Thursday, November 24, 2005

Silver anyone?

What do crackers, coca leaves and dynamite have in common? These are the gifts i purchased to give to miners on my way to the worlds most mineral-rich mine, San Miguel. The mine, is located in a volcano next to the town of Potosi. BTW, Potosi is the worlds highest city at 4010m. My guide and i ascended into the depths of one of south americas busiest mines, we got to level 6/12. It´s dark, cold at times and stuffy at times, cramped, dusty and the smell of dynamite fills the air. This is no tourist destination, this is the real deal. Currently about 6000 people work here, and as we passed various miners, we made some chit-chat and gave them a small gift. The stick of dynamite was first to go...followed by the coca and crackers. These men work hard, and i mean hard. I met a few miners as young as 12 years old running down shafts with wheelbarrows filled with rocks. Silver is the key mineral, and as you can probably guess, the spanish had a hay-day here. The mine, about 500 years old, took the lives of (an estimated) 8,000,000 indigenous people. At an early age, men were lowered into the mine destined to worked their days away, never to see the light again. Of course there were many protests and revolts... the solution? Religion of course! The clever spanish created a Devil idol within the mine and convinced the indigenous people that he would kill them unless they continued to work. Today, local people still respect the idol, lighting him a cigarette and drinking some 96% alcohol before starting to work. A really eye-opening experience.

1 Comments:

At 10:03 AM, Blogger Matteo said...

Hi Bart,
still compliments for your journey! I've uploaded some photos on my blog, check them out!!!

 

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