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“Moral dilemmas and amusing Spanglish” |
The main reason for visiting Potosi is the mine that has been the main employer for hundreds of years. It was originally a silver mine, but now it is mostly tin, etc.. The mine has a terrible history with an estimated 8 million deaths over the last 500 years… It hasn’t changed all that much over time, but now it is also a tourist attraction with people going to check out the mine and the poor conditions the miners work under.. I ummed and ahhed about going and finally decided that I just wasn’t comfortable with the idea.
Instead I wandered about the town and saw a big parade of all the local school kids around the main plaza, who were also competing with a blockade of mining trucks around the plaza and accompanying media interviews, shouting, etc… quite interesting actually!
I also visited the mint, which was fascinating. It was a beautiful old stone building built in the 18th century to produce silver coins for the Spaniards. The building was in great condition and the machinery was in perfect condition and tracked the technological advancements over the last few hundred years. There was the original machinery driven by donkeys to turn the massive cogs that then turned rollers of differing closeness that thinned out the silver. All the machinery from the ovens to the final tools to trim and stamp the coins where there. Further into the mint there was also the steam driven equipment to do the same thing and then finally the electric equipment to produce the coins. It was so interesting as it was possibly the only place in the world to see such machinery and history.
The mint is also a museum filled with relics from the many churches that were in town at the boom times and now destroyed. We only saw a small proportion of the rooms and we were on a 2hour tour, so you would probably need a whole day to see it properly..
Spanglish spoonerism/Freudian slip of the day (by the tour guide at the mint as she described the Spaniards conversion of the locals):
Catholicollision (instead of Catholicism)
previous travel blog entry
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