Carnival and the Mines

At this hour, I ought to be sleeping, but this thunderstorm is as wild as Carnival -- it should not go unappreciated.  So awake I am.  Long crinkled highways of electricity run across the sky.  The thin tin part of our roof is played like an enormous drum:  wind, stray apples stripped from the neighboring tree, water -- all possible percussion. 

So I write.

Traveling across the Altiplano to Oruro

The week after I arrived in Bolivia began Carnival.  Bolivianos wait all year for this festival. When it arrives they party -- hard.  (So hard that Bolivia lost its coastal land to Chile during...yup, Carnival.)   What was a religious festival for the devout in the rural "el campo" has been appropriated by urban Bolivianos (and beer companies) as cause for a week long party. 

Getting sprayed at Carnival

Our favorite -- the Afro-Bolivian drummer-dancers

All of Bolivia parties, but nowhere can compete with Oruro -- a mining town that sits at about 12,000ft elevation.  Oruro is quiet--almost desolate in the cold, high altiplano--for most of the year, but this one wild week makes up for the other fifty-one.  The streets bustle with visitors, street stand vendors and never-ending crossfires from squirt guns, foam spray and water balloons.  I hopped a bus at 4:30am in Cochabamba with Dani--a member of Colectivo Katari--to arrive in Oruro around 8:30am.  Dani came with drum in hand, prepared to play and march with his group in the parade later that evening.  At 9:00am Saturday morning the 4km parade begins--thousands upon thousands hailing from every corner of the country--dancers, musicians and the most elaborate costumes I've ever seen--all unique to their region.  The parade runs till 2am.  Then they do it again Sunday.   All this dancing and music making occurs at the altitude of volcanic Mt. Adams back home.   I didn't stay for all 17 hours....if you linger into whee hours of the morning you must also brace yourself for the inevitable drunken brawls.  

In accord with Bolivia's synchronistic culture, Carnival blends Inca beliefs with local and Catholic beliefs.  Saturday's festivities begin with a Virgin Mary festival, and the festival ends on Tuesday with a majority of Bolivia's population making offerings to the Pachamama.  Carnival is observed in honor of the legendary appearance of the Virgin in the richest silver mine in Oruro in 1789.  "Danza de los Diables" (Dance of the Devils) is the central dance of the festival, honoring the underground gods (devils, or "tios") of the mines, of under the earth.   Picture a hundred or two performers in devil masks and costumes (which cost a few hundred dollars each).  I'm still grasping for a less hazy understanding of Bolivian relationships with these so-called devils--or gods--which seem more like a pantheistic assortment of deities: of music, of each lake and hill, of sex, etc.   Nevertheless it's clear that the devils bear particular importance in the mines.  For those working--some living--under the earth, their belief is split into worlds.  Many follow the catholic God as their savior, but it is thought that when they enter the mines, things change--they are entering the realm of satan.  If the underground devils ("tios") are not appeased, they punish miners "with falling rocks and explosions."  The "tios" will kill miners, then eat their souls.  Therefore though they pray in a Catholic church and trust the cross to keep the devil trapped inside the mines, they continue to make regular offerings to the tios and paint llama blood on the door of the mines, so as to spare their own blood and souls while they are under the earth.

Oruro

My reflection on Bolivia's mines continues beyond dancing costumed diables and religious fear in mining communities.  The mines are historically crucial in Bolivia.  Spain built its Bolivian fortune here on the backs of Indigenous, Afro-Boliviano (African slaves captured and brought to Bolivia much like in North America) and Mestizos.  My understanding is that the Spanish also invented the tios--to keep miners in line.  (And you wonder why Liberation Theology was born in Latin America?)   Miners eventually became a powerful political force in Bolivia--a populist power the Bolivian Government was forced to recognize.  However, the mining unions were all but completely dissipated when the mining companies fired and relocated (with government help) the majority of the mining population in the mid 80s when the global price of tin fell.  (Ironically, much to the dictatorship's and the USA's chagrin, many of these wandering former miners later regrouped in the Chapare region to form the powerful Coca Growers Unions).

After my trip to Oruro I spent an evening in candlelight (thanks to our burnt electrical wires--we were lucky the house didn't explode) talking of the mines with Marcello -- one of my new housemates.  He comes from a family of miners in the high-altitude Postosi mining region, where Marcello was born.  His grandfather not only worked, but lived underground in the mines.  No sunlight.  Inhaling mining chemicals day in and day out.  Living on next to nothing.  Marcello's father lived underground until he was five years old.  His father and all his aunts and uncles have either passed early, or suffer from health problems.  His family finally moved from within the mines when a two ton rock crushed his grandfather.  To this day, his body cannot be recovered.


I highly recommend the film The Devil's Miner (click to watch the trailer) to get a sense of the conditions in Bolivian mines.  The film is captivating.   While the main character in this documentary is no longer working within the mines, other Postosi children are.  Additionally, Postosi has become has sort of "tourist destination" for mine-curious foreigners (and filmmakers)--but this has not necessarily benefited the community.  Some would argue it has continued the exploitation--turning their horrid living and working conditions into an exhibition.   Travel thoughtfully.

I will think of this history the next time I hear Marcello sing Yo soy el dueño de todo in the Katari presentation Otras Mirados, Otra History (Other Perspectives, Other History).
Hear a brief clip of the song here. 

Yo soy el dueño de todo, I am the owner of everything

pero nunca tengo nada. but I never have anything.

Yo hago la luz, hago el fuego I make the light, I make the fire

hago el viento y hago el agua I make the wind, I make the water

yo soy el dueño de todo, I am the owner of everything

pero nunca tengo nada. but I never have nothing.

....

Yo hago la silla y la mesa I make the chair and the table

y no tengo ande sentarme, and I have no where to sit myself

total, si ya no me queda Overall, I have nothing left

ni el derecho de cansarme; I've lost the right to get tired.

Yo hago el palacio y mis hijos I make the palace and my children

duermen en ranchos de lata; sleep in tin cans

soy martillo, hacha, tenaza I am hammer, ax, pliers

pinza, cuchara y azada: pliers, bucket and spake

yo soy el dueño de todo I am the owner of everything

pero nunca tengo nada. but I never have nothing...

El día que yo me canse, On the day I get tired

van a arder las llamaradas!... the flames will burn...!