Potosí

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Disclaimer: this is a pretty long email.


Potosí
· a lot of images, scenes, and emotions I´m taking from Izzy´s letter to
her parents. I´m totally ripping her off but she has some pretty amazing
insights. So - co-authorship of Patrick and Izzy.

The stories you hear of the inhuman cruelty of the Spanish conquistadors in
their drive for gold and silver? The infamous mines that made Spain the glory
of Europe and the Spanish galleons the prize of British, Dutch, and French
pirates? The epicentre of the New-World wealth Christopher Columbus told of
when he returned to Ferdinand and Isabella?

Welcome to Potosi.
The town of Potosi is high up on the altiplano of Bolivia, at about 4,100m.
Potosi calls itself El Patrimonio de la Cultura y la Humanidad. But not in the
same way New Jersey calls itself the ¨garden state.¨ This desolate mountain
gave rise to the flourishment of culture and humanity of Europe during the
Great Enlightenment. Supposedly.
It´s windswept, cold, but not completely unattractive: the buildings in the
centre of town are all beautiful old colonial architectural works of art … an
anachronous time-piece in the middle of the cinder-block barrios that encircle
it, a proud reminder of Potosi´s former wealth, a painful reminder of the
cruel system once used to extract the minerals from the earth.
Well - ¨once used¨ is not quite accurate. The mines of Potosi are still fully
active, and conditions have not improved very much since the 1500´s.
The mountain that changed the course of history, Cerro Rico (rich mountain),
sits another 700m above the town of Potosi itself. Apparently it was another
20m higher, before men began eviscerating her.
Silver isn´t mined anymore - it ran out long ago - and now it´s the less
romantic (and more toxic) zinc, tin, copper, and iron. You know those bottles
full of coloured sand you can get at the souvenir shops at tourist stops
masquerading as ¨geological points of interest?¨ Picture one broken over a
crumpled paper bag, pouring those beautiful and deadly colours of heavy
minerals over it in a cascade of reds, yellows, purples, oranges, silvers, and
fear.
At least, it was fearful for me. Not only because I have an unnatural horror
of wells, but because it´s exactly the kind of rape of the Mother-Earth
(Pachamama) that one reads about or sees in ¨We have 30 days to live unless
YOU make a donation¨ Greenpeace videos.
We decided we would go in to do your typical Lonely-Planet-check-list-Been-
There-Done-That tour of the mine. We were promised that we would get to meet
real, live miners - which almost put me off the tour altogether. One because I
don´t like making people in their Natural Habitat a tourist attraction, but
two, I´m always afraid they´re going to break out in a song-and-dance
rendition of ¨Like a Virgin¨ to make us feel like we are getting our money´s
worth. Or something like that. Whatever.
But anyway - we ended up going. There was no Madonna, in the end.
Which in retrospect, I would have much rather preferred.

