MEMS Lecture Series | Sacred and Profane: Andean Guacas and Colonial Extractions, 1569-1636

In 1569, Mari Flores, Hernán García, Blas García, and Juan Vallejo filed and received permission to start a mining company outside of Potosí, Bolivia, the world's silver capital. Unlike other articles of incorporation submitted by sixteenth-century Spanish subjects, their company was time-bound, authorized for six years, focused on extracting the sacred guaca (living site of offerings) of Manducalla. Each investor was identified in a different way, as an index of their race, gender, and artisan status: Hernán Garcia, of African descent ("mulato"); Mari Flores, "his wife" ("su muger"); Blas García, of Indigenous ancestry ("mestizo"); and Juan Vallejo, chairmaker ("sillero"). In this talk, I compare the terms of the 1569 contract with a similar proposal awarded in 1636 by Spanish colonial officials, treasurers Pedro de Sanabria and Juan de los Reyes, "discoverers and knowers" of a guaca whose rights of extraction they seek to award to Father Pedro Garrido. Unlike the earlier example, this case dragged on for nearly 20 years. By looking at the legal language of possession, discovery, and extraction in the two cases, this talk examines how race and gender intersected with state-sanctioned sacred and technical knowledge from the late sixteenth-century into the mid-seventeenth century.