I watched The Devil’s Miner this weekend, an unsettling documentary recommended on LinkedIn by Roberto Gentilini. It follows the 14-year-old Basilio and his 12-year-old brother Bernardino, who work in the mines of Cerro Rico in Potosí, Bolivia. The film is difficult to watch at times, but it illustrates a set of structural patterns long examined by sociologists and political economists:

• how economic systems influence life chances,
• how labour becomes dehumanised under certain conditions, and
• how communities become locked into cycles of risk, danger, and dependency.

The mines of Cerro Rico rely on extremely primitive technology. There are no ventilation systems or mechanised extraction; tunnels are narrow and unstable; blasting is done manually with sticks of dynamite; hauling is done by children. When technology is underdeveloped, production depends heavily on human bodies. That means people must work longer hours, more workers are needed, and vulnerable groups such as children become 'useful' because of their small size, pliability, and low cost. The technological stagnation of the extraction system drags the social order backwards. The local organisation of production reproduces the conditions that make children’s labour structurally necessary.

The cooperatives are independent and self-run, but they exhibit a strong internal hierarchy:

• partners who own equipment and tunnels;
• foremen who supervise extraction;
• casual workers who perform the most dangerous tasks; and
• children who earn the least and work with no protection at all.

Ownership determines income. Those who control equipment, tunnels, and transport routes earn significantly more than those who enter the shafts. Even within the same cooperative, profits are not shared equally. Consequently, boys like Basilio work 12–24 (sic!) hour shifts while certain partners live relatively comfortably. The structure of ownership dictates the distribution of risk, reward, and bodily harm.

In Potosí, economic value does not come from machines but from the bodies of workers. Each bag of ore represents hours of dangerous labour, cumulative damage from silica dust, the risk of collapse, the risk of gas poisoning, and the big chance of silicosis that kills many miners before age forty. The film makes this clear without sentimentality: human life is consumed in the same process that produces mineral wealth. Miners often describe the mountain as a living entity that eats men, a cultural expression of an underlying material reality.

One of the most striking scenes is Basilio explaining that his boss assigned him a double shift, meaning 24 hours straight. This is not an exception but a normal labour rhythm. When labour is paid only by output (per bag of ore), those who control the process have structural incentives to push workers to stay longer, carry more, and go deeper into unsafe areas. Time becomes the raw material out of which profit is extracted. Children, lacking bargaining power, become the most elastic and exploitable source of additional hours.

One of the most analytically rich aspects of the film is the miners’ devotion to El Tío, the Devil of the Mine. Outside the mountain, families identify as Catholic; inside, miners offer coca, alcohol, and cigarettes to clay idols. Sociologically, this belief system emerges from structural insecurity: extreme danger, absence of state regulation, unpredictable accidents, and chronic poverty. Where institutional protection is weak, spiritual systems emerge to impose meaning and predictability on risk. El Tío is a cultural response to conditions of uncertainty and exposure.

The film also points to the historical foundations of this belief. Under colonial rule, Indigenous labourers were subjected to coerced mining systems. A horned figure was introduced as an instrument of control: refusal to work was said to incur supernatural punishment. Over time, that imposed symbol became local religious infrastructure. The name “Tío” itself is presented as arising from a mispronunciation of Dios (God). What began as a colonial tool has become a locally maintained spiritual authority that still organises behaviour underground.

These beliefs extend into ritual practice. The annual llama sacrifice, and the smearing of blood at mine entrances, can be read sociologically as symbolic labour regulation. Ritual sacrifice expresses, in religious form, a structural reality: mineral extraction requires a price paid in flesh. By 'feeding' the mine with the blood of an animal, the community symbolically displaces the human cost they know will otherwise be exacted through injury, silicosis, or death. The ritual gives cultural form to the risks that the labour regime continually produces.

Cerro Rico once generated immense wealth for the Spanish empire. The colonial mining system with forced labour, dangerous extraction, and disregard for Indigenous lives has formally ended, but many of its structural features persist. The film highlights this continuity: the same mountain, the same hazardous tunnels, the same unequal extraction logic, and the same asymmetry between those who extract ore and those who profit from it. The colonial pattern persists in a contemporary form: wealth flows outward, while danger and early death remain local. The ore dug by children enters global supply chains. International markets reward low production costs, leaving local cooperatives unable to modernise equipment and governments hesitant to enforce labour or safety standards. This is characteristic of peripheral regions in the global economy: resources circulate globally; poverty remains geographically fixed.

Parents say, “We work (together) because otherwise we do not eat.” Children’s labour is therefore not a matter of choice but structural compulsion: lack of farmland, collapse of rural agriculture, insufficient wages, absence of alternative employment, and weak public institutions. Poverty becomes a coercive force that channels individuals into hazardous work. People engage in life-shortening labour not because they want to, but because the environment offers no viable options.

Education appears as the recognised pathway out of mining, but it is institutionally fragile. Uniforms, school supplies, and transportation are significant household expenses; Basilio’s family saves for months to purchase them, at times reducing food consumption to do so. School also becomes a site of social stigma. Classmates mock children who work in the mines, calling them “stone lickers” or “dust eaters.” The social world of education promises mobility while simultaneously reproducing symbolic boundaries that mark mining families as inferior. This creates a structural contradiction: schooling is the route to escape, yet accessing it requires participating in the very labour that traps families in the first place.

Beliefs also help stabilise the system. Statements like “It is better that children work than steal,” “This is our culture,” or “The mountain gives and the mountain takes” function as cultural rationalisations. They soften the perception of exploitation and make hazardous labour seem normal or inevitable. These beliefs serve as coping mechanisms but also maintain the underlying social order.

The film also shows that mining is not only a livelihood but a source of identity and pride. Adult miners acknowledge that life expectancy is short and futures uncertain, yet they describe themselves as proud to be miners. Mining structures social recognition, masculinity, and community. Carnival dances mimic mining movements; weekend football games take place at mine entrances; boys like Basilio are praised for their “courage” underground. Any transformation of the system would therefore have to address not only economic dependency but the social and cultural significance of mining as a way of life.

The boys’ aspirations highlight another asymmetry. Basilio dreams of becoming a teacher or engineer, moving to La Paz or Santa Cruz, perhaps even travelling to Europe. Minerals extracted from Cerro Rico move easily across borders; the miners themselves face far stricter constraints. It is easier for ore to circulate globally than for the children who extract it to leave the mountain. This underscores a central feature of global inequality: mobility is abundant for resources, restricted for people.

Bolivia has experienced economic growth and reductions in national poverty. Yet at Cerro Rico, miners still die young, children still work, safety protections remain minimal, and the mountain itself is collapsing from over-extraction. National-level development does not automatically transform local labour regimes, particularly where economic interests rely on maintaining the status quo.

Conclusion

The Devil’s Miner reveals a social formation in which technology is primitive, ownership is concentrated, labour is dangerous, and children are structurally expendable. Wealth flows outward; poverty confines families to risk; belief systems reflect and manage structural insecurity; and historical and global forces sustain the cycle. The problem is not simply child labour, but an economic and social system that depends on the disposability of human bodies. The film is difficult to watch, but it is a compelling case study in how economic structures influence human lives and constrain the possibilities available to the most vulnerable.