IN STEREO

From dawn to dusk, you only work. I wake up as always, we wash ourselves, I drink a bit of milk sometimes, or some tea, we eat. And I get my stuff ready – my lamp, my backpack – and I go out. I take the minibus, I get to Caracoles [mine], I go to my section, we chew coca for an hour, two hours, then to work. The entrance to the mine is about 400 metres deep. When entering, it is dangerous. Sometimes they work with about thirty carts and you have to enter slowly. There are areas to give us a space – if we advance to a certain part and a cart comes at the same time, it is necessary to take refuge and then move forward. We get to work, we start. First, we explode and clean up everything that has been thrown out, then choose the pure mineral to put in the sack. Then we drill again and prepare the dynamite.

When it is packed tightly, we spark it and we have to move about 100 metres away, to listen. They blow up one by one. [If] we start work at ten in the morning, we would leave at five in the afternoon – it depends how fast we are. The work sometimes takes longer, and we stay. Sometimes it is done fast, too, so we get off. There is no schedule to go in and out. For example, my colleagues have entered late and they are just coming down now. I leave the mine, we change our work clothes, [and] it’s the same: we go down on foot and take another minibus to my place. We arrive, we wash, we have dinner, listen to a little news and take a nap. Sometimes there is not enough time for anything else; sometimes you fall asleep until the next day again. – Pastor