Potosí silver and the mita

Silver was found at Potosí in 1545, and within three decades the city passed 150,000 people, the largest in the New World, and the site was regarded as the world's largest industrial complex. From 1573 to 1812 the Spanish mita made about 200 Andean communities send one-seventh of their men in rotation to the Potosí silver and Huancavelica mercury mines; the districts it covered are measurably poorer today.

The mechanism

THE CLOCK

How it was checked

• EvidenceT5 INDEPENDENT SECULAR; Status: ADDED 2026-09-19
• Letter eraTHE RELEASES, AND THE ENCLOSURE THAT FOLLOWS EACH 1382 to 1694
• SourcesRECORD — Britannica, 'Potosí'; UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 'City of Potosí'; MIT News (2010) on M. Dell, 'The Persistent Effects of Peru's Mining Mita', Econometrica 78 (2010) · checked 19 September: Britannica (read in a browser; WebFetch is refused by the site), 'Potosi'; UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 'City of Potosi' (read in a browser); M. Dell, 'The Persistent Effects of Peru's Mining Mita' (abstract via Crossref/SSRN)