Child Miners

For 200 years, the Llallagua mine in Southern Bolivia has been used to extract tin. An increasing number of poor peasants without any experience in mining have joined cooperatives to extract the mineral. Poor peasants such as Alex Choque, aged 9, and Jorge Mollinedo, aged 13. Their fathers were miners once, but stopped working after contracting the “mine disease” - silicosis. Both Alex and Jorge go to the mine every morning, earning approximately 2 dollars per day and exposing themselves to the deadly toxin known as silica. This film followed Alex and Jorge’s lives for two years.