Bolivian Blog

- Coca y Las Minas

I'm heading down from the Bolivian town of Coroico, perched high up above a network of sub-tropical jungle-clad valleys. Some old stone steps lead down towards the coca fields I'm heading out to, and along which I can see a girl and a guy. The girl is stood by and is singing a sweet little Spanish song, whilst her boyfriend is sat down upon a step. He looks up, and I note first his eyes- they seem darkened, clouded, though he greets me warmly enough, even gesturing to me with the small metal crack-pipe he has in his hand. It's certainly a hospitable gesture- that, as if in premonition of my investigating the local coca production, he thinks I might like to sample one of the end products of the production process- crack cocaine. I quickly ask myself what Michael Palin would do- but before I´ve decided upon an answer, an oh-so-very-English ’errr... no thanks' has slipped out from my lips; an utterance that gives me cause to note that though English today sits proud as the unrivalled international language, it really is still most at home in mumbling awkward apologies, in bumbling over a thanks-but-no-thanks....

    With the girl's sweet accompaniment to her boyfriend's high fading out, I cut down through some fairly dense junglely sections, intermixed with odd patches of orange and banana plantation, together with coffee, a narcotic our Western governments are rather more at ease with than with coca. All's well then so far, but glimpsing now some houses through the trees, I'm greeted by a far less warm example of Bolivian hospitality than I'd received back on the steps. It's a dog, savagely barking at me as it bounds aggressively over.  It stops a few yards short, the heckles of its scraggy white back up, salivating at the chops as its psychotic eyes lock onto the gringo intruder. I raise my sandal, and a stand-off ensues. I daren´t turn my back on it, so there´s not much else I can do-  I try to reason with it, convince it that I'm a great friend of canine kind..... Only I realise now that my reasoning with it isn't helping much. In fact, it can only make matters worse, since the dog has heard my mother tongue in these parts before.... and is sadly unable to distinguish my accent from the American; the latter a nation that is certainly no friend of the coca farmers here, and presumably too of the ever-loyal canine-kind that depend upon them.

    Now the punitive policies of the U.S. government towards the production and consumption of cocaine and crack has long been unable to stem the demand from those languishing within U.S. ghettos. Or, to paraphrase Marilyn Manson, we might say that though America don't like the drugs, the drugs certainly like Americans. A state of affairs that has historically presented a dilemma for the US Government: either it tried to solve the problem of demand by finding ways to eradicate the entrenched social deprivation within that 'land of liberty', or it move to disrupt the supply. Needless to say the latter option seemed to them more expedient, and though the Mexican drug mafia was largely beyond its power to touch, the easily bullied government of Bolivia- Latin America's poorest nation, as well as being a major coca leaf grower- proved a more expedient target. So began the US narco-wars here in Bolivia; the US government trying its best to transform its own social problem into someone else's social problem.

   Now the coca leaf has been used here in Bolivia for centuries. Upon ancient temple walls can be seen high priests salivating as they chew upon the coca leaf stuffed within their cheeks- a practice they believed gave them access to the Gods. Though today its primary uses are more prosaic: within many medicines, as well as a cure for altitude sickness (of which sea-level-dwelling tourists such as me benefit), and rather more tragically, that in chewing the leaf, the hunger, cold and thirst that still bedevil so many Bolivians can be somewhat staved off. Indeed, it is a leaf so widespread in its use here that in 1995 it was calculated that one in eight Bolivians drew their living from its production. It was against such a background that America's narco-cops, together with their lackeys in the Bolivian government, sought to eradicate the coca leaf. Though we might note that the narco-cops would presumably have had to have stopped short of eradicating the leaf altogether, though not out of deference for the autonomy of Bolivians- dear Lord, no!- but rather, because one of the U.S's major corporations has the leaf as its special ingredient. And if you haven't already guessed it, unlike with most corporations you don't have to dig very far to find its little secret- the clue is in the name: coca-cola.

