POTOSÍ, Bolivia — The silver in this mountain helped finance the Spanish empire. It created vast fortunes for some and misery for many more. It fueled the early growth of European capitalism, setting the stage for the modern era.
But now, after centuries of hauling out its riches, miners working near the peak have clawed away so much of the interior of the mountain that it is caving in from the top down.
At the peak of this historic mountain — known as Cerro Rico, or Rich Hill, standing at more than 15,600 feet — a giant sinkhole has opened, a jagged mouth in the blood-red rock. In June, Unesco warned that the mountain, depicted at the center of Bolivia’s flag, faced a critical risk of collapse at its summit.
“Since the internal structure of the upper part of the Cerro Rico is severely weakened due to continuous exploitation,” it said, “there is a significant risk that miners could die from collapses inside the tunnels.”
In July, the government said that it planned to shut down mines above 14,435 feet, where about 1,500 miners work in conditions that can range from rudimentary to brutal. Many thousands of miners work in mines farther down the mountain.
“It is an emergency where we have to act quickly,” said Marcelino Quispe, the president of the government-run Bolivian Mining Corporation, known as Comibol. It grants concessions to the private companies known as cooperatives that work on the mountain, and it helped pay for a failed effort last year to stabilize and cap the sinkhole.
But many miners do not want to leave, saying that the government has offered to move them to new mines far away, with no guarantee that the sites will be as lucrative as the ones they are leaving.
The miners have developed strong ties to the mines. Some believe that each mine has a god or a spirit, called a Tío, that protects them. The miners give the Tío, usually represented in the mine by a clay figure in the shape of a man, offerings of cigarettes and alcohol, coca leaves and other items.
On a recent day at the Milagro Mine, which is among those the government plans to close, miners shrugged off the suggestion that they could be at risk, saying that their mine was far enough from the area of the collapse at the peak to avoid any danger.
“What worries us is leaving here, going far away, leaving our families behind,” said Gregorio Alave, 45. “We will have to fight with the government to get a good mine.”
Mr. Alave has an ownership stake in the cooperative that owns the mining concession, but he employs a younger man to do much of the heavier work. A doctor recently told him that he had advanced silicosis, an incurable lung disease common to miners who breathe in rock dust, and that he should stop working underground. But he said that he must keep working to support his family, despite the bad cough he has developed.
Inside the mine, lit only by the battery-powered lamps on miners’ helmets, the smell of dynamite hung in the chill air. Miners used shovels to load rock into carts with rubber tires, which they pushed to the surface along a narrow tunnel, ducking down in sections where the ceiling dropped as low as four feet high.
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