The Bolivian Death Switch
In October 1993 my friend, Gary Moss of San Francisco, was going to do some consulting work for the new giant copper mine of Escondida in northern Chile. Concurrently another friend, Dr. Alfredo Petrov, of Cochabamba, Bolivia, wrote me a letter proposing a trip to visit a number of seldom visited mines in southern Bolivia. He outlined a juicy itinerary. I forwarded the letter to Gary, who immediately contacted Alfredo and asked about the possibility of him going on the trip. The proposed departure date was only a few weeks after my return from Siberia and I was vacillating about going or putting it off till next year. Gary pushed me over the edge and I told him, “Not without me you don’t.”; it was just too juicy a trip to pass up.
The plan was to meet Alfredo in Cochabamba and spend two days there arranging logistics and getting used to the altitude before heading up to the altiplano and south to the even higher mines. Cochabamba, located in a semi arid mountainous region, is the third largest city in Bolivia at an altitude of about 8,000 feet. We arrived on schedule and Alfredo met us at the airport in his beat up Volkswagen, which introduced us to a whole new dimension in the meaning of the word, dilapidated. On a hill outside of town, Cochabamba has just built the largest concrete Christo (statue of Christ) in the world. They made it one meter taller than the one in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, reasoning that it would steal away some of the tourist trade from Rio.
The economic situation in Bolivia is grim but stable and slowly getting better. The new president of Bolivia speaks Spanish with an awful American accent, because he was raised in the United States. He has managed to bring inflation to almost zero, and the Bolivian peso is now stable and traded openly against the US dollar. The new administration is trying to institute a whole new series of reforms from open trade with Peru to expelling corrupt officials from government. In Cochabamba on TV we saw a Bolivian supreme court justice accepting a $5,000 bribe; caught on tape! The new president has required that the mines pay their way and has even gone so far as to abolish the bureau of mines. The state run mining company, COMIBOL, which at one time had 65,000 employees, is but a shadow of its former self. COMIBOL still maintains a caretaker role at many of the country’s mines, but most of the deposits have been completely or partially given over to the miners to run. Most are run as collectives, but they are having a hard time because the pumps have failed at many mines and they can not afford to buy new ones. In some cases they can not even pay for electricity to run the pumps. Many mines have flooded to the level of the lowest adits and the collectives are then limited to mining only the upper levels.
Bolivia is the only country in South America where Indians still form the majority of the population. Amazingly, before 1982 they were excluded from riding buses because the majority did not possess the necessary government identification cards. Most of the miners are Indian or of Indian extraction and the government has always been afraid of them. They have a long history of militant activity. Many mining camps have statues depicting miners with broken chains still hanging from their wrists, brandishing a pick in one hand and a rifle in the other. In the early days the Spanish were not gentle with the Indians. Many stories are told of how thousands of them were marched into the mines, never to see daylight again and of deep shafts filled with huge piles of bones. Now, many of the miners who can not make a living in the mines are moving to Santa Cruz and the jungle in hope of finding a better life. Santa Cruz is now the second largest town in Bolivia and it is soon projected to pass La Paz in population.
For $100 a day we rented a moderately new, flashy, 4 wheel drive Toyota we speculated had been the property of some drug runner. We found that changing money was not a problem because most people preferred to be paid in US dollars. This was true even in remote mining camps. Our biggest problem in this regard was obtaining the small Bolivian peso notes we needed to make small purchases of food and small lots of specimens. By offering a 10% premium to the merchants for small bills, we were largely able to solve that problem. We bought two cases of bottled water, loaded up on groceries, and headed off to seek fame and fortune.
Oruro was our first stop. At the San Jose Mine, acid rich mine water running from one of the adits had carved a small gulch in some of the mine dumps and hill sides. Small gypsum crystals lined the sides and bottoms of the stream. The mines were mostly closed and except for the efforts of the collectivos they would be entirely defunct. In 1975 I had visited the Itos and San Jose Mines and had been able to buy a few specimens, but now found nothing to buy.
