Cerro Rico, Potosí
Cerro Rico, the 'Mountain that Eats Men,' towering over Potosí, Bolivia, source of most of Spain's American silver from the 1540s onward.
Spanish colonists identified the silver deposits of Cerro Rico in 1545, and within decades Potosí had grown into one of the largest cities in the world, its wealth built on the forced labor of indigenous workers conscripted under the mita system and enslaved Africans who died by the thousands in its shafts and refineries. Silver from the mountain was minted into coin and shipped through the Spanish treasure fleets and the Manila galleons, financing the Habsburg empire's wars and fueling a genuinely global trade network that reached as far as Ming China. Mining continues at Cerro Rico today, though centuries of extraction have left the mountain hollowed out and its richest veins long exhausted. See Potosí, silver and Spanish imperial finance.
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