Bolívar’s Potosi Medal

artificialia
Medal commemorating Simón Bolívar’s arrival in Potosí, 1825 (courtesy of Daniel Frank Sedwick LLC, auction #23, lot 1479).
If you are the author, please send us aditional information
Visitors, send us your feedback
Kris Lane

The great Andean insurrection of the early 1780s spared the Imperial Villa of Potosí, but it severely disrupted the mit’a and ordinary supply chains. By 1800, the city was in crisis again, facing drought on top of everything else. Mining continued in spurts, but by the time independence stirrings began in 1809, the Cerro Rico was nearly moribund. Rebels invaded from Buenos Aires in 1814, only to be driven out by royalists soon after, both groups sacking and pillaging the city, mint and rural estates. When Simón Bolívar finally reached Potosí in 1825, the city breathed a sigh of relief. The Liberator climbed to the top of the Cerro Rico to declare his work finished. South America was free.

Further reading
  • Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, B. (1965) Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí, 3 vols., edited by L. Hanke and G. Mendoza (Providence, RI: Brown University Press).
  • Bakewell, P.J. (1985) Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian Labor in Potosí, 1545–1650 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press).
  • Bakewell, P.J. (1987) Silver and Entrepreneurship in Seventeenth-Century Potosí: The Life and Times of Antonio López de Quiroga (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press).
  • Barragán Romano, R. (2019) Potosí global: viajando con sus primeras imágenes (1550–1650) (La Paz: Plural Editores).
  • Bueuchler, R.M. (1981) The Mining Society of Potosí, 1776–1810 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press).
  • Capoche, L. (1959) Relación general de la Villa Imperial de Potosí [1585]. BAE 122. Edited  Hanke (Madrid: Atlas).
  • Cole, J. (1985) The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
  • González Casasnovas, I. (2000) Las dudas de la corona: la política de repartimientos para la minería de Potosí (1680–1732) (Madrid: CSIC).
  • Lane, K. (2019) Potosí: The Silver City That Changed the World (Oakland, CA: University of California Press).
  • Mangan, J. (2005) Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
  • Tandeter, E. (1993) Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692–1826 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press).