Potosi
After leaving Sucre the gang of us went south to Potosi, home of the richest silver mine in the history of the world, and one of the oldest mines period at around 400 years. In the 1800s Potosi was actually the biggest city in the Americas (including N.A.) due to the thousands of people coming in to either strike it rich or work for the miners. The mine is actually an entire mountain, in which there are over 100 seperate mines. We only visited one, which was plenty. 3 hours underground inside a stinking hellhole of a mountain was plenty. Temperatures around 90 degrees, asbestos and arsenic clinging to the walls, dynamite explosions echoing through the tunnels and spewing dust everywhere, poison gases and very thin air at over 15,000 ft, and an average tunnel height of about four and a half feet.
It was difficult. At some points I was forced to crawl on my hands and knees through tunnels barely three feet high. A claustrophobe would not handle this. Of the seven people who started out in my group, three couldn't make it past the first level and had to go out. The rest of us pressed on for two more hours, going down three floors into the mountain. For me it was never that scary of an experience, eventually you get used to the idea of being inside the earth and you stop thinking about it. The hard part was the heat and the height of the tunnels - physically exhausting work.
The real thing of interest in the mines are the miners themselves. These people work sometimes 24 hours at a time, with an average life expectancy of about 50 years old. Generally they die early due to a pulmioary disease, like silicosis or black lung. They spend all day chewing coca leaves to keep their body stimulated, drinking little and eating nothing (the dust clings to your hands and food, making you very sick if you eat inside the mine). The silver in the mine is long gone, yet thousands of people from Potosi work the mine in the hope of finding a new vein and being set for life. Most work in cooperatives (there is no mining company here) so they are in a sense independent contractors, able to set their own work schedule.
While that in a sense is a nice perk, the people work completely manually, with no machinery whatsoever. Going into the mine is like stepping back in time, seeing them work with dynamite and pick axes and trolley carts. The latter of which you witness them pushing manually down the tracks, two men pulling with ropes and two men pushing the cart from behind. It's heartbreaking to see their faces as they go about this incredibly difficult task, the strain of pushing tons of rocks in such conditions has almost erased their humanity and their faces are mainly expressionless.
By far the mines were one of the most interesting things done so far on the trip. Normally I oppose doing something of this sort, being the priveledged Westerner I am not one who enjoys touring the pain of the less advantaged. For example, I really dislike the people who travel to places like these and take those hideously cliched photographs of the down and out locals (you know what I am talking about, the guy who goes to Africa and takes pictures of hungry kids with flies on their faces, or the old weathered man sitting under the sun with death on his face). The miners however are benefitted by the visiting tourists in a large way: each guide takes his group to the miner's market before entering the mine, where we buy dynamite and coca and drinks for the miners and take these supplies and give them to the men working inside. So, in a way, the tourists provide something for a few miners and help them get through their day.
