Living hell on Bolivian tin mountain

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of Jonathan Dimbleby's trilogy on Latin America to be screened by ITV.

The 30 minute film was a vivid insight into the crushing exploitation and poverty borne by Bolivian tin miners.

It is expertly and no doubt dangerously filmed at the site of the biggest tin mine in the world at Siglo Veinte-which ironically translates as "20th Century"

It is an almost feudal slave camp isolated from the rest of humanity, situated on a tin rich rock 15,000 feet high in the Andes.

The miners work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year for £1 a day.

Even this meagre sum is not their own.

They are forced to queue for hours to spend it on a staple diet of potato and maize at the Company store.

Occasionally the Company, which is nationalised and controlled by the "Bolivian government, brings in putrid meat as a special "treat" reserved for underground workers-at 25% off.

Most of the meat finds its way onto a flourishing black market to raise money for the bare essentials or to pay off the massive debts which almost every family has to the Company store.

The mines are unventilated. 25% of the miners suffer an advanced stage of silicosis caused by the stone dust.

Tuberculosis

This is combined with tuberculosis, which is endemic and untreated, to produce an illness which is quickly fatal.

Workers die at the rate of 38 a month from the labour force of 6,000. The average life expectancy of a miner is 37 years.

Medical treatment is poor and expensive.

Most miners have to lay and die in the cold damp Company houses in which they live.

Company houses are oneroom stone constructions with corrugated iron roofs. In some cases they house 2 families.

The rent for these hovels is deducted from wages and when a working man dies his family is evicted into the street destitute to make way for a family with a 'fit' worker.

Disentry

Running water and sanitation is non existent in these 'houses'. The lavatory is the street. Disentry is rife.

Unemployment high. Those not "fortunate" enough to work for the Company are forced to scratch a starvation existence out of abandoned workings and from slag heaps.

Others, more "fortunate" gather the last grains of tin left in the sludge pits after the processing.

They work waist deep in sludge for long hours for a few pounds a week.

Even for this job there is a two year waiting list ready to take their jobs when they can no longer stand the pace.

The workers chew opium leaves to numb their bodies against the effects of the work and to take away the hunger pains.

Despite these appalling conditions an amazing dignity is maintained by these Indian workers and their families.

Bolivian tin miners have a long and proud history as class fighters.

But with 60 military coups in the last 50 years, they face incredibly difficult conditions.

Last time they went on strike the town was sealed off by the military and the strikers were gunned down.

Dimbleby's film included moving interviews with women who described the brutality of the military at that time.

But as a documentary, of course, the film offered no way forward for these oppressed people.

Political activity in Siglo Veinte was evident from the Graffitti on the walls-mostly the work of the Bolivian Cornmunist Party and the Trotskyist' POR.

Former dictator Banzer The conditions of the Bolivian miners is getting steadily worse. Other cheaper sources of tin, together with the use of plastic has hit the tin market and reduced the price.

The reaction of the Bolivian military dictatorship is to increase the rate of exploitation even more.

But for the miners there is nothing left to give.

For the heroic tin miners of Bolivia the only way forward is to struggle against imperialist and capitalist slavery.

This requires a leadership with a programme which can prepare the conditions to end capitalism in Bolivia and throughout Latin America.

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Last week's powerful and moving documentary, The Tin Mountain, was the first