The Mountain That Eats Men: A descent into Bolivia’s dark heart

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Four hundred years ago, the Cerro Rico, or “rich hill” of Potosí, was the richest silver mine in the world. At a time when all of Latin America was about to be transformed into one big mine—a bottomless bank account for the royals of Europe—the extraordinary wealth of the Cerro became the chief economic engine for the Spanish conquest, and arguably the first real swig of mother’s milk for young Western capitalism.

Legend has it that the Inca knew about the riches lying beneath the Cerro. According to Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, an Inca named Huayna Capaj led a team of treasure seekers to its summit long before the Spanish arrived. As they began to dig, though, a fearsome voice thundered from the heavens. “This is not for you,” it warned. “God is keeping these riches for those who come from afar.” The Inca fled, terrified, but not before dubbing the mountain Potojsi, Quechua for “to thunder, burst, explode.”

In 1545, during the early days of the conquest, the prophecy of the mountain came true. An unlucky Indian named Huallpa spent a shivering night on the Cerro after passing the day in pursuit of an escaped llama. By the light of his campfire, he glimpsed a huge vein of pure silver glittering on the mountain’s surface. Word spread quickly, and, as Galeano puts it, “the Spanish avalanche was unleashed.”

The Spaniards opened the mine that same year. Within three decades, Potosí had grown more affluent than Paris or London, making it the New World’s first boomtown. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, named Potosí an Imperial City, and upon its shield were inscribed the lines “I am rich Potosí, treasure of the world, king of the mountains, envy of kings.” Popular theory holds that the old mark of the Potosí mint (the letters ptsi superimposed on one another) was the precursor of the modern dollar sign.

The true amount of silver extracted from the Cerro is impossible to measure, but Bolivians often claim that enough was chiseled from the mountain to build a shimmering bridge from the summit all the way to Madrid. In Spain, even today, if something is “worth a Potosí,” it is worth a fortune. But this astonishing wealth came at an awful cost: Untold numbers of indigenous workers perished inside the mines after living lives of incomparable torment.

On the fourth level of La Negra, we find Julio at a fork in the shaft, perched on a pile of blasted stone. He is laughing with three edgy young Quechuans. This is the drilling team. Their mandate: open a set of 12 holes in the wall around the corner. These will later be packed with dynamite. The men are clothed, as are we, in the ubiquitous uniform of the Cerro Rico miner: hooded full-body overalls, black rubber boots, hard hat, headlamp, and an overcoat of ghostly gray dust. They are following a vein of zinc to the east.

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