The Extractive Technique in the Social Determination of Health of the Mining Families of Potosí (Bolivia)

Abstract

Introduction: The article reviews the direct relationship between extractivist techniques and mineral technification in the historic Cerro Rico de Potosí, Bolivia, with health's social determination and the life of its population, as a general establishment, that has particular and singular relations of production, power, and consumption generating critical health-disease processes. Development: From the perspective of the transformation of space by technique, proposed by Milton Santos, the instrumental transformation generated by mining in the landscape and life of the population, whose labor force supplies the mine, deriving from the colonial historical context of mining in Potosi, is analyzed. Conclusions: A description illustrates these conditions of the occupations and associated diseases, as well as the pending effects of general environmental pollution, making visible the naturalization of the sickness and death in the mining work by the families themselves and the institutions involved.