Scott Subterranean

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Heidi V. Scott

Journal of Latin American Geography, Volume 11, Special, 2012, pp.

7-33 (Article)

Published by Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers

DOI: 10.1353/lag.2012.0029

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The Contested Spaces of the Subterranean 7

The Contested Spaces of the Subterranean:Colonial Governmentality,

Mining, and the Mita in Early Spanish Peru

Heidi V. ScottDepartment of History

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

AbstractThis paper examines the spatial rationalities of government (Huxley 2007) that in-formed colonial debates over forced labor for the mines of Peru. Building on Huxleyssuggestion that the causal qualities of particular spaces play a signicant role in shaping

governmental rationalities, the paper considers how colonial notions about undergroundenvironments intersected with ideas about the nature of the Indians and their perceivedrights and responsibilities as vassals of the Spanish crown. The article focuses rst on

the Toledan era, and second on three seventeenth-century texts that deal extensively with

the question of mining and the mita.Keywords: mining, mita, governmentality, Peru

ResumenEste artculo examina las racionalidades espaciales (Huxley 2007) que inuyeron en los

debates coloniales sobre el trabajo forzado en las minas del Per. El artculo desarrollala idea propuesta por Huxley que las cualidades causativas de ciertos espacios desempe-an un papel importante en la formacin de racionalidades gubernmentales, y consideracmo las percepciones coloniales de ambientes subterrneos estaban conectadas conideas sobre las caractersticas de los indios y los derechos y responsabilidades que, segnlos europeos, tenan como vasallos de la corona espaola. El anlisis se centra primeroen la poca toledana y despus en tres textos del siglo diecisiete que prestan atencin a lacuestin de la minera y la mita.Palabras clave: minera, mita, gubernmentalidad, Per

IntroductionIn hisNatural and Moral History of the Indies(1590) Fray Jos de Acosta echoed

with enthusiasm an idea that had been expressed two decades earlier in the anonymous

Yucay document, a text that condemned the pro-indigenous writings of Bartolom delas Casas and, among other things, vehemently defended the use of forced Indian laborin the mines of Peru (BNE, Mss. 9442; Bataillon 1965). It was, declared Acosta, a wiseindividual who had once said that, like a man who marries off an ugly daughter by givingher a large dowry, God had given a dowry to Peru, that rugged land, by endowing

Journal of Latin American Geography,11 (S), 2012 Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers


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8 Journal of Latin American Geography

it with great wealth in mines so that whoever wished could find it by these means(Acosta 2002: 164). Like the Yucay document, Acostas reflections on Perus mineral

wealth are an unequivocal expression of what Greenblatt terms Christian imperialism(Greenblatt 1991)a logic of exchange whereby the New Worlds native inhabitants

were expected to relinquish material wealth and sovereignty in return for knowledge ofthe Christian god. Without doubt, Acosta believed that the exchange of mineral wealthfor spiritual salvation provided a powerful justification for the Spaniards exploitation ofmines in the Indies.

The Jesuits enthusiasm for mining did not prevent him, however, from vividlyconveying the horrors of work below the surface when he described the everydayexperience of laborers in the mines of Potos. They toil, he said:

In perpetual darkness, with no idea of when it is day or night; and as theseare places never visited by the sun, not only is there perpetual darkness but itis also extremely cold, with a very heavy atmosphere unfit for mans nature;and so it happens that those who enter the mine for the first time feel weakand dizzy (Acosta 2002: 180).

On returning to the surface, the miners were obliged to make a dizzying ascent up aseries of flimsy ladders, often more than 150 estados,1a horrible thing about which it isfrightening even to think (Acosta 2002: 181).

The tensions embedded within the Jesuits discussion of mining in the Indiesreflected wider and enduring tensions in Peru between colonial beliefs in the Spaniardslegitimate claim to subsurface wealth and deeply rooted views of the mines as perilous,liminal realms that presented moral as well as physical dangers to those who venturedinto or exploited them for their riches. As demonstrated by a substantial body ofhistorical scholarship, large-scale mining and the use of forced indigenous labor werea firmly established part of Perus colonial society by the end of the sixteenth century(Assadourian 1989; Bakewell 1984; Cole 1985; Smith 2004). Well into the 1600s, however,an array of jurists, government officials, men of religion and other commentatorscontinued to express anxieties about the legitimacy and propriety of descending intosubterranean realmsand, moreover, about the legitimacy of compelling Indian laborersto extract the mineral wealth that was concealed within them.

Colonial ideas about the physical and intellectual capacities of the Indians andtheir social practices were undoubtedly central to ongoing debates about the justifiabilityand necessity of the mining mita, the system of forced labor that was introduced on alarge scale in Peru in the 1570s by Viceroy Toledo. Such ideas, however, were closelyinterwoven with beliefs about the qualities and effects of particular kinds of places andenvironments on Indian bodies and minds. In other words, colonial debates on the useof native draft workers in mines (as well as for other kinds of labor) were concernednot only with the intrinsic qualities, capacities and obligations of the Indians as vassalsof the Spanish crown, but equally, as this paper demonstrates, with where they couldbe compelled or permitted to work, in view of the effects that particular placeswereperceived to have on their health, habits, and spiritual condition.

The discussion is situated within the conceptual framework of colonialgovernmentality (Scott 1995) and examines the spatial rationalities of government(Huxley 2007) that emerged in the context of colonial debates over the legitimacy forcedlabor for the mines of Peru. Building on Huxleys argument that the causal qualities ofparticular spaces are a significant but overlooked aspect of the rationalities that informthe workings of government, the paper traces the varied and at times unpredictable ways


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in which colonial ideas about the nature of underground environments intersected withshifting ideas about the nature of the Indians and their perceived rights and responsibilitiesas vassals of the Spanish crown. In turn, the article examines published documentationfrom the era of the Toledan government and then focuses on the seventeenth-century

writings of a Franciscan friar (Miguel Agia) and a prominent jurist (Juan de Solrzanoy Pereira), both of whom wrote extensively on the question of mining and the mita.Finally, the paper reflects on the portrayals of mining in colonial Peru contained inGuaman Poma de AyalasNueva cornica y buen gobierno(New Chronicle and Good Government).Before turning to historical sources, however, the article surveys and seeks to establishproductive connections between, on the one hand, literatures on mining and ideas ofnature in Spanish America and, on the other hand, recent scholarship on the significanceof space in the practices and rationalities of government.

The Imaginative Construction of the Underground

Explorations in Recent ScholarshipThe sixteenth century, Williams argues, brought with it the beginnings of asignificant challenge to predominant European ways of imagining and attaching meaningto the underground. If mines and other subterranean realms had long been regarded assacred or supernatural places that humans had to enter and exploit with great caution,and if mining was widely considered a morally dubious endeavor in medieval and ancienttimes, the 1500s witnessed an incipient desacralization of the vertical third dimensionthat extended below ground (Williams 2008: 8-9, 23-25; Lefebvre 1991: 242-243, 254-256, 336-337). In other words, places which were widely considered forbidden, spirituallypotent, and outside the boundaries of human lifeworlds were gradually transformed, in

early modern European imaginations, into exploitable spaces. Agricola, without doubtthe most prominent European mining expert of the sixteenth century, clearly articulatedthis shift in mentalities in his famous 1556 treatise De re metallica. In commencing histreatise with a passionate defense of mining, Agricola elevated mining above all otherhuman industries:

In truth, in all of the works of agriculture, as in the other arts, implements areused which are made from metals, or which could not be made without theuse of metals; for this reason the metals are of the greatest necessity to man.

