The Mines of Potosí

Today we went to the mines in Cerro Rico (Rich Hill, roughly translated).  Cerro Rico has come to represent the exploitation of Bolivia, because during the colonial era, the Spanish emptied the mines of all the silver at the expense of the indigenous people.  It’s still an active mine today, but there is no more pure silver.

We started out by each buying a bag of coca and a bottle of soda.  Coca is really important to the miners, because they used it in the colonial era to stave off hunger and fatigue while working 14-24 hour days.  The Spanish learned to let the indigenous people use it because they could work longer.  Coca is still chewed in the mines (and all over Bolivia, really).  Our tour guide told us that now the miners make their own hours, but they need the money, so they aren’t really free to work only when they want.

Before entering the mine, we all had to put on baggy pants, jackets, rubber boots, and helmets with lights.  Then we put the coca and soda in jackets and walked into the mine, after waiting for a guy pushing a cart to pass by.  We walked in a long line (10 of us and the tour guide) along the cart’s path.  The ground was covered in a few inches of water, and occasionally we all would have to move to the edge to let a cart pass.  When carts came by on their way out, filled with rocks or bags of minerals, one of us would put our coca and soda on the cart for the miners.  Some parts of the mine were pretty wide and I could walk normally, but in a lot of places I had to hunch, and in two spots I had to crawl.  It was incredibly dark, as you’d expect since we were underground.  Three or four in our group had broken headlamps, so we alternated to help those people see.  It still was pretty tricky, since they were walking in their own shadows.  I can’t imagine being in that darkness for fourteen hours.

We went to see the Tio, an indigenous god.  Technically, he is the devil, but he isn’t evil like the Christian devil.  He is the god of the underworld, and can bring good fortune or bad.  The miners offer coca and alcohol to him in a ceremony.  I did the ceremony, which involved taking a sip of 96% alcohol—that was pretty gross.  The miners also sacrifice llamas to him, but our group didn’t do that.  When they sacrifice the llama, everyone has to be outside the mine or the Tio will take their lives instead of the llama’s.  The Spaniards didn’t know about the Tio, since they gave orders from outside the mine.  There are a ton of Tios in the mines, but we only saw this one.

One of the wider sections

El Tio, with cigarettes in his mouth

After leaving the mine, we went to Wayna Pacha, a children’s center for the miners’ kids.  School-aged kids go there to play games and do educational activities, as a way to keep them from working in the mines.  Technically kids under 18 can’t work in the mines, but many do as a way to help their families.  We saw one boy who was 13 when we were in the mines.  He told us he started working there at 12.

So after hearing the history of Wayna Pacha, we played with the kids!  I played with the older kids, preteen aged.  I played chess with one boy, and then we all went downstairs.  The kids get meals at the center, so they had bread, gruel, and tea and we goofed around together.

Afterwards, some of our group went to a miner’s house.  We walked four or five blocks in the rain until we got there.  Only the miner’s wife was there.  She knits sweaters to sell, but she told us after buying yarn she barely gets any money.  The family had 8 or 9 kids, and lived in a one-room house.  Most of the room was beds, with blankets on them to combine them into one big bed.  There was an electric stove in one corner and a TV in the other.  The two oldest siblings had moved out to work (I think they were 19 and 16 years old).  The family rented their house, like most miners, and said that the owner was not very nice.  The parents speak Quechua, but the mom told us her kids don’t like to speak it.  The mom told us that she can’t read, so she can’t tell if her kids are doing their schoolwork.  She said whatever jobs her kids want, she will support them, but when someone in our group asked if she wanted them to be miners, she said no.

Taxis don’t go by the miner’s house, so we walked a few blocks to a corner where we could catch them.  Luckily it had stopped raining, but the streets were like rivers.  The street the miner lived on was mud, with a 2-foot wide river of water running down each side.  It was great to get home and be dry!  Then I ate the most delicious pizza of my life and it had mushrooms!