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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.

La Educación Especial en el Centro de Rehabilitación San Juan de Dios, se esfuerza en brindar una educación inclusiva a los niños/as con Síndrome de Down, siendo el lenguaje oral uno de los aspectos más importantes. A pesar de ello se observa que estos niños/as presentan dificultades en el habla. Por ello, la presente investigación tiene como objetivo elaborar una estrategia psicopedagógica para la estimulación el lenguaje oral en niños y niñas con Síndrome de Down del Centro de Rehabilitación San Juan de Dios de la ciudad de Potosí. Para lograrlo se diseñó una investigación de tipo descriptiva dentro del paradigma mixto (Cuantitativo-cualitativo), a través de una entrevista semi-estructurada a la directora y un cuestionario a padres y docentes con el fin de elaborar un diagnóstico. Estos instrumentos arrojaron deficiencias para reconocer fonemas, sonidos y expresarse con sus pares. Por ello la estrategia propuesta consta de tres fases que trabajan las dimensiones: Conciencia Fonológica, Comprensión Oral y Expresión oral con los padres, docentes y estudiantes.

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 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.

Copyright of Estudios Atacameños is the property of Estudios Atacamenos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

En 1716 se nombra como virrey del Perú al arzobispo Diego Morcillo, al cual la ciudad de Potosí rendirá un homenaje de tres días al pasar por ella, durante el viaje que emprende de Charcas a Lima para tomar posesión de su cargo. Repasando las principales fuentes de la entrada del virrey en dicha ciudad -el gran cuadro del pintor boliviano Melchor Pérez de Holguín que custodia el Museo de América de Madrid; la relación escrita por Juan de la Torre, el artífice de las loas y decorados del recibimiento; y la crónica de Bartolomé Arzans de Ursúa y Vela en su Historia de la Villa Imperial- sorprende la inserción de datos contradictorios y alusiones veladas a la suerte del virrey -que solo lo fue durante apenas 50 días-, al juego de pasiones enfrentadas durante las fiestas de recepción -codicia vs. soberbia, vicios públicos vs. vicios privados- pero, sobre todo, al “gravísimo daño” a la cohesión comunitaria de la ciudad y sus habitantes que el nombramiento del ambicioso obispo desencadena. La emblemática y las metáforas desplegadas parece contar “otra historia” que no concuerda con la exaltación de la corona imperial a la que las ceremonias de recepción de virreyes se destinaban. Al contrario, Faetón, Ícaro, el coloso de Rodas, la muerte misma que todo lo iguala, figurados en los tapices que cuelgan a modo de emblemas disuasorios, pretenden recordarle al virrey que la soberbia es un arte vacío si no lucha en la prosperidad común.

El artículo indaga sobre el gran fraude a la Casa de la Moneda de Potosí, desarticulado en 1649 por un decidido visitador, y lo que este episodio puede ilustrar sobre la dominación colonial en la era de los Habsburgo. Asimismo nos invita a la reflexión sobre el significado de la corrupción en la era pre-industrial, período en el que el rango y el privilegio restringían la búsqueda de la justicia. Devaluar la moneda del reino constituía un crimen de lesa majestad. Sin embargo, aparentemente para la década de 1640, ello conformaba un hecho rutinario en la Casa de la Moneda potosina. El corregidor y varios oidores de la cercana Audiencia de Charcas se vieron implicados en los hechos. Entonces, ¿cuáles fueron las circunstancias que derivaron en esa empresa masiva de defraudación y complicidad al más alto nivel y cómo se la suprimió?

La explotación minera de Potosí se constituyó en la máxima preocupación del Virrey don Francisco de Toledo, quien la consideró la fuente de ingresos de la hacienda de su majestad. Para ello, diseñó sus reformas, que consolidaban el gobierno y disciplinamiento indigena y organizaban los repartimientos para proveer al centro minero de un flujo constante de mano de obra. Más allá de ello, el abastecimiento de mercurio constituyó otro de los esfuerzos organizativos del virrey, quien conocía la dependencia de la nueva metodología de amalgamación del flujo sostenido del azogue. De una presentación judicial de los indios de Moromoro (corregimiento de Chayanta, Charcas) se patentiza la forma que eligió Toledo para fundar la Compañía del Trajín de Azogues cuyo objetivo era garantizar el flujo continuo de mercurio a Potosí. Esta investigación devela la centralidad de los repartimientos indígenas y su rol en el proceso de dominación, esta vez como prestamistas del capital necesario a la fundación de la Compañía del Trajín.

Copyright of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseño y Comunicación is the property of Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseno y Comunicacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Razón Crítica is the property of La Fundacion Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Procesos: Revista Ecuatoriana de Historia is the property of Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Sede Ecuador and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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.

