IRSH (), pp. – doi:./S
© Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis
Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí: Rethinking
the History of “Informality” and “Precarity”
(Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries)
ROSSANA BARRAGÁN ROMANO
∗
International Institute of Social History
Cruquiusweg , AT, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
E-mail: rba@iisg.nl
ABSTRACT: Underground mining in Potosí was a male sphere. Nevertheless, women
were actively involved in the early stages of silver mining in Potosí, when traditional
technologies were still in use. They also played an important role in the local ore
market. After the introduction of new technology and the reorganization of the
labour force, the process of refining ore was much more complicated. Women then
participated in some stages of the process: in selecting the ores and sieving. This
implies that mining is a complex process with a labour and gender division that has
been underrated and underestimated. More importantly, women became owners of
rudimentary mills (trapiches) where the ore was processed, selling different amounts
of silver to the Spanish authorities, making their living in this way.
INTRODUCTION
Ten years ago, Laurie Mercier and Jaclyn Gier wrote, in a pioneering book,
that there were no studies at that time that “discuss the multidimensional
aspects of women’s work as miners and as miner’s wives and the impact of gender differentiation in mining in a global/historical context”. At present, we
certainly have more studies, particularly on women’s presence in mining in
recent decades, although historical studies remain scarce, due, in part, to
under-recording and also to the scarcity of sources available in the archives
as a result of the underestimation of women’s work and employment.
Potosí (Figure ), which produced sixty per cent of the silver of Latin
America in the second half of the sixteenth century and became one of the
I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers and to the Editorial Committee for their valuable
comments.
. Laurie Mercier and Jaclyn Gier (eds), Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global
Industry, – (New York, ), pp. and .
∗
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Rossana Barragán Romano
Figure . The location of Potosí on an eighteenth-century map.
most populous cities at that time, has also been identified with male labour.
Its production in its “silver age” was related, in large part, to the mita, the
labour system of pre-Hispanic origin, established by Viceroy Francisco de
Toledo in the s, consisting of an annual draft labour system of ,
to , Indian workers between eighteen and fifty years of age, recruited
across sixteen provinces. Potosí’s historiography focused mainly on this
. Arturo Giráldez, “Born with a Silver-Spoon: China, American Silver and Global Markets during the Early Modern Period”, (Ph.D., Universiteit van Amsterdam, ), p. ; Dennis Flynn
and Arturo Giraldez, “Born with a ‘Silver Spoon’: The Origin of World Trade in ”,
Journal of World History, : (), pp. –, p. . It is frequently quoted that the city
reached , inhabitants at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Although this number
is not very reliable, it had , in and , in . Tandeter, quoted by Jane
E. Mangan, Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí
(Durham, NC, ), p. . The population of London in the mid-s was approximately
, and Paris had around , inhabitants by .
. The mita system, of Inca origin, existed in Potosí after the discovery of silver although not on
the vast scale acquired since its establishment in late . Paula Zagalsky gives a detailed account
of the number of mitayos. Paula Zagarsky, “La mita de Potosí: una imposición colonial invariable
en un contexto de múltiples trasformaciones (siglos XVI–XVII. Charcas, Virreinato del Perú),
Chungará. Revista de Antropología Chilena, : (), pp. –. The classic studies on
Potosí and Indian labour remain Alberto Crespo Rodas, “La ‘mita’ de Potosí”, Revista
Histórica, (–), pp. –; Peter Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
male labour of the mita. However, these men travelled with their wives and
family, making a total of around , people who migrated temporarily to
Potosí each year. We therefore still have just part of the history, because we
have scarce information about those family members who accompanied the
workers. Few scholars have written about the women involved in this temporary migration to the mines and on their role in the city. Brooke Larson was a
pioneer in analysing the tasks performed by indigenous women in the formation of this early colonial mercantile economy. Later, Bianca Premo dedicated
a thoughtful piece to the “gendering of mita” and to women who stayed in
their provinces facing the mita effects on their rural lives. In and ,
two important books on women in Potosí were published. Jane Mangan’s
research reconstructed the vital presence of indigenous women devoted to
the petty trade of chicha or corn beer, bread, and other goods and their
small-scale credit network until , while Paulina Numhauser studied the
business of coca leaves among the “mujeres indias” in Potosí in the sixteenth
century and its relations to their production in Cuzco. Both authors remind
us about the female face of Potosí and, clearly, there was a shift from male
workers of the mines to female vendors in the urban markets of the mines.
In recent years, my research on the silver mines, based on the archive of
Potosí, the National Archive of Bolivia, the Archive of Buenos Aires, and
the Archivo de Indias in Seville, revealed two important aspects not previously
taken into account. First, that instead of considering the existence of two
completely different groups, with mitayo workers identified as unfree workers
and minga workers as free workers, we should think about two closely
Labor in Potosí, – (Albuquerque NM, ); Jeffrey Cole, The Potosí Mita, –:
Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes (Stanford, CA, ) for the early periods; and Rose Marie
Buechler, Gobierno, Minería y Sociedad. Potosí y el “Renacimiento” Borbónico, – (La
Paz, ); Enrique Tandeter, “Forced and Free Labour in Late Colonial Potosí”, Past and
Present, (), pp. –; and idem, Coacción y Mercado. La minería de la plata en el
Potosí colonial, – (Buenos Aires, ). The list of articles about the mita and Potosí
is, however, much longer.
. Brooke Larson, “Producción Doméstica y trabajo femenino indígena en la formación de una
economía mercantil colonial”, Historia Boliviana, III/ (), pp. –; Bianca Premo,
“On Currents and Comparisons: Gender and the Atlantic Turn in Spanish America”, History
Compass, (), pp. –; Jane E. Mangan, Trading Roles. Gender, Ethnicity and the
Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí; Paulina Numhauser, Mujeres indias y señores de la coca:
Potosí y Cuzco en el siglo XVII (Madrid, ).
. Rossana Barragán, “Potosí’s Silver and the Global World of Trade (Sixteenth to Eighteenth
Centuries)”, in Karl H. Roth (ed.), On the Road to Global Labour History: A Festschrift for
Marcel van der Linden (Leiden [etc.], ), pp. –; idem, “Dynamics of Continuity and
Change: Shifts in Labour Relations in the Potosí Mines (–), International Review of
Social History, : Special Issue (), pp. –; idem, “Working Silver for the World:
Mining Labor and Popular Economy in Colonial Potosí”, Hispanic American Historical
Review, : (), pp. –.
. Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, used the terms “forced workers” and “draft system” for
mitayos. The opposition between forced and free labour is most pronounced in Enrique Tandeter,
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Rossana Barragán Romano
intertwined labour positions. In order to understand this statement, it is
important to recall that the mita system, characterized as a form of draft
labour, corvée labour, or unfree labour, consisted of shifts to work one
week out of three throughout one year. Some of the mitayos or “unfree workers” could then be engaged as “free workers” in the mines in their “rest”
(huelga) weeks. This is why the ensemble could also be understood as a system
that combined low-wage corvée or mita with better paid free work. Second, it
is no longer possible to associate the production of silver only with the output
of the recognized Mine and Refinery Guild (Gremio de Azogueros), which
received its yearly quota of mitayo workers from the authorities of the
Spanish Crown. Silver sales by thousands of people known as k’ajchas and trapicheros in the second half of the eighteenth century change our perspective on
silver production and marketing in Potosí. K’ajchas and trapiches constituted a
parallel sphere of ore extraction and its conversion into silver and, therefore,
they could be identified as an informal sector. The k’ajchas were people
who worked underground during the weekends and could be involved in
the trapiches or rudimentary mills. Both sold their silver to the Bank managed
by the Spanish Crown. This meant that they were paying their tax and, in this
sense, their silver was not illegal or outside the law or the norms. This circuit of
production and sales corresponds, then, to a wide arena of artisanal and
small-scale production, little known in the whole of Spanish America for
the colonial period. More important and unnoticed in historiography, however, is the fact that amidst the group of small vendors of silver to the Bank
throughout the second half of eighteenth century there were at least ten per
cent of women, Indian, and mestizo people (a person of combined descent,
generally of Spanish and Indian origin).
These aspects, grounded on old and new sources, enable a shift in the focus
from women’s other activities (analysed by Mangan and Numhauser) to
women’s mining activities. In this sense, it is important to go beyond the
view that mining consisted only of underground hard labour, as Dana
Velasco Murillo wrote, criticizing the relegation of women to the background,
considering them as peripheral figures. Calling for a broad understanding of
labour, she pointed out their importance in the multiple endeavours
“Forced and Free Labour in Late Colonial Potosí”. In general, there is an agreement on the forced
and compulsory character of the mita. However, some scholars, like Paulina Numhauser, consider
that Europeans and Indians worked together in the mines “voluntarily”, both making a profit
from their activities. See Mujeres indígenas y señores de la coca, particularly pp. and .
. The name comes from azogue or mercury/quicksilver used in the amalgamation process.
. On historiography about k’ajchas and cooperatives in chronological order: Arzans, Mendoza,
Hanke, Tandeter, Abercrombie, Rodríguez, see Rossana Barragán, “K’ajchas, Trapiches y plata en
el cerro de Potosí”, Anuario del Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia , pp. –.
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
performed above ground. Allison M. Bigelow, on the other hand, underlined
how the analysis of macro-level structures hides and renders invisible how
women made a living in the mines and how the language of mining “obscured
women’s technical knowledge and labour”.
In this article, I will therefore focus on women directly involved in the activities of silver production, refining, and trade. Why is this so important? I claim
that it is not just a matter of saying that women were also present in the work of
the mines. To carefully scrutinize women’s involvement in mining activities
leads us to reconsider two important topics. First, to historicize what is
now called “informal” labour and Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM)
associated with precarity and in which women are so important today,
as we have seen in the introduction to this Special Theme. Second, to
re-read the history of mining in Potosí with particular attention in order to
obtain a broad and more complete perspective of changes over time and of
the position of women in the different settings and periods, illuminating
the complex world of work in these mines. Both aspects allow us to realize
how male-gendered the sources and the studies based on them are, which
rendered these women (and men) invisible, opening up questions for further
research.
Although informal work and precarious work are related, they do not refer
to the same phenomena. Precarious work is identified with instability at work,
in comparison with a full-time “standard employment model” during the capitalism of the twentieth century, and with activities without a regular income.
More importantly, from feminist perspectives, precarity has been linked to
women’s work. However, the definition of precarity as insecure
. See Dana Velasco Murillo, “Laboring Above Ground: Indigenous Women in New Spain’s
Silver Mining District, Zacatecas, Mexico, –”, Hispanic American Historical Review,
: (), pp. –, .
. Allison Margaret Bigelow, “Women, Men, and the Legal Languages of Mining in the Colonial
Andes”, Ethnohistory : (), pp. –. She published, at the end of her article, a list of one
hundred cases of women involved in mining between and .
. The present study does not take into account the important role of the wives of workers as
providers of food for their husbands and as caretakers for their family. In other words, the significant world of the reproduction of labour power.
. Some common characteristics of ASM include activities that range from informal to formal
and may or may not be well-organized; linked to rural poverty with a lack of alternatives that
would provide better opportunities for income generation, sometimes seasonal, labour intensive,
and with low levels of technology.
. See Eloisa Betti, “Precarious Work: Norm or Exception of Capitalism? Historicizing a
Contemporary Debate: A Global Gendered Perspective”, in E. Betti, K. Miller (eds) The Power
of the Norm. Fragile Rules and Significant Exceptions. IWM Junior Visiting Fellows’
Conferences, Vol. (Vienna, ) and “Historicizing Precarious Work: Forty Years of
Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities”, International Review of Social History,
(), pp. –. For the history of precarious work, see the important article by Christian
de Vito, “Labor Flexibility and Labor Precariousness as Conceptual Tools for the Historical
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Rossana Barragán Romano
employment or income corresponds to the process of labour in Europe in the
twentieth century. Precariousness or precarity, like dangerous, hazardous, or
risky work, was inherent to labour conditions and could be just a matter of
“degrees”. Informal labour, on the other hand, refers to distinct activities
not related to the formal sector; to a subordinated economy that reduces
input and labour costs and, in this sense, is linked to the formal sector; or to
entrepreneurs trying to avoid costs, regulations, and taxation. My point of
departure regarding informal and precarious work, based on my experience
of living in a country like Bolivia, but also based on Breman, Van der
Linden, and Munck, is that informality “has been always the dominant
mode of employment in the developing world”, and that the “type of work
described by the term precarity” has been the norm in the Global South,
involving power relations and a gender division of labour, as Federicci underlined. Women in the cities were, and still are today, in informal employment
(also known as cuenta propia = self-employed or for their own labour) and in
precarious jobs.
Grounded on these statements, this article argues that formal and informal
employment, as precarity, developed simultaneously because they exist in relation to one another. In the first part of this paper, I will reconstruct how indigenous women played a crucial role in the early period of Potosí, between
and . Indian people were under different kinds of sharecropping
arrangements, silver was obtained through pre-Hispanic technologies, and,
in the metal market, women were predominant. It was a time when everyone
made more profit from all these activities. The introduction of a new refining
method to obtain silver after implied the organization of a system of
large-scale work and the emergence of unfree and free wage workers inside
the mines and in the refining mills (ingenios) that used abundant water and
mercury (amalgamation). Although the underground work was a male sphere,
silver mining labour was not limited to this task. In the second part, I underline
the complex process of work and a division of labour that has frequently been
underrated. When this is taken into account, as part of specialized work
Study of the Interaction among Labor Relations”, in Karl Heinz Roth (ed.), On the Road to
Global History. A Festschrift for Marcel van der Linden (Leiden, ).
. See Martha Alter Chen, “The Informal Economy: Definitions, Theories and Policies”, WIEGO
Work Paper No. , , available at: http://wiego.org/sites/wiego.org/files/publications/files/
Chen_WIEGO_WP.pdf; last accessed June . The author gives a good overview of the
four schools (Dualist, Structuralist, Legalist, and Voluntarist) about informal employment and informal economy.
