14 BOLIVIA Sucre-Potosì

7th - 12th December - Sucre December 2006 -Tarabuco Market

This Market is one of the most colourful of all Bolivia. The campesinos (peasants) gather here especially on Sunday selling their goods: mantas, coca leafs, bags, hats and everything they need for everyday life, from the soap to the pork (“ciancio”) meat.

Stall vendor (hiding from the camera) selling coca leafs.

One of the fine intricate weavings that Tarabuco is reknowned for.

11th December -Dinosaur Park

Sucre is famous for the discovery, in 1998, in the Upper Cretaceous limestones of the El Molino Formation of more than 300 tracks belonging to different kinds of dinosaurs. We visited dinosaur tracks in nearly vertical beds. The main dinosaur prints in this concrete quarry were from sauropods (long-necked dinos), therapods (3-toed meat eaters), and hadrosaurs (duck billed dinos).

Until only 5 months ago it was possible to reach the wall and touch the footprints. Now luckily to avoid further erosion, tourists can observe the details of the tracks through powerful binoculars. The site has been studied by paleontologists from all over the world and next year will become a UNESCO world heritage site.

13th December -Visit to the Potosi mines (Cerro Rico)

A visit to the mines is a physically and emotionally draining experience.

This is the God of the miners, El Tio (uncle) which inspires fear. Here offerings like cigarettes and wine are given to pacify the lord of the underground. It is believed by doing this protection will be given and superstition supposes it will help finding more precious minerals.

A visit to Potosi, which helped to maintain the splendour of Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries, is today a spine-chilling experience.

Around two billion ounces of silver were extracted from Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) during the Spanish colonial era. Cerro Rico silver paved Potosi’s streets, fuelled the European Renaissance and helped fund the Invincible Armada the Spanish fleet that sailed against Elizabethan England in 1588. But today Potosi is dying.

When a mine closes, all that is left is a ghost town, says the city’s mayor, Rene Joaquino. Something of Potosi ebbs away whenever a seam of metal is exhausted or world mineral prices drop. Most of the mines closed down after a crisis in 1985 and many people left for good. Two years later, when the Bolivian government introduced new incentives to mining, unemployed miners began to trickle back and set up 50 co-operatives.

In 1572, in colonial times, Spanish Viceroy Francisco de Toledo created a system of forced labour. Every seven years, for a period of four months, all males between 18 and 50 were ordered to work in the mines. They were paid a pittance and rarely saw the light of day. Eighty per cent of the male population of the 16 provinces of the viceroyalty of Peru died in these conditions. Every peso coin minted in Potosi has cost the life of 10 Indians who have died in the depths of the mines. Mining methods have changed little over the years. The miners still toil from dawn till dusk. Generators pump air into the tunnels so they can breathe. Children still wriggle into tiny places where adults cannot go. Working sometimes for 10 hours or more a day in extreme temperatures, the miners keep going by chewing coca leaves. Two-thirds of the population have respiratory ailments.