History in High Places - A Backpackers Tale

Clink, upfah, Clink, upfah, Clink, upfah. For the group of us deep underground, these were the only sounds. The miner was chiselling at the rock face, forcing a four foot hole into the rock, expelling a small grunt with each blow. Our guide told us to extinguish our lamps to prove that the man we were watching had been in the mines so long he could do this job with his eyes closed. Not that the darkness in any way resembled the experience of shutting one's eyes. Down there it had a texture and a weight, like you could eat it. After two hours of slipping and scrambling and grinding coca leaves between our teeth, we could descend no deeper.

We were four levels down one of the cooperative tin mines in Cerro Rico (Rich Hill), the sickly, otherworldly volcanic cone that looms high above the Bolivian city of Potosi , which, at 4070 metres above sea level, is the highest in the world. At the hill's base the city's rundown colonial mansions clamour and cluster: a crowd of dilapidated offspring surviving on the scraps of a once mighty inheritance. The mines were created to plunder the extraordinary pure silver deposits that were discovered in Cerro Rico by the Spanish in the 1540s. Such wealth saw Potosi become, for a time at least, the largest city in Latin America and one of the wealthiest in the world. Amazingly (for you wouldn't think it walking its shadowy streets today), in the seventeenth century its grandeur and opulence exceeded that of London and Paris . In the eighteenth century the silver ran out and like a car without fuel, Potosi ground to a halt.

Today the mines remain the reason for the city's existence and like its streets and buildings, which in appearance and condition still reside in the eighteenth century, preserve its history. Using techniques unchanged from the mid sixteenth century when silver was discovered there, the men remove ore that contains mainly zinc and magnesium and some traces of low grade silver which remain in the hill like memories of the tons of it once there. A number of tour agencies, both reputable and not so, run trips to the mines for tourists eager to taste the past. That is how we found ourselves deep in the earth, sweaty and dusty, watching a man hollowing a space in the rock for dynamite.

The air in the mines combines heat, dust and pungent mineral odours to give the first indication of the trying, physical nature of life underground. Present in every breath, this initial discomfort recedes to the periphery as you become aware of the jarring physical nature of the miner's work. It is all done by hand and at a furious pace. The earth is blown free, shovelled into large rubber baskets that are raised to the level above through small shafts and couriered between these points in carts. When full, the carts weigh two tons and are heaved along the tracks, four men (although I use the term loosely as many of the 'men' did not look much older than fifteen) per cart. Cheeks bulging with coca leaves, which they chew as an appetite suppressant and to aid with the altitude, they egg each other on; willing the rock to the surface.

Stopping at an underground museum installed by the tour company we learnt something of Potosi 's past; a dichotomy of unimaginable wealth and extreme suffering. The cost of removing 62 000 tons of pure silver was the death of eight million African and indigenous Quechua slaves. So appalling were the conditions in the mines that the men are said to have survived just six months before succumbing to accidents, lung disease or mercury poisoning. At present the conditions in the mines are largely unchanged. Safety precautions beyond a hard hat are non existent and silicosis pneumonia caused by inhaling the dust ensures that many of the miners do not live beyond 40 years of age.

While physically demanding the tour also challenged us in an unexpected way: the miners seemed happy. From our point of view their lot in life is an appalling one. Exhausting physical labour for twelve hours a day where they do not even stop to eat; safety and working conditions that cause us Westerners to go faint and a weekly wage of one thousand Bolivianos (roughly seventy pounds). Yet what seemed to us as an unpalatable daily existence appeared to the miners as mere inconvenience. Joking, laughing, questioning - their lives, underground at least, are characterised by humour and camaraderie. On our way back to the surface, our guide, who had worked in the mines and still has family working there, mentioned that there were times when he missed his former trade. He talked of the simplicity of life underground; how it lacks the temptation of the surface world, whose struggles and anxieties do not allow for something as simple as happiness. As we left the miner on the final level to his work I felt I had some understanding of this. Surface worries dissolve in the sheer physicality of the work. All that remains is rock, shadow and the clink, clink, clink of a job to do in the heart of the earth.

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