Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
This growth was based on the extraction of surface deposits with high ore contents, which
were easily processed. As these ran out and shaft mining developed, the purity of the ore de-
clined and production costs rose. Labour also became increasingly scarce, thanks to the ap-
palling conditions in the mines. This crisis was overcome by
Viceroy Francisco de Toledo
,
who arrived in Potosí in 1572 and orchestrated the construction of a massive system of dams,
artificial lakes and aqueducts to power the water wheels that crushed the ore for process-
ing. Toledo also introduced the newly discovered amalgam process for refining silver using
mercury, established the first royal mint and regulated property rights. Most importantly, he
tackled the labour shortage by adapting the Inca system of mandatory labour service, the
mita
. This provided an annual workforce of about 13,500
mitayos
at almost no cost to the
mine owners.
These reforms greatly boosted silver production, and Potosí boomed for almost a century.
By the beginning of the seventeenth century Potosí's population was 160,000 and the city
boasted dozens of magnificent
churches
, as well as theatres, gambling-houses, brothels and
dancehalls. The silver also had a global impact, funding Spain's wars and fuelling economic
growth throughout Europe.
The human cost
For the
indigenous workers
and
imported African slaves
who produced this wealth,
however, the consequences were catastrophic. Staying deep underground for up to a week at
a time and forced to meet ever more outrageous quotas, they died at a terrible rate; outside,
the highly toxic
mercury
used in processing the silver posed an equal threat to workers in
the large foundries. One sixteenth-century writer described the mines as a ravening beast that
swallowed men alive. Estimates of the total number who died over three centuries of colonial
mining in Potosí run as high as nine million, making the mines a central factor in the demo-
graphic collapse that swept the Andes under Spanish rule.
The end of the boom
From about 1650, silver production - and Potosí - entered a century-long decline, though the
city remained rich enough to be hotly disputed during the
Independence War
. However, by
the time independence was won in 1825, Potosí's population was just nine thousand. From
the end of the nineteenth century the city came to increasingly rely on
tin mining
- another
metal found in abundance in Cerro Rico, but previously ignored. However, when the price
of tin collapsed in 1985, the state-owned mines closed down or were privatized. Though co-
operative miners continue to scrape a living by working Cerro Rico's tired old veins for tin
and other metals, Potosí never recovered from the decline of silver production, much less the
tin crash.
Plaza 10 de Noviembre
The centre of the city is the
Plaza 10 de Noviembre
, a pleasant square shaded by trees,
with a fountain and a mini Statue of Liberty, erected in 1926 to commemorate Bolivian in-
