Poverty On A Silver Throne

Mining has always been Potosi's lifeblood. Modern prospecting technology has discovered that the mountain still contains at least as much silver as the Spaniards extracted from it. The Bolivian government has invited foreign firms to bid for the contract to mine it.

In recent months, argument has focused on what form the new mining operations should take. Should the top of the mountain be cut off--this would be the cheapest method but it would disfigure the mountain--or should a horizontal tunnel be bored through to the heart of the ore-bearing rocks?

Geologist Jaime Villalobos, a former Bolivian minister of mines, says "most of the ore is concentrated inside the peak. El Cerro's rock has lots of mineral seams of different sizes suitable for modern methods of extraction. It's economically feasible to remove all the rock, crush it and process it. The cheapest way to extract it would be the open-cast method."

This means cutting into the top of a mountain that is a national emblem. The people of Potosi are against that: 97 per cent of them said in a poll they would rather starve than see the silhouette of El Cerro disappear and, with it, the World Heritage tide.

They would prefer to see a horizontal shaft bored, as UNESCO has advised. However, this option is more expensive. It means digging the shaft and extracting the ore while preserving the shape of the mountain. When he was minister, Villalobos says his investigations showed the Cerro contained "more than half a million tons of silver-bearing ore. But that doesn't mean it's economically feasible to extract because a lot of it is low-grade ore." The company that wins the contract to mine the mountain will have to study this.

People in Potosi show discontent when they talk about mining. Villalobos understands. Mining, he says, "whether in colonial times, or whether by the private sector or by the state-owned Bolivian Mining Corporation, has taken non-renewable resources from the area and left behind only contamination and poverty. This project should have a built-in guarantee to create wealth for Potosi," he says.