IN STEREO

The problem is that they think that [Potosí] must be touristic, but they do not know what we are going to live on. If it were touristic, it would paralyse the mining, you see? So they would no longer work on the mountain, because the mountain would have to be kept there, because I think tourists are coming to get to know the mountain, more than anything. Then once it is paralysed – it is already paralysing, little by little – what will become of us? Without mining there are no sales; everything is paralysed. Who is going to buy from us? Obviously, we would have to go elsewhere, to work on something else. Where are we going to go to work?

Maybe we are going to have to go to other places. Where are we going to leave to? You think they’re going to give us a house? What is going to remain here? What’s it going to be? Dead. It will be difficult. As long as you give them, say, those mountains there, if there is ore, [they] can find it. But the problem is that the peasants do not want to give [anything] up either. So that’s why [they should] stop the mining and give us sources of work, that there be factories, everything so that many people can work, not always in the mine. The peasants, they go to their fields, they eat their potatoes, their corn, their grain, and anything they want. But we do not have ranches. – Doña Carmen