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Carlos Villalon - Photographer
British tourist Charles Newman is shown with miners deep inside a suffocating cavern in the Rich Mountain in Potosi, Bolivia. “I thought the working conditions were pretty shocking, coming from Europe,” said Newman, a 19-year-old Briton. “It’s quite humbling, actually seeing what they do on a daily basis.”
Outside the Candelaria mine on the Rich Mountain, miners relax before their next shift. For their troubles, most earn a paltry $14 a day, even as a commodities boom is generating far more earnings than in the past.
Miners fill and empty rail cars inside the Rich Mountain in Potosi, Bolivia.
A woman guards the mouth of a mine in Potosi, Bolivia, preventing thieves from stealing tools or minerals.
At dawn, miners line up to take a bus to the mines of the Rich Mountain in Potosi, Bolivia. There are 600 mines, according to veteran engineer Nestor Rene Espinoza, and 65 miles of tunnels. His study, which was unveiled in August, showed that five large areas of the mountain’s upper levels have a high risk of collapse.
A miner walks home after his shift ends inside the Rich Mountain in Potosi, Bolivia.
The mining city of Potosi, Bolivia, is at the base of the Rich Mountain.
A family celebrates a religious festival in the Calvary neighborhood of Potosi, at the foot of the Rich Mountain in Potosi, Bolivia.
Store owner Armando Padilla displays the dynamite he sells to miners in Potosi, Bolivia. A miner himself in the past, Padilla lost three fingers during an accident with dynamite.
Rising like a monument in Potosi, Bolivia, the Rich Mountain provided the silver the Spanish Empire needed. The mountain is still as imposing as it was when Spanish soldiers first set eyes upon its red, rocky hues rising 15,800 feet into the deep blue skies of Bolivia’s southern highlands.
Women attending to a party to pay homage to Urcupiña´s virgin in Potosi, Bolivia.
Festivals mean brass bands and plenty of food and beer for miners' families in the Calvary neighborhood of Potosi, Bolivia.
A family pays respects to a miner who died inside the Rich Mountain in Potosi, Bolivia. With dozens of deaths taking place each year inside the mountain, miners long ago came up with a brutally fitting moniker for their workplace: the mountain that eats men.
Saturnino Soncko is 58, but the fine deadly dust he inhaled in the mines has left him an invalid in the pulmonary wing of a public hospital in Potosi, Bolivia.