When an art is so poor that it lacks metals, it is not of much importance, for

nothing is made without tools. Besides, of all ways whereby great wealth isacquired by good and honest means, none is more advantageous than mining;for although from fields which are well tilled we derive rich yields, yet weobtain richer products from mines; in fact, one mine is often much morebeneficial to us than many fields (Agricola 1950: xxv).

The emergence of increasingly utilitarian views among Europeans about the exploitationof underground resourcesand of nature more generally provided a significant contextfor the construction of overseas empires in the Americas and was in turn stimulated byEuropean imperial ventures, including those carried out by the Spanish (Arnold 1996;

Beinart and Hughes 2009; Miller 2007). The production of colonial knowledge aboutnature in Spains New World empire, as well as in other arenas of colonization in theAmericas, has emerged in recent years as a prominent field of research. Within this wide-ranging field of inquiry, numerous studies examine the deployment of colonial theoriesabout the properties of American climates and environments, and their effects onindigenous, African, and European populations, and the physical, moral and intellectual


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tendencies that each group allegedly displayed (e.g. Caizares-Esguerra 1999, Chaplin1997, Finch 2001, Gerbi 1973, Glacken 1967, Miller 2007, Ordahl Kupperman 1984).

Taken together, these studies demonstrate with reference to varied geographicaland temporal contexts how notions of environmental determinism, alongside incipientnotions of intrinsic racial difference, played a central role in justifying colonialism along

with the social hierarchies and forms of exploitation that characterized it. To a limitedextent, studies of early debates over the rights and nature of the Indians in the contextof Spanish America also attend to the significance of colonial theories about place andenvironment in the shaping of ideas about indigenous populations, their perceived rolein society, and their responsibilities toward the Spanish crown. Pagden, for example, oneof the most prominent commentators in recent decades on debates about the natureof the Indians, briefly illustrates how these debates were shaped by the prominence ofenvironmental determinism in European thought and Spanish ideas about the Indiansrelationship with nature (Pagden 1982: 22, 97-98, 137-138).

Colonial ideas about place and environment are by no means ignored in existingresearch on mining in the era of Spanish rule in Peru. Recent work by scholars such asBouysse-Cassagne (2005) and Salazar-Soler (1997) demonstrates that the increasinglyutilitarian emphasis in European thinking about mines and their exploitation did notequate to a clearly defined opposition between Spanish and indigenous ideas about theunderground. Many Spaniards, as well as Andeans, attributed supernatural qualities tothe subterranean and believed that minerals deposits could grow and regenerate likeplants (Taussig 1980). Scholarly interest in the ideas and values that were attached tosubterranean environments is less apparent, however, in work that focuses on mininglegislation and the governance and administration of mines in early colonial Peru. Tobe sure, Tudela y Buesos (1970) article on moral debates about forced Indian labor inthe mines of Spanish America touches briefly on how competing portrayals of miningenvironments in Antique writings such as the works of Pliny were deployed to supportas well as to condemn the labor draft. More recently, in examining the impact of silvermining on environment and human health in the Andes, Robins (2011) emphasizes how

varied members of colonial societyminers, ecclesiastics, and legislators, among others readily acknowledged the extreme dangers of the underground, but rarely expressedopposition to the mita.

Nevertheless, while existing in-depth studies on the emergence and evolutionof the mining mita in the colonial Andes consider its social, cultural, and demographicimpact and debates about its legitimacy, they do not attend in any significant way to theimaginative construction of the subterranean in colonial discussions over how miningshould be carried out, andcruciallyover how the mines were to be supplied with

workers (Bakewell 1984; Cole 1985; Espinoza Soriano 1997; Gonzlez Pujana 1992;Smith 2004; Stavig 2000). Yet as will be seen, colonial debates and legislation on the useof Indian draft labor for mining and other purposes focused not only on the perceivedintrinsic qualities and capacities of the Indians, but equally, with where they couldlegitimately be made to work, and with the effectsthat particular environments would haveon their health, habits, and spiritual condition.

Space, Environment, and Colonial Governmentality The concept of governmentality, first outlined by Foucault in the 1970s and80s, and subsequently developed by a range of scholars in the humanities and socialsciences, provides a useful framework for examining the intersection of ideas about thecharacteristics of subterranean places, and native bodies in the context of debates overthe mining mita. Governmentality is commonly defined in current scholarship as the


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art of government or, in Deans words, the organized practices through which weare governed and through which we govern ourselves (Dean 2010: 28). At the sametime, governmentality refers in Foucaults work to a particular form of government. Inthe early modern era, Foucault argues, new forms of government emerged in Europethat focused increasingly on the management of populations (Foucault 2007: 107-108). In shifting away from the exercise of sovereign power over territories, they movetoward the discipline of individual bodies with a view to achieving particular ends (forexample, increasing the wealth of the kingdom) and, later still, toward mechanisms thatare concerned with regulating the biological processes of man-as-species (Foucault2003: 246; Dean 2010: 24-30). However, rather than being replaced one by the other inlinear fashion, the three modalities of government identified by Foucaultsovereignty,discipline, and biopoliticsform a triad that combine and interact in different ways indifferent times and places (Foucault 2009: 107-108). Although Foucaults own writings focus exclusively on Europe, subsequent

work by geographers, historians, and anthropologists explores the strategies andmentalities of government that emerge in colonial contexts. Scotts work on what heterms colonial governmentality demonstrates how the social and racial hierarchies thatcharacterize colonial situations are expressed through and shape distinctive techniquesof government and illustrates how those techniques impact on and are also resistedby colonized populations (Scott 1995). Underpinning governmental discourses andpractices in Europes varied colonial arenas was a belief in the need to adapt the artof government to real or imagined differencesypically identified as expressions ofinferioritythat distinguished colonial populations, places, and environments fromthose in Europe. In Spanish America, the colonial difference was deployed to justify thesubjugation of indigenous populations through exploitative mechanisms, such as forcedlabor, and through techniques of surveillance and discipline that were intended to instilin these populations the habits of body and mind that were associated with Christiancivility. The Franciscan friar Agia, for example, whose early seventeenth-century treatiseon the use of native labor in Peru defended the legitimacy of the mining mita, arguedthat all legislation must be adapted to suit the characteristics of the people and placesto which it relates. Introducing identical laws in Peru to those that existed in Spain, histreatise suggested, would be both harmful and unjustified (Agia 1946: 64-65).

As Agias ideas suggest, understandings of the qualities of particular places,as well as of particular human populations, played a significant role in debates anddiscussions over appropriate strategies of government in colonial Peru. Geographersseek to demonstrate that the art of government in any context or modality is inherentlyconcerned with space and place and, indeed, they argue that this spatiality is embedded

although not drawn outin Foucaults own work on governmentality (Crampton andElden 2007; Huxley 2008: 1646-1647; Foucault 2009: 12). In geographical studies ofcolonial governmentality, close attention is paid to the efforts of colonial regimes todistribute their subject populations in particular ways, to control their mobility, as well asto shape and improve the physical environment, for example through the introductionof urban forms that permitted surveillance and reflected European notions of order andcivility (Blake 1999; Duncan 2007; Howell 2004; Legg 2007).

