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Published: April 14th 2008
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Potosí is a very strange place. One the one hand, it has some fantastic colonial architecture - and on the other hand it's incredibly poor. During the colonial period, silver was found in the nearby Cerro Rico, which made Potosí one of the biggest and wealthiest cities in the world at the time. All the wealth went to the Spaniards, whilst the people who were forced to work in the mines endured terrible conditions, with literally millions of them dying. Although the main silver lode dried up quite sometime ago, the hill is still mined by smaller co-operative companies. And you can go on tours there.
The mine tour is easily the most disturbing and eye opening experiences I've had on my travels. You start out by getting kitted up in 'protective gear', which is reality is just some baggy overalls (which in my case didn't do up properly), wellies and a hard hat and light. Then you visit the miners market, where you buy coca leaves and dynamite as presents for the miners - probably the only time in my life I'll ever buy dynamite! Our guide explained a bit about the miners, the conditions of the mine and
why they chew coca leaves (and that coca leaves are very different from cocaine, despite the latter being made from the coca leaves). Then it was up to the mine with out presents. The first stop was to the processing plant, where the minerals - silver, zinc and lead - are separated from the waste. Our guide explained that in the height of the silver mining period, they were extracting 80% silver, but these days it's more like 15% minerals, and 85% waste. The process they used for extracting the minerals is pretty primitive, and uses some pretty poisonous chemicals...which, due to the lack of money to build proper treatment facilities, are just washed away, polluting the nearby rivers. Whilst we were being taken around the processing plant, we were being told by our guide to hand out coca leaves to the workers in the plant. I found that a little disturbing - the fact that we, as rich tourists, were doling out these gifts to the grateful workers. Although I do appreciate that we're helping them, as the price of coca leaves has apparently skyrocketed thanks to everyone's friend George W. Bush and his campaign to eradicate coca production
in South America.
Our next stop was in the mine itself. I have to admit, I'm a wimp - I only lasted about 15 minutes before having to come out. It was horrible. Whether it was due to the altitude, I don't know (Potosí is at 4,070m and the mine is a little higher) but I felt like I couldn't breathe. I found the whole experience disturbing - the little I saw of the mine gave me enough of an idea of the horrible conditions that the miners work in. Many of them work there because there literally is no other work in the area, and as a result they suffer from terrible diseases and die premature deaths. Even more disturbing is the number of children working in the mines - around 800 out of a total of around 40,000 miners (I think). And there's also the fact that the miners are earning a pittance whilst somebody somewhere is almost certainly making an awful lot of money out of the silver they mine. So yeah, it was an eye opening experience! The people in the group who actually made it to the end of the tour said that it
was horrible, and that they would never complain about their jobs again.
But on a more fun note, once the tour had finished we got to watch some of the dynamite we'd bought blow up. I even got to hold the dynamite before the guide ran off with it to a safe distance.
As I said, Potosí is a strange place. Walking around the city centre you can easily forget the dire poverty of the miners, as it's full of many beautiful old Spanish colonial buildings - to the point that, on the first night, I was quite confused and wondered if I'd somehow been magically transported to Spain. As my first proper experience of a Bolivian city, I'm finding it really interesting - it has a definite energy to it. But at the same time there are reminders of the poverty - such as the women streetsellers, dressed in traditional Bolivian costume, hawking their wares to passers by. Also there are many nice restaurants, dirt cheap by our standards, but which nonetheless I've only seen other backpackers in. I was supposed to be moving on from Potosí to Sucre yesterday, but thanks to some lovely Bolivian bacteria
- probably acquired in one of these nice restaurants - I'm not going anywhere for at least another day or so :-)
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