Dicing with Death: Bolivia, The Yungas in The Clouds

In the Andean cordillera of Bolivia, two mothers risk their lives as they travel some of the most dangerous roads in the country. After having stocked up in La Paz, the highest capital city in the world, MARIA, the grocer, returns to her village. It’s situated in the high mountains of the Yungas forest. Maria is one of the rare women in Bolivia who dare take on these trails that are lost in the clouds. The grocer is an ace at the wheel and as brave as they come, well worthy of the wages of fear, in risking the trip along the dizzy heights of the ravines. But once she gets up there, her journey is not over.

She runs further risks by taking her mobile store up to a remote village. Maria doesn’t do this for the money, but to bring assistance to the residents, who walk for an hour through the mountains for a few errands. LOURDES ventures along one of the most notorious of the “Roads of Death”, in order to bring help to the women who dig for gold. She tries to persuade them to give up this trade, which will never make them rich and which, more importantly is killing them by slow degrees… whole families work in waters that are highly polluted with mercury.

The road leading to the mines is a way of the cross, with broken-down trucks and landslides regularly cutting off the route. Rain falls incessantly, the weakened mountain sides collapse, carrying houses and roads in their passage. It’s clear that Bolivia, because of global warming, is suffering from extreme climatic phenomena. The fault partly lies with the loggers, who, little by little, are killing the Amazon forest.

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