Devils, Witches, and Sudden Death In the hellish mines of Bolivia, workers call upon strange companions to ease their terror

by June Nash

Tin miners in the high Andean plateau of Bolivia earn less than a dollar a day when, to use their phrase, they "bury themselves alive in the bowels of the earth." The mine shafts—as much as two miles long and half a mile deep—pene-trate hills that have been exploited for more than 450 years. The min-ers descend to the work areas in open hauls; some stand on the roof and cling to the swaying cable as the winch lowers them deep into the mine.

Once they reach their working level, there is always the fear of rockslides as they drill the face of the mine, of landslides when they set off the dynamite, of gas when they enter unfrequented areas. And added to their fear of the accidents that have killed or maimed so many of their workmates is their eco-nomic insecurity. Like Wall Street brokers they watch international price quotations on tin, because a difference of a few cents can mean layoffs, loss of bonuses, a cut in contract prices—even a change of government.

Working in the narrow chimneys and corridors of the mine, breath-ing the dust- and silicate-filled air, their bodies numbed by the vibra-tion of the drilling machines and the din of dynamite blasts, the tin

miners have found an ally in the devil, or Tio (uncle), as he is affec-tionately known. Myths relate the devil to his pre-Christian counter-part Huari, the powerful ogre who owns the treasures of the hills. In Oruro, a 13,800-foot-high mining center in the western Andes of Bo-livia, all the miners know the leg-end of Huari, who persuaded the simple farmers of the Uru Uru tribe to leave their work in the fields and enter the caves to find the riches he had in store. The farmers, sup-ported by their ill-gained wealth from the mines, turned from a vir-tuous life of tilling the soil and praying to the sun god Inti to a life of drinking and midnight revels. The community would have died, the legend relates, if an Inca maiden, Nusta, had not descended from the sky and taught the people to live in harmony and industry.

Despite four centuries of prose-

At a graveside service, the family, friends, and fellow workers

of a Bolivian miner mourn his death.

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In a mine, a worker offers liquor, coca, and cigarettes

to the Tio. " W e do not worship him. We do not kneel

before him," said one miner.

lyting, Catholic priests have failed to wipe out belief in the legend, but the principal characters have merged with Catholic deities. Nusta is identified with the Virgin of the Mineshaft, and is represented as the vision that appeared miraculously to an unemployed miner.

The miners believe that Huari lives on in the hills where the mines are located, and they venerate him in the form of the devil, or Tio. They believe he controls the rich veins of ore, revealing them only to those who give him offerings. If they offend the Tio or slight him by failing to give him offerings, he will withhold the rich veins or cause an accident.

Miners make images of the Tio and set them up in the main corri-dors of each mine level, in niches cut into the walls for the workers to rest. The image of the Tio varies in appearance according to the fancy of the miner who makes him, but his body is always shaped from ore. The hands, face, horns, and legs are sculptured with clay from the mine. Bright pieces of metal or burned-out bulbs from the miners' electric torches are stuck in the eye sockets. Teeth are made of glass or crystal sharpened "like nails," and the mouth is open, gluttonous and ready to receive offerings. Some-times the plaster of Paris masks worn by the devil dancers at Carni-val are used for the head. Some Tios wear embroidered vests, flam-boyant capes, and miners' boots. The figure of a bull, which helps miners in contract with the devil by digging out the ore with its horns, occasionally aecompanies the im-age, or there may be chinas, female temptresses who are the devil's con-sorts.

The Tio is a figure of power: he has what everyone wants, in excess. Coca remains lie in his greedy

mouth. His hands are stretched out, grasping the bottles of alcohol he is offered. His nose is burned black by the cigarettes he smokes down to the nub. If a Tio is knocked out of his niche by an extra charge of dy-namite and survives, the miners consider him to be more powerful than others.

Another spirit present in the mines but rarely represented in im-ages is the Awiche, or old woman. Although some miners deny she is the Pachamama, the earth goddess worshiped by farmers, they relate to her in the same way. Many of the miners greet her when they enter the mine, saying, "Good-day, old woman. Don't let anything happen to me today!" They ask her to inter-cede with the Tio when they feel in danger; when they leave the mine safely, they thank her for their life.

Quite the opposite kind of fem nine image, the Viuda, or wido\ appears to miners who have bee drinking chicha, a fermented cor liquor. Miners who have seen tl Viuda describe her as a young ar beautiful chola, or urbanized I dian, who makes men lose the minds—and sometimes their pa checks. She, too, is a consort of tl devil and recruits men to make co tracts with him, deluding them wi promises of wealth.

