Breaking the cycle of the Cerro Rico

Potosí might lay claim to being one of the highest cities in the world, but it is still dwarfed by the conical height of Cerro Rico. For it is not just the skyline of Potosí that the ‘Rich Mountain’ dominates, it also seems to rule over the lives of its people. The vast amounts of silver inside the Cerro made Potosí one of the Spanish Empire’s most prised possessions, supplying Spain with the majority of its silver during its New World rule.

Although 2018 feels a world away from this time, and even though Bolivia has undergone many changes in recent decades, Enrique Paz, coordinator of the Netherlands-based charity called Amigos de Potosí, says, ‘Virtually nothing has changed in the Cerro.’ The death toll in the mines remains high and the life expectancy of those who make a living inside the mountain is less than 40. The costs are high for working in the mines and the rewards are few and far between.

According to Paz, whose charity has been working the area for 25 years, ‘Miners who achieve success in the mine, who earn good money and enable their family to get out of poverty, are rare. The majority of them end badly. This is the cycle.’

Holding the cycle together is the fact that ‘In Potosí there isn’t another source of work,’ Paz explains. Directly or indirectly, everyone works for the mines, as was evidenced by the scale of unemployment that followed the drop in the price of tin in the 1980s. It was not just the miners but all of the inhabitants of Potosí’s who suffered. The town lost around 60 percent of its population.

In this particular context, the aim of Amigos de Potosí, which is to teach alternative skills in local schools and give people the chance of working outside of the mines, is therefore far from simple. Other organisations with a similar goal have already failed because having a formal degree makes little difference when all of the prospects for employment revolve around the mining business.

‘It’s not enough to just provide an alternative trade to working in the mines; you have to work in supporting the growth and development of personality.’

—Enrique Paz, Director of Amigos de Potosí

The cycle that one enters just by being born near the Cerro Rico is as complex as it is ‘fateful.’ It isn’t uncommon to see children as young as 12 walking into the bocamina, where it is a matter of minimum strength instead of a minimum age for labour. For these pre-adolescents working underground can put a smartphone or a new pair of trainers within their reach. It seems that more than the Cerro itself, ‘this [material reward] is what traps them,’ Paz says, rendering education less and less attractive for the youth of Potosí. This is perhaps why efforts by charities to support mining communities financially have been frustrated. Their work becomes obsolete once teenagers enter the mine and become productive on their own.

Amigos de Potosí, however, has a unique primary focus. As Paz explains, ‘It’s not sufficient to provide [young people with] an alternative trade to working in the mines. It’s also necessary to work in supporting the development of their personality, to strengthen the growth of their personality.’ The need for this is particularly pertinent for families that migrate from rural areas to Potosí with the hope of improving their quality of living. Such hopes are mercilessly shattered as ‘they find another reality,’ Paz explains. This is not only due to language barriers, since migrants are often of Quechua-speaking regions, but is manifested in other things, such as clothes and customs in general. It is the women and children who follow the men to the Cerro who experience this culture shock most keenly. The children tend to be marginalised in school and become timid and introverted as they struggle to interact socially, which significantly hampers their personal development at a crucial age.

Teaching music is one of the ways in which Amigos de Potosí helps children tackle these challenges. Over the past four years, teaching indigenous music to schoolchildren has given way to the formation of a small band that participates in marches and parades in the city. The opportunity to ‘learn something that is theirs,’ says Paz, and to be applauded for it encourages them to feel pride, rather than shame, in their indigenous roots and their identity. This also allows previously introverted children to gain confidence in expressing themselves, and to mix in with their contemporaries.

‘This type of education, which helps strengthen their personality, opens up the possibility of a different future for them,’ Paz says. ‘They can see a future, they can view life with joyfulness, which is something that is very difficult to teach,’ he continues. Despite the value of intellectual and practical skills, ‘if they don’t see life with happiness, this life is destined for failure,’ he says.

This fundamental outlook, to ‘always see children as people, with distinct possibilities’, is present in all of the initiatives of Amigos de Potosí, from the the Invernadero Escolar pilot project, to taking children to the cinema to see the feature film Coco. Although these initiatives might seem basic, their long-term effects are significant. The greenhouse project not only provides a sustainable source of food for schools but it also teaches students about organic production. One cinema trip helps children begin to develop the confidence to interact with people outside of their community. Even such seemingly minor steps, can make the difference for to these children and set them in far better stead for the future.

‘We encounter resistance, but we have to do this, we continue doing it, and we are going to continue doing it. We are treading slowly but firmly.’

