Once upon a time in a deep dark mine ...
Trip Start
Dec 30, 2007
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26
50
Trip End
Jun 22, 2008
Potosi,
Bolivia
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Potosi is reputedly the highest city in the world, clocking in at 4060m, so altitude sickness is a real problem here. We didn't have any trouble though, having acclimatised on the way over.
From Uyuni, Potosi is reached by a very pretty drive through the mountains past impressive escarpments of grey rock, herds of llamas and one very bleak town that claimed to display the first railway carriage to arrive in Bolivia and a train that the Sundance Kid held up in 1908 or thereabouts. I can't imagine that many people stop though. The town was dusty brown clay brick, but it did have a soccer field also enclosed by these bricks, but partly falling down now, which must cause the loss of many soccer balls, as the field is built onto the side of a very steep hill.
We stopped for lunch at a little town where donkeys were tied up to a tree with ropes made of llama wool
Cerro Rico
.Potosi's existence is due to a very impressive mountain, known to the Spanish as Cerro Rico for the enormous deposits of silver found in it. Mining started in 1545 and has not stopped since. The mountain is bare and its earth comes in a variety of browns, reds, yellows. The scale of this mine is hard to grasp. Currently 15,000 people work the mines. The population of Potosi is only 145,000 and all of that depends on the mine in some form or another. But in 1600 the population was 160,000 and Potosi was bigger than either London or Paris (so we are told).
Life in the mines is both dismal and a death sentence, and, somewhat ghoulishly, that is what puts Potosi on the tourist agenda. Somewhere along the line, someone figured out that you could trick tourists into paying to see this appalling system of tunnels, where miners work in conditions that cannot be that far advanced from what the Spanish introduced. It worked, and that is what we were here for too. In fact, there is very little else to do in Potosi, even though it is a pretty town with attractive churches and plazas.
It is said that the mines are now run as a cooperative, with various groups working particular claims which are rented from the government, and sharing the profits
Potosi
. That sounds nice. But having seen the conditions, I can't help feeling that what the place needs is privatisation and a big corporate to run the place. Why? The biggest collectives of up to 60 people have started putting in high tech gadgetry such as electric trolley cars to transport the rubble, and electric winches. This kind of investment is way beyond the means of most groups. Likewise, nobody can afford to establish a smelter so the minerals extracted with so much pain and death are simply exported to Chile for smelting and thence to the rest of the world. Bolivia gets a small return on its investment. Some of these problems might be alleviated by a larger enterprise being involved. Or maybe not. It depends on the enterprise I guess, but the current system cannot be described as a roaring success.Our tour started with a trip to the miners market where you are to buy gifts for the miners. This is the place for pyromaniacs. A stick of dynamite, plus a bag of ammonium nitrate and a fuse and blasting cap costs b$17. That's about NZ$3. This combination is called a completo, which makes a neat contrast with the Chilean completo - a bland hot dog that is the favourite snack food over there. The miners' drink (traditionally had on Fridays after a small libation to the earth goddess Pachamama and the Tio, the mining devil) can be bought for b$12 a liter. It is 96% proof.
Extracting ore
Then we went to the basic refinery where the rocks are crushed and minerals extracted by a method of reaction with toxic chemicals and flotation. The chemicals used are arsenic, copper sulfate and calcium (?). Big paddles scoop the minerals out of the foam that forms on the top of these basins. I didn't ask what happens to all the waste, but I can't imagine that it is disposed of properly. In an industry in which everyone is going to die of silicosis anyway, environmental standards can't weigh too highly on the list of concerns.
Then we went into the mine itself, stopping very briefly at a museum which had quite interesting information, but not enough time to read it. They had a model of Tio, who is the devil that the miners apparently still worship to lead them to rich veins and avoid cave-ins. Apparently idols of varying sizes are found throughout the mines, and the practice is very common today.
Our guide gave us quite a positive spin on the life of the miner. He said that miners were very proud of their profession and the money was good, so that the miners did not envy his job. He started in the mines when he was ten and, aged only 25 now, has silicosis. Nevertheless, Nancy found a survey in the museum in which 84% of respondents said that they worked in the mines because they could find no other work
life in the mines
. And no wonder. The passages are very cramped, and we had to crawl on several occasions and most of the rest of the time we were very stooped (admittedly, the locals are very short, but still ...). It is hot, and hard to breathe. It is dusty and the work arduous. And, of course, the miners are practically guaranteed to die of silicosis, unless a cave-in gets them first (15 to 20 per year). Although good quality masks can be bought for just b$150 nobody wears them because it becomes too hard to breathe. There are no safety standards. Although it is illegal to put children to work in the mines, it happens. Our guide (who you will remember started as a ten-year old child) says that there is absolutely no oversight of the mines.We visited one of the high tech cooperatives. Our first stop was to see the electric winch bringing rubble up in a big rubber sack. This is loaded with rubble in the third level of the mine and apparently when full weighs 250 kg. When it arrives, the miner empties it onto a trap door which will eventually be opened to let fall the rubble into a trolley. The work is almost continuous. As he finishes one sack, the next one arrives. And the position is the same for the two miners down in the third level filling the sacks. As one goes up full, the next is waiting. This is hard labour at altitude, in the heat, and with practically no ventilation. The rubble gets to the sack fillers on the third level by a trolley weighing (so we were told) 2.5 tons, pulled along rail tracks by four people. And remember, this is the high tech operation.
The main impression for me was how hard it was to breathe. As soon as we started to crawl up a slope I just couldn't get enough air, and even walking I often felt that the oxygen was turned down too low. It didn't help that I was breathing through a couple of layers of cloth to try to keep the dust out of my lungs, but the lack of oxygen was claustrophobic and being in the mine could not be classed as a pleasant experience. To some extent you must adjust to this - partly it is simply altitude - but performing hard physical labour 10 hours a day in that environment is impressive. And 15,000 do it every day.
The mines have been in constant use for 450 years. There are 150 active mines, and over 700 in total. The main ore extracted now is zinc, along with lesser quantities of tin, silver and lead. But some geologists think that there may still be as much silver in the mountain as has been taken out to date, so the miners keep going deeper and deeper. Our guide said that some of the shafts go down almost 2 km, a statistic which I doubt, but no doubt they are very deep. I wonder, although I didn't think to ask, how they deal with decompression illness. My guess is that it takes so long to crawl back to the surface that decompression takes care of itself.
So, a bleak visit, but interesting. And as our guide said, a trip to make you love your job.
