For four hundred years, “Potosí” has been synonymous with unimagined riches and the quintessential symbol of exploitation. From Luis Capoche’s condemnation of the mine as the “harsh executioner” of Indians through Theodor de Bry’s lugubrious propaganda to modern work, opinion has agreed that here, in the cerro rico, the most naked forms of colonial oppression could be found. Indeed, one would have to go back to the ancient world, or perhaps beyond to Egypt, to find a parallel to the Spanish success in turning a peaceful rural people to non-agricultural ends on such a massive and brutal scale. As Peter Bakewell says, the Black Legend hangs heavily around the town’s history. Just why recent judgment on Potosí as well as opinion on other kinds of oppression and exploitation now seem to be changing is an interesting question. Of course, people are asking different questions of diverse kinds of evidence; but is it not true that different questions are asked, in part at least, because in these postemancipation years the optimism of both modernizers and revolutionaries has faded? The touching belief that if only the villains are unmasked, the oppression will end, is long gone. It is less certain who the oppressors are. Without attributing any of these dark thoughts to Bakewell, one clearly sees that his study fits into a recent trend that seeks to understand rather than to condemn. The closer one looks, the more one sees that rich and poor alike do, in fact, make their own history, even if in neither case exactly as they might choose.
In this book, Bakewell develops the idea that throughout most of its history, silver mining at Potosí depended not so much upon the draconian mita as upon a dual labor system in which more-or-less free men worked alongside the more-or-less coerced. In the beginning this duality was represented by the large number of yanaconas, described by Bakewell as “freelance,” who worked for profit, responded to incentive, and were free to come and go, together with Indians held in encomienda. These were of course compelled to work; but given the choices available and the deeply engrained culture of labor dues to the state, service at Potosí was by no means an unmixed horror. This account of early Potosí, based to a large extent on Capoche and the remarkable inquiry carried out by Polo de Ondegardo in 1550, is not new; but Bakewell subjects the evidence to informed and skeptical discussion that illuminates our understanding. The most important section of the book—chapter 4—shows in detail just how the Andean rural population found a way, in effect, to subsidize a wage labor system in the mine. As shafts deepened and ores became poorer at the same time that imperial stakes grew, the mita was organized to channel men into the mines. This system, however, successful for a few short years, soon came up against the intractable opposition of the native people and their leaders, who resisted not so much mine labor but mine labor at the statute wage. Soon, Indians began to buy their way out of labor service through payment in silver to the mine operators. With this subsidy a much higher wage could be offered to attract the large numbers of free workers who gathered around the burgeoning economy of the cerro rico. At this point Bakewell’s story should mesh nicely with the work of C. S. Assadourian, but he does not explore these questions. By the end of the sixteenth century then, the dual system was perpetuated with forced mitayos alongside an increasing number of voluntary, wage-earning mingas. Bakewell’s discussion of all this is not nearly so simplistic as it may sound from this brief review; it is filled with caveat and careful qualification. His explanation takes into account the deeper structures of Andean culture and the effect of assimilation to European values, and there is a brief comparison with Mexican practice. And of course he understands that everything operated within a framework of colonial domination.
This is only a section of a much larger work and it consequently is a more modest effort than the prize-winning book on Zacatecas; but out of scant, difficult, and disparate materials Bakewell has produced a thoughtful, and in its understated way, a provocative essay.
