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El objetivo de este artículo es caracterizar las técnicas y prácticas cotidianas de los trabajadores subterráneos de las minas de Potosí durante el siglo XVIII, en particular según sus puestos de trabajo y situaciones de coerción laboral. Según las fuentes consultadas, existían tres clases de saberes subterráneos. En la primera categoría se encontraban los saberes de supervivencia compartidos por todos los trabajadores, tal como la capacidad a desplazarse y ubicarse bajo tierra. En la segunda categoría se situaban los saberes de supervivencia especializados, conocidos por algunos trabajadores cualificados quienes generalmente no eran sometidos al trabajo forzado de la mita. Se trataba de las observaciones y las micro-técnicas que permitían evaluar la peligrosidad de los sectores mineros. Finalmente, estaban los saberes de producción especializados, de conocimientos de los metales, de la arquitectura subterránea y de clasificación de los minerales, fundamentados en la experiencia y el uso de los sentidos. Esta tercera categoría correspondía igualmente a obreros especializados y libres. No obstante, algunos trabajadores forzados, encargados del desplazamiento de los minerales, probablemente desarrollaron una más alta capacidad para los desplazamientos subterráneos que los trabajadores libres.

The aim of this article is to characterise the techniques and daily practices of underground workers in the mines of Potosí during the 18th century, in particular according to their jobs and situations of labour coercion. According to the sources consulted, there were three kinds of underground knowledge, which were not mutually exclusive. In the first category were the survival knowledge shared by all workers, such as the ability to move and position oneself underground. In the second category was specialised survival knowledge, known to some skilled workers who were generally not subjected to the forced labour of the mita. These were the daily observations and techniques that made it possible to assess the danger of the mining sectors. Finally, there was the specialised knowledge of production, knowledge of metals, underground architecture and the classification of minerals, based on experience and the use of the senses. This third category also included specialised and free labourers. However, the everyday boundaries between these three types of knowledge were not defined or exclusive, just as the boundary between free and forced labourers was not so clear in practice. Thus, some forced labourers, who were responsible for moving ores, probably developed a higher capacity for underground movements than free labourers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1938 Convention took place under the presidential administration of "Military Socialists", as a result of the political crisis generated by the Chaco War (1932-1935), proclaiming political measures that would be implemented during the rest of the twentieth century (an increased role of the state in the economy, land distribution, public policies on natural resources, and indigenous and women citizenships). One of the topics considered was weather to rent Potosi's abandoned mines to the so called K'ajchas. Who were they? Were they small bosses and mine owners? Were they proletarian workers or primitive miners? Would they have to be favored even though they possessed obsolete and backward system of exploitation or create an industrial system under state control? The study reconstructs, based on newspapers of that period and on Reports of the Convention, the situation of the K'ajchas in a context of the tin economic crisis and the country's political upheaval. Also is analyzed the diferent interpretations and projects that were debated around topics such as the presence of large mining enterprises like Mauricio Hothchilds's mines, mining proletarians or small scale mining owners. One of the central arguments discussed was weather the industrialization development plan that emerged from the Convention should consider small miners enterprises or state controlled workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the colonial context of the 16th to 17th centuries, the silver and gold mining was a key economic sector of the European domination. During the period one of the main worldwide centers of silver production was the Cerro Rico of Potosí (present-day Bolivia). From 1573 it was fed with indigenous labour force, under a system that mixed compulsory labour (mita) and voluntary one. The rules of this system were lucidly analyzed by the historiography. This article proposes to trace the faint documentary trails of the everyday working practice developed by the indigenous mining labour force in Potosi. The aim of the analysis is to become visible the plasticity of the indigenous mining labour world in Potosi which was not static for the long century that followed the establishment of the mita. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]