Whatever a group in Latin America does, they will have to depend on foreign-to-that-country, engineering and adminstrative staff that will cost the company loads of money to maintain. You have to speak English to the staff and read the engineering docs and maps in English. If you don't engineer it, it won't make money.
To operate a 500 TPD silver mine complex, you will need 8 shift supervisors, 4 surveyors, one manager, two engineers, one geologist, 2 electricians, 3 mechanics, one mine captain, two special equipment and safety trainers who are bilingual, one personnel and liason officer, an accounting controller, 2 computer drafstmen, a property-loss control officer, one assayer a mill superintendant, and 4 mill foreman. That will cost you 3 million per year for salaries, US. Then there is their housing. Add 500,000 per year for that. Then there are their flights home, and food. Add 500,000 for that. 4 million per year, or $22.00 US per ton.
Can you do it with 15-20 expats or some semi bilingual native staff, and a translator-expert-Sp-labour-wrangler? Perhaps. But you were interested in the mine making money with no caveats and eveybody in NA having oversight of that fact. One of the major problems with silver mines since the 1900's in LA was theft. That is no joke. One solved that by buying the high grade off the miners literally after their shift. Cheaper than fighting with them. You could also solve it by mechanizing, increasing mining rate, changing mining method, and having a supervisors and supervisors of supervisors in every filch-area.
Gold is actually easier to control. Filch points can be hardened more easily. Africa is actually in certain countries attractive to operate by comparison.
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