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Pachamama, Satan Worship and a Night in Mines
3.32am - stranded and dying on the night of the "earth mother"
"Julio, I need bed. I´m not a Bolivian miner, I can´t breathe here. I´m so tired and I can´t breathe. We go? We go?"
The swirl and song of drunken, incomprehensible conversation washes over me.
"Toby, you´re a coward. Be a man."
The veteran miner and guide pats me on the back lovingly, then, cheeks full of coca leaves, necks down another shot of "Whisky Boliviano" (basically 96% alcohol which somehow doesn´t kill you, mixed with water). He returns to his compañeros, telling a leader of another cooperative that he can help his men if he puts ladders in for tourists. Julio is an arrogant man who hates gringos so much he ironically named his your company "Green-Go" but he speaks French, English, Spanish and Quechua and he knows every miner in this cooperative and many others.
I stand up, shake my back. Fuck it, give me another shot - I´ll have a cigarette - start making an effort and asking these incredibly hardy people about their lives. Alcohol, fuel.
We´re in a stoney shack, crammed with miners on the edge of a mine 4.5 kilometres up on the outskirts of Potosi. There is no food or water available. These miners have stayed here all night, but the rest of the cooperative is deep in the mine, sitting in the dark, cramped spaces where they work with explosions, pnuematic drills and by hand all day -
00.47am - Pachamama´s tortured womb
The culture/ethnology experience meter is spinning into sublime new states of joy and understanding. Somehow I´m sitting in silence around the offering the miners have made to the Pachamama, sharing coca and alcohol and cigarettes with - they hold soft, solemn conversations - it´s warm down here too. The offering is a blanket with a llama foetus in the centre, with an array of fake hundred-dollar notes, coca leaves, trinkets and wax - tonight they are worshipping, with a faith born from desperation, with a religion like no other... I´m so fucking stoked to be here, man! The first gringo ever? Julio thinks so. Better attempt some kind of anthropology -
There are two dieties which the miners must appease and they operate in a duality. La Pachamama is the earth-mother, perhaps the only god I can kind of believe in - they must reciprocate her for what they are taking here. Each cooperative is run on democratic principles, shares everything and provides pensions for the families of dead miners. No one owns La Pachamama and no one owns the metals still left in the mountain either, so this is a religious transaction intimately bound up with the financial transaction and both are taking place knee-deep in blood. That´s the reason for the other diety - El Tio (the uncle) - the devil. This mine has a clay model of him which they respectfully douse with alcohol, just like the ground is made sodden with offers to the Pachamama. El Tio has a white beard and marble eyes, a version of the Satan of 16th century Spain who has taken his place in this logic system. He´s got a massive red dick. Pay respect to Satan and he´ll rape La Pachamama like the Spaniards raped this continent. Eight million corpses. Then the Pachamama will give you tin and silver and zinc, and together they might just protect you.
"¿Estas bien?"
"Si...si"
I, tentatively - Bruce Parry style - attempt to offer coca 1 | 2 | 3 NEXT |
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