Mercury, Mining, and Empire: The Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes

摘要

Mercury, Mining, and Empire examines silver and mercury production in the Andes following the European invasion in the sixteenth century and the effects of those activities on two communities where extraction was carried out: Potosi in Bolivia (silver) and Huancavelica in Peru (mercury). Before the invasion, both had participated in the tightly integrated, multi-faceted, and complex Inca economic and religious system that dominated the Andean highland and coastal regions. Robins cogently and forcefully argues that native Andean peoples were conscripted into the ranks of "foot-soldiers" of a global protocapitalism (p. 4), and that the oppressive, caste-based colonial system affected native people's minds and bodies and relationships within their communities.