大象传媒

A pewter world of fear and comradeship

• Paul Mason
• 21 Mar 06, 03:33 PM

The pit head of the Dorabella mine is just a line of single-storey sheds, bricked-up into the mountain side. There鈥檚 a first aid post, a police cell and then the barred gate, decorated with plastic flowers, which leads to the mine itself. It is always open 鈥� they work a three-shift system, seven days a week. There are no managers: this is a pit the mining companies abandoned when the tin price collapsed in 1985. 鈥淧resident Hugo Banzer gave us this mountain to buy votes in 1985,鈥� says our guide 鈥渁nd we鈥檝e worked it ever since鈥�...

Absence of bosses is one thing. Absence of ventilation, machinery, electricity and rudimentary safety procedure is another. This mine 鈥� a modern industrial complex 20 years ago 鈥� is now worked with the same methods the Roman tin miners used in ancient Britain鈥� only the Romans never managed to get 3km deep.
They straggle down in teams of four. The only required equipment is a helmet, a light, a belt and battery pack 鈥� which newcomers can buy at the store nearby. You need wellingtons for the acid mud and rubber gloves for the climbing you鈥檒l have to do. Apart from that, the uniform of a Huanuni tin miner is a bandana for when the fumes get bad, a tattered football shirt and track-suit bottoms. Each man or woman carries a grey sack about 2ft square: going down it holds tobacco, water and coca leaves; coming up it will hold up to 15lbs of tin. What 15lb of tin feels like, when you have carried it up 400m of slimy wooden ladders can be seen in the veins jutting out from the foreheads of the men staggering out.
The ladders begin not long after you lose the natural light: it鈥檚 a two way system 鈥� as one team strains its way up another is descending, almost at a run, with the young lads showing off by going front-first. 鈥淕ood evening comrades鈥� is the routine greeting, with an added breathless joke if you bump in to your mates. There are four thousand self-employed miners running up and down like this inside the mountains round Huanuni.
After the first two ladder drops there is a plank across a ravine then two more sets of ladders.
Now you are 40 metres down (though at 4,000m above sea level it is all relative) on the main roadway of the mine: when it was owned by a company there must have been another, more official, way in 鈥� because the roadway is head height and at least three metres wide: it has been driven expertly for more than a kilometre into the mountainside. But that entrance has been lost, along with machinery and electrical power. Now, though a ventilation pipe runs down one wall, and two red cables down the other, there is neither air nor electricity coming in. If things go wrong there will be no pneumatic drills, no stretcher teams or respirators: you are reliant on your mates, and on the Tio.
Tio himself sits in a broad alcove, covered with little plastic water bottles, streamers, candle wax and coca-leaves. A miner is bending close to Tio鈥檚 head, whispering while he lights a cigarette. He spikes the cigarette on Tio鈥檚 fang, then lights another one 鈥� puffing a few times to get it going 鈥� and fixes it onto a horn. By the time he鈥檚 finished there are five glowing Marlboros, making a pentangle. Tio鈥檚 face, lit by the miner鈥檚 headlamp, is impassively ferocious: red cheeks, black eyes, flared nostrils. To appease this Quechua deity the miners hold two "masses" (see note below) a week and come to sprinkle water and coca leaves, the two basic sources of energy down the mine, onto Tio鈥檚 head. But he麓s a tricky devil, Tio. Two miners a month get killed down here: "what we lack is the equipment to rescue them with," says our guide.
After Tio, it is a long, grim walk to the tin workings. Three hundred metres, says our guide: 2km later we realise somebody missed a nought off in translation. The path branches away from the roadway and becomes uneven: you have to stoop for long stretches and adopt a monkey-like gait. Your world becomes a circle of rocky silver mud, lit by a 40 watt bulb, in front of you. There are no pit-props except where there鈥檚 been a rockfall: the rock itself is silver-grey, hard and layered vertically 鈥� when it falls it collapses inwards, not downwards, and as thick dust. As the headlamps pass they light up blue cobalt crystals on the roof, pools of rusty scarlet water and lime green lakes which are, our guide cheerily points out as we splash through them in our wellies, sulphuric acid.
Suddenly the road turns downwards and the temperature goes up ten degrees: a thick, disgusting sulphur smell hits you in the face, signalling you are near the workings. If a sweating, scrawny Quechua man had not crawled out of a three foot hole in the floor the way down would have been impossible to spot. The tunnel he has come up from is vertical and has no ladders 鈥� only footholds. It is hot and putrid and spirals downwards like an Escher puzzle. The miners climbing up are old guys and complaining: 鈥淭here鈥檚 no tin down there today, we couldn鈥檛 find it鈥�. Their cheeks are bulging with a day鈥檚 worth of coca leaves: they鈥檝e been down there eight hours and their water鈥檚 finished. They lean exhausted against the rock walls to take a breather, then set off for the exit at a sprint, in single file. One has a picture of Che Guevara on his helmet.
The next team we find is doing better: it鈥檚 got a ladder and an ancient Quechua woman to crank it down the narrow hole to the vein. They鈥檒l expect to bring up 5lbs each tonight, says the digger 鈥� collapsed horizontal during his break: that will sell at 12 dollars. In a country where 30% of the population lives below one dollar a day that is not bad 鈥� and explains why the co-operative miners of Huanuni risk their lives inside this pewter world of fear and comradeship.
NOTE: Originally I wrote that they held Christian masses around the Tio. The guide at the time confirmed this. However on questioning our translator it is clear he cannot have meant Christian masses, but "mesas" which are ritual offerings of statues, sweets and sometimes dried llama fetuses. I will always make clear in this blog where an edit changes the meaning. Paul Mason 22 March.