Member-only story
My Journey to South America’s Heart of Darkness
Finding the epicentre of South America’s cruel colonial past in the mines of Potosí
In 2010, I took a break from a dull, dead-end job to make a long-planned solo trip to South America. It was a continent much romanticised in my mind by virtue of a long marination in my imagination. I had spent many years playing its classical guitar music: the etudes and choros of Heitor Villa Lobos, the exquisite but hand-shattering compositions of Paraguayan virtuoso Agustín Barrios. Each piece was like a magical doorway through which another world briefly shimmered: elegance, grace, the scent of jungles, the grandeur of old cathedrals and ballrooms. And always a lingering perfume of sadness, of a longing for a better world. I imagined sitting with my guitar at the junction of the rivers near the Iguazú Falls, where the borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil intersect, playing a piece from each of the three countries.
South America was, of course, nothing like the enchanted land of my daydreams. The jungles of Paraguay which had inspired much of Barrios’s music are all but gone now, wiped out by the march of modernity. The immense Jasyretâ-Apipé waterfall, once greater even than the thundering marvel of Iguazú, is now drowned by a hydroelectric dam. Asunción, the faded colonial capital, mildews…
