LAT Latin American Minerals Inc

Latin American Minerals Inc. (TSX VENTURE:LAT)(OTCQX:LATNF) (the "Company")
reports that it has begun operations at its Pilot Plant facility, located at the
Paso Yobai Gold Project in Paraguay. Following two weeks of trial operation in
January, the Company suspended its scheduled plant inauguration ceremony to
avoid potentially violent confrontations with demonstrating illegal miners. The
Company has withdrawn its technical and exploration teams from the project for a
cautionary stand-down period. This stand-down will briefly interrupt drilling,
which began on the Company's New Trend Concessions on January 5, 2012. 


As previously announced, the Company has constructed a 100 tpd gravitational
concentrator plant at the fully permitted Minera Guaira Mining concession, a
portion of the Company's Paso Yobai exploration project. In mid-January, plant
engineers began processing mined mineral through the plant. Mineral stockpiling
began in November, 2011 from excavations over a 200m extent of the Discovery
Zone gold deposit. The Company planned an inauguration ceremony to celebrate
this historic event, the commencement of Paraguay's first official gold mine, to
be named Mina Independencia. 


Gold was discovered in the Paso Yobai regions more than a decade ago. Several
local businesses established mineral claims and exploration activity. As a
result of the discovery and delineation of the first gold trend, some local
surface owners and mill owners began conducting unauthorised, artisanal mining
on eleven surface lots located within the limits of the Minera Guaira mining
permit. The Company lacked authority to prevent this work, which is limited to a
small fraction of the concession. Approximately 11 surface owners, plus local
workers and other entrepreneurs derive their livelihoods from these surface
workings. 


Recent Paraguayan government studies have documented mercury contamination in
some streams draining the illegal operations. Several of the diggings and mills
responsible for this damage have been closed by the Paraguayan environmental
authority and the regional judiciary. The local illegal miners/surface owners
protested the Paraguayan government's action by organizing demonstrations around
Paso Yobai and outside of Latin American's test plant site, to coincide with the
planned attendance of mining officials and politicians at the Company-hosted
event. 


In a statement by a local spokesman, the artisanal miners expressed concern that
the law awarding the mining concession to the Company could lead to the
expropriation of their surface lots located within the concession. Though the
group has sought public attention to make a variety of claims, their objectives
do not appear to be related to any past or current activities of the Company. 


Although no injuries were threatened or sustained on either side, following
sharp words and rocks thrown at company vehicles, and also at those of reporters
and bystanders, the Company decided to defuse the situation by cancelling the
Company's opening ceremony. Significantly, hundreds of national politicians,
VIPs and industry figures were expected to attend the event. 


Since the Company's exploration and plant activity involve the daily movement of
staff on the local roads, these activities have also been temporarily suspended
until the Company's public relations office in the town of Paso Yobai can
indicate that the mood has returned to normal and amicable conditions.  


Miles Rideout, the President and CEO of Latin American Minerals stated: "I
visited the plant the day of the demonstration and one of the Company's
directors was on site during the entire event to host visiting investors. We
were able to observe the demonstrators, the operations of the Company's
personnel, and the excellent support and conciliatory action provided by the
local police and authorities. We'll continue dialogue with the artisanal leaders
to help resolve their apprehensions regarding land rights. We'll be happy to
soon get about 150 towns-people back to their regular jobs at our project."


Latin American Minerals considers the use of mercury in gold extraction to be a
dangerous and damaging practice. The state-of-the-art Paso Yobai test plant is
designed to validate the economic characteristics of the large epithermal gold
system that is being delineated at the project. The plant was designed and built
by Sepro Systems of Langley, British Columbia. It employs high-speed Falcon
gravitational concentrators to extract gold using only water, following
scrubbing and milling operations. No chemicals are used anywhere in the
extraction process. The Company operates on a Best Practices policy with due
consideration to its employees and all applicable laws. 


The Company continues to advance the Paso Yobai Gold Project with the following
additional recent milestones. Following the December, 2011 announcement of
trench results on the 100% owned Tacuru Target, the Company received a drill
permit from the Paraguayan Secretary of the Environment on Dec 22, 2011 and
drilling of this target began on January 5, 2012. At this date, 6 diamond drill
holes representing two 3-hole 'fences' have been completed. Samples from this
drilling have been prepared and shipped for laboratory analysis, though no assay
results have yet been received. 


Rideout stated "Concluding fair surface rights agreements on our New Trend
targets was one of our key objectives in 2011. Our Paraguayan country manager
has done an outstanding job in this regard. We, and the other stakeholders in
this venture, are eager to see these first drill results." 


About the Paso Yobai Gold Project:

The Company is developing the Discovery Trend Pilot Plant operation on the
Minera Guaira mining concession, part of the Company's larger Paso Yobai Gold
Project. The objective of the new Pilot Plant is to facilitate resource
evaluation on the Discovery Trend, which is characterised by coarse gold
mineralization extending from surface to greater than 100m depth. The course
granular gold typical of the Discovery Trend complicates conventional resource
estimation by diamond drilling due to the small sample volume extracted in
exploration holes.


The Company's strategy to develop the Discovery Trend target is to detect and
delineate mineral shoots by trenching and diamond drilling, then to verify the
grades of these zones by bulk sampling. The Discovery Trend Pilot Plant will
allow the Company to expand these operations to a commercial scale in order to
accelerate the development of a resource. 


The second New Trend at Paso Yobai is located on concessions that are 100% owned
by the Company. The New Trend at Paso Yobai is approximately 14.8 km in length,
located 3.5 km northeast of the Discovery Trend. The Company owns 100% of the
prospecting concessions that contain this geologic feature. The results of the
Company's 2011 work to define drill targets suggest that bulk tonnage potential
could exist at several target zones along this extensive structure. The Company
plans to focus 2012 exploration on these targets.


About the Company: 

Latin American Minerals Inc. is a well-financed mineral exploration company
focused on the acquisition and development of mineral projects in highly
prospective countries of South America. In addition to the Paso Yobai Gold
Project, the Company's Itapoty Diamond Project and Chiriguelo REE/Niobium
Project are also located in Paraguay.


The statements made in this press release that are not historical facts contain
forward-looking information that involves risk and uncertainties. All
statements, other than statements of historical facts, which address Latin
American Minerals' expectations, should be considered forward-looking
statements. Such statements are based on management's exercise of business
judgment as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to
management. When used in this document, the words "may", "will", "anticipate",
"believe", "estimate", "expect", "intend" and words of similar import, are
intended to identify any forward-looking statements. You should not place undue
reliance on these forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our
current view of future events and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties
as contained in Latin American Minerals' filings with Canadian securities
regulatory authorities. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties
materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, our actual
results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking
statements. We undertake no obligation, and do not intend, to update, revise or
otherwise publicly release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to
reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof, or to reflect the
occurrence of any unanticipated events, unless required under applicable
securities laws. Although we believe that our expectations are based on
reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that our expectations will
materialize.

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