According to Huxley (2007: 185), however, existing scholarship takes littleaccount of how space and environment can be seen as rationalities of government(also Huxley 2008: 1649). In other words, while this scholarship examines the waysin which spaces and spatial relations were shaped and controlled through the interplayof diverse elements such as mapping or architecture, only limited attention is paid toexamining the causal effects that governments attribute to particular kinds of spaces and


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environments (Huxley 2007: 192). The spatial rationalities that underpin the workingsof government, Huxley observes:

Postulate causal qualities of spaces and environments as elements in theoperative rationales of government, and these postulates can be examinedas truths having histories. Thus, the writing of histories of spaces andpowers is also the examination of the logics contained in strategies andtactics of power/government that seek to use space for particular ends(2007: 194).

Huxleys work does not focus specifically on colonial regimes. Nevertheless, her concernfor the spatial and environmental rationalities of government is of particular value tothe discussion that follows. As we will see, ideas and beliefs about the causal qualitiesof mining sites and environments in early Spanish Peru were not only prominent ingovernment correspondence, legislation, and a range of other writings, but also generatedconsiderable tension and disagreement in relation to debates over how, where, and for

what purposes indigenous draft labor could be used.

Spatial Rationalities of the Subterranean and the

Government of Viceroy Toledo Francisco de Toledo, viceroy of Peru from 1569 until 1581, endeavoredto carry out nothing less than a transformation of the Andean landscape in order toconsolidate colonial control and to generate wealth for the Spanish crown. Spatial

reorganization and the strategic redistribution of populations, above all through theresettlement of indigenous communities into newly constructed reducciones (reductiontowns), were fundamental to Toledos governmental strategy (Gade and Escobar 1982,;Mlaga Medina 1974; Scott 2004; Spalding 1984). In contrast to his predecessors, heinsisted on the need to consolidate and defend existing frontiers rather than to expandthem horizontally through further conquest (Gobernantes 1921-6 vol. 3: 89 and 93),but within these territorial boundaries he engaged in an aggressive drive to extend theproductive spaces of the viceroyalty downward into the subterranean. Putting intopractice the large-scale exploitation of Perus mineral wealth was of course dependenton the mobilization of indigenous laborand facilitating this was the principal purpose

of the reducciones. However, it also required the discursive incorporation of mines andother subterranean sites into the everyday spaces of the viceroyaltyin other words,their legitimization as places to be used routinely and exploited for material gain, andabove all to which indigenous workers could justifiably be sent.

In the context of early modern European empire building, Benton argues,river regions and estuaries were considered to be alluring yet treacherous places and, as aconsequence, came to constitute distinctive legal spaces of empire (Benton 2010: 42).In similar fashion, mines and mining regions in Spanish America were viewed on theone hand as potent and attractive due to their promise of wealth and, on the other hand,as places of unique danger and instability that required special attention in legal terms.

This distinctiveness, based on strongly negative as well as positive associations, is clearlyreflected, for example, in royal legislation on the use of indigenous labor in the mines.Now, the use of forced indigenous labor in the mines of Peru and other parts of Spanishhad become common practice well before the 1500s drew to a close. From the outset,royal ordinances for mining were characterized by profound ambiguity (Robins 2011:66) and, moreover, by significant regional variations across Spanish America (Lane 2000;


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Newson 1982). Time and again, however, in the first half of the sixteenth century,royal ordinances for Peru and other parts of the Spanish empire condemned reports ofIndians being made to work in mines against their will and reiterated the illegality of thispractice on the grounds that it posed a grave threat to their health and their lives (see e.g. royal ordinances and instructions issued in 1526, 1541, 1549 and 1551; Konetzke 1953:89, 92, 97, 200, 251 and 282). In February of 1541, for example, a royal edict issued forPeru stated that reports were received that, contrary to royal instructions that prohibitedsending Indians to the mines because experience has shown that many die as a result ofthe work they are given there (Konetzke 1953: 200), naboras (Indians in the personalservice of Spaniards) were being forced to engage in mining labor against their will. Theedict insisted that the governor should not permit or allow that the said naboras aretaken to the mines against their will, but rather that they are treated in accordance with

what we have ordered (Konetzke 1953: 201). A second edict for Peru, issued in July ofthe same year, conceded that Indians could work in the mines voluntarily, but reiteratedthat:

We prohibit and order that neither now nor in the future should any ofthe people who reside in those provinces send or dare to send anyIndians to the mines to extract gold or silver (Konetzke 1953: 202).

If the practice of compelling legally free Indians to engage in draft labor in the minesinitially involved the flouting of royal legislation, it was encouraged in the latter halfof the sixteenth century by the crowns growing tolerance of the practice due to itsfinancial difficulties and consequent urgency to stimulate the flow of silver (Sempat

Assadourian 1987: 349). Although the Viceroy Toledos implementation of a large-scalelabor draft was not formally approved by the crown until after his term of office hadended (Cole 1985: 5), the initial impetus for Toledos aggressive development of themining industry has its origins in instructions he received from the monarch before heleft Spain (Demetrio Ramos 1986: 30-31).

As Huxley (2007: 187) observes, however, projects of rule always involve theinteraction of practice with mentalities and rationalitiesin other words, with ideasand patterns of thought that may be deeply embedded but remain unarticulated or thatare explicitly expressed. Over the sixteenth century, the rationalities that underpinned thedeployment and distribution of native labor were recalibrated in a way that legitimatedcompulsory labor in the mines.2 Toledos mining legislation and correspondence withthe crown, together with the writings of his allies, constituted a particularly powerfulchallenge to prevailing rationalities of rule that inhibited official approval of the mita.

Without doubt, this challenge was founded on the aggressive Christian imperialismencapsulated in the Yucay document, a text that, albeit anonymous, was clearly writtenby a close associate and advisor of Toledo (Bataillon 1965: 273-275). Directly aimed atundermining the pro-indigenous writings of Fray Bartolom de las Casas, the documentexplicitly connected the exploitation of mines in Peru with the triumph of Catholicismin the world, and declared that the influential Dominican had been deceived by the devil

when he condemned the Spaniards search for mines and buried treasure (BNE Mss.9442: no date).

The generalized hardening of discourses about indigenous peoples and theirphysical and intellectual capacitiesin part, no doubt, a response to the realities ofnative resistance to Spanish religion and rulefurther facilitated Toledos recalibrationof governmental discourse where the mita was concerned. By mid-century the idea ofthe indolent, work-shy native was gaining in prominence and began to be expressed in


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royal legislation. As early as 1551, for example, a royal instruction to the governmentin Lima stated that it had received reports that the Indians of those provinces are lazypeople and do not want to work, and that consequently they should be ordered andcompelled if necessary to engage in wage labor in the fields and towns (Konetzke vol. I,1953: 306-307).

