The Mines of Potosi

Natan and I woke up in Potosi and headed to the mines. Once, Potosi was richer (and the population was larger) than London or Paris, all because of the silver that came from Cerro Rico (the Rich Hill, framed by the bell, right) overlooking the city. The coins minted here were essentially universal currency, and they were exported around the world. Spain depended on the ore mined here to pay off their debt, and they forced the indigeonous people into slavery to get to it. When the native workers started dying off, the Spanish shipped in millions of African slaves. Its estimated that in the 300 years that the Spanish controlled the area, more than 8 MILLION people died in the mines.

Today the mine has been in contiuous use for more than 500 years and most of the silver is gone. There are still 400 mines in operation and over 20,000 miners working there. I imagine the hill must be riddled with tunnels, bearing not just a little resemblance to an ant farm. Those miners, who work for themselves as part of a miners cooperative, are still hoping to find the last big vein of silver and literally strike it rich. And though mining does pay better than most jobs in town, rich isn´t exactly the word to describe Potosi´s inhabitants. In an stark reversal, today´s Bolivianos (the currency) are manufactured in France, Canada, and (ironically) Spain.

In the mines we scrambled through passageways that were only shoulder width and used ropes to slide down 2 meter shafts to the lower levels. Before we went, I was aprehensive to say the least - not about the dirt or the narrow spaces - but about how to see this living piece of history and the working conditions without being totally exploitative. Our guide, Efrain (right), struck the best balance we could have hoped for - he´s a miner himself during the low tourist season, like his father and grandfather before him, and he was friends with many of the miners we ran into. He also made sure we came bearing gifts - soda (for the heat) and dynamite. The miners, who constantly joke to keep up their spirits, were the ones urging us to take pictures and strike poses. But Efra was also blunt about what it´s like to work there.

Despite ostensibly working for themselves, or maybe because of it, the miners´ work is brutal. The miners only get paid for what they can sell to the refining companies in town, so they go for bulk and work upwards of 10 hour days. And all that is without food - they just chew Coca leaves all day to stave off the hunger. The air is thick with dust, and by the end of our two hours underground, our throats were burning, despite the bandanas over our mouths. Efra thought we were wimps - he started working there at 13 - today he´s 31. His dad worked in the mine for 33 years, an eternity. Still, Efra wants his own kids to get an education and avoid a life in the mines. But then again, he knows that´s what everyone has said in every generation. (Efra is the first person I´ve heard curse Evo Morales - Evo, he says, is all talk and hasn´t actually invested a dime in improving education, which Efra believes is the only way to bring the population at large out of poverty.)

We emerged from the mine filthy, and with our lungs burning, and got to go back to our hostel and take a divine shower. It was a luxury, and not just because it´s the first really warm shower we´ve had in days. We can get clean and actually choose NOT to go back to the mines tomorrow - that´s not a choice that most residents here get to make. The soil around Potosi can´t grow anything, and the residents here know that when the treasures of the Cerro Rico finally run out (in 15 years? 50 years? 100 years?), Potosi itself will collapse.

This spectre, and the grueling lifestyle of most of the inhabitants, Potosi and Potosinas remain suprisingly effusive lively. At night the streets are full of people laughing and taking and wandering, even as the glittering lights a the top of Cerra Rico indicate that people are up there mining well into the early morning hours. It paralells the suprising humor and optomism of the miners, who are among the most jovial people we have met. Still, the shadow of the Cerra Rico and the dualities it represents (wealth and poverty, potential slavation and the job from hell) literally looms over and dominates the city´s landscape. Efra´s father, who is currently dying from the lung problems he developed in his years as a miner, has a saying: "We eat [from] this mountain, but the mountain, it also eats us.¨