It happened in the early 1970s in Siete Suyos, that mining camp where we children dreamed of touching the stars with our fingertips because the Andean sky seemed much closer than the weathered ground crusted with copajira. Those were the days when my father, carrying himself like a patriot and possessing the patience of a saint, ran the village school—a true beacon of learning rising amid the rugged highlands. I was a thirteen-year-old rascal then, my head overflowing with adventures and fortunate enough not yet to know the disillusionments of adult life.

It was a languid afternoon. The sun spilled across the mountain ridge like molten gold, casting a tragic glow over the Abra ravine, where years earlier a Comibol driver—the husband of a teacher at Daniel Campos School—had plunged to his death. That was when Charles, my cousin, gave me the conspiratorial look that always foretold trouble.

“Tuco, what if we rob our own house?” he whispered in my ear. “Not to take anything—just to cause a commotion. Imagine the chaos!”

The idea struck me as sublime. I was always ready for mischief, blind to whatever disasters or consequences might follow. Charles, a year older than me, possessed an imagination as fertile as a pea field in the rainy season.

“I have a master plan,” he said in the voice of a mine goblin. “A staged robbery to shake up the camp’s monotony. We’ll become legends—or at least escape the deadly boredom of study-filled afternoons.”

“A mock robbery,” I murmured, glancing around as though the walls might have snitching ears. “We’ll pretend we’re being attacked, slip through the window, climb onto the corrugated-metal roof, and—bam!—we’ll be the heroes of the camp.”

We assigned the parts with the solemnity of stage actors. Charles and I would play the gang of bandits; our brother Óscar would be the hostage; and our younger sisters, who still believed in the Three Kings, would make ideal victims to terrify.

“We’ll stage it at twilight,” Charles explained, smiling like the grotesque stone face on the Casa de la Moneda in Potosí. “We’ll come in through the back window, make an infernal racket to imitate inexperienced thieves, and escape onto the roof, leaving false clues behind: an old shoe, a scrap of cloth, broken glass, and half-finished homework. Everyone will think it was the Ánimas gang. It’ll be epic!”

The Fake Robbery

The signal for the “attack” would be my own scream, designed to reverberate through the foundations of Siete Suyos. I took up my strategic position at the far end of the Magisterio neighborhood, near the water spigot where our friend Chocola lived.

Charles, wearing an El Santo mask, tied Óscar up with a length of clothesline wire and gagged him with a blue cloth to silence his protests. We assumed our sisters would be too absorbed in playing with their rag dolls to notice anything unusual.

The sunset painted the camp in shades of fire as we crawled toward the back window, which Charles had oiled in advance so it would open without the slightest squeak. My scream—“Thieves!”—burst forth with such drama that even the neighbor’s dog, owned by the wife of the music teacher, let out a heartrending howl.

Charles, wholly devoted to his role as villain, struggled against invisible bandits and knocked over a chair with a crash worthy of a collapse inside a mine shaft. In less time than it takes a rooster to crow, we were both perched on the corrugated roof, surveying the horizon with the vanity of men who knew themselves to be legendary.

But Charles’s genius had overlooked one crucial detail: the overwhelming efficiency of the miners’ union, which served as the unquestioned authority of the camp. Its men were tough and hardened by the mine, with mustaches as thick as scrub brushes and an almost obsessive devotion to order.

The Frenzy in Siete Suyos

The moment the echo of my scream faded, the camp siren began to wail with the same fury that seemed to herald the coups d’état of those turbulent years. The uproar was monumental. Miners poured out of their houses like an angry swarm, wearing helmets and carbide lamps.

“They’re the Ánimas thieves!” they roared.

The mining police, armed with battered Mauser rifles and accompanied by a pack of stray dogs, arrived at once in a union dump truck. We watched as the vehicle screeched to a halt in front of the school and a dust-covered squad spilled out, marching at full speed. They charged up the slope and burst into the house without asking permission, as if the wind itself had flung open the door, shouting orders in every direction.

The entire camp became an improvised circus: curious neighbors, palliris—the women who sorted ore—wearing curlers and alpargatas, and even the cook from the camp kitchen, her apron streaming like a battle flag.

My father, abruptly torn away from his books on pedagogy, appeared at the doorway wearing an expression of equal bewilderment and exasperation. My mother ran into the yard to look for Pelusa, our pet, who, eager to help, had excitedly joined the neighborhood pack.

The miners searched the area inch by inch. They peered beneath rocks, behind bushes, and around the enchanted well. In the middle of the operation, a burly laborer with a brow dark as a storm cloud looked up toward the roof and spotted us sitting there cross-legged, our faces heavy with guilt.

To our surprise, he said nothing. Perhaps he thought we were a mirage brought on by exhaustion.

“They must have escaped through the tunnel to Santa Ana!” another miner shouted, elevating our prank to the status of a legendary criminal operation.

From the roof, struggling to keep from laughing, we watched the entire camp chase shadows. But the corrugated metal betrayed us. One sheet gave way with a sharp crack.

Charles, tangled in his poncho like a fish caught in a net, slipped and landed directly on a pile of tall wild grass. When he stood up, he looked like a human cactus. I was luckier—or perhaps simply less graceful—and ended up dangling from a beam, swaying like a strip of dried meat in a smokehouse.

When my father recognized us, he let out a booming laugh that seemed to echo through every vein of ore beneath Siete Suyos.

“So these rascals staged their own robbery!”

Amid laughter and reprimands, the mining police finally called off the operation and issued an unappealable verdict:

“In Siete Suyos, the real thieves steal dreams, not houses.”

The sentence was fair: one full week scrubbing the school desks. Charles, bristling with straw like a penitent saint, and I, bruised and ashamed—but carrying with us a story that would remain etched in memory forever.