Virgin of the Mineshaft

If you’re here because you followed my link mid-carnival then go back and finish that post, ye great party-pooper! If you’re here because the title intrigues you, then welcome :)

I’m a Virgin of the Mineshaft. And very few people who have visited the formerly gloriously rich mining town of Potosi can claim to be the same. I’m proud of it. There’s very few experiences I would pass up on as a wanderer but in the mental battle of ethics vs. experience, ethics win. And so the Virgin of the Mineshaft was born.

It started as a stupid joke when I was writing about the article on the Carnival in Oruro and in it I mention how in 1776, an image of the Virgin Mary appeared on the walls of an abandoned silver mine in the dusty, forgotten city of Oruro. Believers called her the Virgin of the Mineshaft and she still remains the main deity of carnival goers (followed by whatever bottle of Fernet, Singani or beer is closer). Now, I haven’t appeared on any walls - that I know of - but I also haven’t done the highly recommended #1 activity to do in Potosi and gone down a mine into the famous Cerro Rico - The Rich Mountain AKA Sugar Daddy of the Spanish Empire AKA The Mountain That Eats Men.

Don't visit the Mineshaft = remain a virgin of the mineshaft. It's okay, you don't have to find it funny. I did in the moment.

View from the entrance of our hostel housed in an old Colonial era building.

Potosi came highly recommended by any traveller we met so we had to go. Having spent 4 days in the vastly diverse and increasingly beautiful landscapes of Tupiza and Uyuni, a city break was just what we needed. Now mind you, this city break will also break your lungs and legs because it’s the second highest large city in the world, sprawled at an altitude of 4090m. We were floored. Potosi is rich, and it likes to show it. The centre of town was straight out of a colonial history book that has clearly undergone modernisation. Lanes full of food vendors, interlocking grid-like streets the SPanish specialised in that held cute shops and open air kicker tables. We spent a couple of days acclimatising and thinking, for the history of Potosi is an interesting one.

Potosi was founded in the 1500s because Cerro Rico is pretty much made of silver. Potosi was the largest supplier of silver to the Spanish empire for a long time. The Spanish monopoly over silver, and the Chinese demand for it would make and eventually break the economy of the Imperio Espanol. Until 1996, over 60,000 tonnes of silver had been mined out of this behemoth, with more still coursing through its veins. When the European market was flooded with Spanish silver and it’s price dropped, Cerro Rico provided - in the form of tin.

But behind the bling of shiny metal lies a truth no one is trying to acknowledge - the real price of this silver. During the Spanish Colonial era, almost 8 million people died mining this mountain. A lot of them were native Incas and African slaves. Today, about 15,000 men work this mountain, inside the honeycomb like mines that run through it. Equipment has improved, but everything else is still the same. Kids as young as 10 are hired to work as they can crawl through small mine shafts better than full grown men. Dust inhalation and the constant risk of falling rocks has brought the life expectancy of the average Potosi miner down to between 40-55 years. Silicosis is unsurprisingly rampant. The 24 hour operation is broken into 3 shifts, but miners can be expected to pull 8, 12 or even 24 hour shifts. Under the crushing weight of tonnes of rock, in a narrow space where wonderful, warming sunlight never has and never will reach. On the surface, trucks crawl up and down the many roads, like an army of ants crawling over the very thing whose insides they carry on their backs.

The men eat the mountain, and the mountain eats the men.

The streets of Potosi are lined with shops offering tours. Every one of them advertises all their guides as ex-miners. That’s great that they have found a way to break the cycle that most Potosi families live through; but that wasn’t enough reason for us to encourage it. For a few hours, to crawl down and gawk at something that has been established as a difficult and cruel practice wasn’t something we could justify as an “experience”. This isn’t your average workplace and despite the numerous ‘unions’ that own different mines, workers still have next to no rights or security. Widows of miners do not receive much or anything in compensation resulting in the sons being sent in to mine for survival. It’s a cycle, and it needs to be broken. Cerro Rico has another 10 to 20 years left in him, and then what happens? In 2011, a giant sinkhole appeared at its peak; a culmination of 5 centuries of relentless drilling through it’s rich bowels.

Cerro Rico - Rich Mountain.

We wouldn’t go down into it, but we definitely wanted to visit this glorious mountain so we set off to hike it. The whole mountain is a rich, red colour and completely devoid of any vegetation. The road snakes up and goes around and it’s very easy to get lost and different roads lead to different mine entrances or have fallen into disrepair and are dead ends. Climbing at over 4000m is a challenge in itself and we were hoping to go all the way to the 4800m mark. As we left the centre of Potosi, things started getting more dusty and definitely more poor. Makeshift shacks and men carrying tools and exhausted faces were all around us. We carried some coca and candy with us; if I’m going to be nosy, at least I’ll be nice about it. I was hoping to talk to a miner if they seemed comfortable, but my Spanish is level A0 at best and so most of the candy just went to random kids who tried to sell us bits of shiny rock along the way.

We started walking up, and within a few hundred meters, the houses stopped and we came across our first mine entrance. I don’t know if it was still an active mine. It doesn’t matter. Onwards, upwards, the occasional “hola!” and the very frequent pauses to catch my breath and things were starting to get repetitive and hot. At over 4600m, we came to a point that had a little shack. A couple of dogs started growling at us so we used the standard strategy of pretending to pick up a rock. Most dogs run away immediately but our guy decided this was reason to become more aggressive. The big black dog started charging towards us and in utter panic, barely holding my guts in, I threw a rock at it. Bad idea! The dog charged the rock, and swallowed it. He then proceeded to attack a cactus bush and ripped it to shreds. This was our time to back the fuck off and hopefully never see him again. It wasn’t easy, but we managed to put enough distance between him and us and my insides decided to remain inside.

Having decided that 4600m is as good as 4800m, we started climbing down - and got massively lost. Dry rocks slipping under our feet and all roads leading to dead ends. We found a miner who seemed to be going down and asked him for the way and handed him some coca. We followed him for a while until he started climbing down, in flip-flops, what can only be described as a sheer rock face. He was mountain-goat-man but Tom and I weren’t. While he got to the bottom and was laughing at our Gringoness, we had to find another way down. It just wasn’t our day though because the next obvious path down found us face to face with about 7 angry dogs. Some more around the corner and now bigboi dog from 4600m was one street above us glaring down.

FML.

I have been scared before, of numerous things. I have never been scared to the point where my body just wasn’t moving anymore. Bolivia claims to have rabies vaccines, but everyone knows you want to go elsewhere if you actually want to survive that disease. Every road blocked by dogs and the clouds were starting to gather in the darkening skies. Eventually, we followed a truck. It wasn’t even the direction we wanted to go in, but there were no dogs so I was going to go. Eventually, after scrabbling over a garbage dump and crossing a creek, we got out. I would describe the experience as beautiful, and traumatic. I wonder how a miner would describe theirs.

View from our hostel rooftop with the Cerro twinkling innocently.

I’m not in a rush to go back to Cerro Rico and I do not wish to imagine what it must feel like to have to go back every day for the rest of your short life. All I can do is hope the miners win their fight and the government sets up more diverse industries. And that El Tio will remember them. If ever there was a God so perfectly suited for his role, it has to be El Tio - the horned, Andean deity that guards the miners when they leave the realm of Christian gods and enter the dark mines.

Back in town, the former Royal mint looks less royal and the Colonial architecture appears colder. The modern poverty lined up next to the remains of former glory serves to remind us that nothing lasts forever. Above it all, Cerro Rico stands tall, holding out against the bugs that crawl through and all over him.