The Devil's Miner plot
Every morning, 14-year-old Basilio Vargas walks from his home along the steep slopes of the Cerro Rico to a school in the Bolivian city of Potosi. A few hours later, however, he exchanges his school uniform for a dusty miner's cloak, rubber boots and a green helmet with gas lamp. At the market, he buys a bag of coca leaves and then quickly climbs into an open truck that takes him back upstairs. At the entrance of one of the five hundred old silver mines on top of the Cerro Rico, the foreman is waiting for him. His daily shift starts at two o'clock.