As will be seen, Toledos challenge to the prevailing rationalities of governmentalso involved a positive re-assessment of the causal qualities (Huxley 2007) of miningenvironments on indigenous bodies and minds and, by extension, on the body of thePeruvian kingdom. Toledo did not dispute the widely held notion that Indian bodies werephysically weak and particularly susceptible to illness (for examples see royal ordinancesissued in 1526, 1563, 1581, 1585, published in Konetzke vol. I, 1953: 97, 407-408, 538-539, 558-559). The reasons he attributed to this, however, lay precisely in their supposedindolence and their harmful inclinations toward vice and immorality. Obliging theIndians to work, he reasoned, was not only legitimate but in their best interests, providedthat they were well treated and not sent to climatic areas different to those in which theylive. It is appropriate for their good spiritual and temporal government, Toledo wrotein a letter to the king in 1570:

That they are not permitted under any circumstances to be idle as a resultof drunkenness or sensuality, and as a result of these, [that they sufferfrom] weak constitutions and are liable to die easily (Gobernantes1921-6

vol. 3: 430.

In another letter to the monarch written two years later, Toledo explicitly extended thisrationale to Indian labor in the mines. As long as the ordinances on mining are strictlyobserved, he said,:

Not only do I consider it harmless, on the contrary, I consider itadvantageous and appropriate for the good government of these nativesin light of what experience shows us about their nature (Gobernantes1921-6 vol. 3: 576).

The viceroys enthusiastic assessment of the effects of mining work on the Indians didnot mean, however, that he did not consider the mines to require careful monitoring andregulation. On the contrary: as the nerve center of Perus economy and prosperity, heargued that the province of Charcas, where the mines of Potos and Porco were situated(Figure 1), deserved the full attention of Perus viceroys as well as their extended physicalpresence (Gobernantes1921-6 vol. 5: 67). Indeed, the detail and scope of Toledos mininglegislation far surpassed the attention that his ordinances devoted to any other singlearena of government.

For Toledo, however, the challenges to good government and to the stabilityand continued prosperity of the kingdom did not come primarily from the intrinsiccharacteristics of the mines but from peopleminers and mine-owners, prospectorsand many otherswho congregated at mining towns such as Potos and constantlythreatened to engage in unruly, selfish and disorderly behavior. In a lengthy preamble tohis ordinances for the city of La Plata (now Sucre), Toledo accused the local populationof having caused Potos and the many other rich mines that God had given them tobecome unproductive and dangerous. If they had been worked with order and reason,then, he said:


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Figure 1. Potos and Huancavelica.

It is clear that the prosperity of this province could be maintained for atleast three hundred years even if no other [mines] were discovered, buteach person wanted to take a little piece for himself, and you [the peopleof La Plata] gave your metals away almost for free and enriched many

other republics, leaving your own in poverty and lost forever, and youeven left the mines in such a state of perdition and so badly worked anddangerous that new techniques have had to be implemented to search formetal with some degree of safety, and you even felled over twenty-fiveleagues of kenua trees that are ideal for smelting, and not only did you failto do this in an orderly fashion, you even allowed the roots to be pulledup, leaving none behind (Toledo 1986: 368; also Gobernantes 1921-6

vol. V: 53-55).

Toledos arguments resonated with and may also have drawn directly on the writings of

Agricola. Some people, Agricola (1950: 6) observed, condemned mining on the groundsthat it is perilous, for:

Miners are sometimes killed by the pestilential air which they breathe;sometimes their lungs rot away; sometimes the men perish by beingcrushed in masses of rock; sometimes, falling from the ladders into theshafts, they break their arms, legs, or necks

While these were legitimate concerns, he argued, they should in no way prevent the earthbeing mined for its mineral wealth:

Since things like this rarely happen, and only in so far as workers arecareless, they do not deter miners from carrying on their trade any morethan it would deter a carpenter from his, because one of his mates hasacted incautiously and lost his life by falling from a high building (Agricola1950: 6).


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Here, in order to counter the arguments of those who condemned mining, Agricoladisconnected the dangers associated with mining from any intrinsic causal qualities ofthe underground and attached it instead to human failings and inadequacies. At thesame time, he discursively included the subterranean within those physical spaces thathumans could legitimately enter and exploit for the benefit of society. Metals, he argued,are not concealed below the surface because they should not be extracted, but becauseprovident and sagacious Nature has appointed for each thing its place (Agricola 1950:12). Indeed, he went on, given that humans are terrestrial creatures, it is far stranger forthem to take fish out of the sea than to take minerals from the ground.

Now, Toledos ordinances on mining were significantly influenced by Juan deMatienzos Gobierno del Per, a treatise written in 1567 that offered a detailed blueprint forthe good government of the viceroyalty, and not least for the administration of the mines(Lohmann Villena 1967: xl and xliv). In the writing of Matienzo, who was appointed in1560 as an oidor(judge) of the Audiencia de Charcas (Lohmann Villena 1967: xxvii), thejurisdiction in which Potos was situated, Agricolas spatial rationalities are echoed witheven greater clarity than in Toledos correspondence. Matienzos view of the Indians wasshaped by Aristotelian ideas of natural slavery, for he argued that the indigenous peoplesof Peru were destined by nature to serve others and engage in physical labor (Matienzo1967: 16-18). Countering the views of those who argued that the Indians should not bemade to work against their will, above all in the mines, Matienzo insisted that Perusprincipal mining sites, Potos and Porco, were salubrious places for Indians to liveindeed, the healthiest places in the whole of Peru. Here, he wrote, the Indians livedlonger than anywhere else and had the greatest number of children. Far from coming toharm, he insisted, the native people enjoy great benefits and contentment (Matienzo1967: 157). As for the fact that many did not wish to go to the mines, this was theproduct, he declared, of their inherent laziness. Thus, making use of Indian labor for themines was permissible in Matienzos eyes due to their natural role as manual workers,but also because it constituted wise government: not only did the mining mita ensure thesteady flow of silver into the royal coffers, it simultaneously preserved the vigor of theIndian population, thanks to the health-giving qualities of the mining sites to which theIndians were dispatched.

Just as Matienzo praised the supposedly salubrious environment of specificmining sites such as Potos and Porco, so too, like Agricola, he challenged the notion thatthe subterranean spaces of the mines were inherently dangerous and hence spaces into

which workers in this case Indian draft laborers could not legitimately be sent:

To say that they fall eighty or one hundred estados in the mines and aresmashed to pieces, this happens so rarely that it should be consideredinconsequential, [and] in most cases this is accidental and the result ofinsufficient care being taken, and is not natural, and can be remediedthrough the construction of sturdy ladders (Matienzo 1967: 135).

Indeed, he continued, uncannily echoing the words of Agricola, other kinds of work,such as carpentry or the construction of high walls, was much more perilous thanmining (Matienzo 1967: 135). Like Toledo, Matienzo sought to break down resistanceto the idea of sending Indians underground against their will by connecting alreadyexisting, denigrating discourses about indigenous populations with spatial rationalitiesof government that emphasized the positive causal qualities of mining sites andincorporated them into the everyday spaces of the viceroyalty. Far from being a liminal


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space that stood apart from other spaces and environments in which the Indians werecompelled to work, the underground, in the eyes of both the viceroy and his oidor, wasno different to a workshop or an agricultural field in terms of the dangers it presented.

The circumstances that respectively prompted Matienzo and Toledo to insiston the need for draft labor for Perus principal mining sites differed significantly. At thetime that Matienzos Gobierno del Perwas written, Potos was on the brink of ruin as aresult of the depletion of high-grade ore and the consequent desertion of the mines byfree Andean laborers, no longer willing to work for increasingly meager wages in evermore dangerous mines (Cole 1985: 4; Robins 2011: 3). Toledos drive to implementthe mita in the early 1570s, by contrast, was additionally propelled by the introductionof amalgamation as the principal method of refining silver, a technological shift thatrequired an enlarged labor force for the construction of refining mills as well as for theextraction of mercury at the mines of Huancavelica.

