Beneath Cerro Rico

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Hazardous to your health, mining in Potosi: the colonial way or is it the Bolivian way? As you may notice this entry is long overdue - essentially dropped the ball on Potosi, but then again no love lost there on either side. It is a fascinating historic town but essentially located beside what looks like the surface of the Moon, a landscape of bleak rock over 4000 metres (12000 ft) high, where basic foodstuffs are somewhat limited - very tough to get any milk - and all roads lead to the mines... Like everyone else does when they come here, we took a tour.


Not much seems to have changed here (las minas) over the years with the exception of head lights vs burning candles and plastic rubber vs animal hide to transfer minerals from one spot within the labyrinth to another on the face of the red mountain called Cerro Rico. It is labour intensive - back breaking -life shortening work. One of the main changes from colonial times is that the mines are altogether run as a cooperative but each mine or small network of mines operated by individual families.


I´m not a huge fan of going under the Earth's surface but seem to be developing a taste for the unknown - guess it´s the novelty of it all. All around this once great town was touted as the colonial era rival to Paris of its day. Seems difficult to imagine such granduer existing here - the mines continue to be the main way of life for the majority of families with tourism quickly becoming the secondary life-line.


We signed up for the mine tour through the agency attached to our hostel (Jerusalem): we had a wonderful guide called Helen Phillips. She is round in a classically beautiful form of a cute South American woman very live gal, studing English and very active in the promotion of Education for the impoverished and young of Bolivia. She explains some of the history of the city to us and our fellow adventurer Keith of Ireland as we approach the miners market.


Which is the first stop for all those excited visitors to the mines. This is the place where you - the visitor - purchase essential gifts for your host: dynamite completos, cocoa leaf, soda, crackers, pachamama (alchohol) and cigarettes unfiltered (of course) to clean the air in the mines... Kinda of crazy notion I knows! Ciggy smoke cleaning the air but it seems to be true? Recommend, buy what you think is good, then buy another bag of goods equal or greater to what you've just purchased. The day we where at the miners market we seemed to be the only foreigners there; the other observation was that there were a lot of very young boys waiting their turn to go up the hill to work in the mines! Maybe they were hoping to be recruited for work not sure really what the deal was there. Helen says that boys as young as twelve work in the mines...


Personally, as Helen distrubuted our gifts to the miners during our journey through an unchanged colonial mine I felt that we didn't purchase enough to go around towards the end we were completely out - So this is how the tour went down:


With our goodies in hand we all piled into the car that would take us up the hill to the colonial time richest silver mine in the world - sadly all the silver is depleted and all that remains is following the veins of other minerals such as copper, which (as they do no on-site refining) isn't that prosperous in the end. We stop at a building looking out the window of the car you see a lot of activity about the surface which pales to the unseen work below the surface in dim light and slightly raised temperatures depending the level being worked at. Certain mines only allow workers below for two hour shifts due to the extreme heat while other miners can work non-stop for up to 12 hours plus. Men work in the mines: the women work as mineral quality control on the surface also there is always someone on watch over night to protect their harvest of minerals from being stolen! Shocking I know!


Helen tells of how the miners track their time by the changing taste of the cocoa leaves in their mouth. The use it to ward off hunger, thirst and keep their energy levels up apparently stuffing hundreds of leaves into their mouth sort of like chewing tobacco - they look like they've either had a serious dental visit or squirrels nuts for the winter - either way they tell time by when the cocoa leaves have lost its flavor which is every three hours roughly. So I guess after four batches of cocoa leaf the miner knows he has been underground for at least 12 hours straight!


I've never been in a working mine before so there is no point of comparison for me but Sean says these are the most arcaic mines he has ever been in which says something because as many of you know any chance Sean gets to go underground he will take it. At one point Helen takes us to a point where there seems to be about ten men working together. They almost came to a complete halt upon our entering their space.


All were very friendly some a bit too friendly - don't gather they see too many women on these mining tours - usually just crazy gringos who want to see dynamite explosions. Helen hands out the remainder of our gifts till we are all done nothing more to give which leaves me feeling a bit guilty seeing how hard all these men are working.


We chat with them for a bit. I notice how many of them are missing a lot of teeth, nearly all of them but they smile happily eager to meet us and share what they are doing along with finding out about us where we come from etc. One of the miners has a full set of chops you can't help but notice he's not quite like the other miners. He goes into detail about how he just began working at the mines the day before and very much stresses the point that this is a temporary solution for him that he plans to continue his higher education but needs to work first to save money for the course.


Helen is very active in getting the children to go to and remain in school doing her best to break the cycle of beginning work in the mines as young as 12/13 only to neglect their studies. Her personal goal seems to get the children out of the mines and into the universities.


We wind our way around the tunnels of the mines and Helen stops to point out this white stuff on the wall of the mine turns out it's natural asbestos - we prompt her to quickly move on - even though we all have those little mask to keep the debris out of our lungs.


Another most interesting object of the mines are the Tios. Tios are a European invention of a subterreanean god that the indigenous people could worship. They found it difficult to make people work in the mines until some thought up the bright idea of a Tio which happens to look like a demon some may even say the devil. Every week the miners pay tribute to the Tio by leaving them gifts of alchohol, cigarettes lit and placed in his mouth and say a prayer to Tio to lead them to a good vein that will be bountiful. The eyes of the Tio are brilliant and shining the first of several we saw is an original. Helen says it belongs in a museo because of its historic significance.