. Jan Breman and Marcel Van der Linden, “Informalizing the Economy: The Return of the Social
Question at a Global Level”, in Development and Changes : (), pp. –, ; Ronaldo
Munck, “The Precariat: AView from the South”, Third World Quarterly, : (), pp. –,
; Silvia Federicci, “Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint” (), available at: https://
inthemiddleofthewhirlwind.wordpress.com/precarious-labor-a-feminist-viewpoint/; last accessed
June .
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
that has been minimized, women become visible. Finally, in the third part, I
analyse how women participated in the important activities of refining ore
in rudimentary mills or trapiches in the eighteenth century, selling the silver
to the Bank.
T H E M I N E S I N T H E E A R LY P E R I O D O F P O T O S Ì A N D
W O M E N I N T H E S M E LT I N G P R O C E S S ( G U A Y R A ) A N D I N
T H E M E TA L M A R K E T ( G A T O )
As in most European territories, in those conquered and established as Spanish
America the crown claimed special rights in the mines and in the production of
metals, known as jus regale, meaning that part of the production should be
handed over to the Royal Treasury, and that the King was the legal owner of
the treasures below the ground, having the right to award concessions.
However, the practices and the laws issued in Spanish America were diverse,
particularly throughout the sixteenth century. There is scarce knowledge
about Potosí after its “discovery” in and before the great changes introduced from onwards. In , the rules established the royal right that
allowed the King to grant permissions over the mines to his vassals and subjects, whatever their situation: Spaniards, Indians, and foreigners could exploit
them in exchange for a tax on production. A published and very important
source written by an important mine-owner, Luis Capoche (Relación general
. Christoph Bartels, “The Administration of Mining in Late Medieval and Early Modern
Europe”, in Nanny Kim and Keiko Nagase-Reimer (eds), Mining, Monies and Culture in Early
Modern Societies, (Leiden, ), p. . See also Numhauser, Mujeres indígenas, pp. –.
. Castilian norms were applied in several places, although the laws also had a local character.
Miguel Molina Martínez, “Legislación minera colonial en tiempos de Felipe II”, in Francisco
Morales Padrón (ed.), XIII Coloquio de Historia Canario-Americana, VIII Congreso
Internacional de Historia de América (AEA) , pp. –; Demetrio Ramos,
“Ordenación de la minería en Hispanoamérica durante la época provincial (siglos XVI, XVII y
XVIII)”, in La minería hispana e iberoamericana: contribución a su investigación histórica: estudios, fuentes, bibliografía (León, ), p. .
. Tristan Platt and Pablo Quisbert, “Tras las huellas del silencio: Potosí, los Incas y Toledo”,
Runa : (), pp. –.
. “ […] todas las personas de qualquier estado, condición, preeminencia, o dignidad, españoles e
indios, nuestros vasallos, puedan sacar oro, plata, azogue y otros metales por sus personas, criados
o esclavos en todas las minas […] que hallaren”. Ley j. Tit. XIX, Recopilación de leyes de los reinos
de las Indias, vol. (Madrid, ), p. . It was also explained that the Indians could hold and
exploit gold and silver mines in the same way as the Spaniards. Ley XIIIJ, , , , in
Recopilación, vol. , p. . “De los Descubridores, registros y estacas, Ordenanza ” de las
Ordenanzas de Minas, Francisco de Toledo, Relaciones de los Virreyes y Audiencias que han gobernado el Perú. T. I. Memorial y Ordenanzas de Francisco de Toledo, (Lima, ). The Rules of La
Gasca in in Potosí sanctioned by the Audiencia of Lima; the Rules of Polo de Ondegardo in
, and those of Toledo in , ratified the royal ownership of the soil, introducing a series of
regulations. Molina Martinez, “Legislación minera colonial”, pp. –.
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Rossana Barragán Romano
de la villa imperial de Potosí, ), listed more than ninety-three seams (vetas)
in the mountain of Potosí and in each one there was a variable number of mines
and people, from seventy-eight in the seam called Veta Rica, for example, to
just one person in some other seams. This recalls the system of holding shares
in the mines in late medieval and early modern Europe. Therefore, a high
number of people were recorded, over , among them twenty-three
Indians, including some Incas and other people from Cuzco and the surrounding areas, although they do not appear as owners in the following
decades.
In this early period, Indian people had more access to the underground, and
not just as “workers”. Even Viceroy Toledo, who organized the mita system,
granted a concession to operate a mine of sixty varas, almost fifty metres, “held
in common” for the caciques and for the communities destined to pay the taxes
and the expenses in mita labouring. The caciques or noble Indian leaders were
granted an additional eighty varas. This same provision applied to the ordinary Indians although, at the same time, it established that “more Indians cannot be granted concessions” without there being enough for the Spaniards.
Important fragments of published and unpublished sources reveal different
kinds of labour arrangements, “workers”, and payments. Some Indian people
had to produce an amount of silver for their masters (amos), and beyond that
amount they could keep ore for themselves. They could be yanaconas or people without any link to an Indian community but attached, personally, to certain individuals, Spaniards, or Indian caciques. There were also encomienda
Indians going to work in order to pay their taxes to the Spanish encomenderos.
Moreover, several agreements (conciertos) existed between the mine owners
and indigenous peoples, which I characterize as sharecropping. There was,
too, a leasing of some mines to the Indians who worked the seams with
other workers at their own cost. In all of these cases, Indian workers
. Bartels, “The Administration of Mining in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe”, p. ;
Luis Capoche Relación general de la villa imperial de Potosí (Madrid, –), pp. –.
. Vara = linear measurement of . metres; see Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, p. .
Título I, Ordenanza V, Ordenanzas para las minas de plata de Potosí y Porco, , in Francisco de
Toledo, Disposiciones gubernativas para el Virreinato del Perú, – (Sevilla, ), p. .
Bakewell noted that the Cabildo of Potosí complained in this period that Indians were taking mine
bags full of the best smelting ore, Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, p. .
. About yanaconas, see Laura Escobari de Querejazu, Caciques, yanaconas y extravagantes.
Sociedad y educación colonial en Charcas, s. XVI–XVIII (La Paz, ); Josep Barnadas,
Charcas, Orígenes históricos de una sociedad colonial (La Paz, ), p. ; Juan de Matienzo,
Gobierno del Perú (Buenos Aires, [] ), pp. –.
. See Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, pp. –, and Josep Barnadas, “Una polémica
colonial: Potosí, –”, Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, Anuario de Historia de
America Latina, : (), pp. –, particularly the transcriptions of testimonies at the end
of the article that illuminate the variety of labour arrangements.
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
obtained ore as their payment and they also refined it by themselves or
through others.
A letter to the King in explained that, although the mines were not
owned by Indians, these mines were, in fact, theirs because they used to buy
their ore from their owners and smelt it, making big profits.
Silver was obtained through smelting in indigenous wind-blown furnaces
made from stones and clay (traditional pre-Hispanic technology called
guayras). These furnaces used the wind of the mountains and the fuel was
an evergreen moss that grew at high altitudes ( yareta or azarella compacta
known as “the firewood of this earth”), llama dung, and a small shrub or special tree (kehuiña, polilepsis incana).
