Potosi

Potosi is one of those places that anyone who has visited Bolivia tells you you have to visit.  One friend warned me, its not an easy visit, but something that should be done.

Potosi is the former star of the Spanish colonialism.  in its heyday in the 17 and 18oo’s, it boasted a population of about 160,000, larger than Madrid at the time, the capital of a huge empire.  Today though, it is a sad little town.  Some stunning building remain to remind Potosi of her glorious past, but the reality is that Potosi, although ruggedly beautiful, is a sad relic of the past.  Impoverished and almost entirely reliant on a rapidly weakening mining industry, it is a city which may be destined to fall further still.

The mines themselves are owned by cooperatives,with and estimated 15,000 miners, mainly locals, working daily.  Rules dictate that miners (all male) must be a minimum of 12 years of age, but we have heard that many are younger.  They work 12-24 hours in a row and are paid only for what minerals they can sell.  For 10 tonnes of minerals, a miner might make about 1,000 Bolivianos, but the cost of transporting these is the miners responsibility and could cost him 500Bs, leaving him a similar profit, about 50 Euros – and he mines entirely by hand and dynamite.

The other huge cost to the miners is their health.  The average life expectancy is about 45 years of age, with the majority dying of silicosis, caused by years of breathing in the fine silica dust found in the mines.  We met one exceptional man, a miner for 37 years, he was very old in mining terms at 53 years of age.  He has a son of 33.  Both are dying of silicosis, his son will most likely be dead before him, and yet both continue to work.  It is the only means they have of supporting their family, ensuring their survival after their deaths.  If a miner has a son, he will usually take his father’s place in the cooperative after his death.  If there is no son, the cooperative will try to find work for the wife or daughters outside of the mine.  Women are not permitted to work in the mine.

Scattered throughout the mine, are dozens of effigies of the devil – our guide estimated about 1,500 of them.  Complete with fangs, horns and a very large manhood, the devil was originally introduced to the mines by the Spanish as a means of inciting fear in the newly Christian miners and ensure they worked longer and harder for less.  Somewhere along the lines however, the devil became the protector.  Miners now make offerings of cocoa leaves, cigarettes and alcohol, to ask for the protection of the devil and patchumama.  Patchumama (mother earth) is for the miners, the mountain itself.  The devil is virile and hungry and in consummating his relationship with Patchumama, they produce the rich veins of minerals in the mountain.  Women are not permitted to work in the mine as the miners fear that if the devil sees them, he will fall in love with them,dismissing Patchumama and thus no more mineral veins will be produced, destroying their livelihood.

The reality of course is that with our without women in the mine, the minerals are disappearing, as is the mountain.  in less than 200 years, the mountain has decreased over 500m in height due to the mining,  Ultimately, Potosi, the former star, will need to find another means of survival or risk total collapse.

The day was not all doom and gloom however, we did have the opportunity to indulge in some explosion of our own and blow up a stick of dynamite once we were outside the mines!  In the end though, the visit to Potosi was just as I had been told to expect, fascinating, fun but a real eye opener and a reminder of how lucky I am.