Under the Mountain

I find myself strangely moved by the experience of visiting the mines today. Partly because our grupo espanol was just me and a French girl, while the other tourists opted for the English tour. So our little band of three strode into the dark alone leaving the masses behind us.

Our guide was a 40-year-old man of few words, but the ones he had were worth listening to. He had been a miner for around 10 years and still was one. On average he had three tours a week and the other days he worked at the mines. And indeed after our tour ended around 1pm he was going to the mines to start the late shift until 9pm. 

He didn't work in the mine we visited - which was the famour Cerro Rico itself. In the mine he did work, the temperature rose to around 60C - so the shifts were 2 hours working, 2 hours recovering and then back in the mines again. He also said the mine was full of arsenic - it would rise in clouds as you trampled on the dry ground. Despite this he and many many others are willing to take the risks in hopes of the potential profits.

On first entering the mines, at the place where the last glimmerings of daylight strike, is a shrine to father and mother earth. The actual altar held an image of a crucified man, which you would be forgiven for thinking is Christ, but this is not a shrine to Christ but Pachatata. Gifts of alcohol are first poured onto the ground for Pachamama and Pachatata and then the giver takes a swig himself as well. Walking deeper into the mine, where no lightrays strike there is the shrine of el Tio or uncle. He is very carefully NOT called the devil - el Diablo - though that is essentially who he is. Miners reckoned that if god is in the heavens, surely the mine pits were the domain of hell and the devil. Therefore the ore also belongs to el Tio/el Diablo and great care is taken to appease him so that he will grant his ore to you. The offerings of alcohol in little plastic bottles are 96% proof - the logic being that you give el Tio pure alcohol and he will give you pure ore. Other offerings include coca leaves and cigarettes.

We had a strangely intimate moment in our little group at the shrine of el Tio, where our guide sat quietly smoking a cigarrette by the statue and after a few puffs putting it in el Tio's mouth. There was a quiet dignity in what he did - and nothing of a tourist show. He enters the dangerous environment of the mines and superstition or not, his gods will be appeased before he goes deeper into the mines.

He sat and talked about his work - and also about the importance of coca leaf for the miners. The miners may work 9, 15 or even 24-hour shifts and during that time they do not eat anything. Partly the asbestos, arsenic and other poisonour substances would enter the food, then there's also the issue of bathrooms or rather lack thereof. Whatever the reason, they chew coca to appease their hunger. Coca also opens up the sinuses - the nose and throat - which in their toxic workplace is a huge boon. Also if you get hurt - e.g. rocks fall on your hand and it gets infected and bloated, put coca you have chewed in your mouth on the wound and bandage it and the inflammation is guaranteed to subside. Not to mention the before heralded aid coca leavers give to altitude sickness. He said with absolute sincerity, that for him and for miners generally coca is not merely important, it is holy. 

I doubt they could do the harsh work they do in the environment they do without it. 

We located a group of three miners, who were working about 30 meters below us. So down some very iffy ladders and some near vertical rock walls we went, then through a tunnel small enough to have to crawl through, bearing our motley gifts of limonade, coca leaves, dynamite, nitroglycerine, fuses and little kits of colouring pens that I had bought for the miners to give their kiddies. Indeed ladies and laddies, dynamite and nitroglycerine! We were unhesitantly sold dynamite & the rest of the do it yourself explosion kit! Clearly the terrorism scare isn't very active in Bolivia. Neither is common sense if you ask me. Image below is me clutching explosive materials at the entrance to the mine - seriously, when am I ever going to get to take this photo again!

So back to our miners, who were carrying the raw ore in sturdy sacks to a place, where it could be winched up manually. Essentially their way of working was exactly the same as those of the slaves back in the good old days. However nowadays the miners are private entrapreneurs and decide themselves, whether they will work 4 or 14 hours a day on any given day. The pay for 1 kg of raw ore brought out of the mines is 2-12 bolivianos (30cents - 1,5 euros) depending on the quality of the ore. On average our three miners estimated they could bring out 80 kilos or more of ore daily - so if the quality was top notch for all of it, that would be about 1000 bolivianos - split three ways that's around 50 euros each, which by local standards ain't half bad. But the work they do, ye gods, the work!

And therein lies the dilemma - as our guide put it, if you make money you want to make  even more and so you work more at the mines, and if you don't make money you work twice as hard in the mines to make some - so either way you end up staying in the mines. Besides alternative work may be pretty hard to come by up here. He also said that if the mountain doesn't kill you from close by (accidents with explosives kill around 10 miners every month in the 5000 mines in the Potosi area), it will kill you from afar (lung silicosis or any amount of other respiratory ailments).

As our tour ended we sat looking at Potosi glimmering in the valley below. My guide turned to me and said, "If the minerals ever run out, Potosi will die". 

Indeed it's hard to think what other livelihood would sustain this cold and windy city of over 130 000 inhabitants. So, for Potosi's sake, let's hope el Tio keeps getting his offerings and the minerals keep flowing. For the sake of the miners, I don't quite know if hoping for this is good or not.