At over 14,000 feet, Potosi, Bolivia is among the highest and most remote cities on the Earth.  Despite this, it has played an amazingly important role in the history of the Americas as well as Europe.  This picture was taken just outside of Potosi, at the entrance to a cooperative mine on the Cerro Rico.    Cerro Rico translates as "the rich hill" and for several hundred years the silver mined from this hill  not only financed the excesses of the Spanish Empire but also provided much of the capital for the Industrial Revolution of Northern Europe.  At its height, Potosi was the richest city in the world.   Over the centuries, millions of indigenous and African laborers died working the mines of Cerro Rico. Today, there is little wealth left in the Cerro Rico or Potosi.   The miners you see in the picture struggle to make a living and earn less than 20$ per week.   They start each day chewing coca leaves, as you see them doing above, to numb themselves and suppress their hunger for another long day in the mines working with archaic equipment and unstable dynamite.  Most miners begin working the hill around age ten (the two miners standing at the left are each ten years old).  If they stay in the mines, most will be dead by the age of forty.  Because of the many dangers in their job, miners are very superstitious.   To appease the God of the mines, "El Tio" (the uncle), the miners sacrafice a llama twice a year and splash its blood across the mine's entrance (which can be seen at the end of the tracks.