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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 article provides a narrative representation of the experience of Indigenous workers who were drafted into the mines of the cerro rico (rich peak) in Spanish colonial Peru (now Bolivia) during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It explores the hardships and challenges faced by these Indigenous workers as they were forced to toil in the dangerous silver mines of Potosí. It highlights the physical and emotional toll of their labor and the harsh conditions they endured.

The mass movement of raw material in the eighteenth century determined industrial, agricultural, social, and visual environments. Using the global supply chain as an organizing principle, this essay examines how four raw materials shaped and were shaped by politics and society. Each of the four elements—silver, seeds, mother-of-pearl, and sugar—is addressed at one stage of its international circulation. Brittany Luberda begins by analyzing labor practices in the extraction of silver from the mines of Potosí during the Spanish colonization of present-day Bolivia. Sophie Tunney traces a material's journey across the sea, revealing the complexities of transporting living plants and the politics of French colonies. Cynthia Kok shows how mother-of-pearl shells, by-products of the pearl trade, were transformed by Netherlandish craftspeople into objects of value by adapting their existing expertise. Sarah Cohen then examines how two silver sugar casters made in the form of enslaved people were used to visualize the coerced labor that produced a sweet commodity for the global economy. Presented in a format that reflects the movement of a material from its excavation and transportation through to its manipulation and reception, we offer a model for investigating the life cycle of eighteenth-century material culture, which was itself multi-layered, interactive, and entangled with colonialist ambition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En este estudio se propone el análisis de determinados artefactos iconográficos, que se erigen con motivo de celebrar la entrada triunfal del recién nombrado virrey interino arzobispo don Diego de Morcillo y Auñón, a la Villa Rica del Cerro de Potosí, de paso rumbo a Lima. Tales artefactos, los magníficos arcos triunfales, mascaradas, una loa y hasta un cuadro al óleo, comisionado a Melchor Pérez de Holguín, se diseñan con antelación; el objetivo es exaltar la figura del virrey, plasmando las figuras emblemáticas acostumbradas. Se propone la lectura de algunos aspectos del programa iconográfico producido en torno a la figura de Morcillo, con el objeto de dilucidar rasgos locales y de la agencia criolla en Potosí, desplegada cuidadosamente en estos emblemas.

Este artículo discute la implementación de los modelos mercantiles del transporte en el caso de la ruta Potosí-Cobija a la luz de las evidencias de la propia praxis nativa. Primero, la ruta colonial es localizada sobre la base de documentos del siglo XVIII e inicios del XIX para ser objeto de teledetección e inspección arqueológica. Los resultados demuestran la prominencia del trabajo nativo como motor de los flujos mercantiles, lo que es observado en un sistema de lugares tradicionales de descanso (pascanas) y asentamientos de pastores. La continuidad en las prácticas indígenas incluye la independencia de infraestructuras oficiales, incluso en épocas Inca y Borbónica, aunque un sistema de postas arqueológicas testimonia la materialización del modelo ilustrado español en la ruta. Se propone que la ruta es fruto del movimiento nativo, pero que su biografía responde a la fusión de modelos y prácticas mercantiles y andinas de transporte. La síntesis de datos arqueológicos e históricos sugiere un movimiento temprano bajo cánones inca en caminos y tambos, seguido por la parcial mercantilización post Toledana de arrieros y trajines y de la implementación andina de los deseos borbónicos después de la independencia.

This article examines a series of proposals for improving silver refining methods presented to the municipal council of Potosí (in current-day Bolivia) in the late sixteenth century as a means of nuancing current understandings of the Iberian state’s pursuit of “useful” knowledge. Historians have argued that the sixteenth century saw the fostering of an empirical culture, one based on experiential and collaborative practices, in the Iberian world. They have stressed that as artisanal experts and royal officials developed a mutually beneficial relationship, this empirical culture became institutionalized in administrative bodies for the pursuit of useful knowledge. This article focuses on the textual production that resulted from the relationship between artisanal experts and royal officials. It probes the motivations of local officials in generating a textual record of artisanal knowledge. Historians have tended to interpret and actors at the time often stated an interest in inscribing, artisanal knowledge as expertise and experience. However, this article demonstrates that what often motivated municipal officials’ inscription of such knowledge was an emphasis on administrative knowledge as rule-following, in particular, a desire to demonstrate one’s competency as an administrator. This conclusion suggests historians should expand their conception of “useful” to better reflect how early modern actors in the Iberian world viewed their pursuit of scientific and technical knowledge. It also indicates the importance of paying attention to the process of bureaucratic knowledge production when interpreting the written traces of the scientific and technical culture of the early modern Iberian world.

