Erin & Matt's Blog: Potosí

Day 118 – Some days probably don’t warrant their own blog entry

As we’d arrived late the previous night we slept in, then did some other fascinating things like laundry, booking future travels, blogging and generally not much. As an excuse perhaps I could point out that Potosí is supposed to be the highest city in the world (a bit over 4000m), so lets say we spent the day continuing with our acclimatisation. It was a tough walk around the corner to get dinner.

Night time from the front of our hostel.

Day 119 – Soft drink, Coca, 96% Alcohol & Dynamite.

At 9am a bus swung round to take us to get decked out in our mining equipment. From there we followed our guide Daniel around to a shop in the miners market where we bought gifts for the miners of soft drink, coca leaves and dynamite. From here we headed up Cerro Rico to the former government mine, Mina Pailaviri, which we would be touring.

Decked out in miners gear with Cerro Rico in the background.

Daniel explaining the difference between Argentinean, Bolivian and Peruvian dynamite (on the bench in the foreground).

Potosí sprawled out beneath the mountain.

The town of Potosí was founded nearly 500 years ago to exploit the rich silver deposits in Cerro Rico. At it’s peak the city was larger than London and Paris, the wealthiest city in Latin America built on the backs of indigenous and African slave labour. Today the silver is starting to run dry and although the miners are now self employed, working conditions are still quite horrific. What’s more the mountain has shrunk hundreds of meters over the centuries of exploitation and a large portion of it is now deemed too dangerous to work in.

Erin and Daniel heading in.

500m meters or more in, Erin is maintaining her composure while Daniel ducks off to explore a side passage, they’ve only had permission to run tours through this mine for three weeks and he’s still getting his bearings.

Mina Pailaviri was essentially abandoned by the government about a decade ago, but years of government ownership mean that it is one of the largest and best equipped of the mines. A smaller private company has taken over running some of the infrastructure in the mine, including pressurised air for machines and a huge German built lift. Aside from the company, 17 collectives also work the mine, totalling 6000 miners in this mine alone. The collectives are run by members who in turn employ miners to work their allocated areas or explore new areas for richer veins.

In the past, boys began working in the mine as young as 12, but now the minimum age is restricted to 15. Depending on whether they are mining tin, magnesium or silver, the miners can earn up to 60 Bolivianos a day (that’s about A$50 a week for a six day week), which is good money by Bolivian standards. In return for this lucrative pay packet they enjoy a life expectancy more than 10 years less than their (already low) countrymen’s, worse for machine operators and other people constantly exposed to dust.

Daniel shares some coca leaves with a couple of the miners. The coca leaves are placed in the mouth by the dozens where they are chewed with an alkali normally made of ash, sweet potato or some other random stuff. The juice is swallowed and it give a mild high, numb lips, suppresses hunger and helps combat altitude sickness. Originally chewing coca was banned by the Pope in the 15th century until the Spaniards observed that their slaves didn’t function nearly as well without it, the ban was quickly over turned.

Something like 90% of Bolivian adults chew coca to this day, it’s kind of like maté in Argentina – a cultural thing. Meanwhile overseas interests (the USA mostly) sponsor the Bolivian government to destroy ‘illicit’ coca crops that get turned into cocaine for the export market. This is a touchy subject in Bolivia as coca farmers are generally regarded as legitimate agriculturalists growing one of the few crops viable at such altitudes. Bolivia’s current president Evo Morales comes from a coca growing background and touts the slogan ‘coca sí, cocaína no’, in effect preferring to solve the problem at the consumer end. Like the poppies in Afghanistan it’s not clear how this will pan out…

Daniel making an offering to Tio (Uncle), a kind of Christian / Traditional combined spirit who looks after the mine. The frog on his head represents Panchamama, the mother-earth.

Halfway down one small side passage we heard a couple of shouts and Daniel announced that there was about the be an explosion nearby. We huddled in a little alcove while we heard and felt two short blasts go off beneath us, The miners who’d set off the blasts came up to sit around for an hour or so while the dust cleared. We chatted with them for a bit and they explained that they would keep working well into the evening because they could not operate their machinery until their compressed air delivery some time later.

On the way out of the mine we paid a visit to the mine’s huge lift. The guy who runs it proudly showed off the German machinery he maintains and said it was like his wife! Daniel offered the remainder of our gifts in return for a ride five levels down and back up again.

Safely back in the fresh air.

While a couple of miners head back in with an empty carriage, only miners who work for the company are allowed to use the overhead electricity cables, so the co-operative miners must move all their carriages manually.