How can I help?

The charitable foundation is supported by monetary donations and any kind of help from people and tourists from all over the world, including travelers who have taken a service or visited the mines with us. In addition, a part of the payment of future visitors who contract a tourist service with us will be donated to the FUNAM foundation. We also accept donations of children's clothing and school supplies.

We are also grateful for contributions from charities, foundations and NGOs abroad.

As a legally established foundation under Bolivian regulations, at the end of each year, or at any time when the Bolivian State requires it, FUNAM will submit financial reports detailing the use of the donations received, thus ensuring a transparent and law-abiding operation.

BOLIVIA

It has about 11,000,000 inhabitants who live in three different areas: tropics, valleys and highlands. According to the UN, it is one of the poorest countries in South America. Bolivia’s main economic activity is natural gas, and the second is mining: state-owned, private and cooperative mines.

The lords of tin

In 1952, the miners made a revolution to change the economic, political and social situation, since all the mines were private and controlled by three powerful men known as the Lords of Tin: Patiño, Aramayo and Hoschild. The former was the richest man in the world. After the revolution, the mines were nationalized and COMIBOL (Corporación Minera de Bolivia) was also created. In 1984, the state mines were closed (state decree called relocation) and more than 30,000 workers were laid off from the state mines. Today, the mines of Cerro Rico are still exploited by thousands of mine workers

Potosí the Cerro Rico mountain

POTOSÍ The mountain (Cerro Rico) for the Incas was a sacred place, so they never wanted to mine it. They knew that the mountain had silver, but they did not want to tell the white conquerors about it because the indigenous people were very respectful of sacred places. In 1545, an indigenous man told the Spanish about it and they began extracting the silver ore using thousands of indigenous men, making the Spanish crown the most powerful empire in the world in the 16th and 17th centuries. Potosí, in 1611, had 160,000 inhabitants, being the most populous colonial city in all of America and also the richest, but now it is the poorest city in Bolivia. Currently, Potosí has around 200,000 inhabitants, according to the last census, and the largest local economy is still mining. In 1987, UNESCO declared Potosí a World Heritage Site thanks to Cerro Rico.