Throughout Bolivia, collectives of small-scale miners known as 'mining cooperatives' have developed a reputation for cutthroat extractive practices that were shaped by neoliberal restructuring starting in the 1980s. Charting a history that starts at the turn of the twentieth century, this paper argues that cooperative mining in the tin belt of Northern Potosí has emerged as a vertical instantiation of small-holder farming practices that migrated, along with miners themselves, from surrounding indigenous ayllus. In the subterranean, however, these practices interacted with the legacies of tin mining, which was characterized by labor hierarchies that corresponded with vertical variation in ore quality. New social striations crystallized as small-holder farming customs settled into the subterranean structure, creating sharp social differentiation across these subsoil 'family farms.' The class composition of mining cooperatives at the national level has been shaped by these entangled underground histories, with implications for the country's economic and environmental futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cities of Potosí (Bolivia) and Ouro Preto (Brazil) have played central economic roles during Latin America's long colonial history of mineral extraction, feeding the Spanish and Portuguese empires with silver (Potosí) and gold (Ouro Preto) and, consequently, changing the world's economy. Based on ethnography, interviews and archival research, in this article we argue that mining in these cities should be understood through the frame of a "difficult heritage" (Macdonald, 2009), incorporating mining's social and environmental atrocities in the official representations of their pasts. We first analyze how the colonial period was depicted in contemporary heritage policies and the role it played in fostering nationalism both in Bolivia and Brazil. Then, we explore how two main issues were excluded from official narratives but remained represented in urban spaces and in local inhabitants' perceptions of them: the environmental impact directly or indirectly caused by mining and the racist violence imposed on African and indigenous peoples to guarantee mass labour for mining enterprises. Today, as contemporary Latin American societies are struggling to reinvent their national selves without reproducing long-standing patterns of race inequalities and extractivism, accounting for the complexity of colonial mining heritage becomes increasingly relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the methodology of historical sociolinguistics, this article explores multilingualism and language contact in the mines of Potosí (Bolivia) in the colonial period. Potosí was the destination of massive migration during its economic heydays around 1610 and one of the largest cities in the Western hemisphere at the time. In the mines special codes were developed, with a specialized lexicon that contains words from different languages. This lexicon was so different that the first vocabulary of the mining language was written in 1610, and many have followed from that date onward. Quechua most probably played a key role as intermediary language between two forms of speaking: the indigenous mining language of the free workers, yanaconas and mingas, probably a mix of Spanish and Quechua, and the language of the forced workers, mitayos, possibly a mix of Aymara and Quechua. The similarities between Aymara and Quechua must have contributed to this possibility of an intermediary language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Print culture is allegedly the cornerstone of modernity, responsible for the rise of the ‘public sphere’. The Spanish Empire throws these tenets into question. Print culture never became a major force as it would in Northern Europe. A world of manuscript production was fertile nonetheless. It was within reach for every subject to write, petition, and debate with officials and the Crown. This did not produce a public sphere in which printed books traded hands in cafés. Indeed, this epistolary culture was highly secretive. There was widespread literacy in encrypting. This vertical, secretive system of petitioning nonetheless produced immense amounts of new knowledge on nature, politics, ethnography, and political economy, upending the pervasive theory of openness-as-knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I study the U.S. 2005 documentary film, The Devil’s Miner, co-produced by Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani. Like many other internationally produced documentary films of this sort, it combines an ethnographic view of its subject with a mission of critique, in this case, the denunciation of child labor in the extremely dangerous and physically exhausting environment of the Cerro Rico mine in Potosí. The general message to the viewer is an emotionally-laden appeal to support children, an inarguable good. The resolution falls back on cultural approaches directed toward the future, specifically, toward keeping children in school, and increasing formal educational possibilities. There is a way in which this universal panacea misses an important point bluntly and correctly outlined by Saskia Sassen, when she argues that economies relying on a significant pool drawn from the laboring precariat tend to be based on a shared understanding that the nation is afflicted with a surplus population (too many migrants, too many children, etc), and for that very reason there is tacit permission to render a significant category of workers temporary and disposable. Indeed, the economy requires this body of workers, and in this context education—while an evident good for the small numbers of children who achieve it--does not address the fundamental underlying conjunction of needs: for workers on the one hand, for survival on the other. To propose education as the solution, then, seems an unintended distraction from a difficult challenge posed by globalized economic systems. In Bolivia, the children’s union UNATSBO has taken a different approach, arguing for the rights of children as workers.