—Enrique Paz, Director of Amigos de Potosí

The future, however, is a complex concept in these parts of Bolivia. ‘The miner doesn’t see the future,’ says Paz. This not only applies to their daily lives, where the dangers of working in the Cerro Rico make tomorrow an uncertain occurrence, but also in the long-term prospects of fluctuating mineral prices and dwindling natural resources. Nonetheless, the resolve of Amigos de Potosí is clear even in the face of such complications. ‘We encounter resistance,’ says Paz, ‘including from the miners’ cooperativas, but we have to do it, we continue doing it, and we are going to continue doing it. We would like to do more ambitious projects, strengthen personality but also teach manual and intellectual skills, but this will be seen in time… We are treading slowly but firmly,’ he says.

Over the past decade Amigos de Potosí has reached more than 2,000 children with almost 25 projects. It is perhaps its specialised focus that has allowed the organisation to succeed in such a complex environment. Rather than trying to implement sweeping changes, they have worked on a personal, day-by-day level to improve the present for these children and to give them the tools to build a better future.

Photo: FreePik

Increasingly popular in the country, yoga offers more than just physical exercise

Yoga is not gymnastics, and it’s much less a religion – it’s a philosophy of life based on physical and behavioural disciplines that encompass postures (asanas), breathing techniques (pranayamas), meditation (dhyana) and concentration (dharana). Yoga also encompasses universal ethical principles called yamas and nyamas, which guide the behaviour of those who define themselves as yogis. These disciplines were systematised by Patanjali, a Hindu sage, about 2,500 years ago in the oldest and most important treatise on yoga: the Yoga Sutras.

Presented in this way, yoga can be somewhat intimidating for first-timers who go to a class hoping to relieve stress or cure back pain. But yoga is more than just that, especially when looked at in its totality: It’s the union and integration of the body, mind and core energies.

Yoga began to appear in Bolivia at the end of the 1940s, introduced by Bolivians who first discovered it abroad. It was the arrival of the Venezuelan teacher José Manuel Estrada, in the mid-1970s, that established and spread the practice of yoga with the foundation of the Great Universal Brotherhood (GFU) in the city of La Paz.

The GFU have spread Hatha Yoga, the most popular and practiced yoga style in the Americas, throughout Bolivia, and the last five years have perhaps seen its fastest growth. Whilst five years ago Bolivia’s biggest cities (La Paz, Cochabamba, Oruro, Tarija and Santa Cruz) each had between one and three spaces for yoga practice, today one can find dozens of yoga centres representing different schools and traditions. The increased availability of training in yoga instruction has further aided this expansion.

Paradoxically, yoga practice has also become less inclusive and more sectorised, often offered as a relaxation technique or targeted to groups such as pregnant women, children or executives. Despite this contradictory tendency, which goes against the core values of yoga, it continues to offer more of these specific benefits.

One of these benefits comes from the incorporation of the ethical principle of nonviolence, or ahimsa in Sanskrit – a denial of any attitude, word or thought that may cause harm to another. To master ahimsa is to reach a state of love and generosity, both for others and for oneself. Yoga which takes this concept into consideration can therefore hold positively transformative power in social contexts where there are alarming statistics of violence against women.

According to studies carried out by different non-governmental organisations which defend women's rights, more than 14,000 cases of rape against women are registered annually in Bolivia. The majority of those cases occur within the home, at the hands of a husband or other male members of the family. Approximately seven or eight in ten Bolivian women have already suffered some type of violence, and every three days a woman dies due to femicide in the country.

Women today in Bolivia are attending yoga studios in greater numbers. In cities such as La Paz, Tarija and Santa Cruz, the majority of people who practice yoga are female. At the same time, women are the majority in yoga teacher-training courses. According to Carla Anzoleaga and Juan Carlos Ibarra, who offer yoga training classes in La Paz, approximately 15 people are trained each cycle, almost all of them women. Thus women teach and support other women in the practice and the path of becoming a yogi. This path can be a means of self-empowerment and awareness of one’s own body, acceptance of oneself and an exercise of self-esteem, and it is considered a healing practice for women who have suffered some type of violence.

The experience of women on the yoga mat can help with empowerment, identity and freedom by giving them a space to use their bodies freely without worrying about being sexualised by others. Thus, a yoga class goes far beyond physical healing. It involves a wide variety of benefits that offer deep personal transformations. All yoga styles in some way encourage transformation and healing, not only of specific parts of the body, but of its totality.

Women on the yoga mat have a space to use their bodies freely without worrying about being sexualised by others.

The main challenge brought by the rapid growth of yoga in Bolivia is to prevent the yogi culture from becoming a business and therefore financially accessible only to privileged white middle-class women, as it is in the Global North. For the new yoga instructors who are being trained in Bolivia who believe in the potential of the practice, the goal now is to find ways to involve more people – both men and women of all social classes.

