La negociación de un compromiso: la mita de las minas de plata de San Agustín de Huantajaya, Tarapacá, Perú (1756-1766)

Abstract

The implementation of the mining mita other than in Potosi and Huancavelica was never very successful during the colonial period. In 1758, the Spanish Crown awarded a mining mita to the owner of a silver mine in San Augustin de Huantajaya, Tarapacá, the only mining area in the viceroyalty that was not located in the Andes. The survival of a mine owner’s registry book that recorded the sometimes daily exchange of letters between the mine owner and the kurakas permits a much more detailed view than is commonly available of the negotiations that took place when such mitas were implemented. Rather than seeing a rise in contentious politics that characterizes this period in Peru, we have a persistence of norms that governed kuraka relations with colonial society. Nevertheless, largely through the efforts of the kurakas of Tarapacá, this mining mita was never implemented and less strenuous tasks than the dreaded work in the mines were reassigned to the mita.

Keywords

• curacas
• mita
• silver mines
• San Agustín de Huantajaya
• Tarapacá
• Perú