If men were working underground, it is possible to imagine that more
women were involved in the smelting process in the mountains in the more
than , wind-blown furnaces or guayras. Women’s involvement could
be even more relevant when men became involved as mitayo workers under
wage relationships after . Women also appeared amongst the main sellers
of ore. In Potosí, as in a number of cities of Spanish America, the plazas were
the main market centres. One of the most important in Potosí was the core
indigenous Plaza del Metal or Gato (in Aymara language khatu and in
Quechua language, khjato), where around to people traded ore and
silver, particularly from Thursday to Saturday.
This special trade market (Gato) was nurtured by multiple channels. First,
from the production of the concessions granted to the communities and to
their leaders or caciques, as mentioned above, responsible for the organization
and delivery of mitayos from their provinces in Potosí. Second, from the ore
. “aunque estas minas no heran suyas, lo heran en su aprovechamiento […] porque estos compraban los metales de los españoles en mucho menos precio de su valor”, Carta de Bravo al Rey, in
footnotes and of Barnadas, Charcas, pp. –.
. C. Cohen, T Rehren, and M. Van Buren, “La huayrachina por dentro y por fuera: un estudio
arqueo-metalúrgico de la tecnología de fundición de plomo en Porco-Potosí”, in P. Cruz and
J. Vacher (eds), Mina y Metalurgia en los Andes del Sur, desde la época prehispánica hasta el
siglo XVII (Sucre, ), pp. –; Pablo Cruz and Pascale Absi, “Cerros ardientes y huayras
calladas. Potosí antes y durante el contacto”, in Ibid, pp. –; Florian Téreygeol and Pablo
Cruz “Metal del viento. Aproximación experimental para la comprensión del funcionamiento
de las wayras andinas”, Estudios Atacameños, (), pp. –.
. García Llanos, Diccionario y maneras de hablar que se usan en las minas y sus labores en los
ingenios y beneficios de los metales (Lima, [] ), p. ; Thilo Rehren, “The Production
of Silver in South America”, Archaeology International – (–), pp. –, p. ;
Modesto Bargalló, La minería y la metalurgia en la América Española durante la época colonial
(Fondo de Cultura Económica) (México, ), p. . Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, specifies the use of kewiña, p. . An anonymous writing of says that human faeces were also used
after a drying process: “Descripción de la Villa y minas de Potosí”, , in Jimenez de la Espada
(ed.), Relaciones Geográficas de Indias, (Madrid, ), p. .
. Capoche, Relación General, pp. –.
. Ibid., p. .
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Rossana Barragán Romano
paid as part of the sharecropping arrangements and wages. Third, from the
petty trade and rescate (rescue and gathering) carried out by some individuals
who used to buy ore from people who were in the bowels of the mountain.
Fourth, from the workers, mitayos, or coerced workers, and mingas or free
workers, who gathered every Monday to climb up to the mountain where
they stayed until Saturday afternoon. Some of their wives or other women
made the food for them once a week. Workers used to buy provisions with
ore, particularly bread, candles, and wine, or comidas (food dishes; the term
is a generic one but it is also used for ready meals) from women who carried
these goods up there every week. It seems, too, that some women ran small
shops very close to the mountain, where they sold coca leaves and bread in
exchange for ore. There were also people paid by specialist traders to convince
Indians to sell the ore that they were extracting, giving them coca, food, and
other products. Finally, there were many Indian palladores who used to search
for ore in the tailings, and there was a special group, the Indian Uruquillas, who
were particularly devoted to this task, living in the same mountain.
This metal market, authorized by the same Viceroy Toledo, was called into
question from –, as analysed by Barnadas. Owners of the mines, refiners, and authorities characterized the ore sold by Indians as theft and Larson
refers to them as “silver pirates”. The testimonies presented to the court by
different actors of that time are invaluable in their detail. Several Indians testified that they were paid in ore, as we have noted above. Although it has been
mentioned that, from onwards, cash wages would have prevailed and
mitayos could choose not to work the quarter of a mine as was their right,
it is possible to think that a tradition of taking ore or of being paid in metal
still existed and the rescate or trade in ore never disappeared. In ,
Capoche described this important market as a place where more than to
people were seated on the floor, selling in rows, three days every week,
particularly Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The wide variety of ores were
. I analyse the intimate interrelationship between mita and minga workers in Barragán,
“Working Silver for the World”.
. “llevan comida el miércoles para toda la semana” (p. ); “los venden a otros yndios por pan y
vino, candelas y otras cosas de comida que llevan al cerro” (p. ); “con los minerales se compran y
se venden en el cerro por comidas” (p. ). Documents from –, in Barnadas, “Una
polémica colonial”. See also Jane Mangan, Trading Roles, p. .
. Capoche, Relación General, p. .
. Ibid. pp. –.
. Larson, “Producción Doméstica y trabajo femenino indígena”, p. .
. Testimonies in Barnadas, “Una polémica colonial”, pp. –. See the important Jesuit intervention in the discussion on P. Numhauser, “Contradicciones en la política de evangelización en el
Perú colonial del siglo XVI. Algunas consideraciones”. Cristianesimo nella Storia, : (),
pp. –, –.
. Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, pp. and .
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
sold in particular sections in the market: rich ore called tacana; ore mixed with
quicksilver, common ores, etc.
If most men were working under different situations on the mountain,
women must also have been more involved in feeding the guayras to smelt
and to sell ore in the street market.
T H E S I LV E R I N D U S T R Y A F T E R A N D
THE PRESENCE OF WOMEN
Significant changes were introduced by the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo
between and after a reduction in production due to the scarcity
of high-grade metals. The indigenous techniques leading to the smelting
were replaced, to a large extent, by the amalgamation process (the blending
of pulverized ore with mercury), which became the main technology for refining silver. The process required the provision of mercury, coming from the
mine of Huancavelica (in Peru), water for the refining mills, and an important
contingent of labour power of around , to , male workers, between
eighteen and fifty years of age, going to Potosí for a period of one year under
the leadership of local Indian authorities (caciques or curacas).
The main unit of production was now the ingenio or silver refining plant
where the ore had to be milled to a fine powder and subsequently refined
through amalgamation. The mills were built in Potosí from and, in
, there were ingenios or mills: twenty-two driven by manpower;
twenty-two by animals (horses and mules); and fifteen by water. The mean
production per day per mill was ., ., and . quintales, respectively
( quintal is equal to forty-six kilos or pounds). Although the water mills
were expensive, they produced much more silver, becoming dominant by the
end of the sixteenth century.
The technological change and the measures taken by the Crown had deep
consequences. Peter Bakewell pointed out that “the Spanish took hold of
the silver refining excluding […] the Indian from his central position” that
they previously had. Carlos Sempat Assadourian argued that these changes
led to an almost absolute concentration of the means of production in the
Spanish people with regard to both the extraction and the refining process.
In other words, through the rules and practices of ownership, through technology, and particularly through the recruitment and assignment of labour,
. Capoche, Relación General, p. .
. Friar Ocaña wrote that women smelted the ore that they received.
. Peter Bakewell, “Technological Change in Potosí: The Silver Boom of the ’s”, Jahrbuch
für Geschichte Lateinamerikas – Anuario de Historia de America Latina, : (), pp. –.
. Ibid. p. .
