I think what the article misses is that the mine is pretty much the only reason the city has inhabitants. The Altiplano is not exactly full of other economic opportunities or appeal.

The other problem is that although these people are "middle income" by UN standards, by any reasonable standard they're desperately, desperately poor. Which is why they stay for the mining-linked income opportunities.

>I think what the article misses is that the mine is pretty much the only reason the city has inhabitants.

Generally people are driven to the urban centers in the first place after their [sustainable] rural ways of life and systems of land management are dismantled in the name of "liberalization"/"privatization"/"modernization", leading to ecological deterioration, and ultimately resulting in complete desertification.

This process is taking place pretty much everywhere. Recently we've seen its bloody end-game in Syria: https://www.grain.org/bulletin_board/entries/5225-over-grazi...

It's critical to understand that human society takes place within a biophysical-ecological context. Ignore that and our predictions about the future are bound to be wildly inaccurate. The same can also be said about our understanding of the past.

Sure, that makes sense, but it ignores the historical reality of the situation. The only reason this city exists in the first place is because there was a huge deposit of silver there that the Incas or the Spaniards stumbled upon. The town grew up around the mines. The easy-to-get-at silver petered out, and they switched to mining copper, then zinc and lead. Eventually, old-style shaft mining was no longer profitable, and open-pit mining replaced it.

If you wanted to live a 15th century lifestyle growing potatoes and quinoa and herding llamas and alpacas, you can still do that - people up and down the Andes still are.

>Generally people are driven to the urban centers in the first place after their [sustainable] rural ways of life and systems of land management are dismantled in the name of "liberalization"/"privatization"/"modernization", leading to ecological deterioration, and ultimately resulting in complete desertification.

Maybe I'm misreading what you said - because I don't think you could argue that people are moving from villages to cities because of privatization and land being polluted - in general. In some specific cases people are forced to move because of externalities like pollution or instability for sure - but migration to cities is just a step in social evolution that's been happening since forever - subsistence farming is a horrible way to live compared to even low level jobs in cities and people naturally want to avoid that.

That's true - by relocation I mean perhaps a few more miles out, as opposed to living literally adjacent to the mine next to the toxic dumps. The photos show kids clothes drying next to the open pit etc.

It looks like this was a town that sprung up around a silver deposit, not the other way around. That challenge of what to do now is the real problem.

As the article states, the town has existed for 400 years, and until the 1950s mining was done with tunnels, not open pits.