There is practically no one left in the world who, after the incident of the 33 miners that were trapped under the ground in Chilido not know about the sacrifice and the danger to which workers are subjected miners nowadays.
Let’s imagine, for a moment, all that sacrifice and danger more than four centuries ago, when the modest current health and protection measures did not exist. When free labor and the rights of workers They didn’t even figure in fiction. When there was still doubt about epistemologically considering the aboriginal as human beings or as beasts of another species.
In that world, unknown to the Incas, there was a pile of silver call Potosi. In Quechua he had a name very different from the European one, Sumaq Urqu they called it, and it meant “beautiful hill”. The only thing the Europeans saw was the opportunity to obtain wealth, and they nicknamed it Cerro Rico.
Potosi It was a real mountain silverwhich was discovered by chance at more than 4,000 meters high. Despite the tremendous height, the lack of oxygen, the low temperatures, and the absence of crops, the Europeans developed an authentic city which, in 1580, would be, with its 120,000 native, Creole, and European inhabitants, the largest in America, and even in the empire held by Spain.
At first, the silver mines experienced low productivity due to the low technical level of exploitation, but when a German miner disclosed the procedure of the amalgamprofits skyrocketed.
Instead of treating the ore silver with charcoal to reduce it (which produced an enormous cost of fuel with a medium yield) was now combined with mercuryfrom which Spain was supplied in its Almadén mines, and in America, from 1570, with the deposit discovered in Peru, in Huancavélica, whose intensive exploitation was on a par with that of Potosi.
From then on, the production of silver increased in enormous proportions. Whereas until 1530 America had exported almost exclusively gold to Europe, in the following 30 years the proportion changed completely, and the silver represented 99% of the precious metals shipped.
To transport that industrial quantity of silvercreated a transportation system which turned out to be very convenient for investors. Precious metals from other areas were extracted by private companies, then melted down in the workshops of the Crown (which kept a percentage), transported to ports and shipped to Europe.
But to transport the silver of Potosi, more effort was needed. The itinerary was complicated: the ore, taken to the port of El Callao, was transported from there by the Pacific Ocean fleet to Panama. The crossing of the isthmus was carried out by means of caravans of mules avoiding the coasts to avoid assaults. The cargo was then shipped to the Atlantic Ocean where it was transferred in protected convoys to the port of Seville and to the Casa de la Moneda.
But the real “problem” (disaster, for the local population) was the workforce of the mines. The King of Spain imposed the compulsory work to the indigenous people of Peruarguing that he was the successor of the emperor inca. The inhabitants of Peru they were workers, but from their own land. Now, the King of Spain forced them to go to work at mines to extract the silver of Potosi that Spain needed.
This work was exhausting and unhealthy, and meant for the men forced to go to the mine to a fixed-term death sentence. Apparently, the work of the search for gold nuggets was less hard, but it also brought destruction to the indigenous community, since it caused a progressive depopulation of the Antilles (since it was a simple job and not as deadly as that of the mineswas employed in this work at womenwhich caused a brutal decline in the birth rate of the native population).
Soon the well-known phenomenon of the indigenous depopulation: the repression of the resistance and revolts, the mistreatment of which they were victims, the minesthe new diseases brought by the Europeans, the destructuring of the population dynamics, decimated the local population: they destroyed it.
Sources: Assadourian, Carlos Sempat, “Potosí and the economic growth of Córdoba in the 16th and 17th centuries” / Venard, M.: The Beginnings of the Modern World, 16th and 17th centuries, El Mundo y su Historia, Argos. / Juan Carlos Garavaglia, Juan Marchena Fernández: Latin America from its origins to Independence, 2005.