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Rossana Barragán Romano
a small group of Spanish entrepreneurs, the azogueros, would have been privileged. In , the Viceroy Toledo divided the whole mita (, to
, workers) into three parts, with two thirds being in huelga or rest and
one third working. With this system, he assigned , Indians every week
to mine owners and silver refineries. In , Capoche, a mine and
mill owner himself, wrote that every mill with two milling assemblies (or
double-headed mill), received fifty Indian mitayos from the Crown each
week, while every mill with one head received thirty-two Indians, and an animal mill (horse or mule driven) around twenty-two Indians. In , there
were just fifty azogueros or owners of silver refining plants (ingenios) in Potosí
and no more than twenty in the adjacent towns.
The indigenous people who, prior to , could have more earnings and
profits through share cropping arrangements, with more space to manoeuvre,
henceforth became coerced wage workers (mitayos) or wage free workers
(mingas). Sempat Assadourian, referring to the writing of Capoche from the
sixteenth century, considered that the indigenous population suffered from
degradation because they were subordinated to a wage system. Capoche
wrote that “the invention of [the procedure of amalgamation with] quicksilver
deeply saddened [Indians] as it deprived them of their profit, and the only possibility they had to sustain themselves […] having owned all the past wealth”.
At this juncture, it is important to underline three important points. First,
that historiography focused more on the dominant form of ownership and
refining (ingenios of azogueros) from the end of the sixteenth century and
on these units working with mitayos, obviating other forms of production.
Second, that the mitayos used their rest weeks to work as free workers, or mingas, or as independent people who could participate in diverse modalities of
silver production, as mentioned above. In this sense, Van Buren showed, on
the one hand, how the indigenous population could use appropriated
. Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, p. .
. Capoche, Relación General, p. , and the list on p. .
. Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, pp. –. In , there were only twenty-seven mill
owners who received , Indian mitayos every week, Archivo General de la Nación, Buenos
Aires, Padrones Potosí . There is no special book devoted to these mine guilds and azogueros.
Bakewell wrote about one of the richest of them in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Antonio Lopez de Quiroga (Industrial minero del Potosí colonial), (Potosí, ). Tandeter
(Coacción y mercado) and Buechler (Gobierno, Minería y Sociedad) made important contributions
to their study of the eighteenth century. Their complex evolution over time, their debts to the
Spanish Crown and to the silver merchants are important topics not completely analysed by the
historiography.
. In Carlos Sempat Assadourian, “La producción de la Mercancía Dinero en la formación del
Mercado interno colonial”, Revista Economía, I: (), pp. –, , available at: https://econpapers.repec.org/article/pcppucrev/y_a_ai_a_a-.htm, last accessed September
.
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
technology to obtain small amounts of silver with great creativity. On the
other hand, the data I analysed about k’ajchas and trapiches shed light on a
sphere of production and sales in the eighteenth century, although they
may have existed earlier. It is thus possible to imagine that some old and
new techniques may have been mainly in the hands of women, because men
were recruited as unfree and free workers in the mines. Third, that the labour
process became much more complicated with women participating in it.
Let us concentrate here on the labour process. I argued, in another work,
that the production of silver is generally considered to be a simple process
of extraction. The case of Potosí shows, however, that the ore went through
a long procedure before it was transformed into pure silver.
The process can be divided into at least six stages underground (in the
mines) and above ground: ore extraction; its selection; trituration of minerals; amalgamation; washing of the mixed mineral; and distillation. In all these
steps, the work was in the hands of the Indian population, unfree (mita), and
free (minga) workers.
In the first stage, underground, all workers were men and mainly ore cutters
or barreteros, primarily free workers, and those who carried the ore out
(apiris), who were unfree and free workers. The second stage was the selection
of the ore above ground. After this careful phase, the selected ore was prepared
and transported by llamas led by their owners (cumiris) from the mountain to
the refining mills (ingenios). The ingenios were rectangular constructions
(Figure ) that enclosed the large and open spaces used in the different stages
in the process of conversion of ore into silver, the mill, and the necessary storage rooms. Before the amalgamation, the selected minerals had to be crushed.
Then, the fourth stage, or the process of amalgamation, could start.
Water was key to this process and the amount of each element to be blended
was the responsibility of the refiner, a Spaniard or a mestizo. The mixing in
Potosí was frequently undertaken in special boxes. Each box held fifty
quintales of flour (, pounds), five of salt, mercury (six to ten pounds
. Mary van Buren and Claire Cohen, “Technological Change in Silver Production after the
Spanish Conquest in Porco, Bolivia”, Boletín del Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, :
(), pp. –, .
. See Rossana Barragán, “Extractive Economy and Institutions? Technology, Labour and Land
in Potosí, the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century)”, in Karin Hofmeester and Pim de Zwart (eds),
Colonialism, Institutional Change, and Shifts in Global Labour Relations (Amsterdam, ),
pp. –.
. See Velasco Murillo “Laboring above Ground”.
. Garavaglia speaks of five stages. I added one stage. See Juan Carlos Garavaglia, “Plata para el
Rey. Tecnología y Producción en el Potosí colonial”, in Juan Marchena (ed.), Potosí, plata para
Europa (Sevilla, ), p. .
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Rossana Barragán Romano
Figure . The activities within an Ingenio, according to Arzans Orsúa y Vela, Historia de la villa
Imperial de Potosí (eighteenth century).
Waterwheel with one milling assembly (cabeza de ingenio)
Storage rooms for copper, salt, dung, lime, and other materials
Storage rooms for the ore arriving from the mountain
Llamas used for the ore’s transport. Second door of the ingenio
Shelter for the refiner who does the assays for the amalgamation
Small pools or ponds to wash the boxes to obtain the mix of silver and mercury
Wire screen to sieve the ore after it has been crushed
Mortar where the stamps crush the ore
Shelter
Furnaces to prepare the ore called negrillo
Chapel for the celebration of the mass
Place where the Indians mix the ores in boxes
Place where the wet ores are dried (pampear)
Place where the ore boxes are prepared
Buitron or place where the Indians remove and mix the ores with mercury, using their feet
(repasiris)
. Main house of the owner
. Main door
. Warehouses of silver and mercury
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí, edited by Lewis
Hanke and Gunnar Mendoza, vols (Providence, ).
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
per quintal of ore), copper sulphate (magistral), and iron. The dough was
removed and mixed by the workers using their feet (repasiris) over several
(three or more) weeks until the mercury was completely incorporated in the
mix. The boxes were sometimes submitted to heat.
After the amalgamation, the fifth stage could start. This was the washing
process that used a stream of water. The light particles were washed while
the heavy parts of the mix, consisting of the amalgam of mercury and silver,
settled down, constituting the pella. Habitually, several vats and settling
pools were used in series to maximize the recovery of the mercury amalgam.
The pella was then squeezed into bags to obtain a solid dough.
Women were important in at least two of these stages: in the process of selection of minerals ( pallar) and in the task of sieving the crushed ore. Pallar was a
Spanish term originating from the native language Quechua meaning to select.
