Colonial silver exploitation
Founded in 1545 as a mining town, it soon produced fabulous wealth, becoming one of the largest cities in the Americas and the world, with a population exceeding 200,000 people.
In Spanish there is still a saying, valer un potos�, "to be worth a potos�" (that is, "a fortune"). For Europeans, Peru�Bolivia was part of theViceroyalty of Peru and was known as Alto Per� before becoming independent�was a mythical land of riches. Potos� appears as an idiom for "extraordinary richness" in Miguel de Cervantes' famous novel, Don Quixote (second part, cap. LXXI). One theory holds that the mint mark of Potos� (the letters "PTSI" superimposed on one another) is the origin of the dollar sign. The mines of Potosi are also mentioned in Part Two of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Bridge of San Luis Rey."
It is from Potos� that most of the silver shipped through the Spanish Main came. According to official records, 45,000 short tons (41,000 metric tons) of pure silver were mined from Cerro Rico from 1556 to 1783. Of this total, 9,000 short tons (8,200 metric tons) went to theSpanish monarchy. Due to such extensive mining, the mountain itself has diminished in height; before the mining started it was a few hundred metres higher than it is today.
Indian laborers, forced by Francisco de Toledo, Count of Oropesa through the traditional Incan mita institution of contributed labor, came to die by the millions, not simply from exposure and brutal labor, but by mercury poisoning. In the patio process the silver-ore, having been crushed to powder by hydraulic machinery, was cold-mixed with mercury and trodden to an amalgamation by the native workers with their bare feet. The mercury was then driven off by heating, producing deadly vapors.
According to Noble David Cook, "A key factor in understanding the impact of the Potosi mita on the Indians is that mita labor was only one form of work at the mines
