It would have been nice to call today easy. Enjoyable. But it was none of those things. I feel like me going into the Potosi mines today, on my hands and knees trudging through the muddy minerals and toxins, was a pilgrimage. Every Latin American, like an Israeli or Jew’s visit to Auschwitz, should put their body and soul through the torment in experiencing El Cerro Rico. My nose is still burning from the fumes. My hands still sting from having to crawl on my belly through a one foot in diameter hole just to see a miner at work who doesn’t want to see me. “No me gustas las photos” he would say. Just the look on his face was enough for me not reach for my camera.
Six foot four.
Like my bathing sessions in La Paz, knees pushed up against my chest as I walked hundreds of meters, over 13,000 feet above sea level, shortness of breath and toxic fumes in the air which we had to call oxygen. I’m almost in tears thinking about what native Bolivians had to do centuries ago for the Iberian hard-on that was silver. At least 6 million, possibly over 7 million, African slaves and native Bolivians lived for no longer then two years, forced into these mines for what the Spanish desired most.
It was obvious by their jovial attitude that the other travelers that were with me in the depths of these mines didn’t really grasp the historical significant of where they were. I knew about the souls that were lost where I was struggling to walk but what I couldn’t understand was how they could physically go in theses depths everyday. The average two year life span probably had something to do with the fact that the hole they would travel into gave them only misery. No wages or hope for the future. At least the miners that hunt this swiss cheese like mountain today have a family and home. They have pride but still the misery of mining leaves most dead by 45 with a liver so ruined by the taste of 96 percent proof alcohol - it’s a surprise that the booze doesn’t kill them first. In pictures below you will see plastic bottles with blue and white labels. Those are the preferred drink of the miners. Numbs the pain and helps the time pass.
I am changed. I will never feel the same as I did before when hearing about anyone having to work in these conditions. I would first commit suicide before having to put myself and family through the misery I saw and experienced today. And for that, the miners of Bolivia are better men then I - will ever be.
El Cerro Rico.
A miracle. 52 and still mining.
He was the only one in the mines.
Everyone else was at a funeral for another
miner who died. He was 42.
Two and a half hours of this.
And this was the good part where I could take picture.
Our guide and the old blessed miner.
These are the many holes we crawled through.
96 percent proof.
The miner´s God - Tio.
Tio´s face is a llamas´s skull with
marbles for eyes. The sacrifice of the llama
is part of Bolivian native tradition.
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