Repasiris and azogueros in the ravine: expansion and decline of production spaces of the mining proto-industry (Tarapacá, 1718-1845)

Abstract

The 18th century saw the beginning of a mining cycle based on the production and export of minerals processed in pre-mechanical manufacturing offices in Tarapacá, in the extreme south of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The regional productive forces were organised in a chain of exploitation between mining owners, representatives of commercial capital and subordinate workers, forming a long-lasting mining production regime of a proto-industrial character. The early centre of mining operations was the Tarapacá ravine and the capital town of San Lorenzo. Internal contradictions redistributed these productive forces, triggering a diaspora from the pre-cordillera to the pampa, where the multi-purpose mining offices operated, producing silver, saltpetre and gunpowder from 1765 onwards. We propose this process as a necessary antecedent to understand in historical perspective the accelerated littoralisation of Tarapacá in the second half of the 19th century and to interpret Tarapacá mining as a long mining cycle, discussing the artificial division of regional history into a colonial silver cycle and a republican saltpetre cycle.