ABSTRACT
During the 1970s and early 1980s, prominent economic historians and political scientists researched mining and its impact on the Latin American colonial economy. The early mining centers in America are in Mexico: Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi, and Guanajuato produced silver, gold, platinum, iron, and copper. Mexico became one of the most important centers of wealth in the Spanish Empire. Colombia’s mining boom centered on the western province of Antioquia, where gold deposits were discovered during the second half of the sixteenth century. One of the most beautiful cities in all of the Americas, Ouro Preto, located in Minas Gerais, started out as a rough-and-tumble mining town. By the late eighteenth century, Ouro Preto had become an important American center of baroque culture and architecture. Colombian economic history is defined by gradual, moderate growth, rather than the boom–bust cycles characteristic of economies with massive mineral deposits.