Leaving paved roads behind, we headed south with a full tank of gas, not knowing when we could buy more. The road more or less followed the railway tracks, which was obviously intended to be the primary means of transportation. The roads became progressively worse and the maps we had were rudimentary and full of errors. We often had to make a guess at which fork to take and often little villages we passed through were not shown. We frequently encountered roads with deep sand and dust and it was not uncommon for us to be running in front of a 100 foot high rooster tail of dust, doing our best to keep ahead of it. All was well if we could, but frequently we would pass a truck coming the other way, had a strong tail wind, or had to slow to avoid some terrible washout or boulders in the road. Then the dust would catch up with us and there would be a flurry of up window rolling, gasping, complaining and bitching about the lack of skill of the current driver. Remarks like, “You know, if you had tried a little harder you could have hit that really big hole.” and “If driving ability were gas you wouldn’t have enough to run a piss ants motor scooter around the inside of a Cheerio.” etc. were common.
We eventually came in sight of the Salar de Uyuni which is advertised as the largest Solar in the world. This one is extraordinarily flat, white, and smooth and in places is about 100 miles across. There are places here with a substantial lithium content, which has not been exploited because of Bolivia’s recent political problems and the conditions hostile to business engendered by them. It will take some years of a stable government and economy to tempt investors to again take a chance on doing business in Bolivia. At the southern end of the Salar de Uyuni we came at sunset to the little town of Uyuni. A friend of mine who had spent time in this part of Bolivia and had come to Uyuni at night during terrible weather had described it as, “Oh my God!!!, what a shit hole”, although in print, much of the emotional impact of his spoken words are lost.
In good weather and at sunset it was a rather pleasant little town. Like many little towns the main business district lined both sides of the railway track. Because of a general railway strike, there had not been a train in two weeks. The gas station was closed and would theoretically open in the morning at 8 AM. Next we found a little hotel in which to stay and after our first day of intensive dust eating, a shower was high on the list of our concerns. None of the rooms had their own bathroom, but the communal bathroom down the hall did have a shower, and even more surprising, hot water.
Hot water was provided by a Brazilian-style water heater and proved to be typical of all the showers we encountered. These water heaters look like the starship Enterprise stuck on a pipe coming out of the wall. Heavy duty 220 volt, mostly insulated wires, also come out of the wall and are attached to the shower head. Bare wire is usually visible somewhere in this lash up and the wires are often wound around the metal water pipe. Water temperature is controlled by a single knob that regulates the flow of cold water to the shower head. As soon as water passes through the shower head, the current kicks on and resistance wires do their best to flash boil the water. The more you open the tap, the cooler the water.
Experience in Brazil with these shower heads had, at various times, yielded surprises all the way from nasty, piercing little shocks when trying to adjust the water flow to being stunned and knocked on ones butt while trying to change the settings on the shower head itself. Here in Bolivia, adding to the apprehension of using the shower, was a rather large forked, throw switch whose ominous, long, naked, red metal bars were just waiting to fry any careless, fumbling fingers. They had only a tiny plastic knob attached to them, which you had to throw to activate the system. You can imagine, having finished your shower, standing there warm, wet, a little soapy, i.e. the perfect conductor, contemplating if you really wanted to try and turn off the system.
At the end of a hard day, when we had located a potential (haw haw) hotel, the first thing that one of us would do would be to check out the bathroom for potential hot water. Upon returning he would immediately be quizzed about the facilities and the answer would almost always be, “Another Bolivian death switch.” Incredible as it may seem, we found more hot water in southern Bolivia than we did in Siberia.
In Uyuni we filled our tank and a five gallon plastic container with gas and headed south trailing a big plume of dust. Fumes from our leaking plastic gas can and inaccurate maps were constant irritations. In addition we were constantly worried about when and if we could find more gasoline. At each village we asked if gas was available and were told no, but it was at the next village which also had no gas, etc.
All was not gloom and doom because the weather was great with a beautiful blue sky and the altiplano (13,000 to 14,000 feet) offered grand vistas of mountains and the plains which were punctuated with small clusters of low adobe huts with thatched roofs and an occasional llama heard grazing on the sparse vegetation. Alfredo, always a fountain of the most interesting facts, told us that the population of the altiplano during the time of the Incas was substantially higher than it was today.
Often in towns or mining camps people would approach us wanting a ride. Driving through villages and even in remote places on the altiplano, people would try and flag us down for a ride. In one mining camp I came out of a miner’s house and found an old Indian chap sitting in the back seat. He had really made himself comfortable, sitting in the exact center of the seat with a blanket draped over his lap to keep his hands and legs warm. I assumed he just wanted a ride back to the center of the camp. Upon arriving at the center of the camp he didn’t get out. We ask the old fellow what he wanted. He wanted to catch a ride to Uyuni. We told him that we were going to Atocha. He said that destination was OK as well. After a while we felt that the country was filled with people who wanted to go someplace else, any place else, and our vehicle was the transportation of choice.
