Lunch with the Devil

Two little boys, Basilio 14-years-old and Bernardino 12-years-old, sit side-by-side in a cave. Warm flames of light lick the walls in the separate vault where they eat their lunch beside the devil.

The older boy warns his brother to always give honor to el Tio, so he will not kill their bodies and eat their souls. If they respect him, he will not crush them by the falling rocks of his teeth or destroy them with his poisonous breath. So, they gracefully sprinkle fists of crushed coca leaves onto Tio's lap. They adorn his cracked, clay torso with precious food.

Yet, Tio's red stone eyes remain starring, unmoved. The little brother says he doesn't like to look at Tio's face with his blackened nose, snarled lips, and straight horns jutting from his head. To calm his brother's fears, Basilio tells the story of Tio's birth:

"This Tio is from the time of the Spanish when they made the Indios work in the mines for days without seeing sunlight. Twenty hours of work, four hours of sleep. The Indios didn't want to work anymore. But the Spanish knew the Indios worshipped many gods, and they built this to frighten the Indios, saying if they didn't work, he would eat them. The Spanish called him Dio, but there was no "D" in their language, so the Indios called him Tio."

Even knowing the story of Tio's creation, the boys still draw dark sinewy devils onto the cave walls with their kerosene lamps. The community still sacrifices a llama and throws its blood onto the mine's face for the devil to drink. Above ground, in the sunlight, they worship God, but once underground they are in the devil's providence.

The local Catholic priest says to see such children working in the mines is to still see Jesus suffering on the Cross. But he says he cannot tell them outright they stray from the "true faith," he only tells them in church that God is more powerful. But belief in a mostly benevolent, protective force is one thing when you are 14 and get to go to school to learn about the planets and stars, throw water balloons at girls, and sit in a church full of candles and glass windows. Belief in a monster is reality when you go into the depths of the earth to feed yourself, your brother, mother, and baby sister. Basilio and Bernardino's father died too soon to save them from this adulthood.

Later we see Basilio in the deepest part of a different, bigger mine. The temperature is hellish, 105 degrees. Dust fills the air and lines the workers' eyelashes, nostrils, and lungs. Their faces turn as white as the pale Spanish that forced their ancestors to this work. Most miners in Cerro Rico die before 40 from Tio's explosions, gasses, cave-ins, or his slow curse of Silicosis. Indeed, belief in a real devil isn't so difficult when we see bodies crushed in the jaws of the world's lust for precious things.

Documentary The Devil's Miner