Se analiza una muestra de envíos de libros remitidos en los barcos que realizaron la travesía atlántica a los puertos americanos. Se trata de envíos de títulos impresos europeos destinados al abastecimiento del virreinato del Perú. En este tráfico de libros jugaron un papel clave los mercaderes que compraron títulos que enviaron a particulares, mercaderes o libreros establecidos en Perú.

Partiendo de la idea de que el miedo existe instalado en nuestras vidas, se analiza el doble discurso de miedos negados y preocupaciones reconocidas desde el que los habitantes de una comunidad del altiplano boliviano explican su vida cotidiana, prestando especial atención a las razones esgrimidas por los adultos en la educación de los niños a la hora de prohibirles frecuentar determinados ambientes o realizar en ellos ciertas acciones. Para ello partiré de una distinción espacial dentro del entramado urbano, diferenciando así entre espacios propios, seguros y reconocidos —pero potencialmente amenazados— que, debido a la concurrencia de determinadas alteridades terribles presentes y pretéritas, son sentidos como un territorio de los otros, una geografía atemorizadora donde suceden cosas, escenarios del miedo que necesitan ser conjurados y reordenados.

El presente trabajo hace un recorrido por la historia del aguardiente de vino peruano que hoy conocemos con el nombre de “pisco”. Se explica su origen mencionando la noticia más antigua que se tiene de él y se hace hincapié en varios aspectos que han sido esgrimidos para pretender justificar el uso del nombre en otros lugares que tienen que ver con distribución temprana, aduciendo que en el Alto Perú “pisco” era una denominación genérica. Se alude a la etapa en la que el pisco llegó a su punto mínimo de producción explicando que no fue un abandono intencional sino guiado por las circunstancias. Finalmente se explica el proceso de generalización del nombre “pisco” para el aguardiente peruano.

In this article I study the U.S. 2005 documentary film, The Devil's Miner, co-produced by Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani. Like many other internationally produced documentary films of this sort, it combines an ethnographic view of its subject with a mission of critique, in this case, the denunciation of child labor in the extremely dangerous and physically exhausting environment of the Cerro Rico mine in Potosí. The general message to the viewer is an emotionally-laden appeal to support children, an inarguable good. The resolution falls back on cultural approaches directed toward the future, specifically, toward keeping children in school, and increasing formal educational possibilities. There is a way in which this universal panacea misses an important point bluntly and correctly outlined by Saskia Sassen, when she argues that economies relying on a significant pool drawn from the laboring precariat tend to be based on a shared understanding that the nation is afflicted with a surplus population (too many migrants, too many children, etc), and for that very reason there is tacit permission to render a significant category of workers temporary and disposable. Indeed, the economy requires this body of workers, and in this context education--while an evident good for the small numbers of children who achieve it--does not address the fundamental underlying conjunction of needs: for workers on the one hand, for survival on the other. To propose education as the solution, then, seems an unintended distraction from a difficult challenge posed by globalized economic systems. In Bolivia, the children's union UNATSBO has taken a different approach, arguing for the rights of children as workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a contribution to the history of a group of self-employed workers that produced 20 to 35% of Potosí’s silver in the 18th century. The paper begins remembering the contribution of historiography to the study of the k’ajchas. The analysis is centered then, in the property rights to the mines because these kajchas challenged the ownership of the ores, appearing as “thieves”. The ores exploited by them were transformed in silver in the trapiches or rudimentary mills. This is why the article focus in the ensemble k’ajcha-trapiche that meant the emergence of a quasi-parallel economy that burst into the scene with considerable energy. This is also an example on how workers struggled to have their part in the new economy. In the conclusions there are some thoughts about the problems when it comes to define them and the consequences of the k’ajchas/trapiches for a new unsderstanding of the labour system in Potosi.