In a specialized mining dictionary from the seventeenth century, there were at
least three activities under the name of pallar. The first one was the cleaning
and selection of the minerals that were taken from underground and moved
to open spaces or patios called cancha in front of the mine entrances. The
second activity was the search for good minerals in the mineral tailings (desmontes) sold to people that used them in the mills. Finally, the third one
was counting the minerals obtained. There are few sources that specify who
was doing this work. One of them, from , held that the selection of minerals was done by boys, elderly people, and women. Another source said that
there were more than a thousand people involved in this task. A Spanish
Friar gave this description:
[…] Indian women also look for the rocks which are discarded around the mouths
of the mine, which is called “pallar”, that is, to break them up and choose those of
value and separate them from the rest. And these are all sold at mid-day in Potosí.
And before that hour, no Spaniard can buy anything from an Indian, and this is so
that the Indians have a chance to buy these metals, as there are many Indians who
buy them for their furnaces.
Despite this selection process being crucial, it seems to have been underevaluated. The differentiation at that time was based mainly on the colours
. Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, p. .
. Garavaglia, “Plata para el Rey”, p. .
. Modeto Bargalló, La minería y la metalurgia en la América Española durante la época colonial
(México, ), pp. –.
. Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, p. .
. García de Llanos, Diccionario, pp. –.
. “Descripción de la Villa y minas de Potosí” , p. .
. Friar Diego de Ocaña, “The Famous Cerro de Potosí and Customs of Her People” (),
quoted by Stephen Ferry, I Am Rich Potosí: The Mountain That Eats Men (New York, ).
The original testimony comes from Relación del viaje de Fray Diego de Ocaña por el Nuevo
Mundo (–).
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Rossana Barragán Romano
of the metals: reddish ( paco), blackish (negrillo) or grey (anco or tacana).
This was an important task because it determined which minerals had to be
smelted or amalgamated. The famous scientist of the period, Alonso Barba, stipulated that grey minerals or tacanas should follow the amalgamation process,
while others should be smelted (rosicler, cochizo, and soroches).
Another task performed by women and children was sieving minerals in the
refineries. Capoche wrote in that there were women and children doing
this as “free workers” and receiving two reales, i.e. half of the amount received
by males working as free workers (a coerced worker or mitayo received . reales
per day and a free worker four reales per day). Other jobs undertaken by women
were the collection of fuel (llama dung and other fuels) used for the diverse mining
steps and, more importantly, the exploitation of the residues of washed amalgam.
It has already been mentioned that a kind of settling pool was used to recover
them. These residues were dried, crushed, and burned in order to recover the mercury. Immediately afterwards, the ore was mixed with lime and copper to obtain
silver. This business occupied more than , men and women!
Wages in the mines are also important when considering women’s labour.
Bakewell established that the salary of a male mitayo did not cover the
expenses for food and other costs for him and his family: he earned sixty-five
pesos for six months but he needed at least pesos, meaning that he had to
find an additional pesos. Not only were the mitayos obliged to work during their rest weeks, but the women and other members of the family also had
to find other ways of earning a living. It is, however, important to bear in
mind that the mitayos were allowed to work part of the mines for themselves,
meaning that the wages were also in kind, as underlined above. Payment in
kind was, in any case, subject to a struggle, particularly between and
. Barnadas showed that the mine owners complained that workers were
stealing their ore, although more than sixty-seven Indian testimonies asserted
that people known as pongos (Indian mine caretakers) and the mingas or free
workers were paid in ore, in addition to the sales that took place on some days
. García de Llanos, Diccionario, pp. –. About the “language of colours” and science, see
Allison Margaret Bigelow, “Conchos, colores y castas de metales: el lenguaje de la ciencia colonial
en la region andina”, Umbrales , (), pp. –; and “Women, Men and the Legal Languages
of Mining in the Colonial Andes”, Ethnohistory, : (), pp. –. Bigelow also analyses
the importance of the terms pallar and pallatha.
. Alonso Barba, Arte de los Metales (Lima, ), pp. –.
. See Capoche, Relación, p. , and Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, p. .
. “Descripción de la Villa y minas de Potosí” , pp. and –. García Llanos,
Diccionario, pointed out that women were also busy feeding the furnaces with fire to recover silver
remains (p. ).
. Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, pp. –. Larson underlined the importance of the
family economy for the colonial and mercantile economy of Potosí: Larson, “Producción
Doméstica y trabajo femenino indígena”, pp. –.
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
outside the mines. Capoche stated that “on the mountain there were no other
monies than the ores”. The qatu or metal market in Indian hands was justified and explained through these modalities prevailing in the mines.
It is important, then, to bear in mind that other forms of refining continued.
The information about the sales of silver outside the miners’ guild in the eighteenth century leads us to think that parallel circuits could continue to exist
throughout the seventeenth century, although they acquired considerable
importance and visibility in the second half of the eighteenth century.
WOMEN IN THE TRAPICHES (THE K’AJCHAS-TRAPICHES
E N S E M B L E O F S E L F - E M P LOY M E N T )
From the sixteenth century, there were different modalities through which
workers could receive some ore for their own benefit and, as we have seen,
this could also be part of their wages. Throughout these years, the owners of
the mines and mills tried to establish whether the workers could keep some
of the ore that they extracted for themselves, defining what was allowed and
what was forbidden. In general, the Spanish owners accepted that the workers
could take some ore as an additional economic compensation and a form of
attracting a workforce. However, they also tried to control its extraction.
In previous articles, I analysed the emergence, in the mid-eighteenth century, of a group of people called “thieves” by the mine and mill owners.
They were known more generally as k’ajchas, and this term was used to
describe people who extracted ore from the mines, during the weekends, for
their own benefit.
The k’ajchas worked in the trapiches, which were the small-scale
ore-processing mills. A trapiche was described as a place where ore was ground
up using large rocks, as opposed to the massive machinery associated with
the water-driven hammer of the more elaborate ingenio mill or refinery. It
seems that the process in the trapiche resembled the native Indian and Inca
practice of grinding ore, called quimbalate by the Spanish. This involved the
use of a boulder described as having a “half-moon shape in profile” used to
crush the ore placed beneath it (see ‘A’ in Figure ). It is possible that the
name was a generic one, involving a variety of possibilities. In any case, in
. Barnadas, “Polémica”, pp. –. Capoche in , Relación General, mentioned that ores in
Indian hands were not stolen but were part of their salary (p. ). He also explained that the wages
in kind paid to the mingas were called corpa (p. ).
. Capoche, Relación General, p. .
. In the Descripción of (BL, f. –), the trapiche consisted of two large stones: a broad
stone of a metre or two in length, which lay flat upon the surface, on which another stone, called a
fly wheel, moved rapidly enough to grind the ore. For more on technology, see Barragán,
“Ladrones, Pequeños Empresarios o trabajadores independientes”.
. Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, p. .
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Rossana Barragán Romano
Figure . Different kinds of mills, according to De Nigris ().
, there is a drawing that clearly shows a trapiche at that time, with the
ponds to wash the mix and the furnaces to evaporate the mercury (Figure ).
In an official inspection in –, each trapiche was listed with the
name of the worker, the number of stones they had (quimbalate) to grind
the ore, whether or not they were working with permission, and whether
they had been awarded mines. The information shows that the trapiches
. Mario De Nigris Ricardo, “Los molinos mineros andinos” (), available at: https://www.
academia.edu//De_Nigris_M._Los_Molinos_Mineros_Andinos/; last accessed June
.