No matter how far we thought we were from civilization we would find people riding bicycles and freshly painted political slogans on rocks and walls, from the most recent election. Once we stopped to examine an abandoned quarry and some crumbling ruins near the railway tracks. The tracks disappeared into the horizon in both directions, but here came a guy on a bicycle carefully peddling along a smooth four inch wide path that had obviously been used for years by other bicycles.
For years I had observed the overwhelming popularity of soccer in South America, but here in Southern Bolivia basketball appeared to rival it as the sport of choice. Almost every village had a sad looking soccer field, but also you would find a basketball court with drooping, netless, rusted hoop. In the small village stores there even appeared to be more basketballs for sale than soccer balls.
Finally, approaching Atocha, we wound down into a canyon and then into a river bed laced with rivulets of water. In the trackless portions, we had to guess where the road was and were thankful for the 4-wheel drive. Eventually we encountered the reassuring railway running along one bank and after scrambling over protruding rock formations in the bottom of the canyon, maneuvering around boulders, and turning up another canyon past a substantial graveyard, we spotted the little town of Atocha perched on the bank of the river. We drove through a final garbage-filled pool, up the bank, and into the town. We found an adequate little hotel on the town square just off the railway tracks that had doorways about five feet high and another Bolivian death switch in the bathroom. Our next order of business was to go looking for gas. Everyone we talked to said the gas station was up the river. We drove to the end of town without seeing the gas station and still people told us to go up the canyon. We drove down the bank into the river bottom and continued north, making our own road in most places. Finally all the houses disappeared and still there was no sign of a gas station. A fellow on a bicycle told us to go up river still farther. Finally in the distance, in the middle of nowhere, we spotted what looked like storage tanks. As we splashed closer we could see tire tracks climbing the bank. We followed and sure enough as soon as we climbed the bank there was a storage depot, which actually had two electrically driven gas pumps. They were closed, however, and we were told to come back the following morning. Surprisingly, the cost of the gas was about the same as it was in Oruro or Cochabamba.
The next day we decided to visit the mines at Tasna which according to Ahlfeld is one of the world’s greatest bismuth deposits. From the altiplano we climbed steadily; after more than an hour of steady climbing toward a mountain that looked somewhat like a reclining elephant, we reached the mines. The upper levels of the mine were worked by a cooperative like most of the other mines we visited; and they were currently involved in a dispute with COMIBOL over the cost of electricity that was supplied to them. At first we were greeted with suspicion, but soon we were able to buy some specimens from the many children who flocked around our car. The tension eased and soon their mothers were bringing specimens for us to buy as well. The problem was that almost all of the material was terrible trash, ranging from massive pyrite to water tumbled pieces of stream tin. We bought a few specimens of damaged siderite, pyrite and wolframite that showed promise. It became evident that to get any quantity of good specimens from there, you would have to make many buying trips there to encourage the miners to carefully collect and preserve specimens. No one had any idea about wrapping specimens in paper to protect them. In fact, there was very little paper in the camp that one could use to wrap specimens. Another problem was that, during the day, most of the men were working in the mine and did not return home till near sunset. To deal effectively with the miners, you would have to wait till Saturday, or better yet, Sunday, or spend the night at more than 15,000 ft.
The best we could do was visit about one mining camp a day. Another day was spent in the mining camp of Chorolque. It was the highest I had ever been (18,000 ft +). It was late spring and there were still traces of snow at some of the mine portals. In some of the mines frozen waterfalls had to be blasted out and removed to keep the tunnels open. Amazingly enough, the miners frequently rode bicycles between the mines and camp. Our reception here was nearly hostile and we were immediately hustled to the offices of the cooperative, where we were asked what our business there was. A video camera was immediately produced and we were asked to explain again what we wanted. They said they had a local TV station and would like to broadcast the tape. Alfredo did his best to explain what we wanted while I showed a few specimens we had and showed how to wrap them up in newspaper. Alfredo explained how specimens are like flowers and if you wanted to give a flower to your sweetheart you would be careful not to step on it or damage it before you gave it to her. We hoped that the tape would be played on local TV, but suspected that, as much as anything else, they just wanted a record of exactly what we looked like. We saw few specimens in the camp worth having. There were a few interesting hollow cassiterite? stalactites however and we felt this mine too had potential but were reluctant to try and spend the night at 18,000 feet. In spite of lengthy explanations of the kinds of things we were looking for, people kept trying to sell us massive cassiterite.