The 'quimbalete' is a kind of grindstone used notably in Potosi (Bolivia) during the Spanish conquest of South America. It was used to grind pieces of ore gravel from centimetric sizes to the size of sand. Its physical functioning, as well as the reason why this strictly Andean tool occupied a central place in a mainly European production chain, have never been addressed. This study is aimed at answering these questions as a result of physics-based modelling. After introducing the historical context, we address geometrical and physical parameters relevant for understanding how this oscillating grindstone was used and what one can expect in terms of grinding. Then, a suitable approach for estimating the yield makes use of the modern industrial empirical estimator: the 'power index'. We offer our conclusions about the position of this tool, which appears as an ideal intermediate tool between the roughening process of the ore at the centimetre scale, and the suitable size for the material to be sorted by the subsequent methods in the chain (such as washing), which involve sandy-sized grains. The study also shows how classical physics can help in addressing questions concerning minerallurgy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A partir de las propuestas elaboradas por Manuel Gutiérrez Estévez se presentan tres motivos míticos andinos: el mito de Wiracocha-Tunupa, el mito de la no explotación minera en Potosí y el mito de Tata Santiago, para explorar sus usos y actualizaciones, partiendo de la consideración de que las nociones mito y mitología son el resultado de una invención occidental que buscaba, a través de las crónicas y su difusión evangelizadora, legitimar las acciones coloniales en el Nuevo Mundo. Con esta perspectiva se enfocan los tres mitemas señalados, haciendo énfasis en que, en cuanto construcciones sociales, estos han nacido en el seno de relaciones interlocutorias y de poder entre mundos culturalmente distintos, y se han venido transformando según los usos sociales que se les ha dado. Palabras clave: crónicas, Wiracocha, Tunupa, Potosí, Santiago, mitografía. ABSTRACT This paper introduces three andean mythic motives —the myth of Wiracoha-Tunupa, the myth of non mineral exploitation in Potosí and Tata Santiago’s myth—based on the proposals elaborated by Manuel Gutiérrez Estévez, in order to explore their uses and actualizations, and starting from the consideration that the notions of “myth” and “mythology” are the result of an occidental invention intended to legitimize colonial actions in the new world through chronicles and their evangelic diffusion. From that perspective, the three mythic themes mentioned will be analized, emphasizing that, as social constructions, they have been born inside power relationships between different cultural worlds, and they have been continuously transformed, according to the social uses which they have been given. Keywords: chronicles, Wiracocha, Tunupa, Potosí, Santiago, mythography.

Tin-polymetallic base metal deposits of Miocene age in the Eastern Cordillera in Bolivia were studied by ICP/MS and EPMA for major and minor elements, paying an attention to indium concentration of the ore deposits. The highest indium content and 1000 In/Zn ratio of individual ore deposits are 5,740 ppm and 22.2 for the Potosi deposits, 2,730 ppm and 7.4 for Bolivar deposit, 2,510 ppm and 17.5 for Siete Suyos-Animas deposits, and 1,290 ppm and 3.3 for San Vicente deposit. The same content and ratio of composite samples of the studied deposits are up to 292 ppm and 4.0 for Potosi deposits, 3,080 ppm and 11.3 for Huari Huari deposit, 100 ppm and 0.3 for Tuntoco deposit, 152 ppm and 1.8 for Porco deposit, 103 ppm and 59.2 for Animas deposit, and 1,160 ppm and 3.7 for Pirquitas deposit. Those of zinc concentrates are as follows: 1,080 ppm and 2.1 at San Lorenzo; 584 ppm and 1.7 at Bolivar; 499 ppm and 1.23 at Porco; 449 ppm and 1.21 at Reserva, and 213 ppm and 0.61 at Colquiri deposit. Indium occurs mostly in dark colored sphalerite and that of the Potosi deposit was found to have one of the highest concentrations, containing up to 1.27 wt% In. Petrukite was discovered in the Potosi deposit, and indium minerals are expected to occur in the Huari Huari deposit and others with the high 1000 In/Zn ratios. The indium contents of the zinc concentrates and composite samples were applied to the produced and remaining ores, then the total amounts of indium in the Bolivian tin-polymetallic base metal deposits are speculated to be more than 12,000 tons In, which is bigger than that of South China (11,000 tons) and the Japanese Islands (9,000 tons). Sphalerites of the Potosi deposit have one of the highest ranges of indium, similarly to those of the San Vicente deposit. Both the San Vicente and Potosi deposits are rich in silver, implying significance of both silver-polymetallic and tin-polymetallic environments for the concentration of trace amounts of indium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The weathering of discharged mine tailings can contaminate groundwaters, rivers and floodplains with potentially toxic Cd and Zn, depending on tailings mineralogy, storage, dispersal and climatic conditions. The mechanisms of long-term tailings weathering and its influence on waste piles and floodplain environments were assessed by a column leaching experiment that incorporated tailings and soil from Potosí, Bolivia, and modelled 20 cycles of wet and dry season conditions over three calendar years. Chemical analysis of the leachate and column solids, optical mineralogy, XRD, SEM, EPMA, BCR and water-soluble chemical extractions and speciation modelling were carried out to determine the processes responsible for the leaching of Cd, Fe, S and Zn. Over this period, approximately 50 to 95% of the original Cd and 50 to 60% of the Zn were leached from the columns. Large amounts of leached Cd and Zn at the beginning of the experiment are attributed to the dissolution of soluble sulphate minerals present in the original tailings and formed after the first wetting of the columns. The Zn/Cd mass ratios of the tailings and soil, initially 429 and 400, respectively, vary considerably over the course of the experiment. Low values (between 220 and 300) in the early cycles are attributed to preferential weathering of Cd-rich wurtzite [Zn,Fe)S] and sequestration of Zn in preference to Cd in secondary Fe phases forming in the columns. In the middle cycles, dissolution of secondary Fe(OH)3 under low pH (<3) conditions, and of ferroan (Cd-poor) sphalerite [Zn,Fe)S], releases Zn and raises the Zn/Cd ratio to 550–600 in the tailings-only columns and up to 1500 in the mixed tailings-soil columns. The very high ratios in the latter are also ascribed to the formation of low molecular weight organic ligands that have high affinity for Zn over Cd. In the later column-cycles, Zn/Cd ratios return to near-initial values, due to the weathering of Fe-poor sphalerite and secondary Fe phases, and the declining preference of Zn over Cd in the soil organic acids under the strongly acidic conditions prevailing in the columns. The formation and dissolution of secondary soluble sulphate minerals also play a role in Cd and Zn cycling, especially at the beginning of the experiment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

