Antonio López de Quiroga was a transitional figure. On the one hand, he was a seventeenth-century entrepreneur par excellence. Beginning at Potosí in 1648 as a mercader de plata, he gradually moved from financial capitalist to silver miner and refiner as opportunities presented themselves. He was successful in his endeavors because of shrewd management and streamlining of production, so as to control every aspect from raw material to finished product, including transport. Specifically, his investments in generously cut adits (access to ore deposits and drainage) and his use of gunpowder to accelerate their cutting were pioneering efforts. On the other hand, López de Quiroga was not entirely free of the sixteenth century, as evidenced by his unsuccessful efforts to locate the realm of the Gran Paitití (to the east of Potosí) and to win a noble title from the crown. His failure in these campaigns may seem inconsequential given his economic success, but to the Iberian mind of the age they were just deserts denied. Ironically, the jealousy López de Quiroga generated by his success and contacts (e.g., the Viceroy Conde de Lemos) probably had much to do with his inability to win official recognition of his accomplishments.
Peter Bakewell was attracted to this mixture of Henry Ford and Don Quixote while engaged in less stimulating research in the archives of Bolivia and Spain. While López de Quiroga’s life’s story is certainly entertaining, he is no mere curiosity, but rather one of a series of Hapsburg-period entrepreneurs, including many kurakas and caciques. He is unusual in that he succeeded when Potosí was in marked decline, and, moreover, through unconventional means. While mining seems to have produced many entrepreneurs, in Alto Perú and elsewhere (e.g., Bartolomé Bravo de Acuña at Zacatecas), Bakewell notes that seventeenth-century America afforded capitalists many opportunities, both legal and illegal, given the limitations to governmental power. This book provides an in-depth look at how one entrepreneur flourished under these conditions, and invites other such studies.
