Though my eyes healed in the decades since I left my childhood home, I was unsure if it was safe to return to those altitudes for my research trip. The doctors couldn’t guarantee anything, but I wanted desperately to go. So, with the tenuous approval of an ophthalmologist and a large bag of various eye drops, I headed back to Bolivia in 2016. It was worth the risk: it was an amazing trip. I even got to visit my old elementary school!
Completely by chance, I arrived in Potosí on the first of April—the 471st anniversary of the Spaniards finding silver in the mountain. I watched the parade and listened to the speeches much like Ana does in this book.
Then I went up the mountain.
Through the generosity of the organization Voces Libres, I was able to tag along for the day to Escuela Robertitio, a tiny school for miners’ children high on the Cerro Rico. I interviewed the teachers and the school psychologist about their work, and I talked to the children about their hopes and dreams.
What stunned me most was the difference that emerged between groups of kids. When I chatted with the six- to eight-year-olds and asked them what they wanted to do with their lives, they all had enthusiastic answers. One wanted to be a teacher, another a beautician. But when I asked the same question to the older kids, the eleven- to thirteen-year-olds, they had no answers. They merely shrugged. By that age, most of the boys were working in the mine after school and the girls were working as palliris, breaking refuse rock with their families to try to make ends meet. Many of them had already given up hope of doing anything different with their lives. Instead, they mapped that hope onto their younger siblings. “Maybe my little brother can get away,” one of the older girls told me, not meeting my eyes.
The clash between the two realities shown in this note’s epigraphs—the blinding wealth produced by the mountain and the crushing poverty experienced by those who have extracted that wealth over the centuries—is the core injustice that drove me to tell this story. I wanted to explore how a girl could dig out from under the weight of generational poverty where the generations began in the 1500s. I wanted to showcase Bolivia, in all its stunning Andean glory and societal complexity, for readers unfamiliar with the country. But most of all, I wanted to write a possible future for the girls—Jadahi, Emily, Noelia, Joela, Jimena, Cintia, and Emiliane—I had met on the Mountain That Eats Men. May they not suffer as their forebearers have.
A NOTE on the USE OF ITALICS, LANGUAGES, and the BIBLE
There has recently been some discussion over whether non-English words should or should not be italicized in a predominantly English text. The argument is that such italicization serves to highlight the foreignness of those words and is not the way bilingual people think or speak. However, the story I wanted to tell in Treasure of the World was not one of bilingual identity. In this book, my characters are not code-switching between English and other languages: they are not using English at all. For clarity, I have chosen to italicize non-English words—not to highlight that they are a change from the way my characters have been speaking, but to remind my readers that the characters are speaking a language that is not English throughout.
So how, in an English-language text, could I best represent Spanish? Whenever possible, I have tried to reflect the fact that my characters are speaking Spanish at the level of word choice and grammar. For example, I have used Spanish colloquialisms (“if you give him a hand, he’ll take your arm”) rather than their English equivalents (“give him an inch, he’ll take a mile”) and kept the subjunctive mood, which is optional in English but mandatory in Spanish. Similarly, the response Ana gives to the readings in church is not the response one would give in English, but a translation of the Mass response from the Spanish. My hope was that, though these choices might make the phrasing feel jarring to Anglophone readers, moments like this would help sink them into the cadence of the language my characters would really be speaking. In addition, some of the Spanish used in this book may not be familiar even to native speakers, as many of the terms are regionally specific to Bolivia.
And what of the Quechua? Variations in the spelling of Quechua come from the fact that the Inca had no written language. More than one modern spelling has evolved to capture the sound of the oral language. Moreover, Quechua is spoken from southern Colombia to northern Argentina and has many regional variations. I took the phrases and spellings used in this book from my graduate school studies with Francisco Tandioy Jansasoy at Indiana University. Though the words I have used are quite basic and likely do not vary regionally, it is possible—as Francisco taught me the type of Quechua (Inga) that was his native language growing up in the Sibundoy Valley in highland Putumayo, Colombia—that there may be discrepancies between the words I have used on the page and the Quechua spoken by the families of the Cerro Rico. I was not able to check it on my research trip as, sadly, my “classroom Quechua” did not stretch far enough for me to do much more than greet my sources politely. To conduct more detailed interviews, I was assisted by a Spanish-Quechua interpreter familiar with the local dialect.
Lastly, the Bible translation used in the text is from the World English Bible, a public domain Modern English translation of the Holy Bible found on biblegateway.com. The Catholic Church rotates biblical readings based on church season. The Gospel reading that Ana hears in the cathedral (Matthew 4:1–11, the temptation of Christ in the desert) is traditionally the reading used for the first Sunday in Lent. In 2016, the first of April was the Friday after Easter. This would most definitely not be the reading you would hear in a Catholic Mass on this day. However, as the passage had interesting resonances with the fictional story I wanted to tell, I used it anyway.