This transition, as historians have documented, had profound consequencesfor native workers: amalgamation not only removed the refining processpreviouslyreliant on traditional Andean wind ovens from native hands but also brought with it,as Toledo undoubtedly knew, severe health implications for workers who suffered directexposure to mercury at Huancavelica and in the refining mills of Potos (Brown 2001;Cole 1985; Robins 2011). Consequently, the circumstances in which Toledo assertedthat Perus mines and mining environments were benign, indeed healthful, for Indian

workers suggest that his assertions were made with considerably less force of genuineconviction than Matienzos claimsnot least given Toledos repeated appeals to themonarch for confirmation of the mitas legitimacy. I argue, however, that the viceroymay have adhered to a genuine belief that mining environments were indeed acceptablesites for Indian labor and that could, moreover, attract voluntary Indian labor, if onlythe mines were subject to appropriate systems of governance and order. For Toledo, as

we have seen, the overwhelming obstacle was not the mines natural conditions but theunruly and short-sighted behavior of mine owners and their associates.

Debating the Mita in the Seventeenth Century The Spatial Rationalities

of Fray Miguel Agia and Juan de Solrzano y Pereira Although the mining mita was a firmly established dimension of everydaycolonial realities in Peru by the close of the sixteenth century, the spatial rationalitiesthat Toledo had sought to embed were by no means universally embraced either in

Peru or in Spain. Indeed, I suggest, the positive assessment of the causal qualities ofmines and mining sites that emerged in the Toledan era is difficult to detect by the endof the century as the debate about the mita was recast in new terms that weighed upthe harm done to Indian bodies against the good of the republic as a whole and theIndians obligations to contribute to its prosperity. In view of a still-declining and evermore dispersed indigenous population and, above all, incontrovertible evidence of thedevastating effects of the mitayos(workers assigned to the mita) exposure to mercury inthe mines of Huancavelica and the increasingly dangerous state of the Potos mines asthey became ever deeper and more warren-like, the notion that mining environments

were good for the Indians health and vigor was no doubt difficult to sustain, even for

the most ardent supporters of the mita and, more generally, of mining. Although thearchives abound with dystopian descriptions of conditions at Potos, above all from thelate sixteenth century onward (Robins 2011: 74-80), the mines of Huancavelica, Brown(2001: 467) observes, were exceptionally dangerous. Between the establishment of themining mita at Huancavelica and 1600, conditions at the mercury had deteriorated tosuch an extent that conditions for the workers were horrific (Brown 2001: 470-1).


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We may see these changes reflected in Agias text, written in response to arequest from the viceroy of Peru for advice on the difficult issue of servicios personales

that is, involuntary Indian labor for the mines as well as for other spheres of economicactivity (Ayala 1946: xiv-xvii). The Franciscan, who firmly believed in the necessityand legitimacy of the mining mita, did not hesitate to acknowledge the very significantdangers to which the mitayos were exposed, and made reference to the great burdenthat Indians experienced in Potos and especially Huancavelica:

Working all day in the galleries with iron crowbars in their hands, andafterwards bringing the metals to the surface on their backs by climbinghighly dangerous ladders and steps (Agia 1946: 62).

Indeed, he went on, the risk to which Indians are exposed in the mines, as compared tothe textile workshops, is incomparably greater, and more harmful and damaging (Agia1946: 62).

Provided, however, that Indian workers were properly treated, adequately paid,and not overworked, the dangers that threatened the health of their bodies in the mines,and even their lives, were justifiable to Agia in that the Indians, like the Spaniards, wereobliged as vassals of the Spanish king to contribute to the vigor of the greater body that is, to the republic of which they formed a part. The laws that compelled Indians togive their labor were wholly just, he argued, in that they brought order to:

The mystical body of those republicans [the collective members of therepublic], without which no republic can survive or be preserved, for it isnecessary that there are feet that walk, and hands that labor, and heads thatgovern, and that some give orders while others serve and obey (Agia1946: 76).

The Indians, Agia reasoned, as people naturally suited to manual labor, could thereforebe expected to contribute to the public good by working in the mines, even if they wereexposed to potential harm in the process. In the absence of slaves, convicts, or voluntary

workers, he argued, it was even legitimate to oblige the Indians to work in mercury mines,provided that the labor requirements did not exceed what was strictly necessary. Theknowledge that workers who are sent to mine mercury are sent for the most part to die,did not, he insisted, undermine this legitimacy, for:

The republic and the king possess legitimate power and authority for thereasons mentioned, that is, public necessity and utility, to expose their

vassals to the danger of death (Agia 1946: 111).

Despite this harsh assessment, Agia concluded that sending Indians to the principalmercury mine at Huancavelica could not be justified because of the extreme peril to

which they were exposed. In drawing on his own personal experience of descendinginto the mine in 1603, he expressed a visceral sense of horror at the environment andconditions that he encountered below ground. There, 150 estados beneath the surface,he experienced first-hand the toxicity of the metals, the thick smoke issuing from thecandles, the bad air caused by sweating bodies, the immense ascent to the mouth of themine, not to mention:


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The danger of falling, the limited or completely absent safety of the bridgesand supports in the said gallery, and finally the many thousands of Indiansthat it [the mine] has killed and entombed (Agia 1946: 128).

Embedded in Agias words we find a vehement negation of the positive causal qualitiesof mines that is expressed in the discourse of Toledo and Matienzo, but also a place-specific spatial rationality that served to modulate logics of rule that were founded onthe concept of the republic-as-body and the roles and responsibilities of its constituentparts. The Franciscans reflections on the mita may be understood, therefore, as a searchfor equilibrium between the health of the metaphorical body of the republic on the onehand, and the health of individual Indian bodies on the othera search that was partiallyshaped by his specific understandings of mining sites and environments and, I suggest,by his personal experience of Huancavelica. This experience was insufficient to change

Agias mind about the overall legitimacy of using Indian labor for the extraction of mineralwealth, including at Huancavelica. Nevertheless, the principal shaft at Huancavelica ischaracterized in Agias text as a subterranean environment of such extreme danger that,

within the framework of logic that not only allows but also requires the input of Indianmining labor to sustain the republic-body, it must be treated as an exception. The ideas espoused by Agia were by no means universally accepted, nor washis entreaty to the monarch to immediately seal off the principal shaft at Huancavelicaheeded. To be sure, some private individuals petitioned the monarch to have the mineclosed (AGI Lima 34, N. 42-C. 1604), while in 1604 viceroy Velasco ordered the closureof the main shaft at Huancavelica due to the severity of its effects on Indian health andmortality (Robins 2011: 69). Others, however, notably the viceroy Mendoza y Luna,endeavored to legitimize the mine as a site to which Indian laborers could be sent,arguing that its effects on workers were grossly exaggerated by those who had a vestedinterest in accessing mitayos for their own purposes (AGI Lima 35, N. 26. 14.I.1609).3

The ongoing nature of debates over mining and the mita was unequivocallyconveyed by the Spanish jurist Juan de Solrzano in his Poltica indiana, an influentialtreatise on the laws of the Indies that dedicated extensive sections to examining thearguments for and against mining in Spains New World possessions and above all theuse of native labor.4 Although it is impossible to do justice to the many nuances ofSolrzanos work, I wish to examine the spatial rationalities that are embedded in hisdetailed treatment of mining and the mita. In his treatise, tensions similar to thosepresent in Agias writing emerge, but the spatial rationalities that inform Solrzanosevaluation of the issue of the mita are much more fully developed.

