James D. Harrop and Dr. Kendall Brown, History
The Spanish mining operations in the Americas during Colonial times were operated by the only supply of manpower available to the Spanish; the indigenous peoples. Huancavelica was a mercury mine essential to the continued production of the silver mines. Mercury was necessary to extract silver from ore and was rarely found in such high deposits as at Huancavelica.
Exposure to toxic mercury caused the disease and death of an enormous number of laborers, mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Later, improved safety conditions reduced the fatality rate markedly. However in the first decades of the mines operations, the demand for mercury created conditions in which safety of the workers was overlooked for production’s sake.
The Spanish were well aware of many of the effects of mercury exposure, mainly from the writings of the medieval alchemist Parascelsus. The mine owners also saw firsthand what poor mining conditions and exposure to mercury did to the native workers. Yet attempts to improve the ventilation of the mines as well as protect the workers from the mercury were slow in coming and when they were more fully developed it was apparently more for economic reasons than humanitarian ones.
The native population of Peru declined dramatically from the time of the conquest of the New World up until the eighteenth century. A large part of the blame for such a massive demographic collapse comes not only from illnesses transported from Europe and Africa but with the mining operations that became a graveyard for a majority of those sent to work there. A lack of protective measures taken by the Spanish at the mines along with the forced labor the Indians were exposed to under the ‘mita’ system utterly decimated native villages.
Evidence that the mines, particularly Huancavelica, were the major source for this decline in population can be seen from the fact that the native populations declined mainly in the areas surrounding Huancavelica itself and later spread outward. As the closest source of labor for the Spanish disappeared, they were forced to look farther and farther away for the necessary manpower to fill the mines. Whereas there is no question that Old World illnesses caused much of the devastation to the Indian peoples, the mines of Peru took just as many lives, if not more. Of those mines, Huancavelica was the deadliest. Mercury poisoning took the lives of countless numbers. Were demographic records available for Huancavelica at that time, they would tell of an unspeakable tragedy in loss of human life for the sake of profit.
The majority of the evidence available to substantiate such accusations comes from accounts written by Spanish priests and others who spoke out in support of the native peoples who were literally disappearing off the face of the land. It was only when the mine operators realized that unless conditions improved there would be no one left to work their mines that improvements were made. Without question Huancavelica’s early history stand as a black mark against the colonial rulers and mine operators who oversaw the exploitation of the mine at Huancavelica and forced labor of the natives.