All other errors and omissions in the text are entirely my own.
GLOSSARY
agradiseyki (Quechua): thank you (borrowed from the Spanish agradecer)
allyisiami (Quechua): response to puangi/puangichi: “Fine”
Altiplano (Spanish): literally “high plain,” a plateau of land at 12,000 ft where the Andes are the widest, covering a large expanse of southeastern Peru and western Bolivia
api (Quechua): a drink made from ground purple corn, water, citrus fruit, and spices
¡Ay, Dios! (Spanish): Oh, God!
Aymara: indigenous language spoken in Bolivia. Estimates are that around 1.6 million people across South America speak Aymara today. Also used to refer to the ethnic group whose primary language is Aymara.
Casa de la Moneda (Spanish): literally, “house of coin.” Name of the mint in Potosí where the silver of the mountain was turned into ingots and money.
Cerro Rico (Spanish): Rich Hill
cholita (regionalism): historically a derogatory term for indigenous women in Bolivia. Today, women have taken over the term and claimed it as a source of cultural pride. The “look” of a cholita is standard: many layered, colorful skirts, a long shawl, flat shoes, a bowler hat, and braids. Pride in this term has come about in parallel with grassroots indigenous movements; discrimination against women who choose to wear cultural dress is lower today than in the past.
chuño (regionalism): a Bolivian staple: small potatoes that have been freeze-dried and thawed multiple times to extend their shelf life. Cooked into stews and soups.
cielo (Spanish): sky; heaven
coca: leaf of the coca plant. (No relationship to cocoa/cacao, an entirely different plant, which is used to make chocolate.) Coca leaves are chewed by indigenous people throughout the Andes. Though the plant is the raw material that is used to produce the addictive drug cocaine, in its natural form it is only a mild stimulant and appetite suppressant. In Bolivia, it is cheaper than food, and many poor families use it to make it through the day on only one meal. Coca is also a deeply important part of indigenous culture and is used both in religious rituals and traditional healing.
dinamita (Spanish): dynamite
Don (Spanish): term of respect for a man, similar to “Mr.”
Doña (Spanish): term of respect for a woman, similar to “Mrs.”
guarda (Spanish): someone who guards the mines overnight to prevent robbery; usually women or girls
Huyana Capac (1464/1468–1524): eleventh emperor of the Incan empire
Inca: indigenous people of the Andes
manta (Spanish): large square of woven wool cloth that can be used as a shawl or poncho or folded to make a sling for carrying babies or a pouch for carrying goods.
mi hija (Spanish): my daughter
mi hijo (Spanish): my son
mineral (Spanish): literally, mineral. Used colloquially by the people on the Cerro Rico to refer to the various metals and ores that have a market value, such as tin, zinc, and aluminum.
Pachamama (Quechua): Mother Earth
Padre (Spanish): literally, father. Term of address for a Catholic priest.
Palliri (regionalism): Used on the Cerro Rico to refer to a woman whose job it is to break open refuse rocks from the mines by hand, looking for trace amounts of leftover metal.
posada (Spanish): inn
Potoc’xi: “a thunderous noise.” Though this is part of a myth about the origin of the name “Potosí,” it does not fit the phonology of Quechua, the language spoken by the Inca. Possibly Aymara in origin.
puangi (Quechua): hello (to one person); literally: an abbreviation for “How was the dawn for you?”
puangichi (Quechua): hello (to more than one person)
Quechua: indigenous language spoken by the Inca and by their descendants. Estimates are that eight to ten million people across South America speak Quechua today. Also occasionally used to refer to the ethnic group whose primary language is Quechua.
El Rosario (Spanish): literally, “the rosary,” Catholic prayer beads and the sequence of prayers that are said on them. Many mines are named for religious figures.
salteña (Spanish): a baked, meat-filled pastry; empanada
Saqsayhuamán: Incan fortress near Cusco, Peru, capital of the Incan empire
silicosis: a lung disease caused by breathing in dust that contains the mineral silica. Over time, it builds up in the lungs, scarring them and making it more and more difficult to breathe. Left untreated, it leads to death.
sorroche (regionalism): sickness caused by the lack of oxygen at high altitudes. Symptoms can include nausea, exhaustion, weakness, dizziness, insomnia, pins and needles, shortness of breath, headache.
Sumaj Orcko (Quechua): Beautiful Hill
Tío (Spanish): literally, uncle. Used by the miners of the Cerro Rico to refer to the statues of the devil guarding the mine shafts.
La Verde (Spanish): slang term for the Bolivian national football team, one of the ten members of FIFA’s South American Football Confederation.
yachac (Quechua): term for a shamanistic healer in Ecuador and Bolivia
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Getting any book from idea to publication is a tremendous undertaking, and this book required more assistance than many to make it there. A huge thank-you to everyone who has supported me personally over the past five years or has helped this book in a creative or technical capacity.
