The Age Of Death

In Bolivia, four miners descend each day into the bowels of the “man-eater”. Over five centuries, the Cerro Rico has swallowed up millions of miners, Indian and African slaves and indigenous people, under Spanish domination. This archaic and dangerous practice is matched only by the lucidity they all have about the likelihood of an accident. Vulnerability is visible everywhere, in the cemetery for silicosis victims and even at the tattooist’s, whose needle begins to resemble a miniature pneumatic-drill. Reveka (Rebecca), the name of the concession that Hilarion manages, rings a Hitchcockian note and is a haunted place: the miner is convinced that the souls of his colleagues who died in the mine still wander there; is it only a coincidence that the miner’s daughter is reading The Three Little Pigs, who repeatedly move house in search of an illusory solidity?