Solrzanos treatise was written in Spain. However, during his two decadesof residence in Peru as oidor of the Audiencia de Lima, he spent two years as inspectorof the mercury mines of Huancavelica, a role to which he was assigned by the viceroyEsquilache in 1616 (Ochoa Brun 1976: xviii-xix). No doubt in part a result of his directexperience of descending into the mines, Solrzano, like Agia, conveyed an unequivocallynegative view of the causal effect of mine environments on those who entered into and

worked in them. No less significantly, perhaps, his juridical writings were steeped intraditions of medieval thought. For Solrzano, Muldoon (1994: 30) argues, the debateabout the legitimacy and nature of Spains occupation of the Americas was a debateabout the right order of the world. Although Muldoon does not address this issue, wemay argue that Solrzanos understanding of right order possessed a significant spatialdimension and one that was informed by pre-Renaissance understandings of humanrelationships with particular spaces and environments.


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In almost every mine, Solrzano argued:

The climates and locations are harsh and sterile, the odours and exhalationsintolerable, the air pestilent and thin, [and] the light absent, for in themthere reigns perpetual night (Solrzano 1972 vol. I: 277).

The labor that Indians were obliged to do in the mines, carrying great loads of ore to thesurface, was carried out:

Not along open and straight pathways with pure air but along dark,winding, and gloomy tunnels that have limited or pestilent air, [and] thatare typically like the Labyrinth of Daedalus and climbing up difficultand dangerous ladders (Solrzano 1972 vol. I: 281).

Not only this, many mines were inhabited by very frightening and demonic ghosts andapparitions that appeared to have been placed there to guard the wealth that lay belowground (Solrzano 1972 vol. I: 277). Perils such as these could not be eliminated throughthe sagacious management and maintenance of the mines, for they were intrinsic to the

very nature of the subterranean. Indeed, the dangers that the mines presented weremoral as well as physical, for they fomented, the jurist argued, criminal and abusivetreatment of the Indians that almost invariably went undetected and unpunished dueto the mines remote and subterranean locations. Where such abuses are concerned,he observed, we can say that, for the most part, they are swallowed up by the earth(Solrzano 1972 vol. I: 280).

Again like Agia, Solrzano invoked the corporal metaphor of the republic,reasoning that the Indians formed an integral part of this bodynamely, the feet thatsupported the upper parts by means of their physical labor. For Solrzano, however,the question of whereIndian workers could legitimately be sent, given their legal statusas free men, was both crucial and difficult. To be sure, he took into consideration theargument that a monarch could oblige his vassals to place themselves in harms way toserve the greater interests of the republic. However, he reasoned, when the dangers

were obvious and unavoidable, sending vassals to reside and work in places where thesedangers existed could not easily be justified, and above all in the case of the Indians,

whose physical constitution was fragile and weak (Solrzano 1972 vol. I: 275).5 Therewas no legal precept, Solrzano argued, that bestowed the right on those who ruled toknowingly place a vassal in mortal danger, regardless of the purpose that this served.

Thus, the legitimacy of the mita was highly questionable, for sending a person to anarea or place where he may die or be killed was equivalent to ordering the death of thatperson. In Roman times, he observed, those who were obliged to work in the mines wereconsidered not simply as slaves but, in a legal sense, as dead people (Solrzano 1972 vol.I: 274-275).

Now, Solrzano did not advocate the unconditional abolition of the mitaor, indeed, of other forms of forced labor. Although he favored the removal of thelabor draft in theory, he acknowledged that in practice this was much more difficult.Like most of his contemporaries, the jurist reasoned that, without mines and labor to

work them, the Spanish dominions in the Indies could not be maintained, nor couldthe faith be defended without the wealth that came from below ground. Nevertheless,his overwhelmingly negative interpretation of the causal qualities of the subterraneanensured that his view of the role that mining and the mita should play in Peru wassignificantly at odds with that espoused decades earlier by Toledo and his allies. As


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much as possible, he argued, the limitless proliferation of mines should be preventedand the use of Indian laborers kept within the bounds of necessity and public utilityand replaced, wherever feasible, with slaves or convicts.6 Even voluntary descent belowground was a dubious enterprise, morally speaking:

Because it is not permissible to lose ones life for the sake of any treasure and those who expose themselves to this danger sin and tempt God byliving and remaining in places known to be insalubrious (Solrzano 1972

vol. I: 307).

It is difficult to determine just how central a role the experience of visiting anddescending into the mines of Huancavelica played in shaping Solrzanos perceptionsof the underground. In contrast to Agia, whose descent below ground at Huancavelicapersuaded him to view those mines as sites of exceptional and hence unacceptable dangerto Indian bodies and lives, I suggest, however, that Solrzanos two years of residenceat the mercury mines may well have played a role in shaping his profoundly ambivalentattitudes, not only toward Huancavelica, but more generally toward the underground ingeneral and its exploitation with Indian labor.

We have seen that, for Solrzano, the question of the mita revolved as mucharound the qualities and characteristics of the places to which Indians were sent to workas around the nature of the Indians and their obligations as vassals of the Spanish crown.In setting all mines (and not just Huancavelica) apart from other kinds of productivespaces due to the extraordinary perils contained within them, the jurists discourse stronglyresisted the normalization and legitimization of the subterranean as a space into whichIndian workers could routinely be sent. Ensuring that the mines were beneficial ratherthan damaging to the republic-body was a dangerous and delicate task that not onlyrequired that every effort be made to minimize the harm that was done in these perilouslocations to the bodies of Indian laborers. It also demanded, in Solrzanos view, a moralreadiness that involved the rejection of limitless greed and of the pursuit of interestsbeyond those of the wider public good.

Like Solrzano, Guaman Poma de Ayala was deeply critical ofand indeedhe unreservedly condemneda colonial mining system that, in his view, threatened the

very existence of the Andean people. As will be seen, however, the vivid representationsof subterranean perils that are so prominent in many Spanish accounts of the mines,including Solrzanos writings, are virtually absent in the Andean authors manuscript.

Mining Spaces and Bad Government in the Writings of Guaman Poma Just as Spanish perceptions of the underground and the legitimacy (orotherwise) of its exploitation were subject to variation, so too Andean views of minesand mining were by no means homogeneous. Within indigenous communities that weresubject to the labor draft of Potos or Huancavelica, it is clear that the mita, along withthe prospect of injury, illness or death that labor inside the mines and refining millsimplied for many tributaries, was widely feared and abhorred (Robins 2011; Stavig 1999).

