Potosi-the European Horror Story

"They say that even the horses were shod with silver in the great days of the city of Potosi. The Church altars and the wings of cherubim...were made of silver: the streets from the cathedral to the Church of Recoletos were resurfaced with silver bars..."

"This jugular vein of the viceroyalty, America's fountain of silver, had 120,000 inhabitants by the census of 1573. Only twenty-eight years had passed since the city sprouted out of the Andean wilderness and already, as if by magic, it had the same population as London, and more than Seville, Madrid, Rome, or Paris...It was one of the world's biggest and richest cities, ten times bigger than Boston-at a time when New York had not even begun to call itself by that name."

"By the beginning of the 17th century it had thirty-six magnificently decorated churches, thirty-six gambling houses, and fourteen dance academies. Salons, theaters, and fiesta stage-settings had the finest tapestries, curtains, heraldic emblazonry, and wrought gold and silver: multicolored damasks and cloths of gold and silver hung from the balconies of houses. Silks came from Granada, Flanders, and Calabria; hats from Paris and London; diamonds from Ceylon; precious stones from India; pearls from Panama; stockings from Naples; crystal from Venice; carpets from Persia; perfumes from Arabia; porcelain from China. The ladies sparkled with diamonds, rubies, and pearls; the gentlemen sported the finest embroidered fabrics from Holland. Bullfights were followed by tilting contests, and love and pride inspired medieval-style duels with emerald-studded, gaudily plumed helmets, gold filigrees saddles and stirrups, Toledo swords, and richly caparisoned Chilean ponies."

"Everything is very dear in this city, the dearest in the world. Only chicha corn liquor and coca leaves are cheap. The Indians, forcibly seized from the communities of all Peru, spend Sundays in the corrals dancing to their drums and drinking chicha till they roll on the ground. On Monday mornings they are herded into the mountain and, chewing coca and beaten with iron bars, they pursue the veins of silver, greenish-white serpents that appear and take flight through the entrails of this immense paunch, no light, no air. There the Indians toil all week, prisoners, breathing dust that kills the lungs, and chewing coca that deceives hunger and masks exhaustion, never knowing when night falls or day breaks, until Saturday ends and the bell rings for prayer and release. Then they move forward, holding lighted candles, to emerge on Sunday at dawn, so deep are the diggings and the infinite tunnels and galleries.

A priest newly come to Potosi sees them arriving at the city's suburbs, a long procession of squalid ghosts, their backs scarred by the lash, and remarks: 'I don't want to see this portrait of Hell.'

'So shut your eyes,' someone suggests. 'I can't,' he says. 'With my eyes shut I see more.'"

"The mita labor system was a machine for crushing Indians. The process of using mercury to extract silver poisoned as many or more than did the toxic gases in the bowels of the earth. It made hair and teeth fall out and brought an uncontrollable trembling. The victims ended up dragging themselves through the streets pleading for alms. At night six thousand fires burned on the slopes of the Cerro Rico [the 'rich vein'] and in these the silver was worked, taking advantage of the wind that 'glorious St. Augustine' sent from the sky. Because of the smoke from the ovens there were no pastures or crops in a radius of twenty miles around Potosi and the fumes attacked men's bodies no less relentlessly.

...The Indians were used as beasts of burden because they could carry a greater weight than the delicate llama, and this proved that they were in fact beasts of burden. The viceroy felt that there was no better remedy for their 'natural wickedness' than work in the mines. Juan Gines Sepulveda, a renowned Spanish theologian, argued that they deserved the treatment they got because their sins and idolatries were an offense to God. The Count de Buffon, a French naturalist, noted that Indians were cold and weak creatures in whom 'no activity of the soul' could be observed.

...In the seventeenth century, Father Gregorio Garcia detected Semitic blood in the Indians because, like the Jews, 'they are lazy, they do not believe in the miracles of Jesus Christ, and they are ungrateful to the Spaniards for all the good they have done them.'"

"Expropriation of the Indians-usurpation of their lands and their labor-has gone hand in hand with racist attitudes which are in turn fed by the objective degradation of civilization broken by the Conquest. The effects of the Conquest and the long ensuing period of humiliation left the cultural and social identity the Indians had achieved in fragments. Yet in Guatemala the pulverized identity is the only one that persists. It persists in tragedy. During Holy Week, processions of the heirs of the Mayas produce frightful exhibitions of collective masochism. They drag heavy crosses and participate in the flagellation of Jesus step by step along the interminable ascent to Golgotha; with howls of pain they turn His death and His burial into the cult of their own death and their own burial, the annihilation of the beautiful life of long ago. Only there is no Resurrection at the end of their Holy Week."

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