In the late 15th century Potosi was one of the largest cities on earth, larger than New York, Paris or London. Today, it’s a city of crumbling colonial houses and churches and desperate poverty, a desolate shell of its former glory. Above the city looms Cerro Rico, stained red with centuries of miner’s blood and minerals, pockmarked with dynamite like the faces of the people, the source of all that wealth and poverty.An estimated eight million men have died in Cerro Rico extracting over 50,000 tons of pure silver for the Spanish crown alone.
The Inca never extracted silver from Cerro Rico. Legend has it that a booming voice warned them that the minerals were meant for others who would come from afar. In 1545 a llama herder was camping on Cerro Rico and lit a fire he lit to keep warm. The fire melted the ore and molten silver flowed out of the fire. The Spanish crown quickly caught wind of the discovery and began exploring the area.
To extract the minerals the colonists instituted the mita system, requiring all indigenous Bolivian men to serve six months in the mines. When that proved insufficient, they began importing African slaves. The men died laboring in the mines, pushing the mills that process the minerals like mules and from mercury poisoning, stomping the silver amalgam with their bare feet, killed by overseers, their diseases, or opting for suicide instead of the misery of life in the mines.
After Independence, control of the mines quickly passed to three major mining families, the Aramayos, the Hothschilds and the Patiños. The silver barons, and tin barons after them, controlled the Bolivian government for the next century and a half. While conditions within the mines improved, the quality of ore declined and the dependence on a single export devastated the economy with each boom and bust cycle.
As mines were privatized and people laid-off in the 1930s and again in the 1980s miners began to demand the opportunity to extract the minerals for themselves. Since most of the mines were stripped centuries earlier and the profit margins on the remaining minerals are slim the government gave the rights back to the miners.
In the afternoon we went to visit a collective mine. Outfitted in rubber boots and raincoats, old fashioned headlamps and bandanas for facemasks we got a little taste of life below.
The conditions in the collective mines are little better than they were centuries ago. The lower levels are reached with rickety ladders, leading to tunnels so low you have to crawl or slide on your stomach. Sulphur, arsenic and other noxious gasses fill the air, leaving you gasping for breath. The temperatures can climb above 100°. There’s standing water and unmarked holes below, falling rock above. At 4500m, walking, let alone wielding a pick axe or towing a trolley of ore, is exhausting.
We spent an hour and a half in the mines, and I feel as if it shaved years off of my life. Miners will work ten to twenty-four hour day, often without food or drink, only stopping to chew coca. Once they start work, the can expect to live about fifteen years before succumbing to silicosis, if they manage to avoid accidents.
Despite this, many of the miners are children as young as ten or twelve. They’re often forced to support their families, their fathers having died in the mines or the victims of black lung disease, coughing up blood and tissue. One of young miners’ jobs is lighting the dynamite that older miners have laid, since they can crawl out of the shafts more quickly.
It’s no wonder that when the Spanish colonists described heaven and the hell indigenous slaves decided that the mines must be hell and the devil himself the owner of the minerals. Outside of the mines the men are Christians, but inside each mine, just beyond the last rays of light, there’s a statue of this devil, el Tio, or uncle. With twisted horns and tail, leering smile and erect phallus, I found the Tio a little terrifying. The miners have a more collaborative relationship with El Tio, making offerings, asking for his minerals and his protection from accidents. Every Friday the miners chew coca, smoke cigarettes and drink Ceibo with their Tio. They also make llama offerings in hopes of satisfying el Tio’s bloodlust, leaving the men alive.
While offerings to el Tio aren’t quite as effective as OSHA, they are a lot more fun. But all flipness aside, I think we came as close to hell on earth as we ever will today. For look at Cerro Rico and the children who work there check out The Devil’s Miner, a fantastic documentary.
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