Potosí, above 3900 meters high, is the highest city in the world. There is usually no reason to build a city at that height, not just because of the cold, but mainly because of the reduced level of oxigen. You just don't wanna live there...
However, in this place, the spanish found the richest deposit of silver in the whole of southamerica, "Cerro Rico". Today, it's a mountain of 4700 meters high, a mine with endless tunnels in its interior. Before exploted, it was 5200 meters high... The spanish took about 64.000 tons of silver from there, forcing the indians to do the hard work. So people from Potosí are not very happy with the spanish... I was often asked "what did you do with all that silver!?"... The most sincere answer I could have was "it's very sad, but I am not them, and they didn't give me any of the silver either..." They usually smiled after that...
Today, the mine is still functioning, but silver is very hard to find. There are no private companies running the mine, only cooperatives of miners who work for themselves and share the value of the minerals they extract, mostly zinc and tin. The miners get good money compared to other professions here, but the work is very hard... some die of accidents, due to the dynamite. The rest die at the average age of 55 years old, due to the exposition to toxic gases, like arsenic, and the dust inside the mine...
I was inside the mine for 2 hours with an organized tour. We entered in the level of 4300 meters. Inside the mine, either it smells weird, or it smells very weird!.. And breathing is hard... not only we were at 4300 meters high, but there were dust, and the bad smell makes you think twice before breathing... You had to walk with the body bended, as the tunnels were not very high, and at times, the tunnes were flooded by water... but I was managing quite well, until we reached a point deep inside the mountain were it got too hot, around 40°C... added to the previous list!
Then I got stressed, but I was not yet aware of it... I was thinking if I should have not gone to this thing, how could I get out, etc... but none of my thinking was solving the problem, it was just making my stress worse... A bit later, I got aware of my stress... and only then I could change my strategy... I saw how other turists were also in the mine, and how the miners were actually philically working there, 10 hours a day, and much more exposed to the dust and the heat than I was... Then I had no longer any stress, and I started to actually understand the mine, feeling how hard it was to work here, talking to some miners, and experiencing the whole thing more attentively... and I went out from there sweating, but I really enjoyed!
How can a miner keep working there?... In part, it's because of him... he is not looking hard enough for alternatives... but in part, it's because of his enviroment... his father was also a miner and he was brought into the mine at the age of 16... Actually, it's similar for all of us, we are where we are in part because of us, and in part because of our enviroment... That's why, when we do something good, it's not right to take all the credit... and when we suffer from a problem... it's not right to just complain around as if we were not responsible for it at all.
Our tour guide was previously a miner, but he learned english and he became a tour guide. Now he is in the mine only 2 hours a day, instead of 10, he doesn't need to do all the terrible phisical work nor be exposed to dangers like dynamite and more intense dust and toxics. He is really happy with his job now!!...
Sometimes we complain about office work.. and this guy is so happy yet he is inside a terrible mine 2 hours a day... isn't it funny?... an asian saying tells... "life is not about what happens to us, it's about how we perceive what happens to us"...