When I started working in Orui during the summer of 1969, tl men told me about the ch'alla, ceremonial offering of cigarette coca, and alcohol to the Tio. Oi man described it as follows:

"We make the ch'alla in tl working areas within the mine. M partner and I do it together eve) Friday, but on the first Friday <

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the month we do it with the other workers on our level. We bring in banners, confetti, and paper stream-ers. First we put a cigarette in the mouth of the Tio and light it. After this we scatter alcohol on the ground for the Pachamama, then give some to the Tio. Next we take out our coca and begin to chew, and we also smoke. We serve liquor from the bottles each of us brings in. We light the Tio's cigarette, say-ing Tio, help us in our work. Don't let any accidents happen.' We do not kneel before him as we would before a saint, because that would be sacrilegious.

'Then everyone begins to get drunk. We begin to talk about our work, about the sacrifices that we make. When this is finished, we wind the streamers around the neck

of the Tio. We prepare our mesas [tables of offerings that include sugar cakes, llama embryos, colored wool, rice, and candy balls].

"After some time we say, 'Let's go.' Some have to carry out those who are drunk. We go to where we change our clothes, and when we come out we again make the offer-ing of liquor, banners, and we wrap the streamers around each others' necks. From there on. each one does what he pleases."

I thought I would never be able to participate in a ch'alla because the mine managers told me the men didn't like to have women inside the mine, let alone join them in their most sacred rites. Finally a friend high in the governmental bu-reaucracy gave me permission to go into the mine. Once down on the

lowest level of San Jose mine, 340 meters .below the ground, I asked my guide if I could stay with one of the work crews rather than tour the galleries as most visitors did. He was relieved to leave me and get back to work. The men let me try their machines so that I could get a sense of what it was like to hold a 160-pound machine vibrating in a yard-wide tunnel, or to use a me-chanical shovel in a gallerv where the temperature was 100° F.

They told me of some of their frustrations—not getting enough air pumped in to make the machines work at more than 20 percent effi-ciency and constant breakdowns of machinery, which slowed them up on their contract.

At noon I refused the superinten-dent's invitation to eat lunch at level 0 . Each of the men gave me a bit of his soup or some "seconds," solid food consisting of noodles, po-tatoes, rice, and spicv meat, which their wives prepare and send down in the elevators.

At the end of the shift all the men in the work group gathered at the Tio's niche in the large corri-dor. It was the first Fridav of the month and the gang leader, Lino Pino, pulled out a bottle of fruit juice and liquor, which his wife had prepared, and each of the men brought out his plastic bag with coca. Lino led the men in offering a cigarette to the Tio, lighting it, and then shaking the liquor on the ground and calling for life, "Hal-lalla! Hallalla!"

We sat on lumps of ore along the rail lines and Lino's helper served us, in order of seating, from a little tin cup. I was not given anv prior-ity, nor was I forgotten in the rounds. One of the men gave me coca from his supplv and I received it with two hands, as I had been taught in the rituals aboveground. I

When they toast the Tio, Indian workers often ask him to "produce" minerals and let them "ripen,"" as if the ore were a farm crop.

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chewed enough to make my cheek feel numb, as though I had had an injection of novocaine for dental work. The men told me that coca was their gift from the Pach-amama, who took pity on them in their work.

As Lino offered liquor to the Tio, he asked him to "produce" more mineral and make it "ripen," as though it were a crop. These rituals are a continuation of agricultural ceremonies still practiced by the farmers in the area. The miners themselves are the sons or grand-sons of the landless farmers who were recruited when the gold and silver mines were reopened for tin production after the turn of the cen-tury.

A month after I visited level 340, three miners died in an ex-plosion there when a charge of dy-namite fell down a shoot to their work site and exploded. Two of the men died in the mine; the third died a few days later in the hospital. When the accident occurred, all the men rushed to the elevators to help or to stare in fascinated horror as the dead and injured were brought up to level 0 . They carried the bod-ies of their dead comrades to the so-cial center where they washed the charred faces, trying to lessen the horror for the women who were coming. When the women came into the social center where the bodies were laid out, they screamed and stamped their feet, the hor-ror of seeing their husbands or neighbors sweeping through their bodies.

The entire community came to sit in at the wake, eating and drink-ing in the feasting that took place before the coffins of their dead com-rades. The meal seemed to confirm the need to go on living as well as the right to live.

Although the accident had not occurred in the same corridor I had been in, it was at the same level. Shortly after that, when a student who worked with me requested per-mission to visit the mine, the man-ager told her that the men were hinting that the accident had hap-pened because the gringa (any for-eign-born, fair-haired person, in this case myself) had begn inside. She was refused, permission. I was

disturbed by what might happen to my relations with the people of the community, but even more con-cerned that I had added to their sense of living in a hostile world where anything new was a threat.