As Mangan (2005: 7-8) observes, however, it is not possible to speak of a commonindigenous experience either in colonial society at large or, more specifically, in themines and mining towns; although Andean communities were subject to overwhelmingexploitation by the colonial system in Potos, for free skilled laborers, unlike theunskilled mitayos who were assigned the most dangerous and difficult tasks, the minesoffered at least some element of economic opportunity. It is important to emphasize,therefore, that Guaman Pomas manuscript, not least because of his ambivalent status


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in colonial society as a Hispanicized and Christianized Andean, cannot be understood asrepresentative of a single, Andean perspective. In striking contrast to many Spanish portrayals of Potos, Guaman Pomas(1987: 1140-1143) depiction of Perus most renowned silver mines contain no mentionof the horrors of the underground or of the mine-workers suffering. Instead, boththe illustration (Figure 1) and text that appears in the chapter of the Buen gobierno7thatdescribes Perus towns and cities convey the unequivocal message that the mines and the

wealth that is extracted from them is of vital importance to the very existence of theSpanish crown and of Christendom, a message that resonates strongly with the patrioticillustrations of Potos that were produced by Peruvian Creoles such as Buenaventurade Salinas y Crdova (1630). Guaman Pomas representation departs from creole

writings, however, by conveying a profoundly Andeanized vision of the city and its mines(Tieffemberg 2004: 217-220). Rather than constituting a deep rupture in Andean history,the extraction of silver for the service of the Spanish monarch is simply a continuationof pre-colonial practice, for the mine also enriched the crown and majesty of theInca in his time along with the said gold mines of Carabaya of twenty-four carats(Guaman Poma 1987: 1140). In the illustration, that continuity is made unmistakablyclear. Standing proudly on the top of the Cerro Rico, the Inca, flanked by four Andeannobles from the four corners of Tawantinsuyu, supports the coat of arms of the Spanishmonarchy. The written text that frames the top half of the illustration reinforces thismessage:

Thanks to the said mine Castile exists, Rome is Rome, the pope is the popeand the king is ruler of the world. And the Church is defended and oursacred faith is kept by the four kings of the Indies and by the Inca emperor(Guaman Poma 1987: 1141).

Without doubt, Guaman Poma unreservedly condemned the Spanish greed for preciousmetals. In an acerbic portrait of the conquistadors, he described them as men who wereso bewitched by gold and silver that they took leave of their senses on arriving in Peru(Guaman Poma 1987: 380). Nevertheless, his Buen gobiernorepeatedly emphasizes thatthe mines must continue to generate wealth for the benefit of the Spanish monarch andthe Catholic faith. In part, his reluctance to denounce miningand in particular themita surely stemmed from his acceptance of the kings authority and his consequentacceptance of the labor demands placed on his Andean subjects (Adorno 2000: 86-87),as well as from a possible recognition of the futility of such a denunciation.

In striking contrast to the proud, even defiant portrait of an AndeanizedPotos that provided the Spanish monarchy with its vital foundations, Guaman Pomasdiscussions of the mercury mines of Huancavelica, scattered throughout the Buen gobierno,unflinchingly emphasize the relentless suffering and death that awaited the unfortunatemitayos. On carrying out a personal inspection of Huancavelica, the Andean authorexplains, the viceroy Mendoza y de la Luna witnessed with his own eyes:

All the hardship and misfortune, so many deaths of Indians poisoned bymercury, and the depopulation of this said kingdom of Peru, and how it willcontinue to be depopulated (Guaman Poma 1987: 482).


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Figure 2. La villa rica enpereal de Potocchi: the city and mines of Potocchi [Potos].(Source: Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva cornica y buen gobierno

(1615/1616). Kbenhavn, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, GKS 2232 4, p. 1065)..

In Guaman Pomas illustration of Huancavelica (Figure 2), there is no expression of

Andean pride, only depictions of relentless labor as workers refine ore and make theirway to and from the mine entrance that looms menacingly over the town. Here again,personal connections and experience are likely to have played a role: while the authorsknowledge of Potos and Upper Peru was second hand, it is almost certain that GuamanPoma personally visited Huancavelica (Deler 2008: 10) and, no less importantly, that he

witnessed the deleterious impact of the mita in the indigenous communities of his home


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province of Lucanas, one of the provinces that was subject to the Huancavelica labordraft. It is significant, however, that in none of his discussions of Huancavelica orindeed of other mines does Guaman Poma pay significant attention to describing theunderground environment and its impact on native bodies, nor does the subterraneanappear in his writings as a space into which, as a result of its intrinsically harmful qualities,

Andean laborers could not legitimately be sent. Instead, his condemnations of sufferingin the mines focus on the daily abuses perpetrated against Andeans by corregidores,miners, and other Spaniards in the form of violent physical punishments, the unlawful

withholding of wages, and the rape of the mitayos female relatives (Guaman Poma1987: 540-549). The illustration (Figure 3) that frames Guaman Pomas discussion in hischapter on mining does not, as one might expect, depict the suffering and perils that mine

workers experienced below ground. Rather, it constitutes a visual litany of horrors thatwere experienced on the surface by caciques principales(high-ranking Andean communityleaders) who had failed to supply miners with the required number of mitayos, namely,imprisonment in stocks, vicious whippings, and public humiliations.

Consequently, Guaman Poma directs his anger toward the failure of theSpaniards to maintain order in the mines and to govern them with prudence andforesight, that is, in ways that would not only sustain the flow of silver toward the royalcoffers, but that would also sustain and preserve the Andean populations on which thefunctioning of the mines depended. Although mercury was poisoning and killing endlessmitayos, his Buen gobiernosuggested, the real killer of Indians was the bad governmentof the Spaniards who either did not know how to exploit the mines without the Indianscoming to harm, or who, more significantly, had no interest in doing so. He had no wish,he declared on various occasions, for the mines to close: rather, may there be moreand greater mines and wealth (Guaman Poma 1987: 1028). However, he urged, It isnecessary to know how to run and govern it [i.e. the mines] (Guaman Poma 1987: 1130).


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Figure 3. La villa rica de Oropesa de Guancabilca: the city and mines ofGuancabilca [Huancavelica].

(Source: Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva cornica y buen gobierno(1615/1616). Kbenhavn, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, GKS 2232 4, p. 1055).


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Figure 4. Corregidor de minas: crown official punishes Indians at the mines.(Source: Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva cornica y buen gobierno

(1615/1616). Kbenhavn, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, GKS 2232 4, p. 529).

In didactic fashion, Guaman Poma outlined for the king of Spain hisrecommendations for a system of good government that, to paraphrase his words, wouldallow the Indians to rest and the mines to continue working (Guaman Poma 1987: 1065).In addition to preventing physical punishments and abuses, he declared, the king shouldensure, among other things, that food and water supplies be stored inside the mines incase workers are trapped, that no Indian under the age of twenty should be sent to minesof any kind, that only those who are strong and healthy should be sent into the mercurymines, and that no Indian should ever spend more than one day working inside these

mines, and in this way they will not be poisoned and will not die (Guaman Poma 1987:1065). In addition, he suggested, thieves, bandits, traitors and other convicted criminalsof all races should be sent as slaves to the mercury mines to live out their lives servingGod and king (Guaman Poma 1987: 1039).

Without question, Guaman Poma regarded the mines and mining towns ofPeru as profoundly damaging to the lives, health, and spiritual well-being of the Andeans


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who were compelled to work there. Like Toledo, however, the principal focus of hisconcern rested not on the intrinsic qualities of subterranean environments, but insteadon the laws and practices that governed their exploitation. Indeed, this focus was whollyconsistent with his portrayal of pre-conquest Andean kingdoms in which, for manyyears, he suggested that Andean subjects had worked peacefully in the silver and goldmines in the service of their ruler (Guaman Poma 1987: 1054). To be precise, GuamanPoma presented a particularly forceful and trenchant critique of the Spanish colonialsystem by conveying the message that it was not the mines per se that ultimately causedthe death and suffering of so many Andeans but rather the way in which the mines andmining towns were governed. The native people of Peru had far more to fear, GuamanPomas manuscript suggests, from the abuses and bad government of the Spanish thanthey did from any intrinsic characteristics of subterranean space.

