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tuesday 03 june 2025
Automatically translated from Basque, translation may contain errors. More information here. 
The pains of Potosi
| I The small hole is the door behind the entrance hall, the steps are very narrow with a truly humble atmosphere. Often you have to go on four legs if you don’t hit the top, we cover the mouth with handkerchiefs because the dust is huge. The stupid giri squad with helmet and flashlight, when reaching down the guide says: “This is the fourth level.” Joseph's working on it and he's not cruel? He knows he will die at the age of forty-five. |
II Joseph arrives here every morning before eight o’clock, until seven o’clock in the afternoon, and so on for a long time. He eats coca leaves, and fanta, four five drinks. That's seven days a week, you can't party. He didn’t get more than one euro a day before, after five years he has risen a bit higher in the company. Things are changing, yes. What do you mean, no? I agree: the former slaves were the workers’ slaves today. |
III Joseph has no schooling, he said: why? Not even a great deal of wisdom is needed for pain. He often piped for the work they needed, working in pain for another who left school. His father, who died of silicosis, spent many days and weeks suffering from pain. But Roberto gladly died of neither grief nor tears because of the arrival of his holidays in the hospital. |
| IV The rich mountain of Potosi will leave Joseph poor. There was a time when I had enough gold, silver and copper. It is a perforated cheese today and it will be later (e)re. There are black faces in the pains, not joy and not humor. They have killed a lot of people in it, neither medal nor honor, their funerals have not deserved another color. I have not kept priests in pain anywhere they have not been seen, but the churches are beautifully filled with gold. |
V He has a stone in one hand and iron in the other, a blow always with the same noise and rhythm. No safety measures and no drilling machine, it makes the effort a hundred meters from the surface of the earth. He asked me if I liked it and said no. “You have to work to live and get the benefit.” Two thousand and nine, this is the pain in the heart! The labourer of Potosi is still in the Middle Ages. |
VI The subsoil is very hot and the outside is very cold, this contrast has caused many deaths. It’s only occasionally that the sound of iron tak stops, the bag of coke to drink or spread. Joseph’s teeth are yellow and his heart is dark, his voice is covered by an explosion of dynamite. How great is the rage and shame that I feel, for us to stain the shirt we lose the joy of life. |
| VII Let him work in the hole and let’s go out to the top of the staircase where our head fits right. Since I can’t breathe, I send the handkerchief into my pocket and the dust begins to grab my mouth a kilo. What suffocation, what anguish! Time doesn't pass. Claustrophobia is a feeling like this. Now I think of José having a drink in the bar, he works in hell and it’s not a metaphor. |
VIII Once upon a time they arrived in Potosi taking the imperialist troops underneath the customs and forms of life there. Those who were present were taken as slaves, tied up in chains and ropes, and thrown into pain. The fights were useless. Robes of corrupt nobles to decorate their gold, churches, priests, political archbishops, pelotas. The challenges faced by the Spaniards were too great, but the pig they fattened was eaten happily by Europe. |
IX I spent two three days in the Potosi area and a very exciting morning in the mines of Cerro Rico. I’m still remembering and being in pain, to see if I can leave everything in today’s verses. I would never want to be in the roles that Joseph currently has, he works close to heaven, but in hell itself. Because the pain is hard, really, in both senses of the word, I value what I have today and I really love it. |
The melody is:The sun melts the top
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