i didn't get to play with dynamite or with tnt last week. a bummer, indeed.
i did get to put on some goofy clothes and go trudging through an old, but functioning mine shaft, though.
the tour was great. it was a group of about 8 of us and our tour guide Fredi Silver (not sure if that's his real name). after being outfitted in our grey overpants, matching jacket and super cool helmet complete with headlamp we were ready to head out into public. we made a quick stop to pick up a backpack's worth of gifts for the miners (more on that in a bit) then piled into our bus and up the mountain we went. this one in fact
half way up we came to a stop outside the two-meter high entrance to the santa maria mine, one of dozens of mines operating. 500-year-old cerro rico mine was the heart of spain's silver lode with native workers pulling up tons of silver to be sent to europe. the mine was so prosperous the city of potosi became the largest city in the americas, and one of the largest in the world. there was so much silver in its mines the town's name was, and still is, a spanish idiom for ostentatious wealth.
but then the silver ran out. this is where we got our civics of cooperative mining lecture.
bolivia's mining industry was nationalized during the revolution in the 1950s. though the silver vein is all but non-existant today, there's still lodes of tin, zinc and other minerals to be pulled. The miners are organised into cooperatives and lease their respective sections of the mine from the government for a fee of 6% of their earnings. each mine is run by 30-40 miners who can set their own hours but often work a slaves pace given the saturated tin market.
so here we have several dozen miners, ranging in age from 13-55 (at least that i saw that day) working long hours in poorly ventilated mine shafts with nothing but hammers and dynamite. and they let us gringos put on helmets and have a look-see.
after paying government fees, cooperative fees, etc., doesn't allow for a lot of luxuries. here's where those gifts we picked up earlier come in. the tour groups bring in bags of small luxuries to give the to the miners you come across on the tour. it's sort of a "thanks for letting us watch you work your ass off" thing.
ours included.
- a couple bags of coca leaves: coca leaves are legal in bolivia, cocaine is not. the miners chew the leaves for energy and concentration. the miners don't eat anything but a few large handfuls of coca leaves during their work shift. bad luck, they say.
- a couple packs of cheap, hand-rolled cigarettes
- a three liter bottle of orange soda
- a miner's gift bag including, (1) stick dynamite, (1) bag of tnt, (1) four-minute fuse, and (1) detonator.
- 96%-proof alcohol distilled from sugar cane. 1 liter good for six heavy-set miners on a friday night. comes in a plastic jug not unlike that 2-dollar anti-freeze they sell in gas stations. our guide says it's only consumed on days-off and special occasions, but the the plastic bottles scattered all over the mine suggest otherwise. most of the deaths in the mine aren't due to cave-ins or toxic gas but to alcohol related falls.
so armed with all this we clawed, clambered, shimmied and spelunked our way through the 30-meter deep mine. the main passages were barely tall enough to stand in, and the mines arteries were often barely large enough to squeeze through. i'm not a claustrophobic person, but when you realized you're surrounded on all sides by grimy rock and breathing thick, dusty air several meters underground it's easy to get that panicy feeling.
but i survived. we all did.
i'm still not quite sure how i feel about offering up third-world working conditions as tourist attractions. the miners seem receptive to the steady stream of curious gringos, but that doesn't do much to change the feeling that this isn't somewhere a lanky kid from middle america should be. the workers are independent, sure, but it's hard to believe that work like this is totally voluntary. especially for that 15-year-old kid who was definitely not new to the job.
from potosi, about 4,000 meters up, i'm off to uyuni to visit the salt flats. the andes are beautiful, no doubt, but i'm definitely looking forward to getting down to some more reasonable altitudes. until later.
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