To my dad, to whom this book is dedicated, and who left his heart on the altiplano years ago. For traveling with me, opening doors where I didn’t even know to look for handles, and for being willing to wait over five years for “his” book to be ready.
To my family, for supporting me as I dug deep to find the treasure in this book. Most especially, to Nick, for ceaselessly supporting me, including solo parenting a feverish four-year-old and two boisterous boys for the two weeks I was in another hemisphere. You have never once doubted me in this crazy thing that I do, though I often doubt myself. Thank you for loving me and being my solid rock every step of the way.
To my amazing writer friends and those who supported this book on its bumpy road to publication. First and foremost, my amazing critique group: Annie Gaughen, Annie Cardi, Katie Slivensky, and Allison Pottern. You guys are the absolute best. Thanks also to Trish Ryan for encouraging me to give this book the time it needed, to Annamary Sullivan for the many phone calls reminding me that “benching” a book is an investment in the future, and to Daniela DeSousa and Samantha Negrete, for the last-minute consult, even though it was midnight in Madrid.
To Caryn Wiseman, my agent, and to all those at Penguin Random House who helped turn this book from an idea into a reality. Special thanks to assistant editor Caitlin Tutterow, art director Cecilia Yung, and assistant art director Eileen Savage for the beautiful cover. Deepest thanks to Stacey Barney, editor extraordinaire, for helping me bring out the heart in this book that mattered so much to me.
I am indebted to the producers and directors of two documentaries that I used in my research: Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani’s The Devil’s Miner (2005) and Raul de la Fuente’s Minerita (2013). The Devil’s Miner was my first introduction to the Cerro’s child miners. I have named my fictional mine El Rosario in tribute to the real El Rosario mine in which Basilio and Bernardino Vargas worked. And though I only discovered it recently, I would also like to acknowledge Ander Izagirre’s book The Mountain That Eats Men. Thank you all for working to make known the plight of the children of the Cerro Rico.
To Francisco Tandioy Jansassoy, native speaker of Inga (Quechua) and co-founder of Musu Runakuna, a political action group that works closely with Inga elders to promote Inga language, cultural expression, and land rights, and my teacher at Indiana University. Thank you for introducing me to your culture and teaching me the fascinating basics of your native language.
Lastly, to all those who helped me while on my research trip in Bolivia, my thanks:
* * *
Este libro ha sido una empresa dura de realizar que ha llevado varios años. Quiero dar las gracias enormemente a las siguientes personas, quienes me ayudaron durante mi viaje de investigación a Bolivia en 2016:
A la Dra. Rosario (Nilda) Caballero Aracena, doctora, trabajadora de desarrollo y ayudante extraordinaria: Mil gracias por presentarme a personas que fueron claves durante el proceso, por actuar como intérprete del quechua al español y por dirigir la excursión por la montaña.
A Zenon Paucara, trabajador de campo en la Fundación Voces Libres: Gracias por dejarme acompañarle mientras conducía a los niños del Cerro Rico a la Escuela Robertito y por compartir sus experiencias conmigo.
A Fabiola Sandivel Miranda Vela, abogada de CEPROMIN: Gracias por ayudarme a ver la realidad de las mujeres de la montaña, y por su trabajo protegiendo a todas esas mujeres maltratadas y guiando a los niños que quieren abandonar la montaña mediante los programas de capacitación.
A José Manuel (Manolo) Diez Canseco y Jorge Marcelo Velásquez Bonilla: Gracias por auxiliarme con contactos y alojamiento en la ciudad de Potosí.
A Vanessa Giselle Nera Zeherina, psicóloga escolar en la Escuela Robertito: Gracias por su generosidad al compartir su trabajo y por presentarme a los estudiantes que tiene bajo su cuidado.
Por último, a las mujeres y los niños del Cerro Rico: Gracias por compartir sus historias, vidas y penas conmigo con tanta generosidad. Debo una mención especial a Doña Serafina Sandoval Condor, madre de once y viuda del Cerro Rico, y a Emiliane (trece años), Rober (trece), Jadahi (doce), Edwin (doce), Cintia (once), Emily (diez), Joel (diez), Noelia (ocho), y Jimena (seis), estudiantes de la Escuela Robertito.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tara Sullivan is the author of the award-winning and critically acclaimed Golden Boy and The Bitter Side of Sweet. She was born in India and spent her childhood living in Bangladesh, Ecuador, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic with her parents, who were international aid workers. She received a BA in Spanish literature and cognitive science from the University of Virginia and an MA in Latin American studies and an MPA in nonprofit management from Indiana University. Her first novel, Golden Boy, won the 2014 Notable Social Studies Tr
ade Books for Young People Award and was selected as a top-ten book of 2013 by YALSA and as a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews and The Wall Street Journal. Her second novel, The Bitter Side of Sweet, won the 2017 Children's Africana Book Award Honor and was an ALSC Notable Children's Book. She currently lives with her family in Massachusetts.
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