The miners were in a state of uneasiness and tension the rest of that month, July. They said the Tio was "eating them" because he hadn't had an offering of food. The dead men were all young, and the Tio prefers the juicy flesh and blood of the young, not the tired blood of the sick older workers. He wanted a k'araku, a ceremonial banquet of sacrificed animals.

There had not been any sched-uled k'arakus since the army put the mines under military control in 1965. During the first half of the century, when the "tin barons"— Patino, Hochschild, and Ara-yamao—owned the mines, the ad-ministrators and even some of the owners, especially Patino, who had risen from the ranks, would join with the men in sacrificing animals to the Tio and in the drinking and dancing that followed. After nation-alization of the mines in 1952, the rituals continued. In fact, some of the miners complained that they were done in excess of the Tio's needs. One said that going into the mine after the revolution was like walking into a saloon.

Following military control, how-ever, the miners had held the ritual only once in San Jose, after two men had died while working their shift. Now the Tio had again shown he was hungry by eating the three miners who had died in the acci-dent. The miners were determined to offer him food in a k'araku.

At 10:30 P.M. on the eve of the devil's month, I went to the mine with Doris Widerkehr, a student, and Eduardo Ibanez, a Bolivian art-ist. I was somewhat concerned about how we would be received af-ter what the manager of the mine had said, but all the men seemed glad we had come. As we sat at the entry to the main shaft waiting for the yatiris, shamans who had been contracted for the ceremony, the miners offered us chic ha and cock-tails of fruit juice and alcohol.

When I asked one of the' men why they had prepared the ritual

and what it meant, his answer was "We are having the k'araku be

cause a man can't die just like that We invited the administrators, bu none of them have come. This is be cause only the workers feel th< death of their comrades.

"We invite the Pachamama, th« Tio, and God to eat the llamas thai we will sacrifice. With faith we give coca and alcohol to the Tio. We are more believers in God here than ir Germany or the United States be cause there the workers have lost their soul. We do not have earth quakes because of our faith before God. We hold the crucifix to oui breast. We have more confident before God."

Most miners reject the claim tha belief in the Tio is pagan sacrilege They feel that no contradiction ex ists, since time and place for offer ings to the devil are clearly define* and separated from Christian ritual.

At 11:00 P.M. two white llama contributed by the administratioi were brought into level 0 in a com pany truck. The miners had ahead1

adorned the pair, a male and a fe male, with colored paper streamer and the bright wool earrings witl which farmers decorate their flocks

The four yatiris contracted fo did not appear, but two others wh< happened to be staying at the houst of a miner were brought in to per form the ceremony. As soon as the\ arrived, the miners took the llama:-into the elevator. The male was or the right and the female to his left "just the same as a marriage cere mony," one miner commented Looking at the couple adorned with bright streamers and confetti, there was the feeling of a wedding.

Two men entered the elevatoi with the llamas and eight more climbed on top to go down to level 340. They were commissioned to take charge of the ritual. All tht

A model of the Tio, shaped by the workers, sits in a

mine alcove. If the image survives an explosion, it is considered very powerful.

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Pushing a cart, workers with puffed cheeks chew coca, a narcotic. Falling rocks » are a constant danger in the narrow corridors, lower left.

workers of 340 entered to partici-pate in the ceremony below and about 50 men gathered at level 0 to drink.

At level 340 the workers guided the yatiris to the spot where the ac-cident had occurred. There they cast liquor from a bottle and called upon the Tio, the Awiche, and God to protect the men from further ac-cidents—naming all the levels in the mine, the various work sites, the different veins of ore, the elevator shaft, and the winch, repeating each name three times and asking the Tio not to eat any more workers and to give them more veins to work. The miners removed their helmets during this ritual. It ended with the plea for life, "Hallalla, hal-lalla, hallalla." Two bottles of li-quor were sprinkled on the face of the rock and in the various work places.

The yatiris then instructed the men to approach the llamas with their arms behind their backs so that the animals would not know who held the knife that would kill them. They were also told to beg pardon for the sacrifice and to kiss the llamas farewell. One miner, not-ing what appeared to be a tear fall-ing from the female's eye, cried and tried to comfort her. As the men moved around the llamas in a circle, the yatiris called on the Mal-kus (eagle gods), the Awiche, the Pachamama, and finally the Tiyulas

Continued on page 82

After two men died in an explosion, the miners held

a k'araku, an ancient ceremony that included

the sacrifice of two llamas.