On top of the world in Potosi
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Arrived in Potosi a day and half ago, and as I had feared I had a case of high altitude blues involving headache, dizziness and upset stomach. Luckily it´s gone today.
Potosi is famous for its silver mines and for being one of the highest city in the world. At 4070 meters above sea level, it's even higher than La Paz. Coming from Sucre(2750 m), I started to get a mild headache on the taxi on the way here. The city has a somewhat tragic history dating back from Colonial times, when silver was discovered at the foot of the nearby mountain (Cerro Rico) around 1545. For the next 300 years or so, the Spanish government used Indian slaves and imported African slaves to work in the mines to extract the precious silver, and they worked under terrible conditions (shifts of 12 hours at the time and the workers stay underground for four month at a time). It was estimated that almost 8 million African and Indian slaves died from these conditions. A significant amount of silver was extracted from Potosi, and the folklore said that the Spanish could have constructed a silver bridge to Spain and still had silver left over to carry across it. Howver, towards the end of the colonial rule, the mines have finally started to run out of silver, and nowadays they are being used to extract zinc and lead.
The mines nowadays are owned by the miner cooperatives themselves, however the conditions are still almost as terrible now as they were back then. Almost everyone who come here does a mine tour, but I decided to give it a miss because it is supposed to be a very clostrophobic environment, with very polluted air and the general conditions are extremely harsh. It would be interesting to see a documentory on it, but I would not like to get sick before my next destination (Uyuni!).
So instead, I went to the St Francisco convent this morning. It is the oldest church in Potosi. It was built in 1547, but by 1707 it was considered too small, so was demolished and rebuilt in the next 19 years. The interior was spacious and mostly constructed in stone, giving it a very different feel to other churches. Unexpectedly an English speaking tour guide came with the entrance price, and I got a private tour all to myself. There were lots of religious paintings inside, though some were covered in plastic to protect from dust. The best bit was going up to the roof for a view of the city. We walked all over the antiquey roof tiles and got a striking view of Potosi, with the mountain (Cerro Rio) behind it.
This afternoon I went to the Royal Mint (Casa Real De La Moneta) and was lucky again to get an English speaking guide, though most people in the group came from Italy. The musuem mainly contained the equipment used for the minting process, and a large sample of coins (mostly silver) that was made from the 1500´s to the 1800's. The size of the equipment was impressive, as well as the amount of labour required to make a single coin. They had a huge room of wheels with gears just to flatten the silver strips from about 1cm to 0.5mm (in four stages), and then they used manual labour to imprint the designs on the coins.. for example, one person would hammer about 5000 coins in a day. I got to have a go of it myself at the end of the tour, by buying a piece of plain silver from the museum shop and used the equipment with a hammer. It was heavy!
So Potosi used to produce a large amount of coins and export them to Spain and other parts of Europe. However they didn´t get paid for it.. I suppose the Spanish did. Nowadays the Bolivian coins are made by Spain, except for the 5 boliviano coin which was made by Canada I think.. and they have to pay for all of them. Our tour guide also mentioned that at one stage Potosi was one of the richest and most populated city in the world (with 170,000 inhabitants).. now it is one of the poorest. However there are still lots of churches and nice looking building in the city, another remainder of its long history. I nearly wanted to go straight back to Sucre on my first day here because of the freezing weather and the headache.. but now I´m glad that I came.
posted by Susan @ 9:36 AM
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