The Tin Trap
'We don't expect to live longer than five years when we start work in the mines. We have to die working because we have children to educate, so they don't have to become miners themselves.'
Higon Cussi Guzman is 33 and has been a miner in Bolivia's largest tin mine for 13 years. Together with reporter Sarah Hobson he travels the tin route: from the mining of the ore at 15,000 feet in the Andes, through trading on the London Metal Exchange, to its manufacture as a vital component of tin cans and computers, and asks why Bolivian miners still receive so little reward.
Researchers HENRIETTA GILPIN. PETER STALKER Film editor MARTIN CRUMP
Series producer William NICHOLSON Producer JOHN ARCHER
(A Year in the Life of the World: Friday of next week 7.30 pm. See page 99)