At 4070 metres above sea level, Potosí is the highest city of its size (145,000 inhabitants) in the world. But it isn’t this fact that has earned Potosí its fame.
Potosí’s story is wholly tied to its silver.
It began in 1544 when a local Inca, Diego Huallpa, was searching for his escaped llama. At high altitude it can get pretty cold so, feeling the temperatures drop, he stopped to light a fire at the base of a mountain known in Quechua as Potojsi. Legend has it that the fire grew so hot that it melted a vein of silver running through the rock.
News of his discovery reached the Spaniards and by 1545 a huge mining operation was underway to extract the silver from the mountain. Potosí soon became the largest and richest city in the Americas, with enough silver found inside the mountain to – figuratively – build a bridge from Potosi to Madrid.
The mountain of Potojsi is now known as simply ‘Cerro Rico‘ (rich hill) or ‘The Mountain That Eats Men.’
The Reason?
Long hours and brutal working conditions meant that those who didn’t die as a result of accidents or explosions in the mines, died from lung diseases such as Silicosis or from mercury poisoning (mercury was used in the process of extracting silver).
After the Ley de la Mita (a mandatory public service system used by the Incas) was introduced in 1572, workers spent up to four months at a time down the mines. They worked, ate and slept below ground; a third of the year spent without ever seeing daylight. The harder they worked and the longer they were exposed to noxious chemicals and gasses, the shorter their life expectancy became.
In 1608 the Spanish colonists began to import 1500-2000 African slaves per year, in order to augment the diminishing workforce. By the end of Spain’s colonial reign in 1825, an estimated eight million African and indigenous workers had perished in the Potosí mines.
The Potosí mines after the Spanish Reign
Before the end of the colonial reign, silver production had already began to deteriorate. The veins of seemingly infinite riches that once ran through Potosí’s Cerro Rico, were finally running out.
The city, whose population once topped 160,000 at the beginning of the 17th century, fell into decline. By the time independence had been won, the total sum of Potosí’s inhabitants was less than 10,000.
From the end of the 19th century, the city relied increasingly on mining tin – another metal that was found in abundance in Cerro Rico – in order to make a gradual recovery from the decline of silver production. But even this was short-lived, for the price of tin collapsed in 1985, and subsequently many of the state-owned mines were privatised or shut down.
Nowadays miner-owned cooperatives continue to operate under conditions that appear to have changed very little since the colonial era. Workers make a living from mining zinc and lead, whilst always carrying with them the hope of finding one of the few veins of silver that still exist within the mountain.
Learning about life in the mines
Aside from reading articles online or watching The Devil’s Miner, an insightful and moving documentary in which a 14-year old boy tells the story of his life as a Potosí miner, it’s also possible to gain first-hand experience by taking a guided tour with one of the local travel agencies in Potosí.
Whilst I had mixed feelings about doing this from an ethical point of view, I do think it’s important to educate ourselves as fully and accurately as we can do about the places we choose to visit. And no amount of reading about what it’s like to work in the mines could compare to the experience of actually spending time inside one myself.
So, mild claustrophobia aside, I signed up for a half-day mine tour with Big Deal Tours. Big Deal Tours are apparently the only company in Potosí that is run and owned by the town’s miners or ex-miners.
Visiting the Miner’s Market
Having collected the safety clothing and equipment (impermeable jacket and trousers, rubber boots, helmet and an electric lamp) that we’d need in order to enter the mines, our first stop on the tour was the Miner’s Market.
The Miner’s Market is a place where miners can buy all the necessary tools and equipment required for their work down the mines, as well as coca leaves, cigarettes, and alcohol.
Chewing coca leaves suppresses the miners’ hunger and tiredness, therefore increasing their productivity and allowing them to work longer hours. Along with the 96% proof alcohol you’ll see for sale here (the same stuff we drank before embarking on our 5-hour bike ride down The World’s Most Dangerous Road), the coca leaves are also used as an offering to El Tío – The Devil.
Where Pachamama (Mother Earth) can protect the miners above ground, the underworld is home to the devil, so they must offer him gifts of coca leaves and alcohol, in order to ask for his protection below ground.
As part of the guided tours it has become customary for tourists to purchases gifts for the miners at this market. Whilst our guide advised against buying cigarettes (not good for the miners’ already damaged lungs), I had no problem at all parting with 15 bolivianos (£1.35) in exchange for a large bottle of Fanta and a bag of coca leaves.
Adequately suited and booted, we were then driven to a refining plant where we were shown the various different stages of extracting minerals from the rock and subsequently purifying them, before arriving at the mine entrance.
