Ethnographic Museum of miners (Museo Minero) - Oruro, Bolivia
February 2008
I'll admit that the “museum” route along the miner's drifts and faces has become an ordeal for me.
Due to lack of oxygen the heart worked at over-revolutions and by the end of a 40 minutes long excursion I became a typical “goner”. And actually I, even theoretically, did not work with pick and hammer!
After this “half-bent” excursion I was imbued even more with a difficult miners fate. At the same time I recollected a tragic series of disasters in mines of the “post-Soviet space”. That's how things are, though around you can hear continuous speculations about progress and technical achievements, and even about social duty. Everything and everywhere – just idle talks. Indian miners probably could not forget that their social duty is not yet paid and therefore they used to steal from capitalist enterprise everything that they could lay hands on. It is amusing, but quite a large portion of the exposition is dedicated to the “technology of appropriation of another's private property”. There is also one more explanation of this fact – tribal Indians did not have a conception of private property.
When I struggled past the show-cases with samples of rocks and mining equipment of hundred years old to the salvational exit, just for fraction I thought that I would never see the light again! Right in time there appeared Tio – devil-protector of the cave that accepted donations. I donated 20 bolivianos and immediately I could see the light ahead! Exhausted and sweating all over, I finally managed to stay alive to reach the last step of exit from the mine!
After such trials against your will you will find “The Capital” of Karl Marx and start to make notes. Sooner or later it'll become handy. Anti-human social systems are doomed.