The Brutal Work of a Bolivian Salt Miner

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The Brutal Work of a Bolivian Salt Miner

Mining is a crucial source of employment for Bolivian men, but the conditions are notorious. Amidst reports of 24-hour days and corrupt bosses in gold and coal mines, only kind words are spoken about the Colchani cooperative who mine and export table...

Unless you're an indigenous Bolivian living in the mining town of Uyuni, getting to Salar de Uyuni is a bit of a nightmare. The nearest town, Potosi, is a four-hour night commute and the same ride coal miners take daily, boarding the bus at 1 AM covered in soot.

I was traveling to Uyuni to visit the Colchani cooperative, managers of the world's largest salt flats covering a cool, 4,000 square miles of land near the peak of the Bolivian Andes—11,995 feet above sea level.

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Mining is a crucial source of employment for Bolivian men, but the conditions are notorious. Amidst reports of 24-hour days and corrupt bosses in gold and coal mines, only kind words are spoken about the Colchani cooperative who export table salt to Brazil.

My tour guide, Javier, meets me outside his 4x4. It's seen better days and I'm not filled with hope for our three-day road trip together. He assures me, though, that he's travelled the salt plains in this car for years, and off we set. As soon as we leave town we're driving on roadless desert, passing a graveyard of rusty steam trains from the mining heyday of the 40s when trains would transport gold and minerals up and down Bolivia.

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Salar de Uyuni is one hundred times bigger than Utah's Bonneville salt flats and the immense landscape is an imposing scene of never-ending plains ablaze with the sun's reflection. The Colchani cooperative manage production and sales and are one of the few food cooperatives in Bolivia who pay decently for tough graft. "We all have a share in Colchani. It's not much but it's different to most of the salaries here," Javier tells me as he packs away coca leaves—the raw material used for cocaine—which help altitude sickness and give you a bit of a buzz along the way.

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It's far from easy work. Miners wake at 4 AM and head to the plains where the entire production, from beginning to end, is carried out manually. "We start by digging until we break through to water, then we mould the salt into piles so it dries." The salt is then loaded onto trucks and milled with a hand-operated device. "It doesn't sound so hard," he smiles, "but we're doing it from morning to evening."

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We spend our first night at a salt hotel built in the mid 90s. As we arrive, Javier tells me that the salt of the Bolivian plains is the best in the world—"those Brazilian's are picky! We can't just give them anything!" It's hard to imagine a building made up entirely of sodium, but this is the place, boasting its own mini-museum and flying flags of all the countries from which they've had visitors. Nights are cold here and everyone hits the sack before the sun goes down.

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Javier's day-to-day life is repetitive. Him and his co-workers are on the flats six days a week, punctuating the graft with homemade lunches and dinners. It turns out Javier is quite the chef. Making everything at the hotel kitchen and then storing it in flasks, we have quinoa (they grow it on the land) and potato broth, alpaca jerky, chicken escalope, and freshly made pancakes for breakfast.

"We do like cooking. There's nothing around here for ages and cooking is something that we do together," he says as we pack our lunch into his car boot. In the second hotel we stay at things aren't quite as cute. The pretty salt crystals and bright, hand-weaved fabrics are replaced with one hour's worth of electricity and an overflowing toilet. I decide it's time to finally try some coca leaves.

Under the meters of salt, Salar de Uyuni holds the world's largest amount of lithium. In the last few years car manufacturers have be sussing out the territory, making several—unsuccessful—bids for the land. The Bolivian government is determined to keep Salar de Uyuni in Bolivian hands and fine salt on Brazilian tables. "All it takes is for a couple of companies to come and we could be out of work," says Javier. "People here have been mining salt not just for a few years, but for centuries."

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The next day we cross from Bolivia into the Chilean Atacama, passing a cactus island which is actually the peak of an ancient volcano. The salt minerals mean the land is a breeding ground for wildlife, particularly pink flamingoes. When we reach Chile, an immigration officer takes my passport and stamps it with an odd-looking date of entry pass, demanding I pay a random made-up fee. "Stuff like that happens all the time here on the plains, you just have to do it," apologizes Javier.

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And with that we say goodbye—him holding his empty flasks of food, me with my flamingo-stamped passport in hand.