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

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One of the men wears an additional piece of equipment over his nose and mouth: an old-school half-face filter mask. At his feet lies a hulking mass of rusted machinery, an ancient pneumatic jackhammer with a chisel the width of my wrist affixed to its end.

“This man is expert driller,” says Julio.

“How old?” I ask.

“Twenty-two.”

The driller mumbles through his mask in Quechua, and Julio translates.

“He says his mask is broken, but he can’t afford a new one.”

Trolley runners may get lucky and outrun cave-ins, and explosives experts hold their fortunes in their own hands, but the average life expectancy for drillers is barely more than 10 years from the day they start. The leading cause of death in the mines is not accidents or gas leaks but mal de mina: miner’s sickness, or silicosis of the lungs. The disease is caused by inhalation of the crystalline silica dust thrown up by the drills.

Death by silicosis is a slow, agonizing demise. The suffering miner literally loses his breath as the alveoli of his lungs become inflamed and overgrown with fibrous tissue. Symptoms progress from shortness of breath, fever, and weakness to bluish skin, cracked fingernails, dramatic weight loss, respiratory infection, and heart failure. A good mask with a particulate filter costs upwards of $50, two and a half times the average miner’s take-home pay for a very good week.

The air compressor pipe suddenly hisses to life, and the miners leap from their seats. The driller hefts his jackhammer, adjusts his useless mask, and disappears into the dark. As we crouch around the corner, my insides shudder, my face quivers, and I can feel the vibrations in my teeth. I touch the wall, and the concussions rattle up my arm and throttle my throat. Julio yells something, but I can’t make it out, so he grabs my shoulder and motions for me to retreat. Just then, an otherworldly cloud rushes around the corner and swallows us.

We abandon the drillers and stumble back the way we came, choking and coughing and trying to hold our breath. “Tourists don’t come down here,” says Julio as he leads us through a labyrinth of shattered hallways. “If I bring them, they start to cry.”

Soon we find another group of men. They sit on mounds of crushed stone surrounded by the tools of the Bolivian miner: pickaxes, shovels, coils of white safety fuse, piles of silver blasting caps, a few threadbare rice sacks, and countless sticks of dynamite.

“Refresco, refresco,” says one of the miners, and I obediently retrieve bottles of singani (muscatel grape liquor), soda pop, and puro (rubbing alcohol) from my backpack. Puro is 192 proof. Cut with soda, it is the macho drink of choice inside the Cerro Rico. Friday is a day of celebration in the mountain. Tomorrow the miners will sell their meager hauls of zinc and tin to the co-op in return for their meager wage.

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