Mercury, Mining, and Empire

Robins, Nicholas A. Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.

Nicholas A. Robins is a professor of Latin American studies at North Carolina State University. His 2011 work, Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes provides a social and environmental history of the effects of mercury and silver mining on the people, economy, and environment in the mining towns of Huancavelica, Peru and Potosí, Bolivia. In addition to the histories of Huancavelica and Potosí and the effects of mining, the “Black Legend” and the caste-based system of labor drafting known as mita figure prominently in the thesis of Mercury, Mining, and Empire.

            Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas is given credit for publicizing what would ultimately become known as the “black legend.” The black legend is a historical portrayal of Spain as rapacious and callously exploitative of Amerindians. With the publications of Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias and Apologética historia sumaria, Las Casas supported the belief in the authentic humanity of the Indians and affirmed the view of the encroaching Spaniards as overly ambitious, imperialistic, and cruel. Bordering on treason, La Casas questioned the legitimacy of the Spanish conquest of Latin America because of the atrocities and exploitations committed against the Amerindians. Many Spanish policies aimed to culturally destroy and imperil the indigenous population. The policies were multifaceted, consistent, and enduring, and resulted in the cultural and linguistic destruction of the Amerindians. The genocidal nature of Spanish imperialism affected every part of the indigenous society throughout the Americas. In opposition to the black legend and La Casas, many of his contemporaries and some twentieth-century historians advocated the “white legend,” the ethnocentric view that the Spanish brought civilization and Catholicism to the Americas, thus bettering the Amerindians and their ways of life.

Without the plentiful and steady Amerindian population of laborers, mining and refining silver- and mercury-bearing ores would have been impossible for Spanish pursuits. As viceroy of Peru, prolific lawmaker Francisco de Toledo revolutionized the Latin American labor system by enacting a labor draft based on the Incaic system of temporary forced labor for public works, or mita. The difference in mita and absolute slavery is that the mitayo, or person serving in the mita, would only work for a temporary amount of time and would receive remuneration for their labor. Official drafts of the mita were based on a percentage of the population required eligible men to serve rotating shifts at refining and mining locations in the surrounding provinces, consequently making the mita a community obligation. The mita only applied to originarios, or those who lived in the communities in which they were born. As such, forasteros, or foreigners, were not required to serve the mita because they did not retain the right to cultivate community lands. The effects of this required labor led to enormous population shifts. Men fled their towns to become forasteros in other towns in order to avoid the mita. Women and children followed mitayos to Huancavelica and Potosí. In many cases, after their service in the mita had ended, instead of returning poor, hungry, and ill, mitayos and their families would stay in the towns as forasteros where they would be exempt from the mita, could choose their own work, have better prospects to earn better wages, and be largely free of the clergy.

The Catholic Church held an interesting position with regards to the mita labor system.
In general, the clergy supported the draft, regulated the mita, and accepted the legitimacy of the forced labor of the mitayos. Informed by an Aristotelian view of the world where there are masters and slaves, clerics believed that the Indians were born to be slaves. Indian labor was for the common public good and so considered acceptable. From the church’s standpoint, Huancavelica and Potosí were placed in Spanish hands by God through divine will to aid Spanish efforts of spreading Catholicism. After the mitayo’s term of service had ended, clergy members also exploited their labor. Mitayos would be expected to tend to the clergy’s animals and pastures, along with the expected exorbitant monetary tributes. Eventually, with depopulation of indigenous communities due to relocation or flight of eligible mitayos, the Catholic Church also experienced the troubling effect of the mita with a shortage of people available to be burdened with steep fees for Mass, funerals, and marriages.  

