The Mouth of the Beast

It was the first time I had ever held an explosive.
Though purchased for less than one American dollar, the weight of possibility was heavy in my hand as I looked toward the entrance of the tunnel.

The silver mine tours in Potosi Bolivia are not for the faint of heart. For that matter, they are not for people who hold their own personal health and safety at high priority either. So armed with dynamite sticks as gifts for the miners, a touch of insanity, and a promise of back problems in the morning, I bent over and entered the rabbit hole.

Immediately, we were assaulted with darkness, the kind of which nightmares are made. It was a welcomed relief when our guide turned on a headlamp and we could see his
jack-o-lantern grin, as well as the calf deep sludge through which we were trucking. I was thankful for my tetanus vaccine.

The mines are all cooperatively owned, giving the miners optimum chance at “wealth”. This means in a good week, after working sixty hours or more, a miner is lucky to take home the equivalent of 80 U.S. dollars.

The air inside was like inhaling rock salt after running a marathon, and were it not for the flimsy surgeon’s mask strapped across my face, my lungs would have quickly become a graveyard of gravel. Many miners die of silicosis after just ten years inside…armed with this thought, my fellow travelers and I engaged in an unspoken contest of breath holding. It was not entirely difficult. If you were to combine rotten eggs and mildew, and leave them outside in the dead of summer, you would smell something similar.

The walls of the mine are covered in veins and burn marks and the slime of a mountain too long held captive by human ants. We were given hasty instructions on the rules of survival. “Touch this pipe, you burn. Touch that pipe, Boom! We all die”, and if ever the guide yelled “Peligro!” we were to immediately flatten ourselves against the wall, lest be bulldozed by a two-ton cart of rocks careening down the passage like the death trap boulder chasing Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

We descended four levels into the mountain, each ladder more rickety than the last, each heartbeat arriving slightly faster. I couldn’t help but notice that the further down we crawled, the more deeply sunken the miners’ soot streaked faces became. Perhaps the rock is not the only thing collapsing in the dynamite detonations. But their morale is holding strong. It was Friday, and Friday is party day when all the miners lay their pick axes to rest and pay homage to El Tio, the devil and ruler of the mine. Together, we smoked hand rolled cigarettes and drank alcohol strong enough to grow chest hair. I was grateful for the liquid courage and the company, deep in the heart of a mountain.
Laughing.
Like old friends.