EL MUKI

February 19, 2018 SouthAmerica

It is only your second shift working at the mine, you are novice miner learning the ropes in the high mountains of central Peru. You grew up there, so you are familiar with the customs, the cold climate, and the harsh work. But now you are making a miner’s pay grade, respectable work in any pueblo. The risk and hard work worth the money which is far more than you once made watching sheep or digging potatoes. The mine is strange, unnatural place, mostly dark, your lamp is not the best equipment; it casts a sickly yellowish light. Yesterday you were assisting the blasting crew running a single-jack hydraulic drill making the holes into which the explosives are placed. It was hard and noisy work, leaving you sore and covered in grit and sweat. This morning your boss has sent you down a level deeper in the mine where it has not been active for a while, you are to go to the end of the tunnel and mark up the working face in preparation of blasting. So armed with a can of spray paint and a measuring tape in your toolbox, you scramble down the wood ladder leading down the black shaft. Fifty meters down takes you to the lower haulage level, a set of mud covered rails already line the tunnel, but nobody else is there, it is pitch black in both directions as you climb out of the shaft.

Working in a mine is one thing, but being alone underground is enough to cause a nervous tingle in anyone’s spine. You add another pinch of coca leaves into your mouth to refresh the wad that you have already been chewing all day. The bitter leaf provides energy and numbs part of the face while easing some of the aches from the hard labor. You turn right and head down the tunnel, going by several wood ore shoots that lead upwards into mined out galleries along the silver vein. After passing two forking tunnels and going another two-hundred meters takes you to the end of the tunnel on level 340. The last forty meters the ground is strewn with loose rocky debris, and the air is dank, hot, lacking in ventilation. You set down the tool box and take out the measuring tape to spread it across the width of the tunnel to measure out a grid on the rock wall. Half meter by half meter grid must be marked out for drilling the blast pattern. You had left the spray paint in the tool box a dozen meters behind, so turn to fetch, but then halt startled, not believing your eyes. A shadowed small figure is hunched over you tool box, pawing through the contests! Your feeble yellowish shines up and catches the creature’s eyes glowing red like some foul demon. You scream and stumble, and when you glance back down the tunnel you are alone.

With trepidation you walk back over to the toolbox to glance inside. You need the spray paint to do your job. Dios! The can is missing. No, no. This can’t be. It is shaking you to the core, that mine creature took it, and worse than that, now you must return up a level to speak with jefe and ask for another can of paint. Your position is in probation for this first six months, you can’t afford to tally up strikes. You also worry that jefe is going to dock you pay for the cost of the spray paint.

With toolkit in hand, the return climb if anything goes faster than when you first descended the shaft. Not out of eagerness to see the blasting crew and your jefe, it was just with each ladder rung pulled upon a desperation sit in to get distance between yourself and level 340 with its wandering mischievous demon.

Moments later, and breathing heavily, you approach the work crew, feeling ashamed to report the bad news. Your jefe sees you approach, and you detect the slight shake of his head in the way the miners lamp casts its beam side to side. This is not going to be good.

“Well Rodriguez? I know you did not finish the task yet. What is going on?

Now you size up your work mates, you have stopped their jobs, to stand around and watch you being addressed by the jefe. “Dios jefe, Dios y demonios, I saw something on level 340!”

The blast crew leader clearly sees that you are shaken up, and he softens his tone, “What happened?”

With your head downcast, not wanting to look at anybody in the eyes, you begin with “I know I had the spray paint with me. It was right there in my toolkit. Something took it. I saw this thing. It was shadowed, about a meter high, hunched over my toolkit. I felt its presence too, my hair stood on end. It still is now! And it, it looked at me! Those red glowing eyes! No, I mean I need this job, but, and that thing. No, no spray paint.”

“Pucha!” swears the jefe, kicking at some dirt. He stands silent for a moment, then he says, “It’s time for another sacrifice.”

Everyone in the tunnel starts talking at the same time, and what they are all talking about is the Muki. You have heard of the Muki your entire life growing up. In fact, they have a painting of one in the restaurant Sol de Oro in downtown Cerro de Pasco. Little gnome like miner- they were creatures of the underground that are said to play tricks on the workers. But these were tales, there were hundreds of tales in the Andes. Like the headless priest, but they were not something you actually ran into.

You hear then “the scale bar went missing on level 270” and “a week ago a rock fall almost hit me”. Another older miner was saying “no point in finishing this shift, it has to be done, the Muki demands another sacrifice.” The jefe was shaking his head, now saying “pucha!”, he made a calming sign with his hands, saying, “We have to meet our quota”. Then all the miners in the crew dropped their tools, and started heading out the tunnel together, leaving standing behind with the jefe to your back. Do you stay with him, and run after the rest of the men and get the hell out of the mine? You picture those red eyes, and your feet do the thinking.

>> I first heard about the Muki in 1998 when working in Peru and going into the underground silver mines. Then in 1999 doing more work in the mining camps of Julcani, Huachocolpa, and Castrovirreyna, I learned more about the Muki from the Peruvian miners. Some of these experiences are documented in my book Field Days in Peru, but not all of them. I have done a lot of work in Peru since that project. Enough to know that the mine creature is called the Muki in central Peru while in southern Peru they refer to it as the Chinchilico (a Peru film was actually made with this title). This is very different from El Tio of the Bolivian mines, which is a replica of the devil that is paid respect each day while the miners go below surface to work in his dominion. The Muki is more like the North American Tommyknocker, and is generally harmless, but seriously believed in by the Peruvian miners. I was told while working at Julcani that each year the miners sacrifice an alpaca to appease the Muki. One miner told me that in the not so distant Peruvian past there were human sacrifices made to the Muki. It is easy enough to make light of the Muki in the safety of surface life, but you try going underground in a narrow dark Peruvian mine, and spend time in honeycomb silent tunnels while being at high elevation and see if your mind ends up playing tricks on you. And wondering, did you see that, was that your imagination, no, it looked like something walking in the shadows along the waste pile. It may not take long for you to also believe in the Muki!

Field Days in Peru is a Journal writing from over 200 days of fieldwork in Peru while conducting geological mapping. Meeting a peruvian woman and getting married in the Andes.