Cerro Rico de Potosí.

This series presented for Lugano Photo Days 2014, Cerro Rico de Potosí, is part of a larger body of work, that has the working title of "The desolate landscapes of Eduardo Galeano: a journey through the Open Veins of Latin America". This body of work is inspired by the the Uruguayan author's book "Las venas abiertas de América Latina", published in the 1970’s.

In this work, I explore one of the most important symbols of the harvesting of valuable local resources, economical exploitation, and human tragedy during colonial times in America: the Cerro Rico -The Rich Mountain- of Potosí, located in the rugged geographic highland of what is now Bolivia. Conceptually, this body of work seeks to convey the author’s poignant descriptions of a Latin American landscape that has been stripped of its natural resources due to centuries of European and U.S. dominance.

In his writings Galeano states that since the European discovery and colonization of the Americas, the conquering nations never sought to develop the local economies. Instead, they established a system in which economical exploitation, rather than territorial and cultural assimilation, became the driving self-enriching force.