Mining...
Wow. The mine tour was intense today. I hope that I am able to load some of the pictures, for all that I seem to have landed up at the slowest ADSL internet cafe in town... We started just after 8 this morning and first geared up in "miner wear" -- rubber pants, jacket, belt with headlamp attached and hard hat.
Then we went to the miner's market, where for Bs18 I bought a packet of dynamite to give as a gift. More precisely, I bought a stick of Bolivian dynamite, a packet of fertilizer, a fuse and a plastic bag, which we found out in the blast demo, was all needed. The dynamite gets rolled into a ball, wrapped in paper, the fuse is inserted, the fertilizer is put in the plastic bag, the ball of dynamite gets nestled in it, and the plastic bag serves to hold it all together into something that looks remarkably like a cartoon grenade. This is me nervously holding the lit packet:
The next step was to go into the mine. They have a small museum that documents the last almost 400 years of silver, tin, zinc and lead mining here. More than 8 million people have died mining this mountain -- mostly slave labour during colonial times, but an average of 40 people die every year even now. The conditions were appalling. I am not proud to note that Canadian companies run several refining operations here in which people work 12 hour shifts, seven days a week, working without protective equipment, using hydrochloric acid, cyanide and sulphuric acid to refine the ore enough to export it. Even then it is only considered "silver enriched" and other places and people reap the benefits of refining the metals further. The slurry created by the refining process is dumped directly into the river. And 40 companies do this...
In the mine, we went down three levels: there are only four in total. We met people working in the mines, moving ore, hand-drilling to create a place to put a dynamite blast and other tasks. The air quality was poor, and the mines have an abundance of arsenic and asbestos. Most miners have a life expectancy of only 40 years -- the workers in the refineries only 35. And there are more than 200 child workers, despite the fact that they are illegal. No one cares. Going into the mine required scrambling, crawling, climbing -- all at an altitude that makes walking up a street hard work. If I hadn't had the hard hat I'd have split my head open at least a dozen times, and as it was I suspect I took a year out of my own delightfully long life expectancy from breathing in that poisonous air for three hours. My throat is raw and when I got out, the stuff I coughed up was black and tasted bad. Here are a few pics of the working conditions:
This is a picture of a fellow working with hand tools to drill a hole in which to insert his dynamite (which he'll then have only four minutes to escape before it blows)
These are two guys pulling a full ore cart towards the electric winch that takes the ore to the surface. The winch was only installed 9 years ago -- before that people had to carry the ore (usually 40kg at a time, 30-50 times a shift) up a path that is only about three feet high, and at a greater than 45 degree angle (we climbed it once down and once up and my legs were quivering with fatigue and I'd cracked my head at least three times, even with a headlamp).
Anyway. It was well worth the experience. I am so grateful for the fact that my life and accident of birth gives me options. More than 90% of the workers in these mines do it because they don't have any other options for work. And most die horribly coughing up blood because of a particular form of pneumonia in their early forties.
Yikes.
Then we went to the miner's market, where for Bs18 I bought a packet of dynamite to give as a gift. More precisely, I bought a stick of Bolivian dynamite, a packet of fertilizer, a fuse and a plastic bag, which we found out in the blast demo, was all needed. The dynamite gets rolled into a ball, wrapped in paper, the fuse is inserted, the fertilizer is put in the plastic bag, the ball of dynamite gets nestled in it, and the plastic bag serves to hold it all together into something that looks remarkably like a cartoon grenade. This is me nervously holding the lit packet:
The next step was to go into the mine. They have a small museum that documents the last almost 400 years of silver, tin, zinc and lead mining here. More than 8 million people have died mining this mountain -- mostly slave labour during colonial times, but an average of 40 people die every year even now. The conditions were appalling. I am not proud to note that Canadian companies run several refining operations here in which people work 12 hour shifts, seven days a week, working without protective equipment, using hydrochloric acid, cyanide and sulphuric acid to refine the ore enough to export it. Even then it is only considered "silver enriched" and other places and people reap the benefits of refining the metals further. The slurry created by the refining process is dumped directly into the river. And 40 companies do this...
In the mine, we went down three levels: there are only four in total. We met people working in the mines, moving ore, hand-drilling to create a place to put a dynamite blast and other tasks. The air quality was poor, and the mines have an abundance of arsenic and asbestos. Most miners have a life expectancy of only 40 years -- the workers in the refineries only 35. And there are more than 200 child workers, despite the fact that they are illegal. No one cares. Going into the mine required scrambling, crawling, climbing -- all at an altitude that makes walking up a street hard work. If I hadn't had the hard hat I'd have split my head open at least a dozen times, and as it was I suspect I took a year out of my own delightfully long life expectancy from breathing in that poisonous air for three hours. My throat is raw and when I got out, the stuff I coughed up was black and tasted bad. Here are a few pics of the working conditions:
This is a picture of a fellow working with hand tools to drill a hole in which to insert his dynamite (which he'll then have only four minutes to escape before it blows)
These are two guys pulling a full ore cart towards the electric winch that takes the ore to the surface. The winch was only installed 9 years ago -- before that people had to carry the ore (usually 40kg at a time, 30-50 times a shift) up a path that is only about three feet high, and at a greater than 45 degree angle (we climbed it once down and once up and my legs were quivering with fatigue and I'd cracked my head at least three times, even with a headlamp).Anyway. It was well worth the experience. I am so grateful for the fact that my life and accident of birth gives me options. More than 90% of the workers in these mines do it because they don't have any other options for work. And most die horribly coughing up blood because of a particular form of pneumonia in their early forties.
Yikes.
Comments
I think it was a good thing to do though - you did not look at all comfortable with the dynamite bag! Love the family fake smile there.... :)
I miss you and love you,
Catherine
And I promise I won´t make goat cheese with explosive powder for flavouring, ´kay?