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
Figure . Trapiche, according to Frézier ().
In: Relation du voyage de la Mer du Sud aux côtes du ChilI et du Perou et du Brésil: fait pendant les
années , & . Ed. Chez Jean-Geoffrey Nyon; Etienne Ganeu; Jacque Quillau.
France: .
B = Trapiche or mill to crush minerals
D = Ponds to wash the amalgam
H = Furnaces to take away the mercury
were experiencing a boom, for more than forty had been established over the
previous two years, while only twenty-two of them were more than fifty years
old.
The trapiches were scattered throughout the city, which, since the end of the
sixteenth century, had a Spanish neighbourhood and parish, around the main
church and plaza, and Indian/Native neighbourhoods in other surrounding
parishes. Indian people who lived in the city, but also the mitayos with their
families who used to come, annually, to work for one year in the mines (mitayo
workers), arrived at houses that were within the limits of these parishes.
There was a clear hierarchy, ordered according to their ayllu or community
of origin. In the parish of San Franciso el Chico, for example, there were people from the ayllu Chayanta (northern Potosí), Yanaoca (Cusco), and others;
in San Pedro, there were the ayllu Colla, Pumachapi, Chacachupi, and
Yunguyo, from Lake Titicaca. In the parish of Copacabana, there were
other ayllus like Carabuco, an important village in the province of
Omasuyos in La Paz, and the ayllu Kachas (Cachas).
One of the most interesting aspects of the inspection is that it shows us
the distribution between Spaniards and Indians and between those different
. Ayllu is the traditional social, economic, and political community in the Andes. Each community had their lands and, within each of them, there were family plots and communal land.
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Rossana Barragán Romano
Table . Distribution of Trapiches in the Parishes of Potosí in –
Trapiches
No.
Women
Trapiches of Spaniards (men and women)
Trapiches of the natives of the Parish of San Christoval (ayllus
Caracoto, Aymaya, Chaqui, Macari, Pocoata and Mujico)
Trapiches of the natives of the Parish of San Francisco el Chico
(ayllus Yanaoca, Quero Marca, Compabata, Chullpa,
Chayanta, Indiganga, Sicoya)
Trapiches of the natives of the Parish of San Pedro (ayllus Colla,
Pumachapi, Chacacupi, Yura, Juliaca, Pichigua, Yunguyo,
Cachas
Trapiches of the natives of the Parish of Copacabana (ayllus
Cachas, Urinsaya, Carabuco, Yanaoca)
Trapiches of the natives of the Parish of Concepción (ayllus
Acauiri, Asillo, Jesús de Machaca, Azángaro, Orurillo,
Collana, Acaniri)
Trapiches of the natives of the Parish of San Juan (ayllus Hilave,
Nungua, Acora)
Trapiches of the natives of the Parish of Sebastián (ayllus
Pumacarcha, Pueblo nuevo)
Trapiches of the natives of the Parish of San Pablo (ayllus Sicoani,
Santiago, Guari, Copacabana, Juli, Villa, Puma, Juliaca)
Trapiches of the natives of the Parish of Santa Barbara (ayllus
Paucarcolla, Taraco)
Trapiches of the natives of the Parish of Santiago (ayllus Guarina,
Tinta, Yanacona, Tuncasuca, Combapata, Langui)
Total
58
33
9
5
18
1
21
5
21
5
19
0
3
0
5
1
17
3
4
2
19
2
21867
33
Source: Archivo General de Indias de Sevilla (hereafter AGI) Charcas 481 No. 19,
1763–1769.
parishes: fifty-eight trapiches (Table ) were in the hands of Spaniards and
trapiches (seventy-three per cent) were in the hands of indigenous people in the
ten parishes of the city. Knowing that very particular groups from different
provinces arrived in a particular parish, it is very feasible that the mitayos
from those communities and provinces were controlling those trapiches, or
that they had some kind of arrangements with the people who owned them.
In , trapicheros were registered, of which thirty-three (fifteen
per cent) were women. Nine trapicheras were Spaniards and the rest were
listed under the Indian Parishes (Figure ), although there were also mestizas
(of mixed blood).
. I have used the same source as Tandeter for –, but I found only trapiches instead
of . See Coacción y Mercado, pp. –. This is because I relied on the detailed account rather
than the total given by the document.
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
Figure . View from the houses of Indian parishes and neighbourhoods, according to a painting
by Gaspar Miguel de Berrío, . This is a fragment from the picture “Descripción del Cerro
Rico e Imperial Villa de Potosí”, Museo Nacional de Charcas, Sucre.
Many names are clearly indigenous – for example, Bartholomé Canchi or
María Sissa. There are others such as Juan Morales or Luisa Guevara,
although Spanish patronyms do not necessarily mean that we are dealing
with a non-indigenous population. In , for example, Blaz de Subieta
made a legal claim on behalf of his wife, Antonia Ybarra, for a trapiche
that she had inherited from her late husband, Don Melchor Gutiérrez. It
gradually becomes clear from the sources that the above couple were not
only indigenous, but also that they were mita Indians from the ayllu
Orurillo, and that Blaz de Subieta was a zambo of mixed African and indigenous ancestry.
. Archivo Histórico de Potosí, Cabildo Intendencia, CGI, .
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Rossana Barragán Romano
The inspection also shows that there were people who owned the trapiches and others who were renting them. In the case of Spanish women, five
out of ten rented out their trapiches to other people. The prices for renting a
trapiche vary considerably. Notarial records show that, in , for example,
one of the most important trapicheros, the Indian Ildefonso Corimanga, rented
out a trapiche with one stone to Teresa de Bonifaz for sixty pesos, while in
, Ambrocio and Cruz Martínez rented out a house-trapiche in San Pedro
Parish to Antonia Montero for forty pesos a year.
Particularly important for this study are the logbooks of daily silver sales to
the Bank of San Carlos. In their pages, we get glimpses into the world of
thousands of men and women whose names and silver deposits were registered
in day-to-day operations. This information is exceptional, as it concerns people who otherwise left few traces in comparison with male wage labourers in
the established mines and mills (mitayos).
The sale of silver marks to the Bank by the trapicheros and azogueros (the
reduced corporation of mine and mill owners, around thirty in the second
half of the eighteenth century) in the period from to , which I
have systematized, shows that women represented from ten per cent to almost
twenty per cent of the total, selling between four per cent and seven per cent of
the silver (Figure ). Unfortunately, it is not possible to discern any trends
because the criteria used for each year were not always the same, i.e. in
. Archivo Histórico de Potosí, Escrituras Notariales , f. .
. Archivo Histórico de Potosí, Escrituras Notariales , f. .
. The Bank of San Carlos under total Royal control was established in , but from there
was already a “Bank” (Banco de Rescates, –) to buy silver under partial royal direction.
