Subtle Advocates: a review for SojoMail

So I finally got published again. The following is a review of an interesting documentary about child silver miners in Bolivia.

Subtle advocates

by James Ferguson
SojoMail 5-24-2006

The Devil's Miner is Basilio Vargas, a fatherless 14-year-old "indio," or indigenous person, who has been mining silver in Potosi, Bolivia, since he was 10. Despite being a practicing Catholic, Basilio offers gifts to "tios," statues of the devil set up throughout the mines, to bid protection for his younger brother and himself from tunnel collapses, dangerous gases, runaway carts, delayed explosions, silicosis (dust in the lungs), and insufficient production.

As grim and heavy as this sounds, The Devil's Miner, broadcast Tuesday on PBS, is a beautiful film with a subtle motif of tragedy. From the awesome, ever-present landscape of the highest city on earth to the colourful costumes and music of the annual festival to the disarming smiles of the Vargas family and their friends, this film drips beauty. While Basilio's struggles are not hidden in the film, we learn about them within the context of his life; he is not portrayed as a victim without a personality.

In The Devil's Miner, Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani have made a film that is the polar opposite of the plethora of Michael Moore-esque offerings now dominating social advocacy documentaries. While the Moore formula focuses on the filmmakers' personal experiences, presenting a loud opinion and an aggressive polemic, the makers of The Devil's Miner remain self-effacing; we never see or hear them at all. Their message - that poverty is real and brutal - is implied. The film does not seek to blame any particular villain for this poverty. It is enough for them to convince us that poverty is worthy of our attention - that people in poverty are worthy of our attention.

Losing his father at an early age, Basilio lives with his mother on the mountainside of Cerro Rico (rich hill) which looms above Potosi. We follow the family as they prepare for school (spending $45 for uniforms and supplies on a $25/month salary), play soccer, watch a battery-operated TV, dance the miner's dance in the town festival, and work in the mines. At the heart of the film is the people's relationship with the tios. In one scene they sacrifice a llama to the tio at the mouth of the mine and smear its blood on the participants. There are parallels between the spiritual bondage to the tios - to which desperately poor people offer coca leaves, alcohol, and cigarettes - and ancient Western oppression of the Americas. Basilio tells his brother the history of the tios: how the Spanish came and enslaved the indios, how the indios eventually rebelled, and how the Spanish set up a "dios," or god, knowing the indios feared idol statues. Now the slave-owners are gone, the mining companies are gone, and poor miners' cooperatives eke the last remaining silver from a once fabulously rich mountain but the dios, pronounced tio by the indios, remains as does their poverty.

The film is a deftly-executed, fly-on-the-wall piece throughout which there is little indication that anyone is aware of the presence of the camera. Interviews with significant people in Basilio's life are interwoven with these scenes and also used to narrate them. As a result everything seen or heard in the film, with the exception of a few introductory lines of text, is said and done by the people of the Cerro Rico.

The interviews, which hold the film together, seem impossibly candid. Without an onscreen word from the interviewer people share their deepest fears, hopes, and dreams. A young priest voices his grief for the people of Potosi and the fear they have of the tios: "When I look into their faces I feel we have not yet done what we should have. When I look at them I see Jesus dying again without hope and nobody at their side."

The documentary sheds light on the plight of the miners in Cerro Rico - called "the mountain that eats men" as 8 million people are estimated to have died in it - particularly the child miners. At the time of filming 800 children worked in Cerro Rico's mines. However, The Devil's Miner inspired Bild Helps- A Heart for Children, a German group, to donate 1 million euros for the area, providing 450 of the children with alternate sources of income and education over the next six years. According to an April PBS interview with Davidson, Basilio and his siblings are now in school full-time.

James Ferguson is news-Internet assistant at Sojourners. He blogs at http://myshkin-press.blogspot.com. Learn more at www.thedevilsminer.com.

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