Beyond the silver

by Laura Amador (Bolivia)

Making a local connection Bolivia

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A small colonial city, with a reputation of yesteryear and a rusty popularity: Potosí. All the times I arrive there, I've always been caught by the sensation of arriving at a place that it's been stopped in time, like a parenthesis of the clock, cause Potosí is a little break from the overwhelming modernity. Walking through the alleys into the center of this city, you can find a few churches and convents that date back to the rise of the city of silver, the colonial era, when Potosí was a benchmark of importance in this new world. They captured my attention, but not because of the historical and artistic information that abounds in the guide's speech, but because when starting the tour into a nuns convent, the first thing they explain to us is that the second daughter of every rich family was destined for religious service, this information surprises me and I immediately think of them, in the stories of all those women who came to the convent in fulfillment of their family duty; I think of all of them, and it is inevitable for me to ask myself: Maybe one of this "nuns to be" was not content with the destiny that was designated for her? I dare to ask the guide about it and he was offended, he answers me saying that being consecrated to the church was an honor and that none of them felt any discontent, I smile and prefer to answer myself, “I'm sure nobody ask them”. While I was walking through the convent, I couldn't get rid of that idea, the hallways of that place were full of a melancholic air and you can breathe the silent sorrows. When the tour was finished, I continue walking and I realized I was close to La Casa de la Moneda, so I decide to go there, it's been a while since the last time I went -I said to myself-. When I was inside the guide leads us to some underground stone vaults in which they explain how the slaves spent day and night spinning the bottom mechanism of a giant machine to create the silver coins, I see the solid wood lathe and I can only guess the monumental weight and the effort that it must have been requiere to rotate it, inevitably I think to myself once again: They were forces to do this all day, every day? But this time I decide not to ask the guide about it cause they were there to show and explain the beauty and magnificence, not to answer about the humans behind. The stone floor is several centimeters below the door frame, they explain that this was caused for the worn out of the feet of the slaves steeping on, when they were turning and turning and turning. I feel a lump in my chest and suddenly I saw them there, turning the lathe, I see their lives consumed like the stone, caught in the nonsense of their designated routine. The afternoon was over, I walk a little more through the city with that cold but pleasant wind that characterizes Potosí, I take a seat on a bank of the Boulevard, I close my eyes and I could see her, second daughter of a rich family entering the convent with a mock smile, her suitcase in her hand and her heart disenchanted, wondering: Why I had to born second ?; meanwhile a few blocks away in a dark stone chamber, a strong young man is spinning tirelessly, breathing hard and asking himself: Why I had to born slave?, both were born without being able to decide their future. I was 14 years old when this happend, and I discoverd that the magic of traveling is this, to tell the untold stories of normal and ordinary people, putting faces to these statistical informamtion repeated by the guides in the museums, giving life to the past of each city and draw it through words, in that way we will be able to see beyond the evident, cause the magic is not just in the places and the beauties they own, is in the people, me, you, them, us.