Place
Potosí
Silver-mining city in the Bolivian Andes, below the mountain Cerro Rico.
- Wikidata
- Q35045
According to Pedro Cieza de León
- involved in Silver found at Potosí
- involved in Silver found at Potosí
According to Melissa Dell
- involved in The mining mita
Silver-mining city in the Bolivian Andes, below the mountain Cerro Rico.
Connections 5
involved in
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Silver found at Potosí
According to Pedro Cieza de León
Primary record
12
Cieza's year: 1546 in Markham's English, 1547 in Pease's Spanish.
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Silver found at Potosí
Scholarship & press
3
Markham's footnote, citing Acosta: an Indian named Hualpa found the vein; a Spaniard, Villaroel, began to work it in April 1545.
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Silver found at Potosí
According to Pedro Cieza de León
Primary record
2
In Cieza's Spanish the Indians who went into a mine gave its holder a mark of silver, or two if it was rich, each week, and half a mark to encomenderos if the holder had no mine. Markham's English (quoted nowhere in this story) reverses it: the holder gives the Indians a mark.
- The mining mita According to Melissa Dell Scholarship & press 4
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The mining mita
Scholarship & press
5
The reference entry: Toledo set up the colonial mita without the Crown's approval, drafting over 11,000 Indians a year for Potosí; and, in its judgment, it coerced reluctant Indians and subsidised production through low wages.
Proof 5 sources
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The Travels of Pedro de Cieza de León, A.D. 1532-50, contained in the first part of his Chronicle of Peru (English translation by Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society, 1864), Hakluyt Society, London (scan on the Internet Archive), 1864.
Primary record
those which they have found in the hill of Potosi (concerning which I now desire to write) were never worked until the year 1546
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Pedro de Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú, chapter 109 (Spanish, in Franklin Pease's modernised edition, Biblioteca Ayacucho, 2005; extract published by the Colegio de Ciencias y Humanidades, UNAM), Colegio de Ciencias y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2005.
Primary record
hasta que el año de mil quinientos y cuarenta y siete años
al que tenía mina, le daban los indios que en ella entraban un marco. Y si era muy rica dos cada semana.
Y si no tenía mina, a los señores encomenderos de indios les daban medio marco cada semana.
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The Travels of Pedro de Cieza de León: Markham's introduction and footnotes (Hakluyt Society, 1864), Hakluyt Society, London (scan on the Internet Archive), 1864.
Scholarship & press
The mines of Potosi were discovered by an Indian named Hualpa, a native of Chumbivilica near Cuzco.
the latter began to work the vein in April 1545
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Melissa Dell, The Persistent Effects of Peru's Mining Mita, Econometrica 78(6), 2010 (abstract on the journal's page), The Econometric Society, Nov 2010.
Scholarship & press
an extensive forced mining labor system in effect in Peru and Bolivia between 1573 and 1812
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Mita (entry in a Gale encyclopedia of Latin American history and culture), on encyclopedia.com, Gale, via encyclopedia.com.
Scholarship & press
Viceroy Francisco de Toledo (1569–1581) established the colonial mita, issuing laws regarding the size of the draft levies, the wages to be paid the workers, and the frequency with which an individual worker served.
Without approval of the crown (which remained ambivalent about the morality of coerced labor but willing to profit from it), Toledo instituted a formal mita for the silver mines and mills at Potosí between 1572 and 1575.
Each year it mobilized over 11,000 Indians from the highland provinces between Potosí and Cuzco.
The mitas coerced reluctant Indians into participating in the colonial economy and subsidized economic production through low wages.
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