Potosi and The Mines

Potosi is an old city where a few hundred years ago 160,000 people lived and worked due to Cerro Rico from which they were extracting silver and other minerals. They said that the silver they found in Cerro Rico bank rolled Spain for over two hundred years. Potosi is very high up at 4070m and we felt it! Whilst still trying to recover from the affects of altitude sickness on the Salar D'Uyuni tour we definitely continued to feel the affects during our time in Potosi. Headaches, dizziness, breathlessness and super big gluey blood bogies. Not nice. But coca leaves helped and so did drinking coca tea. We were told that Potosi was not a nice place, grey and harsh. We found it a lovely, friendly and chilled out place. The buildings are ornate and there are sculptures all around the park.

We decided that we would go on a tour to visit the mines and the men and women still working in them, in some of the worst working conditions in the world. We were worried that it might feel a little too voyeuristic but we were really glad we went as it was a huge eye opener and gave us a huge sense of perspective. Whenever I'm having a bad day at work... well it doesn't even compare!

We were taken to meet our guide who introduced himself like this! 

Nuts! But seriously Juan was a really lovely and hugely interesting person. He told us all about his own personal experience with the mines. His father had worked down there all his short life and Juan worked down there for three years until he had a bad accident and his wife said that his health was more important than money. Miners average life expectancy is 42. Then he had luck and found this job as a guide and is now studying to be a teacher. His four kids, he wants to go to university and his eldest one is studying chemical and mineral engineering. We all discussed how little the miners get for their work and even the people working at the refinery (where they extract the different minerals through various chemical reactions) get paid minimal amounts. They have a short life expectancy too, at 55. The people who get all the money are the refinery owners. The owner of the refinery that we visited had several cars and several homes whilst the people who work for him get pitons for a week full of twelve hour days. They make their money exporting the minerals to other countries that have better technologies for extracting purer minerals. Then these countries sell the minerals back to Bolivia. We had a long discussion about why Bolivia doesn't employ these technologies and smelt their own minerals. Juan described how there is a large movement in the younger generation to make this more of a reality in the future. However to study to become a mineral engineer (like his son) takes seven years. Meanwhile the rich get richer and the poor stay poor and die really young and horribly.

We got given trousers, jackets, boots and miners hats to wear and we stopped at the miners market on the way to buy presents for the miners. Below is some dynamite that we bought them!

Then we stopped at the refinery and Juan explained how the processes work.

We met up with some of the workers working in the refinery and gave them some coca leaves.

Then we drove up towards the mine, stopping to take pictures as we looked down over Potosi.

This was where we got our first glimpse of the mine at the bottom of Cerro Rico. There are 700 mines but only 250 mines are operative today. 

Then there was nothing for it but to head into the underground! The cooperative mine we were visiting was called Candelaria Mina Collectivo and it was about 350 years old. Juan's father had worked in this mine, so had he and he knew a lot of the miners as we walked about. Then we headed into the mountain. 850m in to be precise and the ended up going about 37m down to level 3 where we met some miner shovelling in 35 degrees. Level 4, five more metres deep, was the deepest the miners go, there is no oxygen down there so they have to have it pumped down through tubes.

We needed scarves to cover our mouths as there are a lot of toxic fumes down them mines! Lanterns on and wide eyed we started to walk into the darkness.

First of all the tunnel was dark but easy to walk almost standing upright through. We were following the train tracks along which huge carriages are pushed and pulled full of tonnes of the extracted minerals.

Then the passageways started getting very tight! Before we knew it we were scrambling on our bums sliding deeper and deeper into the mine.

We stopped just before descending to level 3 and Juan told us a lot about how they mine and the real meaning of the mining cooperatives. We turned all our lanterns off and experienced the deep dark blackness of the underground world.

We had been meeting miners all along our walking but none were in such awful conditions as those we were with as they worked down in level 3. The heat, the fumes and their exertion were utterly unbelievable.

A lot of the miners we met had huge terrible scars on their bodies, it was an unreal place.

After scrambling back up the passageway, next to sheer drops of the shafts we were crawling next to, and squeezing through the gaps in the ground we made it nearly back up to the upright passage. Before we did that and after a few seconds to catch our breath, as the altitude was taking it's toll on our exertion and we were nearly passing out, we crawled along another passageway to visit the Tio (uncle). Tio is whom the miners believe is the owner of the minerals that they mine and so they give him offerings to appease him to enable them to keep extracting the minerals underground. 

Visiting the mines was an incredible experience and one I sharn't forget. We learned a lot and is was a harrowing experience but one that gave me huge perspective on what some people go through to survive in their lives.