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145 Chapter Five Domesticating Gold José Martín Félix de Arrate’s Llave del Nuevo Mundo (1761) Compónese dicho escudo de tres castillos de plata sobre campo azul, alusivos a las tres fortalezas que guardan la boca del puerto, y una llave de oro que manifiesta serlo de las Indias, como estaba declarado por SS.MM. [This coat of arms is composed of three silver castles on a blue background, referring to the three forts that protect the entry to the port, and a gold key that represents the key to the Indies, as was declared by their Majesties.] José Martín Félix de Arrate, Llave del Nuevo Mundo I. “Oro quanto ouieren menester”: All that glitters In 1803 Alexander von Humboldt made a visit to the Zócalo, the principal plaza of New Spain, where he witnessed for himself the cultural and economic vitality of Mexico’s viceregal capital. Adjacent to the Royal Palace, which housed the Mining Courts and the Consulate of Commerce, the Casa de Moneda (Mint) was being built. The Casa de Moneda was a warehouse for vast amounts of silver , which were mined in Mexico during the eighteenth century and sent out from New Spain to support imperial initiatives in Europe, the Caribbean, and the Philippines. It loomed large as a symbol of New World riches and of the institutionalization of the Bourbon Empire in New Spain. There, in front of the building site, Humboldt gave voice to the wonder that the bricks and mortar reflection of New World wealth inspired in him: “It is impossible to visit this building . . . without remembering that more than two thousand million ‘pesos fuertes’ [hard coins] have left it in less than three hundred years, and without reflecting on the powerful influence that these treasures have had on the fate of the peoples of Europe.”1 Humboldt’s words remind us of the symbolic and material importance that the precious minerals of the Americas held throughout the viceregal period. The date of and setting for his words underscore the complicated network of economic transactions and transmutations in which that richness was involved by the end of the eighteenth century. What was born as 146 Domesticating Empire tesoros (treasure) in the deep veins of the continent ended up converted into pesos fuertes (capital) through state intervention, represented on this occasion by the neoclassical facade of the Casa de Moneda under construction. The possibility of finding new deposits of precious minerals—what Adam Smith would call in 1776 the “sacred thirst of gold”—was one of the principal motives behind the maritime explorations that in the late fifteenth century had culminated in the voyages of Christopher Columbus.2 Medieval alchemy, with its erroneous claim that one could forgo the mining of precious metals and instead create them through chemical transmutation in the laboratory, had incited a lust for gold that remained unfulfilled. In the wake of this alchemical frustration, Spanish conquistadors would set out into the American interior in search of the mythical cities of El Dorado and Cibola, where they hoped to discover gold in great amounts. In early accounts written by Spaniards who had traveled to the New World, few words resonate as frequently or as powerfully as “gold.” In these accounts (which reflect wishful thinking, to be sure) gold is everywhere—lying on the ground, hidden in riverbeds, and adorning the bodies of the indigenous inhabitants . Columbus alone refers to gold at least sixty-five times in the diary of his first voyage, and his preoccupation with the prospect of finding gold drives his frustrating and frustrated attempts at communication with the people he finds when he makes landfall. On October 13, 1492, Columbus writes: “I was attentive and labored to find out if there was any gold; and I saw that some of them wore a little piece hung in a hole that they have in their noses. And by signs I was able to understand that, going to the south or rounding the island to the south, there was there a king who had large vessels of it and had very much gold.”3 He closes the “Letter to Luis Santangel” by promising to deliver to the Catholic kings, in exchange for additional provisions needed for a second voyage , as much gold as they might ever require. Columbus’s predisposition to find gold, inscribed in his contractual obligations to his sovereigns, causes him to misinterpret information he will later receive from the indigenous...

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