20 de outubro de 2020 , por
Workers’ rights were at the center of Bolivia’s political consciousness. It is known as the "mountain that eats men" because of the large number of workers who died in the mines.
Now, Cerro Rico has become a leading tourist attraction—despite the risks, the plight of the miners, and the downward spiral of a community that has fallen far from past wealth and glory. Heartbreaking to many visitors is the sight of children working in these conditions.
“If they get ahead for a week or two, they quickly fall behind when they get sick.”.
The noise of his absence was drowned in the warring selfie-sticks of the crowd. “That is why I want to change the system.” Morales says he and other activists have been lobbying for more government oversight of mining tourism.
Julio worked in a co-operative mine at the age of eighteen, and now runs a. gives 15% of each ticket to the miners he visits.
The need for large quantities of timber to build the mining infrastructure necessary to extract minerals, also caused high amounts of erosion and deforestation. A report by UNESCO and the International Council on Monuments and Sites called the situation at Cerro Rico “urgent,” saying that extensive mining had “severely weakened” the upper part of the mountain and resulted in “a significant risk that miners could die from collapses inside the tunnels, as … has already occurred.”, Tom Perreault, a geographer at Syracuse University, describes Cerro Rico today as a “honeycomb.” “There are hundreds of mine openings, and miles and miles of mine shafts,” he says.
There, visitors are strongly encouraged to buy gifts for the workers, such as dynamite, cigarettes, and coca leaves (miners chew the leaves to boost their energy and reduce hunger during their long shifts). [6] At the start of the 20th century, liberal reforms and an increase in government policies favoring foreign investment led to a decrease in nationalization of natural resources and an increase in ownership by private companies. Cerro Rico miners | © Jenny Mealing/Flickr | © Jenny Mealing / Flickr. Through the windows inlayed within the meter-thick stone walls of the National Mint of Bolivia, where coins were hammered to bear the mark ‘P’, the mountain today is peppered with the shacks of miners that live near the entry holes of the mine’s veins. In 2014, there were 113,000 socios representing 155 cooperatives, up from 49,000 partners and 94 cooperatives just six years earlier. It wasn’t until the Spanish arrived in the 16th century that exhaustive exploitation of the mountain took place. Cerro Rico, which is popularly conceived of as being "made of" silver ore, is famous for providing vast quantities of silver for Spain during the period of the New World Spanish Empire. Cerro Rico has been mined for centuries, since the 1500’s.
But these figures do not account for the day laborers, or “peons,” who make up half of the workforce in the Cerro Rico mines.
“It is one thing to think theoretically about mining. From horrifying historical facts to essential logistical info, here are 10 things you need to know before delving deep into the mines. They then need to hoist the cart back onto its wheels and onto the track to keep going.
"You have to be crazy to work in the mines, with the conditions. On a recent trip to Potosí, I join a group led by Jose Antonio Ferrufino Ticona, a middle-aged ex-miner who runs Potochij Tours.
If the clock hand it moving anti-clockwise, it is still tethered to a larger structure.
Many of the children opt to start work at 2am so they can finish in time to attend school in the morning.
In Cerro Rico, roughly eight thousand people are employed across four hundred mines.
In the systemic reorganisation following. Dropped in the re-privatisation of the mines in the 80’s, Morales has never picked it up again. Cave-ins are common, and they have become even more so in the past decade, as miners have shifted from following veins to indiscriminately removing mass quantities of rock from shafts, or even mining at the surface of the mountain. The city of Potosí in Bolivia has 2 key claims to fame: Well, it was until they dug all the silver out of the mountain, actually reducing the height of Cerro Rico by about 400m. ‘I was not spider man or Rambo, I was eighteen’. Especially since it is believed that Cerro Rico only has a few years of mining left in it, and is in danger of total collapse given how “Swiss-cheesed” its interior has become thanks to 500 years of the activity. Such was the abundance that the streets were said to be paved with silver and the expression “Vale un Potosi” (to be worth a Potosi) came about, which is still in use today. One tour operator estimates that each month five to six people die in Cerro Rico, the majority from cave-ins. The government filled it with cement to stabilize the rock. In the systemic reorganisation following Bolivia’s 1952 socialist revolution, 3 miners were incorporated into the cabinet. In fact, the working conditions of the miners (~15,000 men each day work the mines inside Cerro Rico) are very, very poor with minimal protective equipment.
While socios can potentially receive a big payoff if their workgroup strikes a rich vein, they are often not much better off than the peons, given that they also bear the expenses and risks of the excavation.
Three terms ago, Morales was elected as the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Cerro Rico couldn’t be farther from Silicon Valley. After 1800, the silver mines were depleted, leaving far less valuable tin as the mine's main product.
The socios can tap this pool of contingent labor when mineral prices are high and they can afford the extra help. About Cerro Rico . The first guy running out the front – he’s doing that to make sure there are no rocks, etc on the tracks that could potentially derail the cart. The average life expectancy of a career miner in Potosi is just 40. A day’s work can earn them as much as twenty-one and as little as ten U.S. dollars—an average to below-average monthly wage in Potosí. During colonial times, an unfathomable eight million slaves were estimated to have died in the mines of Cerro Rico – a nauseating statistic that justifies its moniker as the ‘mountain that eats men’. Hanna Michali, a tourist from Germany, tells me that “everyone” should see what is going on in Cerro Rico—and “how lucky we are compared to how hard others work,” she adds. Giving a miner crackers to “perform” for me feels a bit unsettling and suspect. The book Las venas abiertas de América Latina (The Open Veins of Latin America), by renowned Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano, states that up to 6 million slaves died while working the mines during colonial times.
The miners, they add, are proud of their ability to persevere underground, and some enjoy teaching tourists about what their work looks like.
[ citation needed ] This wealth produced the construction of new cities and empires and served to …
“But I wanted to see the working conditions, so I put my morals aside.”, Every once in a while, a group of miners will strike it rich by discovering a high-grade vein.
A trip with one of Potosí’s travel agencies normally costs $10 to $20, including protective clothing, rubber boots, and a helmet with a headlamp.
As he distributes the various presents we bought at the market—crackers, juice, cigarettes, coca leaves—I notice that one of the miners is sitting off to one side. Each ore cart has 3 guys working it. Farinha acknowledges having qualms about the “zoo”-like nature of the tours.
Danielle Pereira with Cerro Rico in the background. 80% of all the world's silver came out of this mine, which increased the wealth of the entire planet. Those who did survive later migrated to warmer parts of Bolivia to form the current Afro-Boliviano community. The biggest health threat is silicosis, an incurable lung disease caused by breathing in tiny rock particles from drilling and explosions, yet few miners wear masks. Elogio Tola, 45, a miner since he was a boy, takes a break with coca leaves, chewing bagfuls to ward off hunger and exhaustion in the Cerro Rico silver mines in Potosi last month.
By the time the Spanish departed Bolivia three centuries later, millions of workers had perished, earning Cerro Rico the nickname “the mountain that eats men.”. Morales is still attune to the historically silenced voices of the country’s indigenous groups, necessitating a more measured response to foreign investment and expansion in Bolivia’s natural resource sector. The work of historians such as Peter Bakewell,[9] Noble David Cook,[10] Enrique Tandeter [11] and Raquel Gil Montero[12] portray a more accurate description of the human-labor issue (free and non-free workers) with completely different estimates. As wealth flowed out of the mines, indigenous and African slaves flowed in. The Cerro Rico de Potosí was the richest source of silver in the history of mankind.
The biggest health threat is silicosis, an incurable lung disease caused by breathing in tiny rock particles from drilling and explosions, yet few miners wear masks.
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