Reconstruction
Silver made Potosí famous, but food made the city possible. After intensive exploitation of Cerro Rico began in 1545, a mining settlement nearly 4,000 meters above sea level expanded with extraordinary speed. The cold, dry environment permitted little cultivation near the city, so most residents depended on provisions transported from lower valleys, pastoral districts and distant coasts. Silver flowed outward while food, fuel and animals moved inward.
Andean staples formed the foundation of working diets. Written accounts identify maize, potatoes, chuño—potatoes preserved by repeated freezing and drying—oca, quinoa, chile, salt, meat and fish. Charqui, usually dried camelid meat, traveled well without refrigeration. Mita workers arriving from the Lake Titicaca region reportedly brought maize and chuño on llama caravans, together with alpacas or llamas that could be slaughtered during the journey or residence. Chicha, generally brewed from maize, was produced and sold in the city. Wheat bread and wine also entered the colonial market, although access and preferences varied by income, ethnicity and household.
The Columbian Exchange added sheep, goats, cattle, pigs and chickens to an existing Andean economy of camelid herding. These introduced animals often performed poorly at Potosí’s elevation and were commonly raised in lower districts before being driven or carried to market. Early seventeenth-century descriptions report livestock, pork products, cheese, salted Pacific fish and even fresh highland fish preserved with ice. Zooarchaeological evidence from nearby colonial settlements reveals marked inequality: indigenous mining households at Porco relied predominantly on native fauna, whereas affluent residents at Tarapaya obtained sheep, goats, chickens and diverse imported fish. Applying that pattern directly to every Potosí household would be an inference, but it demonstrates how status shaped access to food.
Labor was equally important to provisioning. From the 1570s, the colonial mita compelled designated Andean communities to send workers to Potosí, often accompanied by relatives, livestock and supplies. Coerced labor nevertheless coexisted with wage workers, merchants, transporters and producers. Indigenous and mixed-heritage women became especially important as brewers, bakers, market vendors and credit providers. Within two decades of the settlement’s foundation, many inhabitants were purchasing rather than producing their food.
Potosí therefore joined mine, countryside and marketplace into one regional system. Demand encouraged grain and livestock production in valleys such as Cochabamba, Chuquisaca and Tarija and sustained llama-caravan routes across hundreds of kilometers. Its foods did not form a single uniform cuisine: Andean preservation, introduced livestock, Iberian preferences and extreme inequality existed together. Chuño, charqui, chicha and wheat bread remain recognizable parts of Andean foodways, although continuous descent from particular colonial households cannot always be demonstrated.
Historical context
The Spanish Empire governed Potosí as part of the Viceroyalty of Peru, while American silver circulated through Atlantic and Pacific trade networks. Population estimates are unusually uncertain for a boomtown, but scholarly reconstructions suggest roughly 120,000 inhabitants in the 1570s and about 160,000 by 1610, placing Potosí among the largest cities in the Americas and comparable in scale to major European centers. Mercury amalgamation, expanded after the reforms of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo in the 1570s, joined hydraulic ore mills, coerced labor drafts and long-distance supply routes in an immense mining system.
Evidence
Written sources
StrongSixteenth- and early seventeenth-century administrative descriptions, market records and labor accounts identify staple purchases, livestock, fish, food routes, chicha production and provisions carried by mita households.
Archaeological
ModerateExcavated colonial domestic deposits at Porco and Tarapaya provide material evidence for regional food practices, but these sites lie outside Potosí’s urban center and cannot represent every city household.
Zooarchaeological
StrongAnalyzed faunal assemblages distinguish predominantly local animal use in indigenous mining contexts at Porco from greater use of Eurasian livestock and imported fish among affluent residents at Tarapaya.
Food identification
StrongMaize, chuño, meat, fish, chile, salt, charqui, chicha, wheat bread and introduced livestock are explicitly identified in contemporary or near-contemporary records; faunal identifications independently support several animal foods.
Dating
StrongThe beginning of intensive colonial exploitation in 1545 and the major expansion of the mita and mercury-amalgamation system during the 1570s are securely documented.
Preparation method
ModeratePreservation by drying or salting, chicha brewing and bread baking are documented, but exact household recipes and preparation sequences varied and are incompletely recorded.
Geographic attribution
StrongHistorical and archaeological research securely locates the mining city at Cerro Rico and documents provisioning connections with Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, Tarija, the Lake Titicaca region, Arica and southern trade routes.
Historical interpretation
ModerateThe interpretation of Potosí as a food-dependent regional market is well supported. The relative importance and coerciveness of different labor categories, and the representativeness of elite and worker diets, remain subjects of scholarly qualification.
Sources
- 1.Susan D. deFrance (2012). Dieta y uso de animales en el Potosí colonial. Chungara, Revista de Antropología Chilena 44(1): 9-24. doi:https://doi.org/10.4067/S0717-73562012000100002Scientific literature
- 2.Susan D. deFrance (2003). Diet and Provisioning in the High Andes: A Spanish Colonial Settlement on the Outskirts of Potosí, Bolivia. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 7(2): 99-125. doi:https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025184117208Scientific literature
- 3.Jane E. Mangan (2005). Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí. Duke University Press. doi:https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822386667Modern synthesis
- 4.Paula C. Zagalsky (2014). La mita de Potosí: una imposición colonial invariable en un contexto de múltiples transformaciones (siglos XVI-XVII; Charcas, Virreinato del Perú). Chungara, Revista de Antropología Chilena 46(3). doi:https://doi.org/10.4067/S0717-73562014000300005Scientific literature
- 5.Raquel Gil Montero (2011). Free and Unfree Labour in the Colonial Andes in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. International Review of Social History 56(S19): 297-318. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859011000472Scientific literature
- 6.Gwendolin B. Cobb (1949). Supply and Transportation for the Potosí Mines, 1545-1640. The Hispanic American Historical Review 29(1): 25-45. doi:https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-29.1.25Modern synthesis
