POTOSI, CERRO RICO AND ITS MINES

The Streets of Potosi.

At about six in the afternoon we arrived to Potosi, the third highest city in the world. With more than 4000 meters above sea level, Potosi leaves you breathless when you take on a challenge to climb its streets. Potosi’s alleys, no more than 3m wide that zigzag through the labyrinthine of the city confusing tourists, lead us into a different world. Grand wooden portals, giant stone walls. and lots of colors in the costumes of the local women give the place a mixture of history with today's miserable reality.

Potosi -once the richest city in Latin America.

It is amazing how this city, once the richest in Latin America, can barely afford to maintain a collection of its ancient crumbling buildings, which have not seen any advances besides deterioration. It is enough to just go out to the streets to find evidence of the importance and the wealth of the city, build on the bloody money of its rich silver mines. We visited one of these active mines in a company of our guide Reinaldo, an ex-miner himself, who now dedicates his time to showing tourists the horrifying conditions of a miner world. It was soul-chilling to see that deep inside Cerro Rico nothing changed, time did not advance and did not bring any progress to make working conditions bearable.

We entered through the mines of Rosario, within the famous Cerro Rico. At the altitude of 4500 meters above sea level, the tunnels inside the mountain are flooded by water that seeps through its walls, and the rails for the mining cars that transport the minerals are barely held in place by a few metal hooks. In the areas of possible caving in, the walls of the tunnels are held up by wooden arches, although more than once we have seen those beams broken in halve right above our heads, waiting for the last push to rush to the floor.

A Potosina.

Since the founding of Potosi in 1545, the Spaniards have been sending all of “the fruits of the mines” directly to Europe, but since not so long ago many mines are now run by mining cooperatives. Each one owns one side of a tunnel the benefits of which go directly to the mining partners. Nonetheless, it is not that easy to become a partner of a cooperative. First, for some 8-10 years you must work as a miner in the lowest category and gain experience, then, if you have saved enough money, buy one of the faces of the tunnel and only then begin exploiting it for your benefit. Predictable enough though, the gains in those mines are minimal and the conditions ... as well. We went down 3 levels (separated from each other by 50 meters of mineral), and the heat became almost unbearable. The air was scarce and mixed with gases from explosions making it very difficult to breathe. It seemed that dust was constantly accumulating in our throats, as we were constantly coughing and spitting, although without actually spitting anything out. This is the sensation that you get when breathing in sulfur, lead and hundreds of sulfates that invade your lungs. I can still taste and smell that awful concoction, and it has been about 5 weeks since our visit to the mines.

A mineral separation plant.

We reached an area where a group of people was working. It was a family of a father and two sons (it is very common to have a family cooperative), and we spoke to them for a while about their life as miners.

- How long have you been working in the mine? – I ask one of the sons.
- Since I was 12. -  He answered firmly, demonstrating that he was an experienced miner.
- And how old are you? - Asked intrigued.
- 24!

Since the age of twelve, for more than 6 hours per day, he was immersed in the inhuman reality of the underworld with no lights, no air, and no water. I could not comprehend this….. And even less I could grasp how this life was possible after I was explained how the minerals were extracted and transported to the surface. In some cases the actual mining is carried out with dynamite explosions, in others by a pneumatic hammer, but in 90% of the time the digging is done manually. It turns out, that in a cooperative everyone has to buy their own tools and materials, as well as dynamite and air for the compressors, which ends up being too expensive for the miners. The carts that transport the rocks are also pushed by hand, and in many cases the tunnels have no rails, or belong to a different cooperative, so to avoid paying for their use, the miners prefer to load 100 kilogram bags full of minerals onto their backs and transport them that way. 

We left the mines in disbelief, not understanding how it is possible to work this way. Being a cooperative and working as partners, how is it possible not to use at least some type of machinery to facilitate the process?! It was pointless to look for answers or solutions.

Minors' Quarters.

After the mine we went to a plant where minerals are cleaned and separated. Trucks full of rocks extracted from Cerro Rico deposit their cargo on a rotating drum which grinds the stones, transforming then practically into dust. Then, the dust goes through a series of chemical pools, and eventually silver particles begin floating on the surface, which are then driven by a rotating blade to other pools located outside of the building. The rest is easy. The water with the silver particles is deposited onto the floor, letting the sun evaporate the water. Then the dry silver sand is shoveled into bags for subsequent transport.

And what happens then? Where does that silver go to be melted and turned into different products? Europe. Asking these questions cleared everything. Cooperatives sell 8 tons of raw mineral (a truck-full) to the separation plants for just $500. Those, in turn, for just a little bit more, sell the pure silver powder to Europe. It is there where the silver is melted, turned into merchandise, and then exported around the world. Now, it is clear where the principal revenue ends up, isn’t it? Do you know how much a silver bracelet costs? Well, after this experience you will not want to buy anything made out of this filthy, disgusting material. However, as I think about it this way, we would leave 85% of Potosí out of work.

The Silver Sand.

It makes me so angry that after so much struggle to be able to form cooperatives and work freely, the miners continue working in the same conditions as hundreds of years ago, continue to die from the same diseases, continue to live in poverty, and the money continues to stay in the same hands. The only difference is that now potosinos do not feel exploited. But how do you explain to these people that they are being exploited as slaves for the benefit of others, if since the age of 12 they are immersed in this surreal underworld of false wealth, without any possibility to study to be able to understand that they are being manipulated?

These are the feelings with which we left Potosi and its mines. The mines, where even women worked for three years while Bolivia was at war with Paraguay and there were not enough men to do the work. The mines where workers drink pure 96% alcohol to survive the suffocating underground enclosure. The mines where people do not last longer than 40 years. The mines where, unknowingly, potosinos are exploited since childhood, deceived by the fact that now they work for their own benefit. The mines that provoke nothing else than shame, disgust and sadness.

Translated from the original post " Un Cerro Rico, No Tan Rico" by Emiliano Garcia.