The Heart of Darkness

I had been looking forward to our arrival in Potosi and a tour of their historic mines. The mines captured my imagination and I read anything I could find relating to their history. Cerro Rico, the rich mountain, looms directly over Potosi, its excavation ravaged face a reminder that the town below would not exist at all except for the minerals hidden deep in its bowels.

The Spanish began mining the mountain in 1546, and it has been mined continuously for the following 463 years. The quality silver ore was depleted in the first 250 years of mining. During this time the mountain was producing more than half the world’s silver. Potosi grew to a city of over 200,000 people, larger than London or Paris. In this period, the Spanish removed 45,000 tons of silver from the ´rich mountain´. At today’s price of $17.41 per ounce, Spain’s total take was $25,070,400,000 in today’s dollars price for which some colonialists willing sold their humanity. An estimated 8 million forced labors died working the mines, most of them indigenous Americans. 8 millions lives, painfully lived and silently lost to satiate man’s endless desire for shiny metals.

A tour of the mines today provides a profound lesson in colonialism’s lasting impact in South America. Indigenous peoples, speaking their native Quechua, today chose to enter the same mines that were the tombs and torment of their ancestors. The rich veins of silver are gone and can be seen adorning Catholic churches throughout Europe. Modern miners remove an inferior ore, containing mainly zinc and lead, with trace amounts of silver. Potosi at 4090 meters (13,400 feet) has no agriculture and little other industry. The miners work in small groups each with their own claim, and each getting paid based on the quality and quantity of ore produced. They choose to work in the mines, and being independent they choose how many days to work and how many hours each day. But choice is a function of opportunity and in Potosi, the poorest district in Bolivia, South America’s poorest country there is little to choose between. 5000 men, and only men, work the mines. In any given year 25 men die from accidents inside the mines; cave ins, explosions, or toxic gases. That is one half percent, or one in every 200.

I met a man on the third level of the mine who had been working the mine for 30 years, rolling the dice each year. On the fourth level I met a 15 year old boy who had been working the mines for 2 years. He was shirtless in the stifling heat and worked with a hand chisel at a vein of ore. We gave him a gift which consisted of a stick of dynamite, detonator, fuse, and ammonium nitrate. No toy fireworks for this boy whose childhood was over years ago. I hope he avoids the myriad dangers that lie within that mountain, however if he comes out of the mines safely year after year he will take something equally as deadly with him. The mountain never leaves the miners, they carry it with them, particles of the Cerro Rico lodged in their lungs. They start young and die young usually around 40, main of silicosis pneumonia. The miners of Potosi knowingly sacrifice their bodies to wrest these minerals from the mountain. The Spaniards forced their ancestors to unwillingly make the same sacrifice. My mind wants there to be a difference, to believe that that things must have changed drastically for the better after so many years. However faced with the vivid reality, the difference it not enough.