IN STEREO

Not long ago – just yesterday – they buried three young iners because they died inside the mine. They found like a kind of gas. And that gas, when they’re caught... Young people, the boys, have died. They were 22, 26, and 29, and of course they have families. But yesterday they buried them. And look, imagine what death is like for a miner, when he catches that on the mountain. The gas is very dangerous. But then we are accustomed to living here. Before, our parents had the Chronicles of Potosí, right? In those chronicles, it says that when they begin to work the mountain there, they have to give it food, of about two bushels of quinoa. And that means, just like the quinoa gives [itself] to the people who eat it, two ‘bushels of quinoa’ have to die.

That mountain over there: there is ore as long as, as I say, they give it two bushels of quinoa. And two bushels of quinoa, what is it? I’ll explain: that's the people; it's not quinoa. But like quinoa, people have to go to the mountain. And once it finishes eating all these people, it will give us the silver. And how many more people are going to die? We are not going to see, but we want a future for our children, our grandchildren. We want to leave too, but where are we going to go? [Nowhere is] the same as our Potosí. Obviously starting from scratch is impossible: that I go to another market, say to La Paz, that they are going to let me sell there. No, I'm going to be kicked out. So honestly, I'm afraid to go. I prefer to be here, to finish my life here. I'm used to it here. – Doña Carmen