We began our departure of the mines headed towards the sunlight leaving behind countless miners working in harsh conditions. As we step out we notice that the exit isn't the entrance we entered from. This passage into the mine has a stone arch with a cross at its apex very colonial indeed, similar to the religious cross you can see from any where in the city but is most vivid on the Cerro - essentially a reminder of the forced conversion of many indigenous people to Catholicism.


We are all waiting by the bus stop to take the local down the cerro and into town. Helen chats with school children to determine if they are keeping up with their studies, we mostly sit in silence taking in what we've seen, help Helen a little with her English home work when suddenly this micro bus shows up.


everyone piles in we where lucky to get seats as we drive down an elder woman gets on the bus and greets Helen when the woman get down at her stop Helen insist on paying her fare which is very kind. Winding through the streets she points out that the cobble street we are passing during colonal era was only for the Europeans - no others where allowed to enter the neighborhood.


We are stopped at our hostel we say goodbye and head for the vegetarian place down the street for a bit to eat. Keith has to eat and run as he has a bus to catch to Sucre - again a brief goodbye and wish each other well on our respective journeys.


Post lunch we decide to see about visiting La Casa de la Modena. The guided English tour was for three in the afternoon, perfect, right? Right we que for our tickets to enter and we wait to be summoned by the English guide there are a lot of people waiting to begin the tour in either Spanish or English - there was also a big group of school teens visiting the house
too. So the place was a buzz before everyone was split into their preferred language group.

Our guide was something, his name was oh I forget, let's call him Pancho. He leads us up the corridor to a large hall and asks everyone to be seated. He introduces himself and give the history of the room we are presently seated and then goes around the room asking which country everyone represents followed by the accusation that everyone has stolen something from Bolivia's Cerro Rico. No one is innocent is the gist of his anger towards all nations not his own. Basically all have profitted in one way or another from the silver riches exported from Bolivia during the colonial era. Man everyone knew this was gonna be a lot of fun. Yahoo ... hot damn glad I didn't opt for the Spanish tour.


Boy it was a doozy, the guy probably the best dressed man in town. He was on a mission to make everyone as uncomfortable as possible and question everyones historical knowledge on who did what when, why Africans didn't survive working in the mines. He claimed it was due to sickle-cell anemia but would not be urged by any other arguments like perhaps they all died because they lived in the most inhuman and harshest conditions. It was awful, he was going off on his high-horse for what seemed like forever! Especially because there was an African-American from the South Eastern US with two of her friends that was it for them they and a few other people just walked out on the tour after visiting the next two chambers. At one point he turns to Sean and ask him about Drake and Sir Water Raleigh - real cheeky bastardo, assuming Sean wouldn't have a clue who they were - he was like

Who were they?

Sean told them who they were, and how they were fighting back against potential Spanish invasion, which stumped him up a bit think it messed up his routine on blaming all nations for the disarray of his native land. Little did he know he was arguing with a first class historian!


I imagine the tour would have been a thousand times better if we had the woman instead of this guy. Towards the end he said that unlike other guides - he was different - he belong the the Historic Society which I presume to be exclusive? Essentially he was better than all of them put together....enough already, we went off to have a cup of tea so we could complain about what a disaster of a guide this man is.


Overall our time in Potosi was pretty balanced out the mines where a site to see and the Santa Teresa Museo was lovely: it's where all the wealthy families sent their second daughters provided they could pay the two thousand dowry in either monies or equivilant gift to the convent , Casa de la Modena was good but definately could of been a thousand times better but guess it offered entertainment value in one way, also saw the San Francisco Museo which like the casa was a bit of a disappointment the guide was a bit shy and unsure of her English and cut the tour of the place real short - seriously like thirty minutes most of it walking up and down stairs and when she offered the viewing of additional catacombes when we said we'd like to see more she was well you can't, because of contamination or somehting ... The bonus while in Potosi was visiting the Ojo del Inca if you ever make it to city make time for a dip in the healing hat waters of the sinkhole.


Ojo del Inca (Eye of the Inca) is located about 20 minutes outside of town we hired a taxi to take us out when we arrived we saw a couple of bungalows and a family of three swimming in the steaming water. There is a watchman onsite 24/7 he is the care taker he collects a small fee from those taking a dip in the Ojo. I asked if they have any floating devices and he said yes. I looked over to what he pointed at I was a huge inflated inner tube the kind you would use to float down the Kings River back home.



He said if you can't swim you can't go in as it is bottomless plus I don't think he's a life guard either. We went to wander around take in the view even with 30 degree water though tempting it was cold over all plus I wasn't feel great either we took a hike then Sean put his legs in the water to confirm it was nice I didn't even do that becuase I'm so clutsy that I probably would have fallen in ...

Took us an extra day to leave Potosi because all the buses out of town were overbooked... This might tell you all you need to know, but a fascinating frontier place all the same.

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Photos

very rough
not much has changed from colonial times

our first Tio citing
Tio is the idol the miners make offerings to cigarettes, pachamama 95 pure alcohol, he was invented by the Spanish so the miners would work underground

wood support beams
colonial

our guide
as you can see the head room ain't much she's a bit shorter than me...

Tio
colonial original