Potosi
BOLIVIA
Mining High
By LYNDI
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The road from Uyuni to Potosi is normally a less than pleasant experience. I always tell my passengers to expect the bus to break down at least once, have your iPod charged since it’s too bumpy to read, and wear layers so that you can strip down when the bus gets hot and stuffy and dust starts streaming in the open windows. However, each time I make the trip, the road improves as construction continues – and I actually looked forward to it since I had my leftover Minuteman Pizza to accompany me.
But we made it to Potosi without any problems or breakdowns and in record time. We spent our first night in the world’s highest city (4060m) taking it pretty easy. You can’t do anything too quickly at over 13,000 feet in altitude, so we had an orientation walk of the city and dinner at El Fogon Steakhouse (nice, juicy steaks for less than $5!).
The following day we had all signed up for the infamous mines tour with Andes Salt Expeditions. The Cerro Rico mine (“Rich Hill” in Spanish) is also known as the “Mountain that Eats Men Alive”. Not the most pleasant of nicknames, but well deserved as over 8 million people have died inside the mine over the years. The Conquistadors first started exploiting it in the 1560s forcing every indigenous man between Cuzco and Potosi to work 18-20 hours per day, 6 days a week for 6 months at a time. With strenuous work schedules and colonial conditions, 7 out of every 10 miners never made it out alive.
Today the conditions aren’t much better. Instead of extracting silver with mercury, they now use dynamite – but that may be the only safety improvement. If you call using dynamite in an open cave a safety improvement, that is. Some miners have drills, but the majority use picks and axes and carts without brakes is the norm. There are rarely collapses due to the firm rock structure of the mountain, but dynamite accidents do occur. Unfortunately, the vast majority of miners today die of poisoning of the lungs due to the poor air quality inside the mines. Miners can usually expect to work for 20-30 years before they start coughing up blood and dying of silicosis. Tragically, that doesn’t stop the over 10,000 miners from working 12 hour shifts even today – including hundreds of young children.
And on that note – we decided to take a look for ourselves. Our mines tour began with our guide Soledad taking us to the miners market. Miners today work in co-ops and have to buy their own supplies, so we are expected to take them gifts, usually in the form of coca leaves and soft drinks. Miners don’t eat while inside the mine (the coca leaves suppress their appetite and thirst) and it’s so hot inside and the work is so difficult that they need sugary drinks more than they need water. And while we were at the miner’s market – we managed to buy a bit of dynamite and a pumpkin for our own purposes. More on that later.
When we arrived to the Rosario mine at 4300m, we entered a small mine shaft that could have come straight out of the Seven Dwarf’s work station. For the first couple hundred meters the mine is actually pretty chilly and damp – hence the lovely outfits you see us wearing. But as we went further inside the temperature rose. And as the heat index went up, the ceiling went down. Poor Kim stands at 6’6”, so a little mine shaft where the small Bolivians have to stoop over was not a comfortable experience for him.
Soledad took us to several different locations in the mine so we could observe the different conditions the miners work in. Everything seems to be done by hand in small holes where the temperature easily tops 100 degrees Fahrenheit (36 Celsius) and dust and minerals swarm and stick to every pore of your body. It’s not hard to see why life expectancy inside is so short. The men in there were extremely professional, very thankful for any gifts we gave them, and friendly and joking. The amazing thing is, we only spent 2 hours in those underground tunnels – they spend 12 hours a day in there. Every day. Working. In my opinion, 2 hours was too much – after one hour you are extremely hot and uncomfortable – but it really gave you a taste for how difficult their conditions are. If we had left after an hour when we were starting to sweat and get tired, we would have had no idea how desperate everyone inside is for a breath of fresh air, a gulp of cold water, or a small respite from the dust. And I’m sure our two hours inside is nothing – the difficulty must grow exponentially.
Our last stop in the mines was a visit to the Tio. The Spanish knew that the indigenous population had many gods, so to get them to keep working hard they invented a god of the mines (God is “Dios” in Spanish, but in the native language there is no letter “d”, so it became “Tio” meaning, coincidentally, “uncle”.) But this god is more like the devil – the miners fear him, so they make offerings of alcohol, cigarettes and coca leaves every single day so that he won’t cause accidents inside the mine. It’s quite a conundrum – the God-fearing Catholic Bolivian population lives according to the Christian God on the outside, but inside the mine they don’t believe God can protect them, only the devil.
So we finally surfaced and felt the beautiful sun hit our faces and took big breaths of sweet, sweet air. And then blew stuff up! With our extra dynamite, Soledad helped us stuff it inside the pumpkin, light the dynamite fuse, take photos with it (yes, in that order), and then run it down the side of the mountain in time to see it obliterated. Helped us leave the sobering mine experience on an exciting high note I guess.
The rest of our time in Potosi we wandered the cobblestoned streets, took lots of photos and rested after the long tour. Two nights in Potosi was all we needed, because after so long at high altitude – we were ready to start heading downhill permanently. The bus to Sucre left the next morning at 9:30am and we were excited to low altitude… and Bolivia’s chocolate capital.
