A Miners Life

The hostel you stay in and the people you meet make a huge difference in how much you enjoy your time in a place, especially if you are traveling alone. And I stayed at a great place in Potosi, my next stop after leaving Sucre. When I arrived in Potosi there was a huge parade going on (still not sure why) so a bunch of us headed out to take in the scene. Elementary to high school age kids were all dressed up in different costumes either dancing or playing in a band. Some of these costumes the kids had on were out of this world with the sparkle and flair. That night we all decide to search out a real locals place, back alley style (meaning as soon as we walked in every patron in the place stopped eating and just watched us). We ate steak, rice and salad for less then a dollar. The food wasn’t that bad and there was no food poising that followed; a successful mission in my world.

Potosi is a mining town and most of the inhabitants work in the silver mines which has been a big source of income for the Bolivians since the early 1500s. Back then, the Spanish controlled the mines and its workers by making them work 45 hr days, using their dependence on the coca leaf against them. (Note: The coca leaf has been of immense importance in Bolivia since its existence and is fascinating to learn about- Wikipedia it). I decided to go on one of the tours that take you into the live working mines where you can see the miners and the conditions they must work in. After getting suited up in our mining attire, our first stop on the tour was to buy gifts for the miners- coca leaves, soda, and dynamite. Today the miners average 8 to 10 hour days inside the mines and cannot eat in there, the coca leaves help provide vitamins and energy to the miners.

We then entered The Candelaria Mines, one of the many mines in Potosi. Once inside you can see how dangerous the mining here is, crappy logs hold up the mine walls and without any technology just ‘general knowledge’ on how to mine along the mineral lines, sections are blown up with dynamite. The miners work in teams and there is a leader that directs the miners were to dig or what section to blow up. Every team works for themselves and gets paid not by hours but by the amount of minerals and silver they find. Realistically there are no strict regulations on the hours the miners work or the age they start. Inside the mine we met one man who works with his son, age 13. I asked him why his son was not in school and he said that in school his son doesn’t make money for the family, but in the mine he does. We crawled, slid, and shimmied our way down to the fourth level of the mine, there are about 10 levels in total. We were about 75m under ground and the conditions were horrible, with so much dust and whatever else was in the air made it was painful to breathe (most miners die at a young age from lung cancer). We presented our gifts to some of the miners we met and I realized how little it really was. One outside in the fresh air we were able to light one of the pieces of dynamite that we purchased, yes I got to hold the dynamite with the lighted fuse before our mining guide ran out into the field for it to explode.