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Cerro Rico Mine

By Daniel Lins - 2009-10-12

Potosi Mine

The high altitude in Potosi proved Kryptonite for our super-biking muscles, so we stayed for a few days to acclimatize. At 13,420 feet, Potosi is the highest city in the world. It was founded as a mining town by the Spanish invaders in 1546, and still continues to be a thriving (albeit poor) mining city today.

We had an opportunity to visit the sacred mountain where the mine is, Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain). We shared in some of the work with the miners, blowed some dynamite, and breathed in the toxic atmosphere of the chemically-rich mine.

As a chemist, I was horrified by the air quality in the mine. Walking, in, the air was so concentrated that I could immediately detect sulfuric gases, nitric acid, and sulfuric acid just by their smells. I am sure there were countless other harmful vapors which went undetected. In addition to all the dust from heavy metals in the air (silver, molybdenum, copper, and others), this makes for a very carcinogenic environment.

We met one old man in the mine who had been working there all his life. He took some time to tell us about it.

Juan Carlos Aymara Chiclaya is 74 years old, and has been working in the Potosi mine since he was 14. He came to work here as a kid to support his family, and has miraculously survived the toxic air, cave-ins, difficult labor, and dusty atmosphere for 60 years. But it has been worth it, because mining makes 5-6 times more salary than any other normal job in the city. It provides "a way out" of Potosi—if you survive. He now has 9 kids, and not one of them works in the mine. He put them all through college, and is proud to say that some now live in the USA, some work as lawyers and doctors, and some live in other parts of SA. They are the pride of his life, and make all those hard, dangerous years worth while.

Juan Carlos’s case is unique. The average life expectancy for people who work in the mines is 10 years after they begin, due to the horrible working conditions and health problems. And if they escape alive, they usually have chronic lung and liver problems.

The miners work with pick-axes and shovels, pushing carts full of rocks through dusty tunnels and puddles of toxic chemicals. All work is by hand, and the highest technology used is primitive headlamps. WIth all this, the question arises: why don’t they fix these conditions with better machinery and higher technology? The rich resources of the mine certainly warrant investment. But the mountain is sacred to the native religion, and a prosperous tourism magnet (recently named a UNESCO world heritage site), so outside companies are prohibited from developing the site.

Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potosí

Google Maps – The Cerro Rico Mine: -19.618820, -65.750771 Potosi town is a little north of here.

You can see all of the greens, reds, and blues in the surrounding mountains by satellite image. These are not trees, but actually minerals in the rocks!