ABSTRACT
As the only New World source of the mercury required to efficiently refine silver, the remote mining center of Huancavelica, Peru, emerged in the 1570s as a central pillar of the Spanish colonial project in the Andes. To ensure a steady flow of mercury, colonial authorities quickly established an urban center, monopolies on mercury production and transport, and a rotational labor draft to force Indigenous Andeans to work in the toxic conditions of the mines. As this chapter argues, these early efforts belied a reliance on Andean actors to initiate large-scale extraction in a challenging environment. Over time, however, the urban footprint of Huancavelica came to reflect the power dynamics of the mature colonial order, particularly as technological change concentrated the burdens of labor and the environmental risks of mercury production on the Indigenous population.
