From the historian's notes

Potosi, 1590

Bolivia · South America · August 1590 · winter (austral)

What it was medium

one of the largest cities in the Americas, over 100,000 people at 4,000 min 1545, after silver was found in the Cerro Rico

That year

• The mita: each year thousands of Andean men are drafted from sixteen provinces to work the mines and mills, many walking in with their families since 1573 medium-higha draft of some 13,000 a year
• Ore is crushed in water-driven stamp mills along the Ribera and refined with mercury from Huancavelica since the 1570s highthe mountain turned into coin
• The mint strikes rough coins cut from silver bars and hammered with the royal arms and a cross these years highmoney for half the world

Who held it medium-high

the Spanish Crown, Viceroyalty of PeruPhilip II; the new viceroy, the Marquis of Canete, arrived in Lima this yearViceroy Toledo's reforms of the 1570s: the mita labour draft, mercury refining, the dams and the mint

Its name high

Villa Imperial de PotosiWritten in Latin

The date, there high

1590the Gregorian calendar, adopted in Peru in 1584Church bells all over the town, and the mills, which do not stop.

Money medium

the silver real; the piece of eight is 8 realescut fragments of coin; coca leaf passes as money among the workerseverything costs several times what it would in Spain

Weather medium-high

August: southern winter, dry, glaring sun by day and hard frost at night, a thin cold wind

Things

Objectshand-cut silver coins; mercury flasks; coca leaf in pouches; llama-wool clothFoodfreeze-dried potatoes (chuno); llama meat; maize beer (chicha); wine from Spain at outrageous pricesClothalpaca and llama wool; imported silk and velvet for the richGetting aboutllama trains; mule trains to the coastIn the aircold dust; smoke from the refining ovens; coca

What she'd hear

Spanish in the plaza; Quechua and Aymara everywhere else; Portuguese and Basque among the mine owners.

Where she could stand

• the Cerro Rico — the red silver mountain over the town, riddled with shafts and spoil heaps
• the Ribera — the line of water-driven stamp mills along the stream
• the mint — where bars become coins
• the dams above the town — artificial lakes in the hills feeding the mills

Researched for this card · confidence medium-high