This small book consists of four rather uneven papers on various aspects of Mexican mining history, presented in 1977 at a series of conferences appropriately held in the recently restored Palacio de Minería in Mexico City. Despite the implication of the title, there was no intent to assemble a general history of the mining industry for the country.
Miguel León-Portilla offers a well-organized summary of mining and metallurgy in pre-Hispanic Mexico. Although there is archaeological evidence that the mining of non-metallic minerals, such as cinnabar for red pigment, may have occurred before a.d. 1, the author presents the prevailing view that the use of metals (mainly gold, silver, and copper) and metallurgical knowledge was absent in Mexico until the tenth century (Toltec period), and that such traits were introduced from Central or South America. His essay indicates the paucity of data on pre-Hispanic mining in Mexico and the need for further investigation of the subject.
The short paper by Jorge Gurría Lacroix on sixteenth-century mining in New Spain emphasizes the obvious relation between the exploitation of precious metals and early Spanish conquest and settlement. Concentrating on the Spaniards’ search for gold immediately after the fall of Tenochtitlán, the author treats rather briefly the development of silver mining settlements in northern Mexico.
Half of the book (more than 90 pages) consists of a long essay by Roberto Moreno on the development of institutions and legislation of the mining industry in New Spain. Here the emphasis is on legislative reforms established in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, which were in part responsible for the huge increase in Mexican silver production at that time. The author goes over much of the material already presented in Walter Howe’s well-known The Mining Guild of New Spain and its Tribunal General, 1770-1821, published in 1949.
Finally, Enrique Madero Bracho, president of the Cámara Minera de México and the Asociación Mexicana de Minería, gives a short summary of the modern mining industry of his country, indicating the shift, in the last half century, from the production of precious to industrial metals and nonmetallic minerals.
The appearance of this book, as well as several others recently published on the same subject, indicates the need for a general history of Mexican mining. One hopes that such a work may be forthcoming.
