IN STEREO

We usually need to ‘ch’alla’ on the first Friday or the last Friday of each month, [with] our coca, cigarettes, our alcohol with water. We always drink it with water. There are others who drink it with soda, but most of the miners drink it with a little water. Alcohol with water, nothing more. And as soon as we go in on the first Friday, we offer the Uncle some coca. The Tio is there inside the mine. So we give him his coca, his cigarette, his offering. And then we ask that he takes care of us, because he is the god of the earth, right? ‘Ukhu pacha’, we say in Quechua. And we ask there that he takes care of us, makes the [mineral] veins better. And we chat there among friends, we converse. There is always something to talk about. We always tell a story, tell a joke, a problem, I don’t know.

And from one glass to another, sometimes we don’t go to work. Or we’ll work for a while. And when we go out, we sit there too, until we’re drunk. And then we see that we’re bad and we go: many to their homes, others to continue in the bars in Calvario. It’s always this way, the miner’s first Friday or last Friday. We do it with faith more than anything. When there is faith and when a good vein appears, we say, “There you go, we did ch’alla, there is the vein.” And let's say if we don’t [ch’alla] that Friday for any reason, or we have not come to work, and something happens… Sometimes we blame ourselves and our faith. Then we ch’alla and we’re sorry. It’s not like that often. If the vein improves and we have done ch’alla it is fine: “We have done ch’alla with faith; there is the vein, comrades. Another ch’alla!” – Amilcar