The private azogueros were involved and they had a vested interest in this institution because it
provided them with loans and discounts. For the history of the Bank, see Luz María Méndez
“Los bancos de rescate en Hispanoamérica (–). El proceso histórico y sus fundamentos
ideológicos. Estudio comparado para México, Perú y Chile”, D. Ávila, I. Herrera, and R. Ortiz
(eds), Minería colonial Latinoamericana: Primera Reunión de Historiadores de la Minería
Latinoamericana, vol. (Mexico, ); Guillermo Mira “El Real Banco de San Carlos y la
minería altoperuano colonial, –”, in J. Sánchez, G. Mira, and R. Dobado (eds), La
savia del Imperio (Salamanca, ). See its constitution in: AGI Buenos Aires . Real
Cédula de Incorporación del Banco de Potosí a la Real Hacienda y ordenanzas para su régimen
y gobierno (Madrid, ).
. There were daily transactions: from sixteen to twenty every day, ranging from transactions
for some months, to just two transactions on some days. The earlier logbooks of the Bank at the
Potosí Archive mention only the azogueros and trapicheros, while the title of the logbook is
“Libro de compras de pinas de trapicheros y ccachas”, AHP, Banco de San Carlos (hereafter, BSC)
. This diverse documentation indicates a sharp distinction between azogueros and k’ajchas and
trapicheros (who are identified with one another). “Libro donde se sientan los marcos que se traen
al rescate de los trapicheros de esta rivera”, –, AHP, BSC (for trapicheros); “Libro
donde se asientan los marcos de plata que los señores azogueros de esta villa traen a rescatar a
este banco y mercadería que corre a cargo del maestre de campo”, –, AHP, BSC
(for azogueros). Sometimes, the logbooks include trapicheros and azogueros simultaneously, i.e.
in , , and .
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Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
Figure . Numbers of men and women selling their silver to the Bank, –.
Source: same as Table .
and , not all the months were registered and, in , the data include the
silver from outside the city of Potosí (see Table ).
It is important to mention that the trapicheros were a group with significant
internal differences. In , a large proportion of women (around seventy per
cent) carried out just a single transaction. At the other extreme, a few women
were selling thirty-nine per cent in (see Table ).
It is worth mentioning a few particular cases for the same year. Christina
Cupi, identified as an indigenous woman, sold ore from January to March
in fifteen transactions of between eleven and fifty-eight pesos for pesos’
worth in total. That amount is impressive if we consider that the annual tribute
due from Indian males was around nine to ten pesos per year, that the wage of a
mitayo was twelve pesos per month (three pesos a week), and that the wage of a
minga was twenty-eight pesos per month (seven pesos a week). If Christina
had to work all year long as a minga, she could have earned just pesos.
She obtained, then, in three months, more than an annual wage. Another
woman, Thomasa Mercado, engaged in the same number of transactions but
she sold what she had for pesos, half the amount of Christina Cupi.
María Rosel and María Gimenez conducted, in contrast, several transactions
throughout the year, selling for more than , pesos each. Among the
men, Francisco Chamoso and Diego Iporre were the most important sellers.
The former, who appears in other documents described as a Spaniard,
obtained , pesos from fifty-five transactions, while the latter sold
, pesos’ worth of ore in fifty-seven transactions.
This analysis of k’ajchas and trapiches allows us to approach them in a different way. They became self-employed workers who challenged the
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WOMEN
1754
1755
1757
1762
1763
1764
TOTAL
Number of
transactions
%
Number of
women
%
TOTAL
PESOS
%
Number of
transactions
Men and
women
TOTAL
PESOS
62
79
95
252
18
35
9.12
12.42
6.64
15.68
5.59
17.68
26
30
41
108
11
7
9.45
13.39
9.98
19.74
18.64
19.44
10334
14373
12442
18207
5666
16290
4.31
6.00
5.19
7.60
2.36
6.80
680
636
1431
1607
322
198
275
224
411
547
59
36
239,640
262,462
460,931
196,769
133,430
83,903
Sources: Archivo Potosí-Casa Nacional de la Moneda, Banco de San Carlos. For just trapicheros from 1762 to 1764 see BSC 313, Libro donde
se sientan los marcos que se traen al rescate de los trapicheros de esta rivera, 1761–1764; for 1754, 1755, and 1757 both azogueros and
trapicheros are included: BSC 325 Libro de los azogueros desta Rivera, Trapicheros de esta villa y otras personas.
Rossana Barragán Romano
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Table . Number of women, their transactions and total silver sold to the Bank, –.
Women in the Silver Mines of Potosí
Table . Number of women’s transactions from the trapicheras and amount of
ore sold in (in pesos).
1762
Number of transactions
1 transaction
2 to 5
6 to 10
11 to 20
21 to 50
More than 50
Total
Number of people
%
Pesos
%
72
21
4
6
69.90
20.39
3.88
5.83
5,419
5,514
3,127
4,139
29.78
30.30
17.18
22.74
18,199
100.00
103
Source: Archivo Potosí-Casa Nacional de la Moneda, Banco de San Carlos. BSC 313,
Libro donde se sientan los marcos que se traen al rescate de los trapicheros de esta
rivera, 1761–1764.
ownership of the proprietors of the mines in the Potosí mountain. Through
their own labour and initiative, they effectively asserted their right to take a
significant share of the revenue from ore extraction.
CONCLUSIONS
Conditions of precariousness in the sense of bad working conditions and insecurity were the norm in the world of mining and, after , some spheres
were more precarious than others. It is important to remember that, at the
beginning of the exploitation of the mountain of Potosí, different groups
had greater access to the ore and the role of indigenous people in the smelting
process was crucial. Indigenous women were also actively involved as traders
of ore in the local market. Between and , the technological changes
and the reorganization of labour established by the Spanish Crown transformed the previous situation. The main division in the mines was established
between the owners of refineries, who worked with sophisticated mills and
received important contingents of workers through the mita system or unfree
work. The main conditions of production were then facilitated for a group of
private entrepreneurs. Studies on the mines have foregrounded the formal and
privileged sphere of mining and refining, and the male sphere of workers.
Mining appears to have been much more male. However, their families became
involved as what is now called the “unpaid contributing family worker”, a
group whose participation in the mining economy deserves to be highlighted.
In this paper, I underlined the importance of considering that silver was
obtained through a long process that required work underground and above
ground, as Dana Velasco Murillo has suggested for Mexico. The former was
a male sphere, but, in the latter case, women and the young participated, as
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Rossana Barragán Romano
part of a gender and age division of labour that still exists in countries like
Bolivia. Moreover, the demand for silver drove the development of other activities outside the privileged mining enterprises that used to receive workers
from a wide area.
More traditional and rudimentary technology also existed throughout the
colonial period in the hands of self-employed people, some of whom were
women. This “informal” world was much broader and diverse but crucial to
the subsistence and life of families and households. Sources are undoubtedly
scarce outside the privileged sphere of the entrepreneurs. The book of daily
sales of ore to the Bank is a unique document that offers a completely different
picture of mining and women in mining. It is clear that they were already in a
very disadvantaged position in comparison with the owners of the refineries
and, in order to be able to produce by themselves and without any support,
they had to “exploit” their labour in precarious conditions.
This article has been an attempt to make women in mining visible, and
clearly their history, delineated here, is just the tip of the iceberg. Without a
careful reading of documents, women will remain as invisible as the sources
about them, and the gender bias of such sources are sustained.
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