In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Pa r t Tw o The Mines Introduction: Life in the Nationalized Mines A fter the 1952 revolution,the huge Catavi–Siglo XX mining complex located near Llallagua, some two hundred miles south of La Paz, quickly became COMIBOL’s largest operation, just as it had been for Simón Patiño.The ratio of dependents to miners was very high—about 4.5:1—reflected in the large families like that of Félix, whose parents had thirteen children, eight of whom survived beyond infancy.Wages in the mid-1960s amounted to about eighty cents a day, supplemented by subsidized foodstuffs at the company stores (pulperías). Workundergroundwasorganizedhierarchically,withthedriller—whose equipment weighed as much as 150 pounds—holding the highest status. Miners’ daily lives were shaped by the knowledge that death or serious injury was just one misstep away. Even the lucky miner faced inevitable death from black lung.Miners usually died before they were forty—leaving their widows and orphans without means of support.This reality was often dulled by the consumption of alcohol, leading to rampant alcoholism, at an estimated incidence of over 50 percent of the male population. It contributed directly to frequent physical abuse of women and children and indirectly to increased malnutrition, as resources for food, medicine, or clothing were spent on drink.A more constructive way to cope was to immerse oneself in the deep-seated tradition of collective resistance and struggle for better wages and conditions (Nash 1993). Not only was mining incredibly dangerous, but life in the settlements was far from easy. In the 1960s, a company doctor reported that 40 percent of children were badly undernourished and that 15 percent of all babies died before they were one year old (Gall 1974b). Families were crowded into tiny unheated houses, often having to share with another family, as Félix’s family did when he was young. Everything had to fit in one room 58 crammed with two to three beds for six to eight people. Most kitchens were outdoors on the small porch. With a large number of children,water supplied by a neighborhood tap, and bathrooms in overcrowded communal latrines,women led lives shaped by domestic chores.They spent long hours chatting together as they lined up at the pulpería every other day waiting to pick up subsidized food, the only way to ensure a single check came close to buying enough to feed the family. Caloric intake was generally less than what is required for healthy lives (Nash 1993). COMIBOL schools were better than other state schools, but even a poor state school was out of reach for much of the rural population. Nonetheless, miners’ children were frequently packed seventy-five to a small classroom, with some sitting on the floor and few with books. Within this often desperate world, miners and their families forged a subculture with deep bonds to their community and their union, the Federation of Bolivian Miners’ Unions (Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia—FSTMB—commonly referred to as the Miners’ Federation). By 1961, women had formed a Housewives Committee of Siglo XX (Comité de Amas de Casa de Siglo XX), which played an important role in increasing pressure on COMIBOL for better conditions, and in strengthening the FSTMB. Their contribution often went unacknowledged, however, due to the strong machismo of both miners and their representatives. Left-wing political parties heralded the miners’union as the vanguard of Bolivia’s proletariat,and played an important role in fostering a sophisticated class consciousness among miners.But indigenous rituals also held a central role in their lives, and before 1952 were used by owners attempting to make them more compliant. Miners made regular offerings (ch’allas and k’araukus) to the god of the mines, known most commonly as the Tío, but also as Huari or Supay, to ensure his continued benevolence.As left-wing parties and the union gained prominence, these ancient rituals played a critical role in reinforcing class consciousness (Nash 1993). By the mid-1960s almost five hundred miles of tunnels pockmarked the inside of the Siglo XX mine, but the average grade of ore had dropped significantly.What remained was steadily removed by the “block caving” method of blasting low-grade masses of mineralized rock, allowing the extraction of greater volumes with far less manpower. The addition of a “sink and float” concentrating plant raised the mineral content of ore entering the mill, contributing to COMIBOL’s profits...

Share