Jonesin for a Ride!

Potosi was quite the experience and adventure. We arrived late in the afternoon in town and checked into our hotel. Tom arranged for a 4 hour mine tour the next morning at 9 a.m.

This is a working class town of sorts, but with plenty of old structures to marvel at. Each of the towns have a main plaza in the center of town, with typically government buildings and a church. Since these towns were developed during the 1500’s, the streets are narrow for horse and buggy. The streets are also laid out in the typical grid fashion.

The town has a rich history, mostly because of the mountain and the minerals within it. Currently there are about 10,000 miners a day working the mines in Potosi. At one time, this was the largest and richest town in the world under the Spanish. When the Spanish ruled this area, this town was their funding source to fuel their empire. When the local population wasn’t enough, they imported slaves from Africa to work the mines. Miners would work shifts of 4 to 6 months at a time without signing daylight. The average life expectancy after entering the mines was 10 to 15 years. This area is a major significant to the world when you put it in perspective. This allowed the Spanish to continue otherworld influence an additional 200 years because of the wealth of this mine. Bolivia was the first to revolt for independence in this area, but the last to receive it, mainly because the Spanish always had plenty of forces to guard their funding source.

Today the mines are basically operated by cooperative’s. Our mine tour started with a quick stop where the miners pick up their coco leaves, a bar of some type of substance which activates the coco leaves, and the energy drink, which smells like grain alcohol. It is tradition to bring the miners gift, so we purchase a typical batch for them (coco leave, drink and alcohol). Today’s miners work 24 hour shifts, with the constant chewing of coco leaves to give them energy and it makes them not hungry – another words, these miners are buzzed up on some type of coco buzz for 24 hours. They don’t eat while in the mines these dust is bad for digestion.

Off to another part of town where we put on some overalls, boots and helmet and then headed up the hill. At the entrance they gave us miner lights for our helmets and we saw some miners push out some carts out of the mine. PUSH, I said. These mines are very primitive. We then followed our guide in. The mine we were entering was actually started in the 1600’s. For us tall guys, we were crouching quite a bit while walking, ducking our heads from the air pipes. With being at 12,000 feet, and crouching most of the time, Tom and I were getting quite the workout. The first part of the mine was wet as we sloshed through and walked in-between the railway. Then we branched left where is was dry and time to put our masks on because we were kicking up the dust.

Tom and I were constantly crouching and walking, at times half our height, which made it very difficult. We continued to walk some more, with pauses here and there. We walked about a mile when we stopped and had to squeeze by a cart and up over a small berm of gravel into an area where a miner was working.

We stayed for about 20 minutes talking and asking question with him. Then we headed toward another area. Our guide saw that I and Tom where having trouble and suggested we wait in an area while they traversed a more difficult tunnel. A couple of other people also stayed as the remaining went to visit another miner.

To tell you the truth, I was beginning to get a little Closter phobic with the air getting warmer and stale, and I had seen enough tunnels. I had already seen enough! I didn’t need to trudge through another tunnel. These are deplorable conditions for people to work in and I don’t ever want to buy a piece of silver. The thoughts that ran through my mind as we walked and crawled through this maze were of mixed emotions. Earlier in the week we saw some beautiful silver adorned religious artifacts at the churches we visited during the same era. The thought of the price of human suffering and cost just to adorn one of these church artifacts I found to be hypocritical.

We crawled through another small 6 meter area where we were finally on our way out. Just before exiting, we stopped by a worship icon that miners go to every Friday to give thanks and to go through a ceremony.

This trip exhausted me physical because of the high altitude and emotionally as see what conditions these miners work in. It is all manual labor. We asked why they do not use jack hammers. The answer was only if they find a vein worth a lot of money, otherwise, it is cheaper to use human labor on the cheaper veins of tin and other minerals.

Tomorrow we will visit the minting building in town before we take a road to Uyuni, to visit it the salt flats.

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