Considerando que las fiestas coloniales – que en el Alto Perú en su totalidad presentaban rasgos relacionados con el aspecto religioso- resultan un espacio estratégico donde detectar la reproducción y exteriorización de valores culturales, en este trabajo nos concentramos en observar y caracterizar a las festividades religiosas que estuvieron presentes en Potosí durante el siglo XVIII. Las ceremonias religiosas desarrolladas en el marco de estas instituciones favorecieron la vinculación de los distintos actores en una sociedad donde la religión era el eje de la vida cotidiana. Sin dejar de contemplar el carácter religioso de las fiestas, debe tenerse en cuenta que estas actividades constituían para los indios la contrapartida de sus actividades económicas y también políticas, ya que en este marco se realizaba la elección de las autoridades locales. Tomando como parámetro tales vectores, realizaremos un recorrido por las fuentes describiendo a estos acontecimientos, intentando comprender los diferentes contenidos que trasuntaron estas prácticas, que presentan un carácter tanto explícito como simbólico.

Introducción: en este artículo, se presenta un análisis de la relación directa entre la técnica y la tecnificación extractivista de minerales en el histórico cerro Rico de Potosí (Bolivia) y la determinación social de la salud y la vida de la población potosina, a escalas general, particular y singular de relaciones de producción, poder y consumo generadoras de procesos críticos de salud-enfermedad. Desarrollo: desde la perspectiva de la transformación del espacio que propone Milton Santos, se analiza cómo, derivada del contexto histórico colonial de la minería en Potosí, surge la transformación instrumental que la explotación minera ha generado en el paisaje y la vida cotidiana de la población, de cuya fuerza de trabajo se abastece la mina. Conclusiones: se ilustran estas condiciones haciendo una descripción de las ocupaciones y de las enfermedades asociadas, así como de los inminentes efectos de la contaminación ambiental general, haciendo visible la naturalización de la enfermedad y la muerte en el trabajo minero por parte de las propias familias y de las instituciones involucradas.

Abstract This paper’s main goal is to advance some considerations on the interrelations between port cities and capital. More specifically, it sheds light on how these interdependencies took place in the eighteenth-century Portuguese and Spanish Atlantic world. This paper thus seeks to draw an urban political economy in transimperial, global, and contractual perspectives. For so doing, particular attention will be put to Rio de Janeiro’s projection far beyond the South Atlantic, and in particular, its interconnections with the Rio de la Plata basin and Potosi markets. Attention will also be paid to the impact of and repercussions that far-flung economic phenomena had for the urban domestic markets.

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]

This work aims to ponder the sources used by researchers to study colonial mining. Analyzing its contributions and limits, and also, the appearance of new questions which have enabled the increasing of knowledge about this important activity in colonial America. We will focus on fiscal sources, especially on accounting books of the Cajas Reales, which offer us many possibilities, although we will also talk about the limitations when thinking of this information as conclusive, without subjecting it to a stringent analysis, and without completing the study with other source of documentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este trabajo explora, utilizando la metodología de la sociolingüística histórica, el multilingüismo y el contacto de lenguas en las minas de Potosí (Bolivia) en la época colonial. Potosí fue el destino de la inmigración masiva durante su florecimiento económico y una de las ciudades más grandes en el mundo occidental en 1610. En las minas se desarrollaba un código separado, con un léxico especializado que contenía palabras de lenguas diferentes. Este léxico fue tan distinto que el primer vocabulario de lengua de minas fue escrito en 1610, y muchos han seguido desde esa fecha. El quechua jugaba un papel clave como lengua intermediaria entre dos formas de hablar: el lenguaje minero indígena de los yanaconas y mingas, probablemente una mezcla de castellano y quechua, y el lenguaje de los mitayos, posiblemente una mezcla de aimara y quechua. Las semejanzas entre aimara y quechua deben haber contribuido a esta posibilidad de lengua intermediaria.

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]

Anthropologica inicia la sección «Traducciones» con un artículo del etnomusicólogo británico Henry Stobart, uno de los especialistas más importantes en música indígena boliviana, en particular de la región de Potosí.

A través de un extenso trabajo etnográfico, Stobart pasa revista a los nexos existentes entre producción de alimentos y la producción material e inmaterial de cultura. El presente artículo es una buena muestra de la solidez teórica y empírica sobre la que se basa su obra. En él, de manera sumamente sugerente, Stobart examina las implicaciones multisensoriales de la recepción musical en la región de Macha, al norte de Potosí, durante los períodos de fiesta. Con prosa amena y aguda, Stobart repasa los vínculos culturales entre música, sexualidad y comida, así como entre percepciones visuales y auditivas para, finalmente, concentrarse en las relaciones entre prácticas musicales, ofrendas religiosas y el clima de la región potosina. Tomando la noción de sinestesia en la antropología, Stobart analiza un rico material etnográfico y nos acerca a concepciones indígenas de los Andes hasta ahora inéditas para nosotros. Un texto que, sin duda, propiciará acercamientos parecidos a las músicas indígenas de los Andes peruanos.