El artículo examina la pequeña y mediana minería de la plata en dos provincias de Potosí (Bolivia) durante la República temprana, situándola entre las políticas estatales de rescate y amonedación, y el contrabando por la "ruta de las pastas" hacia Salta y la costa chilena. Se identifica el papel de los "fomentadores" bolivianos, que daban créditos y se encargaban del envío de las "oncitas" de plata desde las provincias al Banco de Rescates. Se analiza los mecanismos de acumulación minera (sin recurso a capitales extranjeros), mostrando cómo la relación "al partir" entre los propietarios y sus "socios" indígenas (cacchas) pudo transformarse en una relación "reglamentada" entre patrón y jornalero. Finalmente, se comparan dos empresas de Porco: Siporo y Huanchaca, ambas se unían en su oposición a la injerencia estatal en las relaciones laborales, y sobre todo contra los intentos del Presidente Santa Cruz de introducir un nuevo Código Minero en defensa de los trabajadores.

Múltiplos fatores imbricantes e atritantes, econômicos e não econômicos, explicam o complexo histórico-geográfico potosino. Alguns podem ser enumerados como indicadores do processo histórico global, pois adicionaram e, posteriormente, subtrairam energia ao referido complexo: os impulsos crescentes e decrescentes do capitalismo comercial europeu; a política econômica dos Áustrias e Bourbons de Espanha como resposta à conjuntura européia; ascenção e declínio na extração, industrialização e comercialização do minério e metal argentíferos procedentes do cerro potosino e de muitos outros espalhados no antiplano andino; presença de uma instituição monetária receptora de barras ou riéis de prata e expedidora de reais; alta e baixa marés demográficas; mobilização forte e ondulante de mercadores, gêneros agro-pastoris procedentes do solo americano e de mercadorias euro-afro-asiáticas.

(5.parágrafo do artigo) O que se propõe neste trabalho é tão somente comprovar que o complexo histórico-geográfico minerador potosino, principalmente no decurso da segunda metade do Século XVIII, voltou a receber novos estímulos à transformação do minério de prata em metal. Estímulos consubstanciados no desempenho de duas instituições, uma monetária e outra bancária, localizadas na Vila Imperial de Potosí. O presente trabalho, entretanto, decorre de uma ampla pesquisa em andamento através da qual procuramos comprovar que as referidas instituições da central potosina, cujas congêneres européias foram importantes fatores do desenvolvimento do capitalismo moderno, apenas possibilitaram que o mundo andino alto-peruano continuasse com a sua histórica estrutura sócio-econômica pré-capitalista.

“I entered the country by its most painful door” declared the Swiss photographer Jean-Claude Wicky at the end of a long and patient work of documentary photography about the Bolivian mines of Potosi, realized between 1984 and 2001 in a hostile and fierce universe, inseparable from the history of Bolivia. This article proposes to present the book Mineros. Bolivia (2007), result of this work hailed by critics for its artistic and documentary quality. More than a reflection on the anthropological and historical dimension of the work, the point of this article is to study some of the characteristics of the pictures, which introduce the public into a confined, raw and bitter world, without ever distorting or caricaturing the complex reality of which it testifies. We will also take an interest in the process by which Wicky decided, after exposing his work in many cities in the world, to give each of the miners immortalized by his photographs a copy of the book. Their gratefulness and emotional reactions decided him to dedicate a video documentary to this return to the mines, twenty-six years after the beginning of the project. He directed the documentary film Todos los días la noche (2010), in which scenes of encounter with mineworkers alternate with explanations of the mining history of the region, while introducing a subtle reflection on the relationship between the artist and the people who inspired him and fed his work for decades.