24 Oct 2002
(Sigh, I had finally caught up with 21 year old Garth, but CFS has tripped me up. Also, my diary entries have dried up for the next couple of months, so details may be sparse.)
Potosi is the city established to take advantage of Cerro Rico ("rich mountain"), which is the largest silver deposit in history. The Spanish fed hundreds of thousands of indigenous and African slaves into the mines and took its wealth back to Europe. Nowadays there's not much silver left and it is mined mostly for tin and zinc by small worker cooperatives. But the working conditions haven't improved much: upon entering the mines, life expectancy drops to 15 years thanks to accidents and silicosis.
Although it could be construed as oggling at the misfortune of others, I figured a tourist dollar was more welcome than a mining dollar, so I went on a tour into one of these cooperative mines. It was pretty intense: hot, muggy, cramped and very very loud. The miners don't eat while working, preferring to dull hunger and pain by chewing their way through bags of coca leaves. One of my fellow tourists (all male!) was completely shocked and overcome by the conditions and was outraged that we weren't also outwardly incensed. Afterwards, we obliterated the physical and empathic discomfort by setting off explosives.
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Note the cheek bulge: coca leaves.
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Bag of coca leaves
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Really, really hard work
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Blowing stuff up
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Cerro Rico
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