Potosi

Potosi shocks - that is what Lonely Planet has to say about the town located at4100m above sea level. Well for me Bolivia is a shock. Starting from the beautiful salt desert which we crossed staying more or less at around 4000m above the sea level all the time ending on the desolate state of Uyuni and the non existing road to Potosi. Non-existing means that there is no road, not that there is some road in a very bad shape...Anyway we have arrived at 2am after this grueling experience on the bus and checked in to our hostel. By the way the nights in Potosi are freezing cold...The town as such resembles Cusco so in a way it is quite pleasant. As long as you can stand being at 4100meters. On our first day in town we have visited the beautiful Museo & Convento de Santa Teresa where still five nuns live and where there lots of things are just like they were 500 years ago...quite amazing and shocking in comparison to general Bolivian conditions we have seen so far. If you make it to Potosi you should not miss it cause the tours are great!!!

Geneally however, people come to Potosi to see the mines. Sounds innocent until you actually do the "tour". Rita was not so eager since it is generally advised that the ¨tour" is not for people having claustrophobia. She does not have it in a sense but she does not enjoy dark closed spaces. Anyway without much persuasion as soon as we got one of the travel agents offering the tours she signed up...so there we were - next day at 8.30am we should be at the travel agent to start the tour...

Next morning the tour started a bit late with the preparation for the visit to the mines. We got dressed in proper mining gear as you can see on our pictures. Right after that we were transported to the miners market where we were told about the history of the mines etc an we were to buy presents for the miners who we were to meet (we were to visit working mines). It was intriguing but still kind of what could be imagined as possible in the 21st century - meaning that our guide (to the left on the picture below chewing coca leaves) told us that he has been drinking till 5am last morning because on Sundays it is customary and that he offered us 95% sugar cane alcohol (holding it on the picture) to taste and see what the miners drink. Looking back perhaps it was a bad idea not to taste it. Check out the dynamite together with the detonators on the table to the left of our guide!




Anyway he said that buying this alcohol to the miners is a bad idea since most of them have alcohol problems - the same with the buying cigarettes. So we bought dynamite which you can buy just like you would buy potatoes, coca leaves and some soft drinks. It was like buying a Christmas present. We asked about the dynamite since it was kind of weird that anybody could by it together with the detonator just like that on the street. We were told that Bolivia is not like US and people do not blow themselves or others for the sake of it...Obviously Bolivians are different from human species... Then we went to the private processing plants where the first warning signals started reaching our brains...such appalling conditions and lack of safety etc. was not exactly what we expected. I think there is not to add about those pseudo enterprises except that for sure they would win any competition for inefficiency etc.

Anyway our bus took us to the mountain which looks more like a trash dump. We imagined that we will go through some gate or enter something what would at least resemble a mining enterprise. We were very wrong - the mines are private enterprises (locals call them cooperatives)...meaning it is just a hole in the mountain and anybody can wonder into it...There are probably zillions of such holes around the mountain.

Immediately upon seeing what is going on and the black hole in the mountain Rita panicked and proclaimed to me that she is not going in. In a way I was grateful that she did it before entering the mines... I was right about to tell the guide that she is not going in, when she changed her mind and entered the tunnel...The good thing was that our first stop was in a ¨museum¨ where we had some time to get used to the circumstances. The first photo of this post comes actually from this museum - it is the God Tio. In the museum it was kind of dark so we could not follow too much the text next to Tio nevertheless a couple of days after the visit to the mines we have seen an excellent documentary - The Devil´s Miner - where we learned that this ugly creature was created by the Spaniards and is until today worshiped along Jesus in a strange mix of blended Christian and ¨local¨traditions...the story goes like that: at some point when the locals had enough of being exploited by the Spaniards, they went on strike. The Spaniards knowing that locals fear all sorts of Gods created this ugly creature and told them that he will kill them if they do not go back to work...so they immediately did. Since in Quechua letter D does not exist they named the God Tio (meaning uncle in Spanish, instead of Spanish Dios). Nowadays the miners offer him cigarettes, alcohol and coca leaves...

From there on basically because the way was so tiresome it was difficult to panic...there was no time for it. So off we went often crawling through very narrow passages etc. There was so much dust and it was so hot that one did not know what is better - breath through the mask or try to inhale through it what made you feel like in a sauna...with the slight difference that instead of steam you inhaled dust...I have to emphasize again that because it was so tough to move there was no time to think about the dangers etc...


We have seen miners pulling 2 ton wagons, shuffling the stones on them and preparing detonations...we have survived though during the next three days we were not able to walk as our muscles hurt so much from walking two hours in a very awkward for us positions.

About the mines - workers start working there at very young age and die around 40. There is no security nor any kind of oversight over what is going on...It is just unimaginable though only a couple of years ago something like that was happening in Poland near Walbrzych (so called Biedaszyby for the ones knowing Polish) where mines were closed and consequently people illegally started to mine for themselves (there was also a movie made and some articles published in Germany - der Spiegel). The scale is though not comparable - moreover in Potosi this is legalized madness - actually an example of real free capitalism which definitely cannot be encountered anywhere in western world - extremely interesting considering that the country is ruled by Evo Morales who hates US, capitalism and tries to nationalize whatever is possible. Nobody knows how many people are in the mines at one time but definitely over ten thousand. No one seems to care for their well being - perhaps except Tio who they fear so much... I recommend everyone to watch the movie The Devil´s Miner to understand what I am talking about.