Mining Documentaries

Somehow, the theme for this week became "the grim side of mining in the Andes." During colonization, silver mining in Potosi, Bolivia, became important to the Spanish Crown and the economy of the colonies. Legends abound about how much silver came out of those mountains. Resources, however, don't last forever, and mining in Bolivia is no longer the prosperous industry it was centuries ago. That doesn't stop people from continuing to mine the mountains...

And it doesn't stop children from working in the mines either. On Wednesday, I watched The Devil's Miner with students from my Modern Latin America course. Children work in the mines in order to help support their families and also make enough money to go to school. This documentary followed one 14 year old boy through his days in the mines, and ended with juxtaposing his dreams for education and travel with the reality that most of these children never leave the mines.

Tomorrow night, I'm headed downtown to watch another Andean mining documentary, Tambogrande: Mangos, Murder, and Mining. The summary says, "The feature-length documentary follows a small village in the Andes struggling to get health care and justice after a mercury spill by the world's largest gold corporation."

The funny thing is: I had no idea these two documentaries were being offered before this week began. Oddly enough, both of them address the same subject--and they're being offered by two separate organizations. Life is funny like that. Not funny in a ha-ha way, though. This is more sobering. I'll bring a tissue.