Potosi was founded in 1545 after silver was discovered. Because of that it became one of the richest cities in the Americas until the silver dried up. During its booming days, 8 million people died extracting and processing the ore. Today, the mine is still active and is open for tourist to visit.
The conditions are still horrible: the mines are still a bunch of passages of varying heights, and to go from one level to another the opening was so small that we had to crawl through on our bellies. The temperature in the sections of the mines that we went to also varied between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius! The youngest miner currently working in this mine is 10 years old and the oldest 68. Our guide was 12 years old when he started working. The life expectancy is 55 years old (increased recently from 45), and for at least the first 5 years working in the mines, miners do NOT get any medical coverage. Yet still, by Bolivian standards, this is a good job as the income is about 4 times the average Bolivian salary.
The mining tours may seem like voyerism, but they actually help the miners - with our tour operator, Koala Tours: http://www.koalabolivia.com, 25% of our tour fee goes toward the miner cooperative to help build a new hospital only for miners .
As for the tour, we started by visiting the miners market where we bought gifts for the miners: water, juice, coca leaves, cigarettes. We could also have bought dynamite as it is legal for anybody (including tourists) to do so in Bolivia.
From there we went to the processing plant. Nowadays they use cyanide instead of mercury to extract the silver… uhh.. that seems much safer..?!
Finally, we went on a two hour tour of the actual mine, which is located 4300 meters above sea level. The mine is still active, and on several occasions, we had to jump or scramble up the wall of the mine to get out of the way of incoming carts.
