The labor force in Potosí (Viceroyalty of Peru) and in New Spain included the same elements, but in different proportions. In Real del Monte (north of Mexico City), forced drafts (similar to the mita) from neighboring indigenous communities provided some workers, but the majority were wage laborers of diverse ethnicities: creole, mestizo, mulatto and acculturated Indians. In both places, there were also a limited number of African slaves. In order to attract skilled laborers, which included the pikemen who knew from experience how best to follow a silver vein and extract the ore, a custom developed that granted workers a share of the ore they extracted beyond a required daily quota in addition to a modest wage. For Mexican mineworkers, this share (called the “partido”) formed the bulk of their income, in part because they put the best ore into the sacks that were to be shared. (Peruvian workers negotiated a day to work and keep the ore, called the kajcheo.)

During the 1750s, Pedro Terreros invested in improvements (especially draining water) to his Veta Vizacaína mine, and in the 1760s tried to recoup profits by decreasing his labor costs: reducing the wages paid to the unskilled peons (from 4 to 3 reals a day), increasing the daily quota, decreasing the percentage of ore to be shared, and finally changed the procedure by which that share would be calculated. Frustrated with this steady erosion of their livelihood, the mineworkers protested, first to local officials on July 28, 1766, and then, when they felt their grievances were not being addressed, to the viceroy himself on August 1. The majority of workers also refused to report to the mines until their demands were met. A royal inspector wrote up new regulations that preserved the mineworkers’ right to the “partido,” but also sanctioned the owner’s policy of mixing the ore before taking out the workers’ shares. Over the next several years, local officials (and even a royal inspector, stay tuned for the new kind of bureaucratic under the Bourbon reforms) continued to side with Terreros, calling for severe punishment of the leaders and abolition of the partido, but the subsequent viceroy continued to show clemency toward the workers in the interests of preserving social peace.

What were the specific demands of the workers?

What kind of language or philosophy did they use to protest conditions and to appeal to royal authorities?

How does this form of resistance compare to others you have read about in the course (e.g. the indigenous use of the courts in Stern, Guaman Poma’s letters, slave resistance)?