Whilst five years ago Bolivia’s biggest cities each had between one and three spaces for yoga practice, today one can find dozens of yoga centres.

Men’s participation is fundamental, especially in consideration of yoga as an instrument to combat gender violence. The idea that yoga can benefit everyone through the increase of self-awareness could be the basis for a developing dialogue on how to create more inclusive spaces, with one simple idea: If you have a body, you are capable of learning, discovering and growing – or, to put it simply, to do yoga.

I would like to thank the yoga instructors and instructors who contributed to this article with their insights on the history and development of yoga in Bolivia.

Illustration: Hugo L. Cuéllar

A new space for poetry

Six poets lived in La Casa del Poeta between 1943 and 2012 and, as Fernando Lozada, the building’s administrator points out, ‘They all died here’. In 2012, when the house was falling into disrepair, it was aptly dubbed ‘The Tomb of the Poet.’ If you believe in ghosts, this would probably prompt the image of creaking floorboards and the odd poltergeist hurling books across the room. In reality, the atmosphere is tranquil, the pictures and busts of La Paz’s celebrated poets adorn the walls alongside their poems only as a reminder of house’s distinguished history.

It is this history that La Casa del Poeta seeks to simultaneously preserve and move forward from in its new role in the city. ‘It continues to be called La Casa del Poeta, but as a literary cultural centre,’ Lozada explains. ‘The idea is not to lose the history of the house. It is no longer a home, but a house in the sense of a space.’ With a new hostel for artists and writers in Alto Seguencoma, which is in the south of La Paz, the Casa is liberated from its former role as a residence for Bolivia’s ageing poets, and is therefore free to move in new directions, and host new forms of activities.

In 2012, when Elsa Dorado de Revilla passed away after five years of residence in the house, it was decided to give the house a new life, rather than to accept the requests of new dwellers. ‘Poets who have any money are rare,’ Lozada points out with a smile. More than 60 years without maintenance made the house unfit to live in. The decision to renovate it accompanied the decision to transform the space for the conservation of literature and make it suitable for other functions. One of the new additions is the Franz Tamayo bookstore and library, which has seen a dramatic increase in popularity after it moved from the Municipal Theatre.

Since its reopening on World Poetry Day this year, the 21st of March, La Casa del Poeta has hosted workshops, cultural conferences and a series of weekly lectures that are one of its primary attractions. These lectures attract a broad public of varying generations. ‘Families and contemporaries come to homages,’ Lozada explains, ‘but when [the speakers] are younger the public is more heterogeneous, more diverse.’ The house’s workshops are geared not only towards students of literature but also to a wider public, all as part of the centre’s development from a place for poets to a space for a broad literary community. Another initiative is the proposed publication of an annual poetry anthology, which would physically take poetry out of the Casa and into the hands of others.

Given La Paz’s poetic tradition, poetry continues to be the primary focus of the space, with 70 percent of its activities directed towards this artform. However, the centre’s agenda is gradually branching out into other literary forms such as extracts of novels and essays. Just as La Casa del Poeta is open to all people, it is open to all forms of literary expression, ‘from haikus to novel extracts.’

‘The idea is to not lose the history of the house. It is no longer a home, but a house in the sense of a space.’

And yet poetry remains the genre of choice, inextricable as it is from this country’s culture. ‘I believe that the history of Bolivia without poetry is unthinkable,’ says Lozada. From Jaime Saenz, who according to Lozada is ‘the most paceño poet of the twentieth century’; to female authors such as the Josefa Mugía, or pioneering feminist authors such as Adela Zamudio and Yolanda Bedregal; to more recent literary scholars such as Blanca Wiethüchter or the little-known Quechua and Aymara poets. All are indicative of the country’s longstanding literary tradition. ‘You could never say that this is a country without poets, Lozada continues. ‘It would be as unjust as saying that it is a country without music.’

This doesn’t mean that Bolivian literature is without obstacles. ‘Bolivia is a country of writers who don’t publish, and a public that doesn’t read,’ Lozada admits. The hope is that the country’s affinity with music, can be used to promote a literary engagement with current and future generations of young writers. As Lozada points out, ‘There is a good alliance between writing and music.’Just as music can increase the appeal of poetry, poetry can help elevate the level of the, at times ‘repetitive’, lyrics of folk music.

With that in mind, starting next month, the house will be holding workshops for poets who want to get involved with music and for musicians who want to improve the quality of their lyrics. La Casa del Poeta is not only providing literature with a new physical space, but is also moving it into a new conceptual space.

‘I believe that the history of Bolivia without poetry is unthinkable.’

—Fernando Lozada, Manager of the house

The ghosts of Jaime Saenz and his compatriots, if they are still in residence, must be satisfied with the new role of their final resting place.