    Under such circumstances, with so many livelihoods at stake, subsequent heavy-handed policies directed at the coca farmers were inevitably going to produce a backlash. It all began with a rather spontaneous, localised resistance, but soon grew to an oppositional movement, headed by a coca farmer named Evo Morales, a man who, in riding the wave of anti-US sentiment, was soon elected to congress. Though it didn´t take long for the authorities to get rid of him- for having made the eminently reasonable assertion that if the police were using violent means of coercion against coca farmers, then coca farmers were justified in using violent means back, the death of three policeman as they tried to close down a coca market- and with it the livelihood of the farmers- gave them all the pretext they needed to get rid of him. It was, however, to be a hollow victory for the government- for Evo, as his supporters affectionately call him, bearing the coca leaf as his symbol, was not merely content to march back to congress, but was to go on to win the very presidency itself. Pity then, poor old Washington! Its narco-wars had not only failed, but had stoked up a broad based democratic movement that would not only see its drug-policy in Bolivia in tatters, but given the very much red-hue of the Evo movement, foreign capital would almost certainly be at stake too.

   So the back-story of Evo is certainly romantic, but perhaps more importantly, the democratic, grass-roots movement that carried him to power has clearly energised the democratic culture of Bolivia as a whole. In La Paz, for example, can be seen a new wave of progressive political graffiti, together with grand murals, that cry-out that the new order be true to its anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and pro-ecological roots. So too are mass-movements out in force every day on the streets of La Paz. For example, during my stay, there was a pro-gay rights march- men and women marching in white masks across the city so as to highlight the plight of homosexuals classified as 'mentally ill' by a law enacted by the previous government. But what was even more heartening than their energies directed towards their own cause was that on the main thoroughfare in La Paz they joined in solidarity with another campaign group- a group of wives campaigning for the rights of their husbands who work in the mines; thus effecting a brief union of emancipatory struggles, suggesting that the universal demand for full emancipation in dimensions economic, political, cultural and social is still alive and well today.

    Though in spite of the heartening thoughts such protests evoke, the reality of the lives of people such as those miner´s wives and their families is certainly anything other than heartening, lives that Evo has had a hard task in improving. For nowhere are the problems thrown up by centuries of exploitation, at the hands of conquistadors and foreign capital alike, more apparent than in the old colonial mining town that those women hail from:

   The town of Potosi is set high up upon the bleak Altiplano, where at a thin-aired 4100m the nights are frozen cold. One wonders why anyone would choose to live up here, but the reason isn't too far away- in the red-hued mountain that looms up high above the town. For legend has it that in the 16th century an Inca farmer lost a llama up in these desolate parts, and having followed it up to the mountain, found himself harassed by the Altiplano's biting cold. He therefore lit a fire, only to find- to his astonishment- that after a few minutes a little stream of silver flowed out from his fire´s base. For the man had landed upon the world's richest silver source- henceforth christened the Cerro Rico, or Rich Mountain.

    Naturally enough, it didn't take long for the ever-rapacious Conquistadors to learn of this discovery, whereupon they quickly began the enslavement of the local indigenous population to dig out the silver that would enrich the treasuries of Western Europe. African slaves were conscripted too, though the bleak conditions- a world away from Africa- saw them survive little more than a few weeks on the Altiplano. And the natives too, though more used to the climate, didn't fare too much better- for toxic fumes, the bitter cold, and collapsed mines meant that, over the centuries, millions of indigenous people died in the mine; leading historians to place the mine as one of the main causes of the depopulation of Latin America during the colonial period. In sum, the mine, though enriching the Western powers with unimaginable wealth, wrought terrible suffering, misery and death upon the indigenous population; conditions which, tragically, the working conditions in that same mine today still offer an impression of:

    I'm standing a few yards away from the mine´s narrow, dark opening. I´ve taken some local precautions so as to steel myself for the descent- my belly’s been fired by a shot of the miner’s 96% alcohol- sweetened with 4% sugar cane so as to avoid vomiting-, and my mouth is just now beginning to go numb with the coca leaves I´m chewing. So I nod in readiness at my guide, Ronaldo; an ex-miner who’s to be my guide, as well as the sufferer of my insufferably numerous questions.

    As you descend through the upper passages of the mine, the first impression beyond the darkness and the claustrophobia, is the overwhelming stench of sulphur, whose yellow traces can be seen crystallised in the bare faces of rock. Ducking down through the low passages, held up by wooden struts supported at times on patches of brickwork, and sometimes on still more precarious rock outcrops- Health and Safety is certainly not a concept they're familiar with here in the mines- you have to proceed quickly, for the carts that trundle along the rail here, full of rocks from which their trundlers hope precious minerals will be found, are unwilling to stop for the likes of us- any increase to their thirteen hour day caused by we tourists would certainly not be welcome. We pass by the trundlers of the heavy carts, the hot and sweaty men who winch the rock between levels, and on down to the solitary workers deep down in the most inaccessible passages; each with a ball of coca bulging within their mouth so as to make them, if not 'comfortably numb', then at least tolerably numb enough to get through another thirteen hour day.

