This text outline omits illustrations.
Silver: the heart of the Spanish empire in the Americas
Encomenderos (individuals) to corregidores (crown bureacrats)
Black Legend a la peruana: Guamán Poma de Ayala
Potosí, heart of the viceroyalty of Peru
Revolution in mining technology: the patio (amalgamation) process
Double labor structure at Potosí: mita (forced draft) and mingas (voluntary)
Encomenderos to corregidores
Encomenderos: conquerors and royal favorites received grants of tribute and labor of native villagers (1492-1540s)
Crown attempts to
- convert encomienda from private to royal control (New Laws of 1542)
- restrict use of labor by encomenderos (personal service banned 1549)
- control labor drafts: mita (Peru, 1570-) and repartimiento (New Spain, 1550-)
Corregidores: bureaucrats replaced encomenderos to collect tribute and control labor for the Crown
Guamán Poma de Ayala, Nueva coronica y buen gobierno (ca. 1613) Black Legend as recorded by a Peruvian mestizo
Search Request: K=GUAMAN POMA DE AYALA MNCAT--U of Minnesota
BOOK - Record 14 of 24 Entries Found Brief View
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Author: Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe, fl. 1613.
Title: Letter to a king : a Peruvian chief's account of life under
the Incas and under Spanish rule / by Huaman Poma ; arr. and
edited with an introd. by Christopher Dilke and translated
from Nueva coronica y buen gobierno.
Published: New York : Dutton, c1978.
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LOCATION: CALL NUMBER: STATUS:
WILSON 985 P77nbE Not checked out
Guamán Poma de Ayala’s “six ferocious animals”
Encomenderos, “lions who destroyed with teeth and nails…”
Corregidores, “serpents ...who lived at the cost of the Indians.”
Priests, “…tricky wolves who robbed their riches, wives and daughters”
Notaries, “hunting cats who lay in wait…”
Adventurous Spaniards, “fierce cruel tigers”
Caciques, “rats who stole day and night”
“El encomendero y sus mujeres
believed themselves to be absolute lords. They made the Indians carry them about in ‘andas’ as if they were Incas.”
“When they arrived in a village they made the Indian men and women serve them and they demanded gifts from them through the ‘caciques’ and not satisfied with this they forced the Indians to serve their relatives, friends and servants.”
“The corregidores in order to make themselves rich,
allowed themselves to be bribed, with this in mind they invited to eat at their table la gente baja, such as Indian mitayos, mestizos and mulatos without honor, with whom they got drunk, some of them even went about with robbers and ruffians and J
ews…”
The corregidores considered themselves absolute lords
“They administered justice as they wanted, robbed and punished very cruelly without any right and considered the Indians as their mortal enemies, they treated them badly without any reason. Many times the corregidor insulted and tortured a mayor ordi
nario hanging and horse whipping him…”
“The corregidores, the Judge, the Priests and the Spanish Lieutenants
used to go around, both by day and by night, pretending to examine the sex of the women, with the pretext of confirming if they were prostitutes or amancebados. The result of these visits was the birth of many mestizos.
“…they also turned them into loose women, thus doing great harm…”
Major silver strikes
New Spain: Taxco 1534 Zacatecas 1546 Guanajuato 1550 Pachuca 1552 Santa Barbara 1567 San Luis Potosí 1592 Parral 1631 Chihuahua 1709
Alto (Upper) Perú: Porco 1538 (near Potosí) Potosí 1545--Rich Mtn. Oruro 1606
1545: Cerro de Potosí, richest silver strike in the early modern world.
From: Pedro Cieza de Leon, Crónica (1553), an eye-witness account
Note: workings river, churches, houses.
Today: world’s largest slag heap, 13,000+ ft.
Potosí Royal Mint founded 1575
Registered yearly production: Potosí district 1550-1720 (metric tons silver)
Native technology, 1545-1575
Decline: 3 periods/3 decades each 1635-1665; 1665-1700; 1700-1720
amalgamation with mercury
Guayras: native silver smelters
Fired by charcoal, llama dung, roots
Funnel design draws strong winds
~1570: 6,497; by 1600, few.
Guayras in Cieza de León’s Crónica (1553)
“The Incas...made clay vessels...which had openings or breathing holes in many places. In these vessels they put charcoal, and ore on top of it; and they placed them on the hills or slopes where the wind was strongest, and extracted silver, which
they refined and purified afterwards with...tubes through which they blew. In this way was extracted the great flood of silver that has come from the cerro, the Indians taking the ore to high places all around it to produce silver. These vessels are ca
lled guayras, and at night there are so many of them all over the countryside and hillsides that they look like decorative lights (luminarias). And when the wind blows hard, much silver is extracted. When the wind falls, they can extract none.”
Patio method of amalgamation (blending ore with mercury) at Potosí
Allowed Spaniards to corner profits
undated drawing (late 16th century)
“the most remarkable feat of technology ever achieved in Ibero-America”-- Peter Bakewell
Amalgamtion required water: dams and canals (east) central district (north) native residences (south, below cerro)
Water power was the key to Potosí’s prosperity. Note many dams in the Kari-Kari massif east of town.
Upper Peru
Mita: yearly labor draft, ~20,000
Mercury essential for smelting ore
Huancavelica (source of mercury)
Peter Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain
Inside the red mountain worked only by yanaconas and mitayos
Yanaconas: Hispanicized servants
Mita: migrant labor draft, once every 7 years
16 provinces: lost 50% of population in a century
“The corregidores and Spanish judges cruelly, and without mercy
or fear of God or of Justice, punished the ‘caciques’ also the Indian miners, who worked in the mines of mercury in Huancavelica, Potosí, Choclococha and Carabaya, they stripped them of their clothing then they tortured them, later they mounted th
em on llamas and beat them, or they hanged them from gallows, sometimes by their feet, and lastly they had them fettered and put into stocks.”
Double labor structure at Potosí--resembles mines of New Spain except more slaves in New Spain (10-15% of total force)
Mitayos (~13,000 yearly from 1575) did the dirty work underground, yet preferred to work in Potosi as a means of paying tribute
Many yanaconas, after 1580, mingas, were attracted to mines and refineries by opportunities for specialized laborers--half of total workforce.
Blacks, slaves or free, also worked only above ground, but only in small numbers.
End