Potosi Underworld

I wish I could post photos right now, but like I posted last time, our beautiful card reader is MIA. In any case, we spent a couple of days in the historic city of Potosì, the source of most of the Spanish empire´s wealth in the new world. From the mountain named Cerro Rico which towers over the chilly city (it´s located at 4100 meters, that´s about 13,000 feet) the spanish, and now the Bolivians have extracted millions of tonnes of silver, lead, tin and zinc ore, which is processed in small local smelters and shipped all over the world.

In the old days, the silver in partuclar was fairly pure and relatively near the surface, and thus easy to extract and process. Since the 1800s, however, it has been necessary to delve deeper into the mountain to find anything of value. Now the mines are so spent and the work so hard that large companies have abandoned the mines altogether, and they are operated only by small cooperatives of miners. Matt and I went on a tour of one of these cooperative mines.

The first stop was the mercado minero, where we bought items to give to the miners as gifts (this is customary when visiting the mines.) The usual gifts are bags of coca leaves, cigarettes, bottles of pop and (I kid you not!) sticks of dynamite. All of these things (along with puro, a kind of everclear drink consisting of 96% pure alcohol) were available from various shops for a minimal cost (a stick of dynamite with detonator and bag of amonium nitrate costs $2.50.) Off to the mines we went. The tunnels were very small to begin with ... I had to duck my head and then crawl for the entire 2 hours we were underground. We did have helmets and protective suits. Deeper in the mine, the temperature increased to about 90 degrees and the air was thick with a fine dust consisting of fine silicate particles. Occasionally we would have to move to the side of the shaft to make way for a hand operated railcar full of ore on its way out of the mine. Soon we were deeper in the mine, and had to crawl for lack of space.

We met several miners. One man had been working down in the mine for over 24 years. He had 4 kids, and made about 50 bolivianos a day (about $6.70) Matt L talked to a 17 year old miner deep down in the mine who had been working all day at hand-hammering a dynamite shaft in the rock. He had to lay down on his stomach to fit in the small space in which he was working. We left the mine sort of stunned and shocked. On our way out we met 2 other miners who couldn`t have been more than 15 years old. Then there was a dynamite demonstration, and we were done.

The conditions under which these miners work are unbelievable. Many can only work for a few years before they are sickened by silicosis or cancer. I`ve never seen anything like it. Since the days of slavery and Spanish rule, it is estimated that over 8,000,000 people have died working the mines at Potosi.