In addition to relocation and flight, the health effects of mercury and silver mining contributed to the desolation of the native Amerindian population. Poor working conditions in the mines of Huancavelica and Potosí made mining deadly work for mitayos. The advent of amalgamation-based process of mercury refinement brought another dimension of danger to laborers. Laborers were in direct contact with mercury. This contact created acute exposure to mercury and led to chronic poisoning. Rockslides, cave-ins, falling ore, and carbon monoxide were constant threats to laborers. Ingestion of silica and mercury vapors led to coughs and certain early death for mitayos. As a result of mercury exposure, birth defects and deformities were common in Huancavelica and Potosí.

Additionally, the natural environments surrounding Huancavelica and Potosí suffered extensive ecological damage as a result of smelting and mining operations. In the early years of silver and mercury mining efforts laborers used the native kenua tree as fuel for smelting. In both Huancavelica and Potosí the kenua forests were depleted by the seventeenth century. The ichu plant was also used as fuel and it, too, was quickly denuded from the landscape. Perhaps the most significant environmental and ecological disaster of mercury and silver mining in Huancavelica and Potosí are the ongoing effects of soil contamination. High levels of mercury can still be observed in the soils of these mining communities today. Furthermore, native animals around Cerro Rico, the mountain where mining and refining took place in Potosí, disappeared from the landscape.

Violence in Huancavelica and Potosí was also directly related to mercury exposure and intoxication. Crimes of passion, debts, and minor disagreements were all made worse by madness as a result of mercury poisoning. The phrase “Mad Hatter’s disease” originated in felt production because of the mercury that the felt was treated with. After wearing the felt hats, wearers would often exhibit the symptoms of madness related to mercury toxicity. The opening vignette in Mercury, Mining, and Empire describing the madness exhibited by an elderly cleric named Juan Antonio de los Santos is indicative of someone suffering acute mercury poisoning. Father de los Santos’ rage, threats to parishioners, excess saliva, and overall insanity combined with residence in Potosí provides compelling evidence that even residents who were not actively engaged in mining operations were affected by the toxic nature of mercury and silver mining.

The late seventeenth century saw the decline of mining and refining operations and an end to the mita in Huancavelica and Potosí. As a protector of the Indians, Victorían de Villaba brought a sincere interest in protecting the Indians in his province, unlike his predecessors. A former professor of law at the University of Huesca, Villaba launched an attack on the mita upon his arrival. Echoing the black legend, Villaba challenged the fact that the mita was for the public good pointing to the enormous toll it took on the indigenous population. He countered that instead of the crown and wider society, miners and refiners received the most benefit, all at the expense of the Indians. Villaba also disputed the Aristotelian view that the natives were lazy. With a lawyer’s argumentative brilliance, Villaba pointed out that even if the Indians were lazy, that was no reason to force them into labor. In 1809, a war for independence consumed the region and interrupted the labor supply to Potosí. Productivity in Potosí suffered, and finally by 1819 the labor system that had sustained a silver empire was abolished.

Mercury, Mining, and Empire fundamentally argues that the silver mines of Latin America were an integral component in the rise of modern global capitalism. New trade routes created to import and export silver, mercury, and any other product associated with their production in Latin America set the foundation for the industrial revolution and helped to maintain a global economy for centuries. The silver mined in Latin America created the profligate spending of the Spanish Empire. This unprecedented and massive flood of New World silver sparked high inflation in the Old World during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Bough with silver refined in Potosí and mercury amalgamated in Huancavalica, African slaves could have theoretically been brought back to Huancavelica and Potosí to labor alongside Indian mitayos. Finally, mercury and silver mined from Huancavelica and Potosí elevated Spain to the status of a world power.

Although there were other mining towns in Latin America, Huancavelica and Potosí are different because of the nature and scale of the mining operations located there. The toxicity of mercury and the ever-present silica in the air were standard in the two towns. Along with the environmental and ecological toil placed on Huancavelica and Potosí and the surrounding areas, the price of Spanish imperialism was greatest on the indigenous population of Latin America. The depopulation, cultural breakdown, linguistic cessation, and the lasting effects of mercury and silver mining created a lasting disaster for Latin America.