Inside the mines
Entering the mines is not something I did lightly; once you’re inside some very real dangers exist. You will be exposed to noxious chemicals and gases, including silica dust, arsenic gas, acetylene vapours, as well as asbestos deposits, and whilst it’s unlikely that only two hours of exposure will cause any lasting harm, no-one really knows for sure.
Dynamite is used regularly, carts laden with heavy rocks come rattling down the tracks upon which you walk (you have to rely upon being able to jump out of the way in time), surfaces are slippery, tunnels are poorly-lit (if at all), and visibility is incredibly poor.
On top of all of this, Cerro Rico is riddled with enough tunnels running through it to leave it dangerously close to collapsing at any moment. Every blast of dynamite weakens the tunnel walls and further destabilises the mountain.
The mines we visited were Rosario Bajo and Candelaria Baja, both of which belong to the cooperative, Unificada.
More than 100 miners work in each one, performing operations such as hammering and chiselling the rock by hand, sorting mineral-rich rock pieces from worthless rubble, carefully placing dynamite into minute crevices, and carrying weighty rock-filled sacks or pushing heavily-laden mining carts to the mine entrance.
At one point we were asked if any of us wanted to help the miners to push one of these trolleys, and Stu (who works in the construction industry at home, and considers himself to be a reasonably strong and capable of heavy-lifting) volunteered. After just a few minutes he was panting furiously and admitted that he couldn’t imagine having to do that every day for hours on end. Even with the help of two other miners, he’d struggled to move the truck less than a hundred metres.
Going deeper underground
Whilst I’d had to adapt to walking in almost complete darkness through water thick with silt, and to noises I was unfamiliar with (the constant hissing of pipes as they pump oxygen into the deeper parts of the mine) and smells I didn’t recognise, the initial part of the mine boasted relatively wide tunnels and high ceilings – high enough at least that I didn’t have to duck as I walked.
Although it was an environment that was alien to me, I didn’t feel at all claustrophobic or panicky, and I was breathing normally with plenty of oxygen available to inhale.
However the further into the mine we ventured, the less comfortable I began to feel. The tunnels got darker and narrower and I lost count how many times I banged my head on something overhead, either because I couldn’t see properly or because I failed to duck down low enough to allow for the extra few inches that the helmet added to my height.
The walls were covered in all sorts of brightly-coloured, strangely-textured minerals and chemical compounds, which – whilst visually fascinating – could also be potentially deadly if touched. Our guide pointed out a large quantity of arsenic (a highly toxic chemical used as a poison in medieval times) seemingly growing in between the cracks in the rocks above our heads.
I was starting to wish I’d bought some gloves at the Miner’s Market earlier that day, because if I lost my footing I would have been too scared to touch the walls in order to steady myself.
As we descended deeper and deeper into the mountain, down poorly rigged ladders that led us rather precariously from one level to the next, I noticed that I wasn’t breathing as easily as I had been just an hour beforehand. My chest felt tight and I longed for some air that wasn’t oxygen-starved and filled with dust.
I could only imagine how the miners felt, having to spend almost half their waking lives down there.
Our guide informed us that he worked down the Potosí mines for seven or eight years from the age of 13, and admitted that if he hadn’t have made the transition into the tourism industry, he would more than likely be still doing so.
He was quick to add that there are no longer any children working down the mines; a statement that seems to be disputed by NGOs such as Amigos de Potosí, who state that because child labour in the mines is illegal, many companies will not admit that it still goes on.
He explained that even since the silver decline, mining is still the primary industry in Potosí, and although none of the workers can admit to liking their jobs, they are very proud of the work they do, and it does pay well in comparison to other employment in the city. However, as all the mines now operate as cooperatives and the miners are only paid for the minerals they recover, this does mean that they have to work incredibly long hours six or seven days a week.
Takeaways after two hours underground
Whilst I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the voyeuristic aspect of the tour (essentially we just rocked up, wandered around for a couple of hours, took photographs of the miners at work, and then hopped back on the bus to continue our travels), it was an educational experience – mentally, physically and emotionally.
I have huge respect for the miners who work tirelessly every day to support their families, in the knowledge that their job will probably kill them one day.
One day the reserves will finally run out, too. What then? Will Potosí simply become a ghost town, its grand colonial buildings surrendered to Mother Nature and its people struggling to make a life for themselves elsewhere.
Have you visited a mine before? Do you agree with the ethics of visiting one? Educational, humbling experience or a voyeuristic tourist attraction? Let me know in the comments!
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