On Trading Roles

This is an interesting work that contrasts heavily with the other historical studies that I’ve read on colonial Potosí. While those emphasize the economic, labor, and social life of the mines themselves (especially in relation to silver production and the mita system), this book is a dive into the city that “supported” the mines, with “supported” in quotation marks because the city of Potosí was a vibrant space in its own right.

Here, Mangan seems most interested in the production of markets as they relate to gender (male or female) and ethnic (Spanish/Andean/African) relations. She finds that the markets of Potosí were so dynamic as to be almost unrecognizable to Spanish and Andean visitors. In fact, very little raw food or textile products were produced in Potosí. As a result, Potosí seems to have been a thoroughly commercial society. That isn’t to say that food products weren’t transformed into something new—they were, it’s just that the crops were not cultivated in Potosí. Honestly, I find the discussion of food products here to be one of the most interesting parts of the book, as Mangan shows us that largely indigenous women produced a sort of beer called chicha, which was produced from corn flour. Trying to persuade the people of Potosí to stop drinking so much chicha (they hoped to replace it with wheat bread), Spanish officials effectively embargoed the import of corn flour into the city. This backfired for them, as the women who produced chicha instead used wheat flour, ultimately lowering the production of wheat bread. Naturally, the Spanish withdrew their prohibition on corn flour and both chicha and wheat bread were consumed by Spaniards and Andeans alike.

I was also really interested in Mangan’s discussion of credit—in spite of the overflowing supplies of silver coming out of the mines, very little of it was used within the city of Potosí itself. Spanish colonizers instead aimed to ship the silver elsewhere, primarily to Castile itself. As a result, the people of Potosí—rich and poor alike—were forced to rely on credit and loans in order to support their daily expenses.

One question that I have is regarding the permanence of Potosí’s population. Were Andean residents primarily the wives or family members of indigenous men who temporarily migrated to Potosí under the mita system, or was it a more permanent population? Peter Bakewell shows us in Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian Labor in Potosi, 1545-1650 that voluntary wage laborers were used as well forced laborers under the mita system, but how do residents of the city itself fit into this scheme? Were mita laborers active in the Potosino economy, or was it exclusively made up of minga workers?

I’m not sure if this is what Mangan intends, but my major takeaways were that:

• Spaniards and Andeans seemed to become increasingly culturally similar over time (the case of chicha/wheat bread) illustrates this point;

• Women played remarkably important roles in urban Potosí.

That said, I don’t think I liked this book nearly as much as some of the other work on Potosí that I read. I picked this up expecting to be more interested than I actual was—I know markets are historically important, but they don’t quite interest me as much as learning about systems of labor that I’m not familiar with. It’s worth a read if you’re really interested in Potosí—the other couple of reviews are a bit harsher on Mangan than she deserves—but others might not find it so useful.