‘The smell of death was everywhere’: Inside the world’s most dangerous mines

Hugh Brown risks his life to document the men, women and children who mine precious minerals by hand in brutal conditions. He’s encountered the “coal mafia”, braved the “mountain that eats men” and been interrogated over terrorist links — and he isn’t done yet.

Story by Monique Ross, pictures by Hugh Brown

“Literally the smell of death was everywhere.”

Hugh Brown has recently returned from one of the world’s largest silver mines — Bolivia’s Cerro Rico. It roughly translates to “rich mountain” but also has a much darker moniker — the “mountain that eats men”.

It’s an ancient death trap that has claimed the lives of as many as 8 million miners in the past 471 years.

“Death is part of working on the mountain. My first fixer, as we were driving through the streets of Potosi, was pointing out ‘that woman lost a husband in the mine, that woman lost a husband in the mine’,” Brown says.

“It’s a town of 150,000, and every single person was related to someone that had died in the mine.”