La muestra de arte Principio Potosí. ¿Cómo podemos cantar el canto del Señor en tierra ajena? (Creischer, Hinderer, Siekmann, 2010) vuelve a la explotación colonial de las minas de Potosí como proceso de acumulación originaria desde donde pensar el comienzo del capitalismo y las relaciones centro–periferia. A partir de esta idea, se proponen analogías entre la explotación colonial y la capitalista, entre la pintura colonial y el arte actual Desde Bolivia se plantea un contra–proyecto a la muestra, Principio Potosí Reverso (Rivera Cusicanqui y El Colectivo, 2010) bajo el precepto de que si hay algo así como un “Principio Potosí” este debe ser pensado desde la resignificación andina de los procesos coloniales. El foco está puesto menos en la circulación global de la plata que en el mercado interno y en la franja intermedia de negociaciones que este generó. Si en Principio Potosí “mercado”, “imagen” y “ritual” son pensados desde la lógica equivalencial de la acumulación capitalista, en Principio Potosí Reverso son tensionados desde la lógica inequivalente del ethos andino.

Este trabajo se propone trazar un panorama acerca de la organización de las iglesias de indios potosinas. En los datos extraídos de los libros de fábrica, observamos ciertos aspectos que nos permiten describir cuestiones relativas a la organización territorial/parroquial en las que se evidencian referencias a los mecanismos de sujeción y control de la población originaria, como la adscripción cofradial. Nos interesa conocer cómo el proceso de imposición, negociación y resistencia a la normativa española aplicada en este contexto de reformas fue experimentado por la población indígena, ya que hemos advertido que ciertos aspectos heredados del período prehispánico como la organización de la unidad comunal y su ordenamiento territorial, sumada a la percepción sagrada del espacio continúan reproduciéndose, ahora bajo la infraestructura colonial. La concepción del espacio –y la sacralidad implícita en ella- resultan vectores fundamental para comprender los procesos llevados a cabo en la región, signados por los movimientos de desestructuración y organización de la población indígena.

This article studies the representation of violent women in colonial Potosí as told by Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela (1673-1736) in his Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí Following a contextualization of colonial violence and of the narrator’s ideological perspective in his description of women, the analysis focuses on the story of Estefanía, a 14 years old young woman. Arzáns shows, in this story, the social tensions between women and Potosi’s patriarchal society. This article aims to demonstrate that the crimes of this young woman, although narrated from a catholic and moralist perspective, portrait the drama of a young woman confronting a repressive patriarchal system. Thus, Arzáns’ text presents an ambivalence: on the one hand, by condemning the young woman, and on the other, by covertly admiring her life. The sentence “Oh dichosa pecadora” (Oh happy sinner) summarizes this ambiguity. The sinner is happy because she repents of her sins, and with the help of Virgin Mary it is believed that she will go to heaven, but, at the same time, she may be happy in Arzáns’ view (as well as in the reader’s perspective of today) because of her independent life as well as for challenging the patriarchal system. [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 1630, after he got a vast experience as a priest and commissioner of the Inquisition in the viceroyalty of Peru, Lorenzo de Mendoza arrive at court, where he printed several memorials addressed to Philip IV, all of them implying a common vision of a global, integrated and stable empire. This vision of the monarchy laid mainly in three points: the place Portuguese and other subjects of the monarch had to occupy in front of the Castellans, the protection of the indigenes and the protection of silver shipment that arrived every year with the fleet.For these statements, he was named episcopal prelate of Rio de Janeiro, here he tried to put into practice his integrating ideas. Nevertheless, the strong reaction of the Portuguese colonial oligarchies obliged him to come back soon to Madrid, a few years later. There, he told everything had happened to him in a new series of memorials. The comparative analysis of these texts brings a new perspective on the problematical integration of the Portuguese and Castellan colonies during the moment of the Iberian Union.

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.

This paper explores, using the methodology of historical sociolinguistics, multilingualism and language contact in the mines of Potosí (Bolivia) in the colonial period. Potosí was the destination of massive immigration during its economic heydays and one of the largest cities in the Western hemisphere in 1610. In the mines a special code was 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 played a key role as intermediary language between two forms of speaking: the indigenous mining language of the yanaconas and mingas, probably a mix of Spanish and Quechua, and the language of the 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]

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 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 aims to analyze and shed light on the social organization of Basques in Potosí (in Upper Peru) in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In doing so, it turns to the concept of ethnicity, which has been used to analyze migrant groups in different parts of the contemporary world, but can be equally usefully applied to the colonization of the Americas from the sixteenth century onwards. The Basques constitute a particularly clear example of this. The core of the text discusses the discourse of identity and the forms of social organization developed within this group, above all with regard to the lay brotherhood (cofradía) of Nuestra Señora de Aránzazu.