Mining and wages in the colonial Andes during the Seventeenth Century

GIL MONTERO, RAQUEL

Budapest

Congreso; Reconceptualising Wage Labour From a Long-Term and Transregional Perspective; 2020

Worlds of related coercions in work

The aim of this paper is to discuss wages and forced labor in Potosí during the second half of the Seventeenth Century. It was a period of massive migration, diminishing of indigenous population and a significant process of urbanization. It was also a transitional time regarding the initial configuration of colonial Peru. The organization of labor analyzed here is the mita, established during the 1570s by the Spanish Viceroy Francisco de Toledo. The state regulated the mitayos? payment, working hours, rest periods, and other obligations and rights. Those laborers were forced to work for private entrepreneurs and constituted approximately thirty percent of the total labor force at the beginning of the Seventeenth Century.CONGRESO VIRTUAL POR LA PANDEMIA DE COVID 19