Out tour companions were three Argentinean mujeres, or, as they say, ¨Che.¨
(they don´t actually. It just sounds like everything they say). They had
appropriately sexy, Bohemian South American names like Maya, Lourdes, and
Nancy. - Well, so the last name isn´t so specially different. But she wasn´t
exactly Bohemian or sexy, either, so there.
Our little combi trundled up to the miner´s market, where we were all
promptly handed a stick of dynamite. Por el novio, the guide (Eric) said,
nodding at me. All the girls laughed. I for one didn´t find the idea of an
over-confident firecracker in my shorts THAT humourous, but I was outnumbered …
We bought a few bags of coca, some bottles of sugar water ie ¨juice,¨
cigarettes, and some dynamite to give to the miners.
Back in the van and through the outskirts of town to the entrance of
the principal mine. On the way, we all asked questions that started as
academically interested - and by the end of the 10-minutes ride were
dumbfounded incredulity. This is what we found out:
10,000 men - no women! - work in the mine. About 3,000 of them are
´socios,´ that is, belong to the Cooperative (a sort of union. No, no foreign
corporations - at least in this mountain). In return for 25% of their
earnings, they receive pension, health care, and a widow´s compensation -
because the mine kills 100% of the men that work in it. Out of 10, seven
deaths are from silicosis (lung cancer), and three from accidents. The average
life-expectancy of a miner is 42-46, if you´re lucky enough (or unlucky … the
last few years are a gasping, wheezing hell … the saying in the mine is You
stop when you cough blood). The pension begins at age 65, so of course no one
gets it.
The work of the socios is very profitable - minimum 900 to 1,000 Bs ($115 to
125) a month, compared to the supposed minimum wage of 400 Bs (when of course
no one actually earns that much). However, it is correspondingly dangerous …
the other 7,000 men in the mine are ¨peones,¨ those who work in teams for each
socio, carrying out the wagons that the socios (perforadores, those who use
manual tools to drill into the rock) fill. They earn little, and have no
protection, as they cannot belong to the socio - yet. After years of hard work
they get a chance to be in the socio. Spots in the socio are gotten either by
experience in Cerro Rico (only), or from father to son.
Supposedly (according to our guide), the minimum age to start working
is 15 or 16, as he did. But later I met a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sucre whose
task over two years is to stop child labour in the mines - children of 6,7,8
work.
Our cheerful afternoon smiles had been sufficiently doused by the time
we got to the mine entrance and put on our DorkAlert! yellow jackets, pants,
bright orange helmets, and rubber boots. At the entrance, we nodded hola to a
few appropriately stoic gentlemen, and gathered at the opening. Our guid
started to say something, but the dim rumbling we had been hearing crescendoed
and we leapt aside as a wagon came flying out of the hole, two miners clinging
to the back. VERBATIM IZZY: ¨They rode on the tub until momentum stopped them,
and then two others came, and grunting and sweating, lifted the tub onto
another track. We watched this, then turned and went into the mine).
The first 20m or so was braced with big rectangular rocks - without
mortar, in a perfect arch. ¨From when the Spanish started the mine,¨ said
Eric. We had no time to marvel or snap pictures because suddenly the shaft
tightened (literally - it was an enclosing, suffocating, incremental
tightening, the way a constrictor snake kills its prey), and we had to half-
jog (Izzy and I at a half-crouch, whacking our helmets every 15ft) because the
wagons were coming off a decline and one metric ton of rock doesn´t wait for
kneecaps or elbos to be tucked aside.
Nancy was gasping and slowing down (remember, an airless chamber at
15,500ft), and we were getting more and more nervous as the lights of Eric,
Maya, and Lourdes grew futher and further away.
The Spanish frock swere long gone, and now there was only a helter-skelter of
beams and planks holding up an entire mountain. Well, it had held for 20 years
… a few more hours, we hoped. And then I realized - when it does fall, it will
kill people. It doesn´t matter if it´s not us, that´s still someone´s loved
one … and equally important, the person that keeps them from begging on the
calle. That average of one violent death a day is someone that sweated, loved,
worked, joyed, feared, lived - being brought out (if the family is lucky) un-
breathing.

I gripped Izzy´s hand harder, we put our heads down, and kept going,
the only sounds the slip of boots in mud, stifled breathing, the cadence of
helmets on rocks, and that awful, kinetic silence that can bring your worst
nightmare round the corner, unstoppable.

We came to an alcove. Eric anxiously moved us aside with Maya and
Lourdes and then craned his neck again down the tunnel. Thirty seconds later a
wagon came rolling out - though not pell-mell downhill, as we had crested the
hill somewhere back there (though impossible to tell where) - being pulled
with hemp ropes by two men - peones - heaving on their load at 45 degrees to
the ground, the way Boxer must have in Animal Farm. Behind the wagon, pushing,
were two more men. One had on an old University of Vermont sweatshirt on. Both
were also straining into the cart, veins popping, sweating, with what looked
like all their might but was just a measured distribution of the immense
strength and desperation is takes to haul out eight wagons of rock a day, an
hour for each one …
¨Refrescos, refrescos,¨ they called ... ¨Somos cansados!¨ Instead Eric
dropped a bag of coca on the wagon and they kept moving. Momentum is a
protected treasure in the mine.
We watched the wagon turn the corner, with both men in back swivelling
all their weight against the side of the mine, and gripping the tracks with
the toes of their boots. That´s about when it started to hit me, really hit
me, in the gut, that this is the way people - lots of people - live,
sacrificing their bodies and spirits to make the lives of their families a
little less miserable, for another day.

They grunted - the unintentional sound of someone lifting an extreme
weight (not the kind you hear in the gym from some over-juiced frat boy, or
from Serena Williams, but the sound of someone who knows he must lift this
weight or someone, himself, his crew-mates, might get seriously hurt or
killed) - as they strained to keep the wagon on the track and moving.

