The Leading eBooks Store Online for Kindle Fire, Apple, Android,
Nook, Kobo, PC, Mac, Sony Reader... A History of Mining in Latin
America From the Colonial Era to the Present For twenty-five
years, Kendall Brown studied Potosí, Spanish America's greatest
silver producer and perhaps the world's most famous mining
district. He read about the flood of silver that flowed from its
Cerro Rico and learned of the toil of its miners. Potosí
symbolized fabulous wealth and unbelievable suffering. New World
bullion stimulated the formation of the first world economy but
at the same time it had profound consequences for labor, as mine
operators and refiners resorted to extreme forms of coercion to
secure workers. In many cases the environment also suffered
devastating harm. All of this occurred in the name of wealth for
individual entrepreneurs, companies, and the ruling states. Yet
the question remains of how much economic development mining
managed to produce in Latin America and what were its social and
ecological cons