IN STEREO

We are not all charismatic, in that a tourist likes a guide, or the reverse. I could explain the Mint in [only] two hours, but the tourist is dissatisfied if I tell them, “Here’s the room of paintings; you can look,” “Here’s the machine room; coins were minted; you can walk around.” It is very cold. But like being with a blind person, I feel with them. I imaginatively take a walk in an environment and can make you feel the history, whatever it is. You can take them to the section of the machines or the places where people lived and make them breathe that process of history. Really, it’s how you handle it too, the point of making the story understood. You have to like it, you have to be passionate, and you have to make the tourist experience that. Because if you do not achieve that, there is no satisfaction.

[Then] the tourist does not take the Mint [or] the city of Potosí, packaged as a memory, back to their city. They take the experience, and they tell what they have lived through, what we have told them. So it is a matter of sensations: it is like a cover on the eyes and you have to taste several meals, and like that, we will know what you like. So more or less, this is how everything works, the aim of entering the Mint and making them feel it. Backed up by documented records, the oral tradition revolves around the tourists’ needs, and they like to experience. They do not like to walk around without a reason. They like to experience; they like to appreciate; they like to enjoy. So that has to be handled. I think the guide is key to any monument. – Seila