than 60 injured.

...Violence began Thursday morning in Huanuni, a mining town 180 miles south of the capital La Paz, where rival mining groups battled with guns and dynamite over access to Bolivia's richest deposit.

...The violence began Thursday morning, when hundreds of miners belonging to independent cooperatives stormed the state-owned Huanuni mine, demanding more access to its tin deposits. State-employed miners counterattacked to regain control of the mine and the groups exchanged gunshots and dynamite.

Miners from both sides, some only in their teens, threw dynamite and homemade explosives at each other from ridge to ridge, sometimes separated by no more than 50 feet (15 meters).

On Friday morning, members of the miners' cooperative rolled three tires packed with explosives down the side of the mountain toward town, causing an enormous explosion.

The violence followed a breakdown in negotiations in the nearby city of Oruro in which the miners' cooperatives rejected a government proposal dividing Huanuni's veins of tin between the two groups.