Trip To Bolivian Mine Is A Blast ‘Suffer-Tourism’ Has Reached A New Low In A Silver Mine In Potosi, Bolivia

Move over Eco-tourism. Suffer-tourism is here.

Step right up and pay money to watch people suffer. No joke. It’s happening in the Bolivian mining town of Potosi right now. And what better place? Over the last few hundred years, millions of men have died working in the local silver, copper and zinc mines, done in by explosions, cave-ins and lung disease. It’s a far cry from Club Med, but somehow Potosi has managed to become one of Bolivia’s most popular tourist attractions. I had to see it for myself.

Potosi sits in the southwest corner of Bolivia, an overnight bus ride (300 miles) south from La Paz on a road with more potholes than actual road. Once I arrived, tour operators began fighting over me in the street. For $5, I allowed myself to be crammed into a Koala Tours minivan with about 20 other young (Swiss, German, Australian and English) travelers. We were driven to the other end of town to pick up our mining gear: a hard hat, rubber boots and rain jacket.

Jaime, our guide, strongly recommended we pop around the corner and pick up some gifts for the workers before entering the mines. A former miner himself, Jaime said we couldn’t go wrong with sticks of dynamite, fuses, blasting caps, coca leaves and unfiltered cigarettes. Not wanting to disappoint, I headed down the street in my junior varsity fireman outfit with a shopping list that would get me arrested in most American supermarkets.

Much to my surprise, every little convenience store in town carried these items. I could just walk up and buy a stick of dynamite as easily as a candy bar - only the dynamite cost less! Blasting caps and fuses were even cheaper. A dozen unfiltered cigarettes cost a dime, a lunch bag full of coca leaves about 20 cents.

Everyone in my group went a bit overboard. I spent $3 and got a few sticks of dynamite and a couple of blasting caps with fuses. The others bought at least twice as much. The shopping was fun, but when we reboarded the minivan I felt a bit uncomfortable surrounded by enough explosives to blow up several mini- and perhaps a few full-sized vans. Mere tourists, myself included, were handing sticks of dynamite around and comparing them like Eiffel Tower refrigerator magnets.

The silver and zinc mine we visited was in the hills a few kilometers outside of Potosi’s town center. At a gravel pit near the entrance, Jaime detonated some dynamite for our amusement. He buried the stick a few inches under ground, lit the fuse and we all took cover. Following the big bang, we ran over to see a smoking hole just big enough for a cat to bury some scat.

As we approached the mine, I couldn’t help noticing many of the workers sitting around eating coca leaves. Their mouths were stuffed to bursting, and several of the older miners had cheek bulges that would put a squirrel to shame. Jaime said this was their “meal” for the day, or rather that the coca suppressed their hunger so they could work without eating. He introduced us to a few of the men and they held out their hands for our gifts. It felt like Halloween … in Afghanistan.

Jaime lit our lanterns and led us into the mine, which he said was being “rented from the devil” (such a comforting thought). We walked hunched over through the dark, narrow, 4-foot-tall tunnel that went, more or less, straight into the hillside. We stopped occasionally to let a few miners scurry past us with 80-pound bags of rock debris on their backs.

Safety standards? Don’t be ridiculous. Working conditions in the mines had not improved in 300 years.

The air I was breathing had already been sucked free of oxygen by at least 500 people and replaced with a tasty mixture of asbestos, soot and body odor. Support beams were almost non-existent, though I do remember one in particular. Jaime pointed out a huge crack in it. “That one’s about to go,” he admitted, then tapped it and some loose rock fell on my head. I was afraid the whole mine would cave in at any moment … and it wouldn’t have been the first time this had happened.

We stopped to chat with a sweaty 22-year-old who was pounding a rod into some rock with a hammer. He seemed to be progressing at the rate of one millimeter per decade. Through Jaime’s translation, he explained that 95 percent of the miners were making $3-$5 per day in small collective work groups, and the other 5 percent, who’d discovered mineral-rich veins, owned several Mercedes each. Never mind that there wasn’t a decent road in the country.

Along the way, Jaime introduced us to the Devil of the Mine (affectionately called “El Tio,” or The Uncle), a clay figure about as scary as Mr. Potatohead. It was adorned with cheap jewelry and a used hairpiece, part of which had been cut off and fitted as a goatee. It was surrounded by flasks of alcohol and unfiltered cigarettes left as offerings. With such a high death rate (most miners die of lung disease by age 40), making an offering to “El Tio” is regarded as a practical safety measure.

After an hour, the tunnels all looked the same to me and I was beginning to feel the effects of the poor ventilation. On the long walk back, we stopped occasionally to chat with a miner and shorten his life by giving him a couple of unfiltered cigarettes.

I got so excited when I saw the light at the end of tunnel (literally) I smacked my head on the ceiling and fell backward into a puddle. Once outside, I gulped fresh air like it was free beer.

Walking around in the mine for two hours felt like an entire week. And there was nothing quite like seeing people slaving away for a few dollars a day to put my own problems into perspective. Obviously, we shouldn’t be turning a blind eye on this and other human hardships.

On the other hand, the fact that tour operators profit from this suffering doesn’t seem right. However, if they helped the miners obtain a safe, breathable, well-lit working environment, the tourist trade would likely come to an end. There are a few modern mines in Potosi but they don’t offer tours because, Jaime claimed, “there’s nothing special to see.”

After touring one of these mines for myself and coming away emotionally drained with a splitting headache, hacking cough and soot particles oozing from my nose, I still can’t understand its appeal. Tourists are not popping off to Pakistani sweatshops to see 8-year-olds make carpets, or flying to Somalia to watch farmers try to grow food without water, but I suppose if Potosi’s success continues, such “attractions” may be around the corner.

MEMO: These 2 sidebars appeared with the story: 1. WHO IS THE VAGABOND? During the past two years, writer Doug Lansky has covered more territory than Columbus, Marco Polo and Magellan combined. Living out of a backpack, the 25-year-old Minnetonka, Minn.-native has traveled up the Amazon aborad a cargo ship, hitchhiked through Syria and Jordan, rode a camel across an Indian desert and sailed down the Nile. To help fund his globe-trotting, Lansky has sold carpets in Marrakesh, guided snowmobile trips in the French Alps and picked bananas and mangos in Isreal. Starting today, The Spokesman-Review will carry Lansky’s weekly dispatches and photographs in the Travel section.

2. IF YOU GO Bolivia Tourist Information, 3014 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20008; 1-800-265-4842 “Bolivia: A Travel Survival Kit. 2nd ed.” Swaney, Deanna & Strauss, Robert. Lonely Planet Publications. $16.95 “South American Handbook.” Box, Ben. Passport Books. 1995 $39.95.