Potosi is only fifty miles southwest of Sucre, but it took us a half-day to get there. It is a drive of twists and turns, over mountain passes, and across the vast barren Altiplano, to get to the highest city in the world. It was once the richest city on earth as well. Founded by the Spanish in 1545 as a mining town, Potosi produced most of the silver for the Spain’s New World Empire. It became the largest city in the Americas, with a population exceeding 200,000 people. More than 50,000 tons of silver came out of the mines surrounding the city, extracted by the 60,000 Andean Indians and 30,000 African slaves who were forced to work in them.

Over 300 years of mining, millions of miners have perished in Potosi from lung disease, cave-ins, and explosions. This tragic city of silver and death still stands, but its wealth has vanished and its importance is gone as well. Many of its mines are now sealed, yet a few are still barely active. They now produce tin instead of silver, and today’s miners, some as young as 13, face similar dangers. They will eventually perish long before their time. After having lunch in Potosi, we drove out of town through a series of rainsqualls, which helped me to interpret this grim place. We passed below this rocky hill with a memorial cross on its summit. All of Potosi’s hills hold warrens of played out mines. A small patch of blue sky, surrounded by storm clouds, incongruously clings to what otherwise would be a black and white image. This interpretation, more than any other I made in Potosi, best symbolized how I felt about the place.