World Kanno Travel Blog: POTOSI... the Tragic History of Mining and Slavery in the Guts of Cerro Rico

The Andean mining industry was first brought to my attention last year when I was teaching about gender equality for my AP human geography course. I stumbled upon a documentary called “Girl Rising”, which focused on the sexism and discrimination females face in places throughout the developing world. One girl, named Senna lived and worked in the mining town of Rinconda, Peru. She was one of many impoverished girls lured to work in the mines. Most are promised a decent wage assisting the minors and town in some supporting role. Most find themselves exploited in the worse way, working in the brothels to pay off their debt. It deeply saddened me to hear the hierarchy of exploitation trickle down and degrade both the miners and the girls servicing them. I had every intention of going to Rinconda to learn what I could. I hoped to interview and photograph both the girls and the miners. Unfortunately, I had two strikes against me. 1) I’m a male gringo. 2) I can’t really speak Spanish. In addition, because of the situation, I learned it’s not safe for foreigners to go into this particular mining town because of the negative publicity it has received since the film. In the end, I decided not to go to Riconda, but Potosi in Bolivia, because the stories from the Andean mines need to be told to a wider audience.

town of Potosi

The mines of Potosi are no strangers to the horrors of exploitation. A matter fact, Potosi should be one of those stories from the past that should be known and taught like the Holocaust, Rape of Nanking, or the Middle Passage. The shear number of people affected and the amount of suffering and death that happened here makes you feel despair for the human race.

Getting to Potosi from La Paz was a small detour from my ultimate destination of the Salt Flats in southern Bolivia. I arrived early in the morning after a twelve-hour overnight bus. The landscape surrounding the town was an array of rust colors painted across distant mountains, barren hills, and vast plains. There is no doubt this town was founded as a place for unearthing the precious minerals within the womb of one particular mountain, just at the edge of the town’s periphery.

Cerro Rico

After checking into a hostel, I decided, I’d waste no time and booked a mining tour with a travel next door. I immediately was told I would be having a up close and personal four hour tour with an ex- miner. For twenty dollars for me and another backpacker from Germany jumped on the opportunity.

geared up

holding a stick of dynamite outside the tour agency office

An hour later, I met the guide – A very short, Aymaran-Boliviano named Miguel. His face weathered and teeth rotted, told a story of someone who has lived an extremely challenging life. I gathered from his small stature that he grew up with a lack of nutritious foods. Despite this, he greeted me like a man who loves his job. He was energetic, playful, but most of all, informative from both a historical and sociological standpoint.

Miguel explaining to me the minerals inside.

First founded in 1545 by the Spanish, Potosi quickly grew into Spain’s crown jewel. Cerro Rico, or Rich Mountain was the cash cow that made Spain one of the wealthiest European countries during the 16^th century.

16th Century Spain

For centuries, Cerro Rico produced more silver than anywhere else in the world. The Spanish crown allowed private entrepreneurs to set up mining companies in its American colonies, but had to give a twenty percent tribute to the Spanish Crown. This generated a enormous amount of wealth because the biggest customer was the Chinese and their hunger for silver was endless. Even to this day, the Spanish have a saying, “Vale un Potosi”, which means to be worth great value. And it is said, that the $ sign originated with the letters of the word “Potosi” superimposed on each other.

many minerals come out of the mines

As we rode up to the mines entrance, I couldn’t help but strain my neck from the backseat, to see the top as we got closer. Physically, Cerro Rico dominates the landscape at over 4800 meters high and a temperature below freezing at this time of year. Psychologically, its name emanates horror and suffering of the millions of lives this mountain has swallowed.

We arrived to the entrance and were warned that it is dusty, cramped, and completely dark, so we needed to be extremely cautious. All became true immediately after we entered the hole. Most sections were made for miners about five and a half feet. We crawled through tunnels, spilling into large rooms where extensive mining had taken place. Still to this day, miners are still picking at rocks. Most of the silver is gone, but still contain plenty of other precious minerals.

entrance

One of the most interesting tidbits I learned was how much indigenous and Catholic beliefs still influence the miners. For them, the mines represent hell. Some of the shafts go more than a thousand meters deep. The heat is hell. The potential for danger is a spark away. There are no tributes for Jesus or the Virgin Mary down here. This is the Devil’s domain. And out of respect, statues have been erected throughout the mines to act as places for tribute.

this is Diablo's domain

Miguel showed us, that anyone who enters the mine should bring offerings like cocoa leaves, cigarettes, and alcohol. Requests for protection are said while lighting cigarettes to be placed in the statues mouth and pouring liquor at the base of the devil’s hooves.

tribute of cocoa leaves and cigarettes are common

alcohol is required

lighting cigarettes for Diablo

Spanish conquistador mannequin serving time in Hell

Despite all the offerings, life is short. Accidents, respiratory disease have made the average life expectancy of the miners less than fifty years old. In fact, Miguel’s grandfather died at fifty, and father at forty. Despite, Miguel’s boyish size and thirty years of age, he looks much older from the wear and tear of mining.

The worst of the stories to come of the mines was during Spanish colonization. Millions of natives and about thirty thousand Africans were forced into the mines as slaves. In fact, Spain required one out of five native men in each village or town to work in the mines. Their bodies were used like beasts of burden. When four mules died, twenty enslaved Africans were sent as a replacement. Deprived of their humanity, the suffering was immense. Miguel told me, of every one hundred miners that went in, only thirty would come out alive. There was no regard to their safety and as a result, over eleven million miners died here through the centuries. Sadly, the world beyond these communities, have no idea the suffering that went on for so long. Mining in Potosi is so normalized because it was founded on it, and continues as the cash cow for the residents. Though, miners today volunteer and work in collectives, the conditions of poverty make it difficult to say no.

mining for the future?

Despite the nearly five centuries Potosi has been continuously mined, the town has little to reflect of it’s glorious past. A replica of the Statue Liberty, ironically towering above the central plaza and night market are about the only things to see. It’s not horrible here. It just feels as if Potosi has been stuck in perpetual purgatory. Perhaps, that is the will of Paccha Mama (Mother Earth) for violating her for so long. Humanity has violently taken so much of her property, that she transformed the mines into a living hell. As long as Cerro Rico continues to bleed out its precious goods, its hell will not freeze. The town’s residents exist in a sort of limbo as what will become of Potosi. Mining or waiting for the mountain to call or retire them. It is a place where people idle between the guts of an abyss, while hoping to be the one to discover that million-dollar, baby diamond stuck in a rock.