IN STEREO

We have always had a story, haven’t we? We base it on that. It’s not true that Diego Huallpa discovered the mountain – and all the stories begin to be born from there, don’t they? But I think it was earlier. Potosí has always existed, you see. Because they also say – I have other friends who study this – that this has always been a ritual place. So I have always believed that Potosí has always existed, and the mountain has been exploited even earlier than the Spaniards. It’s true. And everything that they took from the mountain was sacred – purely for our great leaders, like the Incas. So I lean more to that story, let’s say. But when the Spaniards came – wow, they’ve fucked it up, haven’t they? Yes, it seems that it relates [to today], doesn’t it, because look at my current life. I will not tell you that I'm as screwed – it relates a little, let’s say.

It is not the Spanish now that are looting us – it’s our own. Ourselves, among Bolivians, within the same culture. Before, the Spaniards made the indigenous work, isn’t that right? They were struggling; they didn’t have much pay because they were slaves. But anyway, it seems that we now follow that too. We work and we work but we enrich the owners, and they don’t work either. They pay you a little better, but at the end of the day it’s not what you want, is it? Because those who work in the mine, I see that there are many colleagues who are very fucked up, let’s say. And they get sick – mine sickness. And there is no one to look at them – they’re not insured. You can’t work anymore – what are you going to do? You die, in your house, in a hospital. So in that way I believe we relate to the old – it’s like now too, isn’t it? Now, you see, slavery is a little more modern. – Amilcar