Potosi, Bolivia

Potosi is more of a modern city than I expected it to be, with over 150,000 inhabitants. On a Saturday night, there are hundreds of young people out on the streets looking for something to do, and the streets are teaming with tailors´shops and lawyers´offices. But scratch the facade of this somewhat inviting exterior, and a tragic past quickly rises to the surface.

The silver mines at Cerro de la Mina are the most blatant example of human exploitation in Bolivia. But I also visited two other places that give a broader context to the tragedies of the colonial era--Casa de la Moneda (the National Mint), and the Convento de Santa Teresa (the convent of Carmelite nuns).

The Casa de la Moneda is one of the four places where the Spanish Empire minted its reales, or silver coins. The facilities were run on slave labor--both indigenous and African--and countless thousands died in the rough conditions of working with molten metal and heavy machinery. Still on display is the equipment where workers lost fingers and entire hands in the process of stamping out the coins that made the Spanish Empire the most powerful of its era.

The Convento de Santa Teresa is tragic in a less immediately obvious way. During the colonial era and, in fact, until the Vatican reforms of the mid-20th century, this Carmelite convent was a cloistered home to daughters of elite Spaniards. Commonly a ¨privilege¨ reserved for the second daughter of the family, at the age of fifteen these girls were obligated into service of the Lord at the convent--and were never allowed to leave its walls or to have contact with another human being again (other than their fellow nuns)--the meaning of the term ¨cloistered¨. Their families paid a minimum of 100,000 USD to the convent, often in the form of priceless works of art; the more money they paid, the nicer their daughter´s quarters would be. The girls were allowed family visits through elaborate systems of screens, so they were never even able to see their parents faces. All of these nuns came from incredibly wealthy Spanish families, many of whom had made their fortunates on the blood of the miners in Potosi, and who saw their daughter´s service as bestowing honor and spiritual blessings upon the family.

Potosi was not a cheery place to be--and the frigid weather certainly didn´t help matters. But unlike anywhere else I´ve been, it demonstrates the tragedies of the colonial era--and puts perspective on the drastic inequalities still present in modern times. And I highly recommend a visit if you are coming to Bolivia.


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