Silver, the Abundant Metal: Upper and Lower Peru

CHAPTER FOUR

SILVER, THE ABUNDANT METAL: UPPER AND LOWER PERU

Although the mines of Mexico produced the most silver in the Span- ish Indies over the entire colonial epoch, Peru—Upper Peru (Bolivia) and Lower Peru (Peru)—produced more during the first half of that epoch. In fact, not until the 1670s did Mexican silver output surpass that of Peru. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the halcyon days for Peruvian silver mining, Potosí, the richest silver mining area in all colonial Spanish America, drove New World silver production, but other regions of Peru—Cailloma, Carangas, Chucuito, Pasco, Oruro, and Trujillo among others—contributed their share of silver as well. Overall, between 1531 and 1810, Peru produced almost one and one-half billion pesos or 42 percent of the New World’s output of silver (see Figure 2–3). Upper Peru’s share of this Peruvian total was much larger, 80 percent; the other 20 percent came from Lower Peru, primarily in the eighteenth century. Around 1800, Alexander von Humboldt, the keen observer of the colonial regime, had surmised that Peru was the major New World bullion producer, but Mexico (New Spain) was the leader in silver output (See Figure 1–1).

Atahualpa’s Ransom and the Cuzco Distribution

Spaniards became aware of the precious metals of Peru at the moment of conquest with their most salient introduction to Inca riches coming in 1533 when they acquired Atahualpa’s ransom. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish intruders, the Inca empire in the Andes (Tahuantinsuyu) was rent by civil war between the followers of Huáscar and those of Atahualpa, both of whom were sons of the previous ruler, Huayna Capac. In their struggle for the Inca emperorship, Atahualpa prevailed and captured his half-brother Huáscar. An authority on the early Spanish presence in Peru, Noble David Cook notes that when Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, mounted his third expedition to the region in 1531, Atahualpa was in 142 chapter four

Quito in present-day Ecuador, but in 1532, he came south with a few thousand Inca warriors both to deal with the European interlopers and to enjoy the thermal baths at Cajamarca, where the Spaniards joined them. When Atahualpa visited the Spanish encampment in November 1532, Pizarro and his men ambushed the Inca and took him captive. Sensing the Spanish desire for precious metals, Atahualpa offered to pay a ransom of two rooms of silver and one of gold in exchange for his release. The Spaniards agreed to his terms and were astounded when Atahualpa’s Inca supporters trooped into Cajamarca with gold and silver jewelry, ornaments, and ritual pieces to save their leader. With the ransom in hand, however, the Spaniards reneged on their promise. They charged Atahualpa with killing Huáscar, held a mock trial, found him guilty, and garroted the Inca on July 26, 1533. Meanwhile, on June 17, just before Atahualpa’s execution, Pizar- ro’s men divided up his ransom. The ransom was breathtaking. Cook estimates it at 13,420 pounds of gold (6,100 kilograms) and 26,000 pounds of silver (11,818 kilograms).1 A Peruvian expert, Manuel Moreyra Paz Soldán, calculates the booty taken at 5,721 kilograms of gold and 11,041 kilograms of silver, remarkably close to Cook’s fig- ures. In value, Moreyra sets the amount of the ransom at 1,326,539 pesos of buen oro (good gold)2 or 2,294,626 silver pesos of eight reales. The value of the silver was 51,610 marks or 438,685 silver pesos.3 Sig- nificantly, the gold obtained from Atahualpa’s ransom constituted 41 percent of total Peruvian gold gathered by the Spaniards from 1531 to 1540, but only 8 percent of the silver. Moreover, the gold collected from the ransom was greater than total Mexican gold output in the immediate post-conquest decade (1521–1530), an indication that gold booty taken from the Incas was vastly greater than that seized from the Aztecs in Mexico. Less well known than Atahualpa’s ransom was the Cuzco distribution (reparto del Cuzco), a sharing of booty taken in the Spaniards’ conquest of the Inca capital in March 1534. The gold seized amounted to 580,200 pesos of buen oro worth 959,882 silver pesos or 17 percent of the total for the decade from 1531 to 1540. The silver totaled 215,000 marks or 1,827,500 silver pesos or 35 percent of the silver total

1 Noble David Cook, “Atahualpa,” in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996), 231–232. 2 A peso of buen oro in 1533 was valued at 450 maravedis. 3 Moreyra Paz Soldán, Moneda colonial, 35–43.