    As you proceed down further through the levels of the mine, the passages get harder to crawl through, conditions further worsening as the temperature becomes unbearably hot. It is down here that men blow apart the rock in the hope of finding sporadic sections of precious rock leftover from the heyday of the mountain's exploitation. Their methods haven't changed an awful lot in that time; in spite of the nationalisation of the mine in 1952, followed by its transformation into a mining cooperative after a Thatcherite-style attack by the government during the 80s. For the hissing pipes, running by the heads of those who descend, do not carry oxygen so as to make the mining spaces more breathable, but compressed air for drills, so that holes might be born out of the rock large enough to insert a stick of dynamite; which can be bought in Potosi as easily as a cappuccino can be bought in central London. The two-minute fuse lit, and a boom later, then should the mine not collapse around the miners, the mineral can be chipped away at, winched up the four levels, and then carted out to the on-site lab where it is tested for mineral content. It is a hit and miss business this- the rock could be worthless, or it could bring the men who extract it a modest rise in their living-conditions. Though unfortunately for these men, and the Bolivian government, the lack of any industrial apparatus to process the mineral here means that in spite of all their back-breaking labour, all the risks they run, it is the capital of wealthy neighbouring Chile that pockets most of the benefits.

    What then could impel such 'free men'- free in contrast to their enslaved ancestors- to go down into such a place for such scanty, uncertain rewards? Where if they are not buried in a collapsed mineshaft, or suffocated by a poisonous gas leak, they can expect that at between 45 and 55 years old they will begin coughing bloodied sputum into a handkerchief; living out just a few more days of their life in agony, coughing up the contents of their lungs. And all in the knowledge that they leave their widow in a world that does not know social security to boot.

    The reason why they do it is that though the rewards may be uncertain, the average wage that can be made in Potosi is just 800 Bolivianos per month, or £2.40 per day- not much to feed a family on, which being a Catholic country tend to be large. It is thus for 1000Bs, perhaps 1500Bs or more that men endure the mines- driven to a harsh life at the whims of the world market by the very conditions of poverty that same world market universalises in Bolivia. Such that, as one man proudly told me as he chipped away in a solitary, dank corner of the mine, his children might get an education- such that they might have a better fate than he.

    It was after two hours of such experiences that I left the mine, filthy and exhausted- overwhelmingly relieved to glimpse daylight once more, to know that I wouldn´t ever have to go back down there again. Though things are clearly very different for the men I left behind in the mine. For were they to glimpse daylight in the knowledge that they wouldn´t be going back down into the mine, it would almost certainly be because the mine had finally become unprofitable, that the international commodity price in London had sounded their death knell. For the miners here do not any longer believe that some mystified Inca god of nature presides over their fate- they know full well that the only God in town is the world mark;, the same one which has determined the fate of so much of the rest of the immiserated Bolivian economy they'd be left to scrape a living in were the trading floors of London to announce their doom.

    And with the bitter experience of what happened in the 1980s, the miners know that there is little even the progressive Evo can do in the face of such forces. Sure, he has been radical within the parameters permitted him, but has all the time had to proceed cautiously, knowing full well the punishment our global economic order can meet out to those that defy its laws. And we all know full well that even a radical head of state at the head of a radical democratic movement is powerless to shield his country from those laws.

    What then can we do?  We who are able to leave the mines? We who are able to breathe fresher, though yet still unfree, air? Must we resign ourselves to their harsh fate at the whims of the global marketplace? Accept their fate as merely 'the way of the world'? Or, most grotesquely of all, merely count ourselves lucky?

    There are perhaps two points to be made here that offer some hope: that unlike the old Inca Gods of nature, this new God of the world market is made by men, and so consequently can be undone by men. Second, that though it is beyond the power of any one government, or even 'people', to defy that cruel market´s laws, it is not beyond the power of the sum of mankind to change it. And it is here the Morales democratic revolution can teach us a lesson- that though at the national level, such movements are limited in their power, at the global level, this may not be the case. That the globalised order we all suffer from, in varying degrees, might with a globalised, democratic union of peoples who, as with the Bolivians, are unwilling to be silenced, might just challenge that order.

   That´s no doubt a forlorn hope.... but one that anyone unable to endure the reality of such man-made suffering must cling to- must be faithful to- if they are to live with their own ability to leave those hellish mines.