La India

La India


Phase: Operations
Mine Type: Pit
Gold Map

The La India property in the municipality of Sahuaripa, Sonora State, Mexico, comprises 57,614 hectares. The property is in the Sierra Madre Mountains of northern Mexico, between the towns of Tarachi and Matarachi, and approximately 210 km east-southeast of the city of Hermosillo. Most basic services are available in Sahuaripa, 15 km to the north. Agnico-Eagle’s Pinos Altos and Creston Mascota mines are 70 km to the southeast.
The topography consists of long ridges separated by steep V-shaped valleys ranging in elevation from 1,200 m to more than 2,000 m above sea level, with areas of low relief suitable for building mine-related infrastructure. The climate is semi-arid, with seasonal temperatures ranging from 35°C to -2°C. The area experiences torrential rainfall from July to September; the driest months are March to May.

History:

The first gold discovery in the region, as recorded by Spanish colonials, was made in 1673 at Ostimuri. The gold deposit at Mulatos was discovered by the Spaniards in 1806, but it is likely that indigenous peoples exploited the native gold-bearing oxidized zone of the Mulatos deposit prior to the colonial epoch. Small-scale mining has been semi-continuous in the district during the last two centuries (Consejo de Recursos Minerales, 1992). Much of the early mining and all of the small-scale present mining (hand-mining by local artisanal miners) targets oxidized fractures containing fine-grained visible gold. The mineralization described for the mines in this section is not necessarily indicative of the mineralization at the La India, Sonora property.

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