As we stepped onto the track to head deeper in, we heard another wagon
coming. This time they came to a halt about 20 feet from the alcove.
¿Les ayúdamos? Said Eric, and without waiting for my answer, slid down
the tunnel and around the back of the wagon. I followed, and placed myself as
he did with my chest against the wagon. Somebody shouted something in Quechua
but which didn´t need to be translated; ¨Now let´s fucking PUSH!!¨ Very, very
slowly, the cart started to move, but my amazement grew more and more quickly
as I successively dropped into different levels of exertion (there´s a
difference between how hard you think you´re pushing and what you´re really
doing), until I was digging in, torqueing, screaming inside with the PUSH! and
then the cart started to move. Of course, I had nothing to do with that. I
know the rope-men had to be pulling twice as hard to compensate for the weak
gringo.
We gathered speed, and rushed by the girls. 10 feet later Eric
motioned, we leapt off, and the pushers came back to their positions, giggling
at us. The cart went round the corner with more of those awful grunts and
disappeared. I watched them go, turned round, and suddenly discovered I
couldn´t breathe. I had been exerting as close to as hard as I could for only
30ft or so, but I was done, bent double. We came back to the girls and Lourdes
asked me a question, but my head was ringing, I was gasping so hard I couldn´t
have answered anyways. I leaned against the wall of the mine with my hand, and
some rock came crumbling away. Don´t put your hands near your mouth now, said
Eric. That´s toxic.
Later, when I had about cought my breath, the only thing I could say
to Izzy, over and over, was I can´t believe how much that weighed.

Eric had grabbed a rock from the wagon and was passing it round. No wonder -
the mineral content made it 40-60% heavier than a regular rock.

We kept going down. I say down. It was more or less flat, I think - but the
metaphor is apt.

The track ended, and we stumbled along until we got to a side-passage (among
dozens), where two miners where sitting. Socios. They said not to go further,
that there was an explosion going on down the way.
So we sat down and talked. One was an older man - Luis. The other was
his son - Luis. Luis Jr. had what looked like a tumour in his cheek but what
was actually a huge ball of coca. The miners don´t eat in the cave - just
coca, unfiltered raw huge rolled cigarettes, and ¿piku? (I think. Some evil
name like that), a 96% cane alcohol.
They were smoking as we sat down. Now, I´ve been in my fair share of
unventilated, crowded Belgian bars, but I have never experienced anything like
that. The ceiling was four-foot, and there was barely even enough oxygen to
light the cigarettes.
We talked, first about Evo (Morales, the first indigenous President-
elect of Bolivia). They were glad he was in power - they said he was going to
change the system, level out the riches of the country in a more equitable
distribution. We talked about another mine, American-run and owned, where the
miners earned a lot more and had more benefits but were not unionised and all
the profits left the country.
At some point Luis Jr, who was mostly quiet, brought out the piku in a
plastic water-bottle and passed round cap-fuls. First, of course, to Luis Sr.
He dribbled a little on the ground - an offering to the Pachamama, for luck
finding a good seam and protection. Then he downed the cup without flinching.
One might ask what he was doing ,taking shots of basically ether alcohol deep
in a mountain with dynamiting going on all round and the only fuel in his body
nicotine and novocaine?
I didn´t. Luis was, as Jr. proudly pointed out, the oldest miner in
the mountain, at 56. I figured he knew what he was doing.
The first of our group to get the shot was Nancy. She almost didn´t
make an offering, assuming Luis´s was sufficient, and I watched Luis´s eyes
grow more and more horrified as he realized she might not ´pour some out for
the homie.´ This was no tourist gimmick. They truly believed that offering
counted - no, was necessary.

When the cup came to me I poured a little, as Luis had, and threw my
head back to take the shot like a miner, a man - and then spent the next hour
wishing I´d ´offered´ most of the cup, as Izzy had.
We talked some more - Izzy and I, and I suppose the Argentineans, more
enthralled by the minute (and successive caps of piku). Luis was not educated
(though he knew a surprising amount about the world-out-there and its Current
Events), but he was wise.
Lourdes asked - Jeez, don´t you just get sick of the mine? (or: ¨Che,
che che che, che che?). Luis paused, and looked at her. Yes. Of course. But
what else should I do? It´s what I know. I´m working so that my children can
go to school and have a better life than I did. I´m working because I don´t
want them to have to do this.
Then, Luis Jr, why are you working?
Same thing. It´s expected of the eldest son - and then the socio spot - a very
valuable investment - doesn´t die with Luis Sr.
I asked one last question - Luis Sr, with Evo, do you have hope?
He looked at me, a little sadly.
Well, a little. But not for me. I have hope for my children. And even
more for their children. So there is hope. But not for me.
Luis Jr concurred, but said No, for me, I have some hope. I think if
Evo does what he sys he´s going to do, then it will be better for me and my
family.
The miners take the minerals - the veins and heart - of the mountain.
And the mountain in return takes their lungs, their lives, and their hope.

