May 13 - The Potosi Mines (or... one of the world´s worst jobs)

So, Potosi.

It´s hard to describe just what a horrific history this Auschwitz-colonial-silver mine has had.  Historians estimate that 6 million people have died in the mines over the 400 hundred-odd years the mine has been in operation.  When the Spanish came to the new world they never found their city of gold, but they did find an enormous mountain of silver at Potosi, and spent the next few hundred years forcing locals into bringing the silver to market.  The silver funded the Spanish empire and made Potosi the era´s Dubai - maybe one of the wealthiest cities in the world.  Over 100,000 people lived there (at a time when Paris had less than half that number), at 13,000 feet, and the economy of most of the region was reconfigured to supply the miners and export the gold.  Cities as far away as Salta became agricultural centers just to export crops up to Potosi.

Today the city has a melancholy, charming feel.  It has lots of well-preserved colonial architecture and clean streets downtown (although the drive in was the worst so far - the last few kilometers of road are lined with trash trash trash).  The weather is cold and the sun is fierce.  There are a few tourists and a few modern mines, in addition the what´s left of the Potosi mine.  After being the Dubai of its day now it´s just another Bolivian backwater.

And the mines... people still work them today in conditions that haven´t changed nearly at all since the colonial days. Life expectancy in the mines is 10-15 years, before miners succumb to poison gas or silicosis of the lungs.  In in what could only be possible in a place like Bolivia, you can tour the mines.  So I did.  It was one of the most intense experience of the trip - a nightmare of sorts where at the end you get to back to the sunlight but the miners stay, working.

The shocker about the mines is that the miners are self-employed.  There´s no story here of forced labor, indentured servitude or foreign companies exploiting local workers.  Most miners are young and from outside of Potosi, and they come to the mines because of earnings that are several times that possible to them in other places.  So it´s a classic case of risk-premium... like young American men going to work on oil rigs instead of supermarkets.  Except in Bolivia, the risk premium is enormous and the extra earnings seem tiny, given the terrible state of the economy.

And then there are the ¨customs¨of the miners - the alcohol use, coca chewing and cigarette smoking which probably multiplies the effects of the job.  If they spent that money on face masks... well it isn´t fair to judge as a westerner.  But it´s hard not to think those thoughts when you see the mines.

Peru has it´s own version at La Rinconada, the highest town in the world.  That article by the LA Times rung true.

Slate and the BBC provide interesting color.

I also took a visit to the old Spanish mint, which offers some more sad irony.  Bolivia used to mint money for the entire world.  Now the country imports its currency from Spain (the technology for minting is too expensive these days).  Even the zinc and tin roofs of the shacks in Potosi are imported from Europe (despite the fact that Bolivia has big reserves of both), because the country lacks the industry to process the metals.

So I spent a melancholy afternoon reading a bit and trying to process the sights of the day... the nights are cold and central heating is a rarity so it means a lot of time spent sleeping (under the covers... the only warm place in the city!).  Tomorrow its off to Tupiza, and then a final push into Argentina for the last leg of the trip.

Let´s start out with dynamite and.... grain alcohol?  These two should be kept far away from each other, but, in the mines, people drink 196 proof booze while blasting holes in the walls. 

And then there´s the ammonium nitrate, fuses and some bica for your coca.  The miners drink, chew coca and smoke at the same time.  They say the alcohol helps them with the heat, the coca kills their apetite and ¨filters¨ the air, and the cigs ¨clear the air.¨ Peculiarly, they don´t eat in the mines because they think their food will get dirty.  Just unbelievable.

Other tourists suited up and ready for the mines.

Mining shacks on the edge of the mine entrance, with a good-luck prayer flag.

Pushing an ore cart out of the mine.

Tourists are expected to bring ¨gifts¨ into the mine for the miners, which usually means a few dollars a person worth of soda and coca leaves.  This guy guy a 1.5l bottle of lemonade.  The tours have actually paid for a lot of infrastructure improvements in the mines (like ventilation), and the miners get some freebies.

1 ton of ore stacked high in the ore cart and moved by pure human labor.

In the mines... a lot of the miners teeth are stained with coca and tobacco.

No lights.  It is 100% completely dark in the mine... these are just some headlamps in the distance.

Hauling ore by hand at 14,000 feet.  Unbelievable, back breaking work.

It was hard to get good shots with all the dust and total darkness, but you can get a feel for the conditions here.

Ditto here, shoveling ore by hand into buckets which are dragged by hand onto the surface.

A runner with a big bag of ammonium nitrate (!) to re-supply some miners.

Moving some ore in position to be dumped into the pick-up chutes.

Tired.

There it goes.

I can´t get over how inefficient everything in the mines is... here people manually sort some of the ore before it gets shoveled into trucks for transportation to the smelter.