Conclusions It is clear to see how the colonial difference made itself felt in legislation forand debates over the supply of labor for the mines in Peru. Ideas about the nature ofthe Indiansideas that identified them as different and inferior to Europeansplayed,of course, a central role in shaping colonizers views on whether and in what capacityindigenous populations could be obliged to work in the mines. However, the logicsof rule in Spanish Peru were also informed in significant ways by spatial rationalities.

The management of indigenous populationstheir distribution, discipline andpreservationwas of critical importance to colonial governmentality in Peru and otherareas of the Spanish empire, but this was intimately linked to perceptions of particular

places and environments and the effects that they were believed to have on indigenousworkers bodies and minds and, by extension, on the health and vitality of the kingdomsof Peru and Spain.

The arrival of the sixteenth century may well have heralded the establishmentin European and Euroamerican societies of increasingly utilitarian perceptions of thesubterranean as a space to be exploited for material gain as well as for the good ofsociety. The efforts of the Toledan government to normalize the mines as productivespaces of the viceroyalty chime with the ideas of Agricola, and exemplify the shift inmentalities that was taking place. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the Toledan vision ofgood government that privileged the channelling of labor into the underground was

questioned and challenged well into the seventeenth century. Colonial perceptions of subterranean space, however, cannot simply becategorized as positive and negative. The attribution of either external or intrinsicfactors to the characteristics and effects of mining environments played a crucial rolein shaping the logics of rule that were formulated vis--vis the use of indigenousdraft labor. Unable to subscribe to the idea that mining spaces were no different to ormore dangerous than work environments above ground, Agia adopted a narrative oflegitimization that differed substantially from that espoused by the Toledan government.

Whereas Toledo and his supporters argued that the Indians would benefit physicallyas well as spiritually from their labor in the mines, Agia concluded that, as the lowliest

components of the metaphorical body of the republic, the Indians were obliged, withinreason, to sacrifice the health and vigor of their bodies by descending below ground.Even more so than in Agias text, the underground remains in Solrzanos imaginationan alien and exceptional space beyond the boundaries of the everyday spaces of therepublic a space that could only be entered into in strict moderation and in accordance

with public utility if harm to Indian bodies and the republic-body alike was to be avoided.


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Like Solrzano, Guaman Poma called for stringent limitations to mineworkers exposure to underground environments in order to preserve their health andthat of the wider kingdom. In this sense, his manuscript reveals a spatial rationality ofgovernance comparable to that contained in Solrzanos deliberations on mining andthe mita. As we have seen, however, the subterranean environment and its dangers arestrikingly absent as a focus of visual or textual representation. This absence, I argue,should not be interpreted as a denial of the dangers of mining but instead as an endeavorto convey the message that the Spaniards, unlike the Incas and their predecessors, hadfundamentally destroyed the equilibrium between the sustenance of the republic-bodyand of the bodies of individual subjects by transforming mining sites into spaces ofabuse and unchecked exploitation.

In addition to revealing varied perceptions of subterranean spaces and theireffects on indigenous bodies, the writings examined in this paper also suggest thatpersonal experience had at least some part to play in shaping these understandings. Thestudy of Indian rights in colonial Spanish America should attend more closely, I contend,to the way in which geography and environment was made to matterin other words,to how debates about these rights, in Spain as well as in the Americas, were entangled

with ideas as well as with experiences of particular places and their qualities. Moreover,in exploring the spatial rationalities that underpinned the theories and practices ofcolonial government in Peru and elsewhere, there is a need to be sensitive to ongoingenvironmental changes in the geographical area under study as well as to changing ideasand mentalities. Over the course of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century,conditions in the mines of Potos and Huancavelica alike deteriorated dramaticallyfor those compelled to work in and around them. Due to deeply embedded colonialbeliefs about the status and nature of the Indians as well as the economic necessity ofthe Spanish crown, these changes were not sufficient to radically transform dominantspatial rationalities with regard to the use of Indian labor in the mines. Nevertheless,as Solrzanos text suggests, they may have played a significant role in activating pre-modern European anxieties about the underground and its exploitation that were just astenaciously embedded.

AcknowledgmentsI would like to express my gratitude to guest editors Alex Hidalgo and John FabianLpez and to editor David Robinson for their patience and assistance during the processof review, as well as for the invitation to contribute to the special issue. I am also verygrateful for the incisive and highly constructive comments provided by three anonymousreviewers. Any errors that remain are, of course, my own.

Notes1A unit of vertical measurement based on the average height of an adult male.

2Because this article focuses above all on notions that were explicitly articulated anddebated I use the term rationalities to refer to colonial ideas that informed or wereintended to influence the governance and administration of the mines in Peru.

3It is interesting to note that Guaman Poma portrays Don Juan de Mendoza as one ofthe viceroys of Peru who sought to protect indigenous populations, specifically in thecontext of the mercury mines. Other viceroys, he wrote, will be envious of the fact thatthis very Christian man favored so greatly the poor Indians of the said mines (GuamanPoma 1987: 482). Guaman Pomas portrait may be ironic, however, for he continues:


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As a result [of Mendozas efforts] the wealth of his Majesty will be greatly increased,provided that the Indians do not all die (Guaman Poma 1987: 482).

4 The Poltica indiana is a Spanish-language version of Solrzanos earlier work, DeIndiarum Jure, published in two stages in 1629 and 1639. As Ochoa Brun (1972: xxx-xxxiii) observes, however, this was not a straightforward translation. Notably, Solrzanomodified his arguments regarding the cruel treatment of Indians by Spaniards thatcensors of his Latin treatise believed to be exaggerated. For a more recent discussion ofSolrzanos scholarship see Muldoon (1991 and 1994).

5 Elsewhere in his treatise, Solrzano contradicts this statement by rehearsing thewidespread argument that the Indians possessed bodies and physiques that were ideallysuited to physical labor (Solrzano 1972 vol. I: 172).

6Although black slaves were hardly used for mining labor at Potos due to the fact thatthey constituted a considerable economic investment for their owners, some convictlabor was in fact used in the mines and refineries. See Robins (2011: 45).

7Guaman Pomas manuscript is divided into two principal sections. The first section,the Nueva crnica (New chronicle) consists of a chronicle of Andean history and thesecond, the Buen gobierno (Good government), describes colonial society in Peru andmakes recommendations to the intended reader Philip IV of Spain for reform. For anin-depth discussion of Guaman Poma and his writing see, in particular, Adorno (2000).

Archival SourcesArchivo General de las Indias (AGI)

Lima 34, N. 42-C. Peticin del protector general de los indios [Damin de Jeria] sobre queno se labren las minas del socavn de Huancavelica, y se deshagan las escaleras y cierrenla boca de l. 1604.Lima 35, N. 26. Minas de Guancavelica. Informe del virrey al rey. 14.I.1609Biblioteca Nacional de Espaa (BNE)

Mss. 9442, folios 69-72v. Dominio de los yngas en el Per y del que S.M. tiene en dichosreinos. No date.

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