Tales of Potosí

LAH 2020,
Spring 2010

Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, B. 1975. Tales of Potosi.

Potosí
• Potosi was located well above timberline
in the barren region called the puna ("the
uninhabitable") because of its thin and icy
air. Altitude, awesome storms, freezing
temperatures, and bitter winds were
effective barriers to human habitation.
• A massive outcropping of pure silver
(50%) 300 feet long and 15 feet wide had
been uncovered by erosion.
The silver rush of 1545

• The human history of Potosi began

with the silver rush of 1545.
• The silver lode was initially discovered by
an Indian.
• The nearby Spaniards, having found the
Discovery Lode, were promptly joined by
175 eager countrymen from La Plata,
with 3,000 Indians.
Largest city in 1611
• By 1611 it would have a population of
160,000, making it larger than most of the
urban centers of Europe and Asia.
• It was also one of the world's highest cities
and probably the richest.
• Its name had become legend and was
universally employed to express the
quintessential idea of unlimited and
inexhaustible wealth.
Labor for silver mining
• black slaves could not withstand the rigors
of physical labor at such altitudes and
such low temperatures.
• everyone who held Indians in encomienda
employed them, but they were not
enough.
• the mine owners were forced to rely on a
free labor market throughout the early
period.
Early Spanish metallurgy
• Spanish smelters faced a crisis
• they found the ore "too hard" to be
melted;
• they repeatedly increased the heat,
and then watched the silver content
of the superheated ore burn and
volatilize instead of melting and
running as expected.
Inca metallurgy
• Indians had long ago learned to add a measure of lead to
induce melting
• maintain more precise control over smelting temperatures.
• invented a portable wind oven (huayra, or "wind," in
Quechua)
• Temperature control was achieved by estimating wind
velocity and then moving the oven up or down the hill to get
the correct draft to produce the desired degree of heat.
• Indian smelters delivered a specific
amount of refined silver, keeping the
remainder for themselves.
• Many free Indian laborers in the
mines similarly paid the owner an
agreed amount of silver each week,
and in that way acquired large
amounts of ore, which they then
refined for themselves.
Indian dominance of
smelting
• Garcilaso de la Vega estimated that up to fifteen
thousand wind ovens could be seen operating at one
time, so that after dark the slopes of Potosi shone
like some marvelous new galaxy
• The Indian monopoly on smelting would hold until
the discovery and implementation of a new chemical
method of extraction, the amalgamation process, but
that was not to come until 1571.
Potosí Production

• Baron Alexander von Humboldt

estimated, from royal treasury
records, that Potosi produced over
127 million pesos during the first
eleven years.
Regional Economy

• Every mouthful of food, whether for man

or beast, every barrel stave, every beam
—everything consumed or used in the
High Place—had to be brought up from
below.
• the daily volume of trade ran from forty
thousand to eighty thousand pesos in
Potosi's central market place in 1549.
Potosi was primitive
• Houses and buildings were cramped; ceilings were made
low and rooms small to conserve heat.
• Windows were few and unglazed.
• Even rich miners lived in wretched shacks that were
cruelly ventilated by cracks.
• Severe cold was expected in winter, but on the warmest
of summer days the temperature never rose above fifty-
nine degrees.
• The burning of charcoal in poorly vented fireplaces or
simple braziers was the principal protection from the
eternal chill and offered its own peril in the form of
carbon monoxide poisoning, which was chronic.
Violence in Peru
• Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro, fell out over the
division of spoils and died in the ensuing warfare, which
lasted for a decade.
• In 1546 Gonzalo Pizarro, Francisco's brother, rebelling
against reforms ordered in the New Laws of 1542,
beheaded the first viceroy and crowned himself king of
Peru.
• Not until 1548, after Gonzalo Pizarro's overthrow and
execution, could the building of Potosi be pursued
without interruption.
Decline of mining
• By the middle of 1566 the more accessible veins
of tacana, the ultrarich ore, had been exhausted,
and fortunes began to fade.
• Scores of mines were faced with closure because
the prevailing technology could not compensate
for the diminishing quality of the ore.
• Meanwhile, Potosi's sudden and dramatic decline
did not go unnoticed in Spain. The Habsburgs had
grown accustomed to receiving a million to a
million and a half pesos annually in quintos from
Potosí.
Francisco de Toledo, Viceroy

• well armed with comprehensive

plans and instructions, together with
wide discretionary powers.
• Toledo, from 1569 until 1581,
• earned lasting fame as the founder
of Spain's colonial system on the
southern continent.
Potosi on the verge of
collapse.
• November, 1569, Toledo found a general Andean
economic depression
• He quickly moved to confront the major problems:
– free labor market and
– inadequate technology.
• The Indians worked or not as they saw fit, and
always within the terms of their concierto with mine
owners.
• With Indians' monopoly of extraction and refining,
control of the production of silver had never rested
in Spanish hands.
New amalgamation method

• 1554 - of a new method of amalgamating

silver ores with mercury.
• This was a cold chemical process for the
extraction of silver from low-grade ores.
• 1566 - large mercury deposits at
Huancavelica, about 140 miles southeast
of Lima.
Toledo’s actions
• Toledo convened a junta to discuss the
question of Indian labor.
• October, 1570, the junta decided that
compulsory Indian labor in the mines was
justifiable on the basis of the public interest.
• Toledo expropriated the mercury mines.
• Ordered a census of all the Indians of Peru
between eighteen and fifty years old.
The Mita
• The census found 1,677,697 males liable
for service.
• every year one-seventh of its male
population was to be made available for a
four-month term of paid labor in mines or
on other projects.
• Wages and working conditions were
stipulated, and relevant mining ordinances
were issued and inspectors appointed.
• Thus began the infamous mita of the
mines, its victims the mitayos.
The mita proved to be
disastrous for the Indians
• Commonly forced to work beyond their term of
service
• they were not always paid, and when they were,
their wages were far below free market levels;
• villages were commonly forced to send more than
their allotted number of laborers,
• A summons to labor in the mines came to be viewed
as a virtual death warrant.
• Excessive labor under the most adverse conditions,
– an inadequate diet,
– disease,
– accidents,
• soaring mortality among the mitayos.
Mitayos were not the only
Indians working at Potosi.
• A detailed report of 1603 on the
mines of Potosi shows that
• out of 58,800 Indians employed,
• only 5,100 were mitayos.
• There were also 43,200 free day
laborers and
• 10,500 mingas, or workers who
labored on a contractual basis.
Population in 1611
• the city had a population of 160,000
• 3,000 peninsular Spaniards,
• 40,000 non-Spanish Europeans
• 35,000 Creoles (including many mestizo
children of Spanish-Indian unions),
• 76,000 Indians, and
• 6,000 Negroes and mulattos and other
persons of mixed blood.
Potosí’s decline
• Early in the second half of the seventeenth
century
• The Mountain was being mined out,
• diminishing production and quality of ore.
• Spain and her overseas empire were suffering the
effects of the later Habsburg decline,
• It would require the efforts of the Bourbons to
restore the economic vigor of the colonies in the
eighteenth century.
• Population, like silver production, was a reliable
barometer of Potosi's economic well-being.
1700s
• By the beginning of the eighteenth century Potosi's
population had shrunk to about 60,000.
• The 132 refineries of boom times were now 60,
• and the Ribera, with its abandoned buildings, fallen
roofs, and jutting, skeletonlike walls, smelled of decay.
• Many of the surviving refiners were in financial difficulty
through indebtedness for mercury.
• Scores of mines had closed down, and those still
producing yielded none but inferior ores.