Can't Do It In Europe, 2005/The Devil's Miner, 2005

Can't Do It In Europe, 2005. A Film by Charlotta Copcutt, Anna Weitz and Anna Klara Åhrén. 46 min. Color. Distributed by First Run Icarus Films, 32 Court Street, 21st Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201; Phone [phone]. http://www.frif.com.

The Devil's Miner, 2005. A film by Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani. 82 min. Color. Distributed by First Run Icarus Films, 32 Court Street, 21st Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201; Phone [phone]. http://www.frif.com.

The silver mines of Potosi, Bolivia have long been synonymous with the extreme exploitation of human labor. While some mining undoubtedly occurred in the Cerro Rico in the pre-Colonial period, it was under Spanish Colonial rule that mining reached its zenith and thousands were conscripted as laborers. It is estimated that over ten thousand workers lost their lives in the mines during that time, and working conditions have improved little in the centuries that have followed. The two films reviewed here, The Devil's Miner and Can't Do It in Europe, explore the theme of contemporary exploitation in the silver mines of Potosi, but they do so from different vantage points. The Devil's Miner highlights child labor in the mines through the life of one very appealing 14-year-old boy, while Can't Do It In Europe documents a thoroughly modern mine practice. This film explores the burgeoning "reality" tourism industry in Potosi, and presents a whole new twist on the ways that labor can be exploited. It is not the product of the labor that in any way interests the tourists, it is the very existence of the workers working which fascinates.

As an anthropologist whose own understandings of the Andes were profoundly enhanced by my conversations with a different 14-year-old boy, I was impressed and deeply moved by the beauty, honesty and authenticity of The Devil's Miner. This film, which portrays the life of 14-year-old Basilio Vargas, is hauntingly beautiful visually, musically and ethnographically. Basilio is a fatherless boy who works in the mines to support his mother and two siblings, but what makes this film so meaningful anthropologically is that it is far more than a sympathetic portrait of a young victim of exploitation. The film realistically captures the experiences, interactions and dreams of a poor boy on the cusp of manhood and on...