Potosi, 22nd December

Silver was discovered in 1545 by the Spanish Conquistadors and the city pf Potosi was founded the next year. Even today the vast mountain in which the silver is found dominates the city. It is still producing silver and a number of other minerals and employs 15,000 miners.

The Conquistadors used slave labour from the local population and later slaves brought from Africa to mine the ore. Today the mine conditions are still poor with life expectancy of forty years due to silicosis, accidents and rockfalls. However the mine is now operated by a series of worker co-operatives and despite the mountain being mined for over four hundred years, it is still producing silver.

Our first stop on the tour was at the Miner’s Market. This is as the name suggests and offers everything for the miner. There are the usual helmets, headlamps and overalls on sale. Of particular relevance to Bolivian miners, there are bags of coca leaves on sale. The miners use these to counter the effects of altitude, hunger and exhaustion. Most miners we saw had a bulging cheek packed with coca leaves.

They are superstitious and also buy 96% alcohol to make an offering to the earth goddess, Pachemama. This consists of a few drops on the group followed by a short swig of the colourless, flavourless liquid.. Alongside this there is dynamite in bundles and detonators on sale. A single stick pf dynamite retails for about the equivalent of under USD3. There were also large cardboard boxes lines with plastic with the tops open and you could see the pink pellets inside. These were bags of ammonium nitrate which was bought loose by the kilo. The dynamite is used to initiate the explosion and the ammonium nitrate is packed into the hole to make the blast more effective as it is a lot more powerful explosive than just using dynamite. 

We were expected to bring some gifts for the miners which our guide told us would be a bag of coca leaves and a bottle of soft drink. The drink is partly to meet the need for liquid in the hot dusty mine but also the sugar helps to give energy.

We dressed up and were ready to go...me and Stu

The girls had different uniforms, Shannon, sonya and Julia.

An over view of the mine on the hill just behind the city.

The city can just be seen towards the top left corner.

Me ready to go down the mine. 

This is a working mine so operations were carrying on despite our presence.  

As we were walking towards the mine opening, a rail cart was pushed out by three miners. The rails bend to traverse the slope of the hill. Below the rails were several bins. These are used to store different minerals being dug out of the mine or at the end, a pile for waste rock. One bin held a lot of red rocks which was iron oxide. The rail cart was full of silver ore so it stopped above the bin which was half full of almost black silver ore. The cart was tied to some restrainers and the brake golding the wagon upright was released and the top part of the cart was pushed over and another load of fresh ore was added to the bin. 

We walked into the mine and splashed along the rails disappearing into the heart of the mountain.

The first few hundred metres were shored up in dressed stone. Further into the mine, some of the rock was strong enough to support itself and didn’t need any extra support. However there were other areas that had thick wooden uprights supporting cross beams holding the roof up.

Any of the tunnels were high enough to walk along upright but you would have to duck under the roof supports. There were also several plastic pipes suspended from the ceiling and the roof supports that drifted from side to side as the miners used any available hooking point to tie the pipes to. There were used to deliver compressed air to the working faces for operators to use pneumatic drills to drill holes into the rock ready for blasting. 

As a working mine there was still a lot of movement underground. If a cart was coming you would have to stand to one side to let it pass. Some of the tunnels were not wide and you had to scramble back to a wider section to allow the cart to pass.

At one particular point there was a full cart being pushed to the mine exit and another empty cart going to the working face…and it was a single track railway with no passing points. They have a simple solution. The empty cart is pushed off the rails and man handled onto one side of the tracks to allow the fully leaden cart to be pushed onrds to the exit. Then the empty cart is manhandled back onto the rails and it sets off again.

The tunnels were often waterlogged with the rails under water.We stumbled over unseen obstacles, rock and rail tracks. There was dust in the air which our headlamps caught the tiny specks dancing in the beams of the lights.Some tunnels had less effective ventilation and these were hot and oppressive with no air movement. Water dripped from the ceiling and occasionally down the back of your neck.

There were rock falls both major and minor. Major rock falls require clearing and shoring up of the area to support the rock. There were minor rockfalls which were more of an inconvenience. Rocks on the rails had to be cleared by hand so that the carts could be pushed along. There were piles of rocks in some places resting against the walls where repeated rock falls had been cleared to one side.

Some places were remarkably wide seen here with space to both sides as a miner loaded ore on to a cart.

 After more than two hours underground it was time to leave . We made our way following the guide. The air hissed from poor joints in the pipes above our heads. We could feel that there was a gentle breeze of fresh cool air on our faces. Around a corner we saw the light of day and the mouth of the tunnel and we were at last standing in the open. 

It had been an interesting experience. After two hours of walking through the mine underground and stooping to avoid roof supports, pipes and low ceilings, my back and new were aching. Some of the rest of the group had had enough underground experiences and just wanted to be back on the surface so for one reason or another we were all glad to be back in the sunlight and able to stand up straight.