We spent a day driving around some of the mines near Atocha, like Animas, and everywhere there were large, partially abandoned mining camps and abandoned mills, with huge tailing dumps poisoning the streams that trickled down the canyons. In Atocha, one night while eating dinner, we were approached by a man with a tape recorder who said he represented the local radio station. He also wanted an interview about who we were and why we were in town. Again, Alfredo did his best to explain how we wanted to buy mineral specimens and how they should be protected.
We finally realized that in the time we had left we could only scratch the surface of the mines in the district, and it would be better to move on to other districts and at least get a quick overview rather than spend all our time in one place. We managed to drive from Atocha to Potosi in one day arriving at 10 PM. The next day we found out that protesting railway workers had blockaded the roads into and out of town at midnight for a 24-hour period. We found ourselves in a blockaded city with all the gas stations and many businesses and government buildings closed for the day. In some ways it was ideal, because traffic was very light in the city and it was easy to get around.
Potosi is perhaps the most famous mining camp in the world. Back in the sixteen-hundreds it was the largest city in the western hemisphere and had a population of about 250,000, a large number of churches, riding clubs, ballet companies etc. It’s population is now only about 125,000 but at 13,500 feet has the distinction of being the highest large city in the world, substantially higher than Lhasa, Tibet. The city sits on the flank of Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) that produced many fortunes of silver and allowed Spain to create all kinds of mischief in Europe. Today the only large mine that is operating is the Mina Unificada and it is so poverty stricken that it has taken up offering mine tours for tourists. The balance of the mines are being mined by small collectivos. On some of the city streets that lead directly to the mines, at the edge of town, are small shops that openly sell dynamite, blasting caps and fuse, all stacked neatly on the sidewalk in front of the stores.
Alfredo introduced us to a man he knew, who had decided that running around searching for mineral specimens was a better way to make a living than teaching school. He had a tabletop covered with grungy pyrite and siderite specimens and a poor lot of vivianites. I bought the lot and told him that I was buying it more to encourage him in the business than any other reason. He did not believe me till I started to throw the worst of the siderite and pyrite out on his patio and told him I couldn’t afford to pay the freight back to the USA on such junk. This dealer had been trying to find specimens of phosphophyllite for a number of years without success. He had even advertised in the local newspaper, but miners had brought him every manner of blue and green rubbish they could find, but no phosphophyllite.
Gary, badly wanted to visit the El Dragon Mine, not far from Potosi, to see if he could find any of the rare selenium minerals that it was famous for. Time did not permit us to do this but our runner said that visiting the mine would be useless because the portal had caved and that there was absolutely nothing on the dump. He said, however that he knew the owner of the mine and that the owner had about 100 kg of the mostly pure vein material, predominately krutaite, which he would be glad to sell for $70 per kg. We ordered 5 kg, carefully instructing him to look for material with tiny vugs with well formed crystals, especially any colorful crystals which were likely to be the even rarer secondary selenium minerals. Our runner finally brought us the material late at night. Some Germans had told the mine owner that the material was dangerous and thinking that it was radioactive, had buried it in his courtyard. He could not remember where it was buried and had to hire two miners to excavate. They found the material but destroyed his patio in the process.
We were finally able to buy gasoline and drove on to Llallagua, where the police and the owner of the hotel told us that we should not park our car in front of the hotel, but in a locked parking garage. Even though the front of the hotel was not more than 100 feet from a police station, they worried that radical miners might put a stick of dynamite in it. There was a lot of unrest in town caused by the closure of the Siglo XX mine by COMIBOL. COMIBOL still had a caretaker staff watching many of the old mine buildings and mills but collectivos were intensively working many of the upper levels. Since the mill had been shut down, the miners had to make their own concentrates. Sunday afternoon we saw hundreds of men working to crush ore by hand and using various kinds of primitive water-driven devices to separate the heavy cassiterite concentrates from the lighter host rock. Driving up one of the winding roads through one of the camps and the hundreds of primitive small concentrating facilities we felt a real tension in the air and had the feeling that some small incident could set off a real riot.