Eric motioned for us to go. Izzy and I sat with the Luises and took a picture -
Sr. with his arm round my neck, a gesture I did not expect but deeply
appreciated, and then we left.

Luis Sr. will die soon … a few months, a few years … but I hope it´s in the
mine. A man with such dignity deserves as much.

The thing is - the safety standards and rules of the Cerro Rico mines are made
by the Cooperativo. There are no slaves, no one is forcing them to work. They
choose to work dangerously because it´s more profitable. It´s their choice,
their opcion.

We crawled under another passageway, and came out in a little room with a
giant statue grinning awfully at us.
His name is Tio - Uncle, in castellano (Spanish). But it doesn't
really mean that. When the Spanish came with stories of the god that lived
under the earth, the devil, the people just took him on as another god. True,
malevolent above ground, but a friend and protector below. His name came from
Dios, but the ´d´ was hard to pronounce in Quechua. So - Tios, Tio.
The statue was made by the Spanish, because they couldn´t stay as long
in the mines as the indians, they had to come out every so often. But they
feared that, with them gone, the Indians would slack off. So they built the
statue of Tio to watch over the slaves - in the image of a Spaniard. He has
horns, of course. But also - deep green eyes, and pink (sunburned) skin,
representing the Spanish. He has a huge erect penis, symbolizing fertility …
Tio and the Pachamama are husband and wife, so their children are the minerals
in the mountain. That´s why women aren´t allowed to work - the miners are
afraid that the Pachamama will get jealous and do something terrible.
He sits with an open, grinning mouth. The miners place cigarettes in
his mouth and coca leaves in his lap. A llama fetus sits at his feet. Then
they sprinkle piku on his eyes, mouth, and penis, and light it on fire. I
can´t really picture anything more terrifying. But to them, he is a friend.
Another tour group came, and we left. The next half-hour, 45 minutes
were as before - shuffling quickly down a passageway, dodging beams and rocks
and wagons. We got behind one, luckily, and followed it. Unfortunately there
were two coming back in, empty, so they had to turn round and push until they
got to where they could push the wagons over to let the other one by
(remember, each wagon is 200kg). We ran past, the peones shouting to hurry up,
but the cart we were following had got stuck on a corner. I went forward again
to help… the wagon was stuck in the mud and rails and it took six of us to get
it back on, though I think I got in the way more than helped.
Another few minutes and we came stumbling out of the mine. For some
reason, though, the sun and air wasn´t as welcome as I´d expected. Instead, as
I watched the wagon, empty now, being pushed back into the tunnel, I just felt
sick.

Down at the van, taking off our gear, we noticed an old shoe in amidst the
rubble, discarded but defiant, the sole peeling away, with just the shell of
it still remaining. In the back-ground, another wagon came to the chute,
unloaded, and then turned and went back into the mine.

I´m not sure what exactly I mean by telling you all this. It´s
definitely not an attempt to state some opinion in particular, or ´show´ you
anything about life, or its partner Death - the more I grow and travel and see
the more I realize how little I actually know. It´s not even really to
describe the utter black and desperate and toxic and soul-sucking pit of human
despair that is the mine - and tomb for eight million men.
Izzy and I have travelled a lot of places, and seen some miserable
things, thanks to our work in Ayacucho. We´ve passed by hundreds of beggar-
children, shoe-shiners, invalids with stumps for limbs and battery-acid-
slumped faces, and each time we pass by our hearts got a little harder, a
little more insensitive to the clutching hands of the old woman.

We have seen all that. But we both cried in that mine. Something went missing
from our hearts in there.

In Motorcycle Diaries, Ernesto ´Che´Guevara says, We are all a pueblo mestizo
(mixed people), from Mexico to the Tierra del Fuego.
I´d say that´s true, but not entirely accurate. We are all a pueblo
mestizo - and all part of humanity.

They say something of value is worth a Potosi. But what is of value?

And on a completely unrelated subject… (or, maybe not). I wrote this on an
island in the middle of the vast Lake Titicaca, listening to the night-sounds
of animals and the soft plop of the waves on the beach. It´s been raining
since it got dark, a la rainy season. Usually when I sleep outside, I sleep so
I can see the stars, but there are none tonight. And standing outside naked
feeling the millions of rain-drops fall on me, on the ground, the lake,
animals, of all those raindrops falling - there are still not as many of them
as there are stars.

I hope you are all doing well…
Much love
Patrick

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