La Mantaña que come Hombres - April 19th, 2008

4000 up, and 100 down.

So it goes were in Potosi, the highest city in the world, the air so thin you get tired brushing your teeth and beer practically explodes from the bottle.

We´re here because we finally connected with out illustrious spanish teacher in Sucre, but she´s gone for a few days so we grabbed a quick bus to mysterious, tragic Potosi.

Potosi is dominated by Cerro Rico, a legendary mountain so filled with silver that it underwrought the Spanish Empire for hundreds of years. But not without cost, the mountain has killed between 4 and 8 million people. Million. The skyscape of Potosi is not a mountain but the largest grave ever placed on the soil, filled by greed. Tours operate daily to take tourists into the mines, now owned by several miner´s co-operatives, and show both the medieval conditions, and the morbid silence of the mountains´s soul. The exploitative nature of visiting people working towards their death is actually really balanced by the somewhat mandatory gifts of coca leaves, alcohol, and dynamite that visitors give the miners, their wives, and their children, all of whom can be found deep in the earth, and the darkness.

Jess and I grabbed a tour and donned the mandatory "my god tourists are stupid" overwear and headed into the mines.


Now, a big part of visiting the mountain has nothing to do with the social reality of Potosi and it´s miners, but with decending hundreds of metres in the earth. For those of you like me, the absolute most frightening, terrifying, and debilitating experience one could endure would be a complete enclosure in pitch black mining tunnels. The tunnels of Cerro Rico are not the same as North America, they are unventilated, unlit, unpowered and often under four feet round in diametre. I mean scurrying through this:


I cannot actually describe something I am more genetically frightened of.

Anyways, several parts of the tunnels were walkable, and even opened into small caverns, amidst the quiet work of Miners. As I said, there is no power in the mines, so all rock dislodged is puahed out in carts by men, adding to a growing understanding of the mountain, that what has happened in here has not changed for hundreds of years, and may never. To reinforce the point, the ghosts of Catholicism do not seem to penetrate the rock, and in a country with almost 100% christian religion, the only gods down here are the ancient ones...

This is Tio, or "Uncle". The statue is hundreds of years old, but the horns were added later as the Christian philosophy appropriated the god of the dark, hot caverns as El Diablo, a concept familiar and seemingly fitting. Tio is covered with coca leaves, cigarettes and alcohol offerings, every Friday the mineers come into this cavern, or sveral smaller subsidiary caverns across the mountain, to provide offerings and ask for wealth and safety. The photo is pretty wretched, but I have a great video that I will throw up if I ever get internet faster than a burro.

We emerged from the mountain hot and filthy, actually climbing hand and foot out from the tunnels. I had, somehow, lost a stick of dynamite inside, (I am not making this up), but it didn´t really seem to phase our guide much. I was comforted in that uncomfortable manner. It was an incredible experience, from the inky silence to the miners, a step closer to understanding the country, but for it all, there are still some sights you can´t wait for...