Laurent Chéhère

Huayena Potosi in Bolivia no longer peaks at 4,782m. Gutted by 500 years of exploitation, the rusty and ochre mountain is eating away at itself from the inside. It now resembles a volcano riddled with gigantic craters. The collapse has begun, but it still overlooks the city of Potosi. The arrival of the Conquistadors and the discovery of a silver vein in 1545 launched its disastrous exploitation. This mine made Spain rich and powerful, and engulfed hundreds of thousands of indigenous people and African slaves within its bowels. Today, lead, zinc, and tin have replaced silver mining. Slavery continues; 14,000 miners continue to dig in a stifling atmosphere filled with arsenic and silica dust.