Have you ever heard the great Welsh actor, Richard Burton, speak about his family of coal miners?

It’s an evocative, wistful account of how his father was always looking for that great seam of coal.

Though mining has always been dangerous, it evokes a certain kind of romanticism.

Real men did the job.

Yes, we now have compliance manuals and safety dashboards. But we always had, and still have, collapses, gas explosions, flooding shafts, and men, like Burton’s father, coughing up black dust in towns built around a single pit.

Going underground is entering a hostile environment. The earth is heavy, and it shifts, traps, and kills.

Even today, with modern ventilation systems, rock-stress monitoring, remote drilling, and autonomous haul trucks the size of suburban houses, mining remains one of the most perilous civilian professions on the planet. You couldn’t pay me enough to do what these brave men do.

Gravity doesn’t negotiate. Methane doesn’t care about quarterly earnings. A fractured rock face doesn’t respect your cost curve.

And that’s just the baseline.

Now imagine doing that job in a region where armed criminal organizations operate with impunity.

Welcome to mining with a second risk layer: geology below you, cartels around you.

The Vizsla Tragedy

Here are the facts.

On January 23, 2026, 10 workers from Canada’s Vizsla Silver Corp. were kidnapped while traveling from their camp to the mine in Concordia, Sinaloa, Mexico. The incident occurred near the Pánuco project, a remote mining area with a history of cartel activity.

Mexican authorities found 10 bodies in clandestine graves in the area. Officials have identified 5 of the workers so far. The miners confirmed as deceased are José Ángel Hernández Vélez, Ignacio Aurelio Salazar Flores, José Manuel Castañeda Hernández, Jesús Antonio de la O Valdez, and Jesús Antonio Jiménez. The other five, Javier Vargas, Antonio Esparza, Javier Valdez, Saúl Ochoa, and Miguel Tapia, are still being processed for identification or remain officially missing.

I can’t imagine the pain their families are going through. These men, useful and productive, had a dangerous enough job without worrying about cartel members getting involved. And what’s worse - get ready for this - the murderers mistook the miners for members of a rival criminal group. Insane.

And since the killings look like they came from cartel turf violence, they weren’t a targeted extortion of the company. You may recall VZLA was in the unofficial Rude portfolio and fell once the news broke, down nearly 15% on the day before the Friday meltdown two weeks ago.

We now face increased geopolitical risk in Mexico, though that wasn't the intention.

The Original Risk: The Rock

Mining is essentially controlled collapse.

Underground operations carve voids into rock that has been under pressure for millions of years. Remove enough material, and the stress redistributes. Sometimes that redistribution is smooth. Sometimes it’s violent.

Rock bursts can eject material like artillery. Gas pockets can ignite. Equipment failures in tight shafts leave little room for error. Even in open-pit mines, where the danger feels more cinematic than claustrophobic, slopes can fail catastrophically and bury millions of dollars of machinery in seconds.

Just look at this video for some harrowing footage of miners trying to rescue their own after a collapse.

Yes, safety has improved dramatically. Fatality rates have declined. Technology has made monitoring more sophisticated than ever.

But no one can eliminate the risk.

Mining is inherently physical. And physics eventually wins.

The Second Layer: Criminal Territory

Now shift the scene from geology to geography.

In parts of Mexico, particularly in states such as Sinaloa, the risk extends beyond rock mechanics and ventilation systems.

These are areas where the Sinaloa Cartel and its factions operate with varying degrees of visibility. They control territory, monitor movement, and extract informal “taxes” from economic activity.

Again, Mexican authorities think Vizsla’s kidnapped and murdered workers were mistaken for members of a rival criminal gang.

Oh, the absurdity!

You’re not moving product for a cartel. You’re drilling a vein of silver in volcanic rock. But in contested territory, perception is everything. A pickup truck. A group of men. A rumor.

Suddenly, geology, as dangerous as it is, is no longer your most immediate concern.

Mines Can’t Relocate

Here’s what makes this especially dangerous from a business standpoint: mines are immobile.

A hedge fund can shift capital in seconds. Digital nomads can pick up and go in hours. A tech company can move operations to a new jurisdiction with a lease and some laptops.

A mine is embedded in Earth’s crust.

If the ore body is in Sinaloa, that’s it. That’s where it is and where it will stay. Investors can sink billions into shafts, mills, tailings facilities, roads, and camps. Once built, the capital is inert.

That immobility creates leverage for anyone who controls the surrounding territory.

Cartels understand that a producing mine has payroll, suppliers, trucks, and predictable economic output.

That visibility in unstable regions is self-evidently dangerous.

The Invisible Costs

When criminal networks operate near industrial sites, the cost of doing business expands.

There are the obvious expenses like private security, coordination with federal forces, and hardened transport routes.

Then there are the harder-to-model costs like delayed exploration, employee fear, insurance premiums, community tension, and project interruptions.

Even when no direct violence occurs, the perception of increased risk affects recruitment, retention, and capital allocation decisions. And don’t forget about a lower stock price thanks to the higher risk premium.

Investors sitting comfortably in London or Toronto see drill intercepts and feasibility studies. What they don’t always price correctly is the jurisdictional overlay.

You can hedge the silver price. You can’t hedge a mistaken identity at a checkpoint.

The Moral and Strategic Reality

The uncomfortable truth is that the world desperately needs more metals.

Electrification. Military hardware. Renewable infrastructure. Data centers. Even the monetary hedges investors buy when they lose faith in governments—all of it requires extraction.

Silver doesn’t grow on spreadsheets. Central banks don’t print copper.

It all comes from holes in the ground.

And many of the most promising deposits are located in regions where governance is nonexistent, corruption thrives, and criminal organizations put their thumbs on the scales.

That doesn’t mean companies shouldn’t operate there. They have to, for the sake of the rest of us. But it means the risk premium is real.

When supply chains depend on deposits located in cartel territory, the market eventually reflects that insecurity.

The Human Cost

It’s easy to talk about risk premiums and jurisdictional overlays as if they’re just spreadsheet entries.

But the reality is more human.

Miners are often locals supporting extended families. They travel long distances to remote camps. They work 12-hour shifts in physically demanding and dangerous conditions.

Adding cartel violence to that equation doesn’t just alter financial projections. It alters lives, as it sadly did this time.

When headlines briefly flash about abducted or murdered workers, markets may wobble for a day. Then trading resumes.

For the families involved, the anguish never goes away.

Wrap Up

Mining has always required courage. Physical courage underground. Financial courage from investors. Political courage from governments tasked with maintaining the rule of law.

When organized crime operates nearby, the danger multiplies.

You’re managing rock stress and territorial stress.

You’re modeling grade and recovery rates, as well as the stability of the surrounding society.

Geology is ancient and indifferent.

Cartels are modern and intentional.

We just relearned that lesson in the worst way possible.