Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Journey to hell: Potosi, Bolivia

Today I've had one of the most memorable, valuable and interesting experience of all my journey. I'm in Potosi, in Southern Bolivia, the highest city in the world at 4070m, a city that lives today's present on the same mining "industry" which gave it a glorious past (in the early 17th century Potosi was the most populated city in the world with 160,000 citizens). There are more than 450 mines around the city and the conditions the mineworkers are subject are among the most subhuman in the world. As I hopefully will be never a mineworker, I thought it would have been a remarkable experience to have a tour into those mines to understand better what it means working in such places. Well, Dante has probably took the inspiration from a Bolivian mine to write his Divine Comedy: that's the hell on Earth, for sure. Let start saying that into those mines are employed about 20,000 workers, a couple of thousand of which are between the age of 12 and 16. Bolivian law forbid underaged workers but there are no controls, so nobody cares about their rights. The life expectancy for the adult workers is 42 years old, which dramatically decrease to 28-30 for people who starts working at younger age. They work 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, 50 metres below the ground at a temperature close to 40 degrees celsius. Moreover, outside the weather is awfully cold and in wintertime it can be minus 20 degrees. As this wouldn't be enough, the houses have no heating system and hot water is a real luxury... The average salary? 200 US dollars per month. To survive (just for few years) to this impossible conditions, they chew coca leaves all day long, starting early morning, and they drink pure alcohol at 96%.
Having a tour into one of those mines just for few hours has been eyes-opening for me. Once more, it was the closer thing to hell I've ever seen. Walking (but it's better say crawling) those narrow dark labyrinth of tunnels, with mineral's dust making the air unbreathable and the hot climate making you sweat for each single step, into the mud, along arsenic-covered rocks, potentially dangerous gas and an endless effort required, made me definitely understand I'm a very lucky one. I cannot ignore that.Before leaving, the guide (which is working as a miner as well) told us not to forget to have children, as it's the only important thing in the world. His life expectancy gives him no hope: just few more years left, if he's lucky.
For sure, I'm gonna leave this place with less energies but a little bit more of consciousness and wisdom.

PS: The picture above shows you all the consciousness and wisdom I was talking about... Just a stupid tourist who plays with dynamite!

2 comments: