Tales of Potosi

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

Tales of PotosíTales of Potosí

LAH 2020, LAH 2020,

Spring 2010Spring 2010

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 metallurgyInca metallurgy • Indians had long ago learned to add a Indians had long ago learned to add a

measure of leadmeasure 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 Indian smelters delivered a specific amount of refined silver, keeping the amount of refined silver, keeping the remainder for themselves. remainder for themselves.

• Many free Indian laborers in the Many free Indian laborers in the mines similarly paid the owner an mines similarly paid the owner an agreed amount of silver each week, agreed amount of silver each week, and in that way acquired large and in that way acquired large amounts of ore, which they then amounts of ore, which they then refined for themselves.refined for themselves.

Indian dominance of Indian dominance of smeltingsmelting

• Garcilaso de la Vega estimated that up to Garcilaso de la Vega estimated that up to fifteen thousand wind ovens could be seen fifteen thousand wind ovens could be seen operating at one time, so that after dark the operating at one time, so that after dark the slopes of Potosi shone like some marvelous slopes of Potosi shone like some marvelous new galaxynew 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 ProductionPotosí Production

• Baron Alexander von Humboldt Baron Alexander von Humboldt estimated, from royal treasury estimated, from royal treasury records, that Potosi produced over records, that Potosi produced over 127 million pesos127 million pesos during the first during the first eleven years.eleven years.

Regional EconomyRegional Economy

• Every mouthful of food, whether for Every mouthful of food, whether for man or beast, every barrel stave, every man or beast, every barrel stave, every beam—everything consumed or used in beam—everything consumed or used in the High Place—had to be brought up the High Place—had to be brought up from below.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.