A Journey into the Mines of Potosi

POTOSÍ -- Cerro Rico (meaning Rich Mountain in Spanish) towers over the highest city in the world like a goliath. It is here that at the height of the colonial era, the Spanish forced the people of the area to mine silver for shipment back across the Atlantic. At its peak in the early seventeenth century, Potosí´s population of 160,000, exceeded that of London, Paris and Madrid. Spain made its silver coins here for nearly 400 years (You can see the ones that did not make it back to Spain at the Mel Fischer wreck museum in Key West).

Needless to say, the mountain has been raped of nearly all its silver, but more 15,000 locals still enter the dangerous mines to hunt for tin and other metals. With arsenic and asbesto dust clouding the air, the average miner lives only to about age 44. Still, they come for the money, 1,500 bolivianos a month, twice the national average.

Meghan and I journeyed into the mines to see just what it was like to work there. We started as a group of six, but three people quickly dropped out as the passageways began to narrow and the ceiling began to drop. With only the light on our helmets and scarves wrapped around our faces to keep the dust out, we crawled, climbed and slid through three stories of a 350-year-old mine, which although rather depleted, still contained hopeful miners. (When we crawled past a miner, we gave them gifts of coca leaves, soda and dynamite.) The conditions in a mine like this are what you would expect: horrid. About 90 percent of miners here say they only do it for the money. Nearly 8 percent polled said they did it for fun -- mostly, the pollsters say, teenagers who like the thrill of a dangerous job.

At the end of our visit, our guide gave me a green mushy substance, and I began rubbing my hands with it to get the grime off my hands. I thought it was some kind of weird soap. Meghan looked at me like I was crazy and said the guide wanted me to shape it into a little ball -- it was not soap, it was dynamite! After I did this, he put a three-minute fuse into it and set it alight. Then he handed it to me before I had a chance to react. After a quick picture, he ran over a small bluff and dropped the package. A minute or so later... Kaboom!!!





Pictures: Entering the mine; our groupmate Malay from England before crawling through a scary section of mine; the two of us enjoying the rare chance to stand up in the mine.