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Published: April 26th 2009
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Cerro Ricco - The Rich Mountain
By Tina Torres
‘Si si si, yo soy de Potosi. ‘Sings a boy in the middle of the restaurant. He collects a few coins then heads out the door. Why is this boy so proud to be from a dodgy town in the south of Bolivia? Turns out that Potosi was once a place of huge richness, where the street lamps were literally made from pure silver and where Spanish aristocrats flocked to enjoy the finery of life.
The Inca had previously started to mine Cerro Ricco - ‘the rich mountain’, but had stopped when a great thunder sounded and miners were told by a mystical voice that the treasures here were destined for others. They obeyed and their story bears its mark on the town’s name: Potosi - which derives from an onomatopoeic Aymaran word for thunder.
It didn’t take long for the Spanish to start mining the mountain in the 1540’s. As a result this small place in South America was the life line that funded the Spanish exchequer for decades.
It was a time of luxury and growth - by the 1670’s it was the largest
city in the world, with inhabitants reaching 200,000! You can even find references to Potosi in the novel Don Quixote, where it is an idiom for ‘extraordinary richness’.
By the 1800’s however there was no more Silver ore to be found. At least 35,000 indigenous peoples had died, mainly from mercury poisoning and bad work conditions.
Moka and I spent quite a few days in Potosi - staying at Residencial Sumaj. We dedicated a whole day to visiting the Money House Museum where the Spanish coins were minted and you can still see slaves foot prints hollowed into the wooden floors where they laboured. We also took a day trip to go inside the still operating mines of Cerro Ricco.
I was reluctant to do this excursion as I felt it would be quite disrespectful to the miners who work for a pittance and then have bloody tourists getting in their way.
It was definitely the most bizarre way I have ever started a day. First you are given overalls and gumboots to put on, which is not too weird until you head to the Miners Market. As its name suggests this is where the miners
buy their supplies. Jorge, our guide, gives us samples of coca leaf to try and sticks of dynamite to look at before we purchase them from the elderly Cholita woman at the stall. Jorge, our guide is the friendliest Bolivian I have ever met and his smiles go miles.
Each mine entrance to the mountain represents a separately run cooperative mine. The Miners are young men with weathered faces. They stuff the coca leaves we have bought as gifts into their hats and pockets then go back to work. We also hand out some dynamyte to other miners. Outside the mines women mind piglets and rest in the shade while children play in the dirt or loiter around the tourists.
It is hard to breathe inside the mines. The air is thick, heavy, and seems to linger. The narrow tight passage ways are lined with loose rubble. Gapping cavities that seem bottomless are everywhere. The floor is uneven. Beautiful white asbestos grows on the walls. Teenagers push carts that imitate an Indiana Jones set.
Jorge guides us around the warren for two hours. We pass workers with pick axes. One miner stops to talk to Jorge. His
teeth and lips are blackened and his left cheek protrudes from the wad of coca leaf inside. He is going to see El Tio. Who is Tio?
Tio is a statue of a man with horns. He is covered in offerings of coca leaf, alcohol and candles. When the Spanish ran the mines they placed a God - Dios - inside the mines. The workers could not pronounce the ‘D’ and called him Tios. In time the, ‘s’ was dropped. Hence Tio: which in a strange twist is the Spanish word for uncle. Regardless of his name his purpose is clear: good luck and permission to finding ore. 100% pure alcohol is given, (and drunk) in the hope of receiving 100% pure ore. Life in the mines is hard, short and the rewards are few.
Finally we emerge from the mine, dizzy and disorientated, I almost fainted as we came back to the surface. Jorge loads us into the van and takes us back to town.
So where now for Potosi? Still a political centre for Bolivia, the city will never fall off the map, but the glamour of the 17th and 18th century is long gone.
Is it possible that the unity Morales’s is creating within the country will return some of the pride that this small boy sings about? Or is this just another mining town destined to demise?
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