Potosi

We spent five nights in Potosi - more than planned because there is currently a nationwide strike, from transportation to medical care. Potosi is a 500 year old silver mine and it was the gem of the Spanish empire - the richest mine in world history and the site of some of the greatest suffering in human history. More than 8 million workers and slaves have died in the mine they call "the mountain that eats men." It is still active but just barely - some geologists have said that it will run out of silver and perhaps begin to collapse within 10 years. It has already dropped about 500 meters in height from when the Spaniards began to mine it intensively more than 500 years ago. Today it is mined by cooperatives, using extremely primitive methods in marginal mines at extraordinary damage to their health, breathing in arsenic and exploring unscientific veins with dynamite lit by hand.

We went on a tour through one of the mines. The opening passageway had been constructed by the Spaniards using arched tunnels made of stone. As we progressed further into it, the method of digging had changed to jackhammers and dynamite because it is much cheaper and that particular mine wouldn't be profitable with more expensive methods. Nothing was automated except for air tubes pressurized to power the jackhammers. The air was stultifying and it felt ominous. We brought the workers alcohol and dynamite to compensate for our intrusion (they also get a share of the profit, we were told). Our guides had worked in the cooperative before, so there was an understanding and camaraderie between them that made me feel like less of an obstruction for being there. One of the guides, Juan Carlos, and I spent some time talking. He is 33 years old and worked in the mines from age 20 to 25 as his father had. He quit because all of his friends died of lung cancer, as his father had at age 45. When his father was dying in the hospital, he would see many family friends there as well, but almost every time there was one less. The miners work long hours and drink extreme amounts, sometimes inside the mine. Their favorite drink is 96% alcohol and $2 for half a liter. Juan Carlos told me that when he began working in the mines, he thought it was extremely stupid to drink so much, often blacking out. After some time working there, he understood and joined them. It was very sobering to talk to a man not much older than me who is resigned to dying soon (he has not been diagnosed with anything, but the mines are so terrible that he has to think that way). I'll never look at a piece of silver the same way again.