We were not able to buy a single specimen in Llallagua. Llallagua is a fairly large city and it is hard to find the miners. We thought it could be done, but it would take several days to find the miners who might have specimens. Here, we thought it would be a good idea to advertise in the local newspaper for specimens, if you had the time to arrange it.
On the way back to Oruro we stopped in Huanuni. We were told it was the only profitable mine run by COMIBOL. The pollution from the mill and raw sewage running into the little river that ran through the town was appalling. Many men and women were working in the sewage water in the river bottom, extracting cassiterite concentrates from the fines that the inefficient mill was dumping into the river. Many of the miners were reluctant to talk to us because the mine has strict regulations against collecting specimens. Huanuni has produced fine specimens of vivianite and other minerals, but to be successful in buying specimens here you would also have to spend considerable time cultivating the miners.
The following day we visited the mine of Morococala which has produced so many fine vivianites. We were there the entire day and little by little, were able to get the miners to start talking to us and selling us specimens. We were able to buy a good quantity of vivianite, most which consisted of single or partial crystals which should be well received by our customers. We were able to buy a handful of good matrix specimens, but nothing that would rate as spectacular. I had hoped to have these in time for the Tucson Gem and Mineral show, but they will not make it in time.
Back in Cochabamba we did our laundry, sorted through our specimens and wondered if their sale would cover our expenses. We talked about various schemes to get the material out of the country and what to pack it in. One alternative that Alfredo suggested was baby coffins which he said were not very expensive. He said that they were lined with Styrofoam and should make good packing boxes. Gary and I thought that once the minerals were unpacked on this end we could get some mileage out of them as ice chests or as boxes for Christmas presents for some of our sensitive liberal friends. We reckoned that you could be the baddest dude on any mountain with your very own Bolivian baby coffin ice chest. Gary departed for his home in San Francisco and I for Brazil and Peru.
Captions for photographs:
1. Typical mining camp on the Altiplano.
2. Alfredo collecting halite crystals on the Salar de Uyuni.
3. Mill tailings in canyon near Animas with stream contaminated with mine waist.
4. The city of Potosi as seen from Cerro Rico.
5. Best phosphophyllite specimen in world. Sitting on bed of small arsenopyrite crystals.
6. Workers going on shift in the Siglo XX mine, Llallagua, Bolivia 1985.
7. Scavengers working to recover cassiterite concentrates from mill tailings, Llallagua, Bolivia.
24. Vivianite xls on ludlamite crystals. Huanuni, Bolivia. It makes you wonder just how good specimens from here can get.
27. Oruro, Bolivia looking south.
28. Itos mine. Mine water running out of portal and growing small yellow gypsum crystals in the stream channel.
29. Gary Moss propositioning “Tio” underground at Oruro, Bolivia.
30. Cero de Potosi and Mina Unificada. The richest mountain in the world. Home of the best phosphophyllites.
31. Lady shopkeeper in Potosi selling dynamite, fuse, caps etc.
32. Lower portal to Siglo XX mine, Llallagua, Bolivia. Mine is now closed.
33. Mark Bandy’s house near portal to Siglo XX mine.
34. Mediaeval looking cassiterite recovery workings in tailings of Siglo XX mine.
35. One man cassiterite recovery system in tailings of Siglo XX mine.
36. One man ore crushing device. Siglo XX mine.
37. Ladies recovering cassiterite by hand from tailings, mine water and sewage. Huanuni, Bolivia.
38. Solar de Uyuni. Largest solar in the world. Alfredo getting excited about digging his first rubbishy halite crystals. Yawn!
39. Main road to gas station and points south. After every rain, the road is closed.
40. River canyon near Atocha stained with mine water and mill tailings. It also doubles as the main north south road.
41. Tres Cruses near Arica (Veloco), Bolivia. Perhaps the most scenic drives in Bolivia.
42. Headframe at Morococala. It is still being operated by a colectivo, but if any main component breaks it is doubtful that the collective will have enough money to repair it.
43. The volcanic stock at Tasna, Bolivia. Perhaps the worlds greatest concentration of bismuth.
44. Abandoned city above Colquechaca, Bolivia. Colquechaca means “silver bridge” The sign over the road into town proclaims the camp to be ruby silver capital of the world.