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c oncl usio n 177 Conclusion t The silver mines of Latin America, and specifically those of Potosí, were a vital component in the rise of modern global capitalism. The tens of thousands of tons of silver that traveled the globe, and were exchanged in countless markets and salons, reflected the hopes of traders while eclipsing the despair of those who had produced the metal. This flow of silver transformed the world, prying open new trade routes and enabling people to experience the tantalizing flavors of exotic spices and teas, the smooth sensation of silk, and the translucent delicacy of porcelain. As Potosí and other mining centers began to produce literally fabulous amounts of silver, the peso of eight quickly became a ubiquitous currency by sheer force of numbers if not by consistent purity and quality. Although exchanged in Europe, Russia, the Levant, the Middle East, Africa, India, and Indonesia, China served as the ultimate magnet and final destination of much of New World silver. While tons arrived there via Europe, silver often took the direct route from New Spain and Peru, impelled across the Pacific by the wind and the force of desire, where it was eagerly traded for China’s mythical merchandise. Just as the mineshaft hollows out that which is inside, so too did the mercury and silver mining economies eviscerate communities and leave tens of thousands of people to die slow, painful, and anguished deaths. The use of mercury to refine silver also created one of the largest and longest-lasting ecological disasters ever known, and one that continues to this day in Huancavelica and Potosí. In the first thirty years of Potosí’s history, from 1545to around 1575, silver was produced there through smelting, relying almost exclusively on 178 mercur y, mining, and emp ir e quasi-independent Indian miners and refiners. In the context of their world having been turned on its head through a conquest which was preceded and followed by civil wars, and a population implosion that was nothing short of apocalyptic, being an Indian miner or refiner in Potosí during this period had its advantages. Until the 1560s, not only were there economic opportunities in extraction, smelting, and a myriad of related activities in this ultimate of boomtowns, but the climate offered some, albeit limited , protection from the diseases which were killing people by the tens of thousands.1 By the mid 1560s, when the ultra-rich surface deposits had largely been exhausted, the landscape of Potosí had been transformed. No longer was the Cerro Rico and town site blanketed with evergreen kenua trees and spiny ichu. In a first round of environmental destruction, it had all been consumed, mostly for fuel for smelting but also for construction. In the place of nature’s virginity stood a haphazard, hastily constructed, rowdy, smoky, and filthy mining camp, with a now barren, ruddy, and perforated Cerro Rico overlooking it. Similarly, in the region of Huancavelica, the kenua trees were the first to go beginning in the mid 1560s. Having deflowered the region of kenua, the use of ichu for fuel beginning in the 1570s led also to its disappearance from the vicinity of Huancavelica by the mid 1580s. These events, however, only foreshadowed the forced labor, mass poisoning, mass migration, and mass market which were about to unfold.2 Although Potosí quickly achieved legendary status, it was quicksilver that enabled sustained silver production there, and elsewhere, as well as the continuing expansion and integration of the international economy. The global flow of silver depended almost entirely upon mercury, the silver that flows. In use at least since Roman times, mostly for gold refining, the mercury-amalgamation process remained as much of an art as science throughout the colonial period in Latin America. First introduced and rapidly adopted in New Spain, it took much longer for refiners in Peru to embrace the practice, notwithstanding the discovery of one of the world’s largest mercury deposits just outside of Huancavelica. Despite efforts by Enrique Garcés to encourage the use of the system in Potosí, the prostrate nature of its mining industry by 1570, and the promise of the method, it was only as a result of the forceful promotion and the enabling mechanisms imposed by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo in the early 1570s that mercury amalgamation was ultimately adopted there and elsewhere in Peru.3 De Toledo’s reforms not only revitalized silver production in the region but also had a catastrophic impact on...

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