Today I begin a multi-part series on the Cerro Rico of Potosi; I am writing these posts with the hope of putting into historical context the 20th century cycle of Bolivian capitalization and nationalization.

The amount of misinformation regarding this issue in the blogosphere is staggering. I hope that by reading this, commentators will be better equipped to understand that Evo Morales did not rise to power in a historical vacuum, but his ascendancy is closely tied to historical precedents ingrained in the Bolivian soul.

In the 18^th Century, Bartolomé Arzans de Orzua y Vela wrote the following:

Oh singular work of the power of God; one miracle of nature; perfect and permanent marvel of the world; happiness of mortals, emperor of mountains, king of the hills, prince of all minerals; sire of 5,000 Indians; army paid against the enemies of the faith; fortress that impedes their designs; attractor of men; base of all treasures; adornment of sacred temples; coin that purchases the sky; monster of riches; body of earth and spirit of silver; its catholic monarchs possess it (what greatness!), the other kings envy it, the nations of the world all hail its greatness. They claim it powerful, they affirm it is excellent, they say it is without equal, they celebrate it as admirable, they cut the wind to acquire it, they cross the sea to find it, and they travel the earth to have it.

Arzans de Orzua y Vela was speaking of the Cerro Rico of Potosi, the site of one of the richest silver deposits in the history of civilization.

The Cerro Rico first comes on the historical radar screen in 1462, when the Incan Emperor Huayna Capac discovered and sanctified the mountain. The Emperor ordered his vassals to explore the area around
the mountainside, whereupon they discovered rich mineral ore protruding from its sides. From there they heard a voice, saying that the silver was not for them, but was for the white men who would come from afar. The vassals explained the mountain’s uproar to the Emperor, and thereafter the Inca declared the mountain sacred, and the minerals therein were not to be touched.

In 1529, the King of Spain granted Francisco Pizarro the authority and resources necessary to explore and conquer the regions south of present day Ecuador. Upon Pizarro’s arrival, the empire was immersed in a civil war of succession that made it vulnerable to the conquistador’s designs. By the end of the 1530’s, the Inca Empire had disintegrated, and in the years that followed the Spanish were able to subdue the remaining pockets of resistance.

In 1544 the Indian Diego Wallpa was grazing his llamas, and lost one on the mountain side. His search for the lost animal forced him to stay the night on the mountain, where the cold prompted him to light a fire. The fire melted the mineral ore inside of the mountain, and Diego reported this to the Spanish, who shortly thereafter established the first silver mines in the city of Potosi.

In 1545 the Spanish crown, acting through emissaries in South America, officially established the first mine in the Cerro Rico (rich mountain) of Potosi. So rich and abundant were the early deposits that veins of pure silver were extracted from the mountain with little need for processing.

Potosi became a boom-town without precedent. From an initial settlement of 170 Spaniards and 3,000 Indians, by 1610 the city’s population had grown to 160,000 inhabitants. Even by European standards the city had become a metropolis; Paris had a population of 60,000, London 100,000.

Opposing social forces set into motion by the conquest presented the early colonial administration with a number of obstacles. As introduced diseases decimated the already diffuse Indian populations, the need for labor in the silver rich mines of Potosi increased exponentially.

In desperate need of a method to exploit Indian labor and extract taxes from a disperse population, Viceroy Francisco Toledo implemented a series of far reaching reforms that would forever alter the structure of Andean society. Under Toledo, the official policy of the colonial regime became “reduction”, the forced resettlement of the indigenous ayullus into permanent, fixed communities. Though this was a process that took centuries, Toledo laid the foundation for the destruction of the dispersed colonies that occurred within the different ecological tiers of the Andean landscape. In this way the colonial authorities were more easily able to census and tax the reduced communities.

Reduction also solved the problem of a securing a steady supply of labor for the resource hungry mines of Potosi. The cost of building and maintaining a working mineshaft was equivalent to the cost of building a cathedral. The Spanish tried a number of tactics to solve the problem of labor shortage, from slavery to wage labor.

The final and most successful result was the introduction of the mit’a, a Quechua term used to describe the system of rotational labor used by the Incas in the corn producing valleys of Cochabamba. Under the Spanish system, one-seventh of the male population in each community was required to work one year in the mines, each individual would serve once every six years. Suddenly, the Spanish miners had an annual labor force of 13,500 men. They paid the mitayos a small wage, which was not even enough for subsistence. The mitayos were required to provide their own food, coca, and the cost of transportation.

By 1572, the richest and purest deposits of silver had been exhausted. Toledo solved the problem of purifying the mixed silver mineral through a process of amalgamation with mercury. First the ore had to be broken up, and then it would be amalgamated with the mercury. Indian workers were responsible for this milling process, and they were in contact with and exposed to mercury constantly. Since mercury was used at a fixed ratio to extract silver, this also allowed the Spanish crown to monopolize the distribution of mercury and thereby keep track of exactly how much silver was being extracted and processed.

It is estimated that 1.5 kg of mercury were lost to the environment for every kg of silver that was produced using this process. An examination of silver export statistics shows that the loss of mercury to the Pilcomayo basin, the watershed around the Potosi area, may have reached more than several hundred tons per year between 1520 and 1820.