Hard to come to terms with our A.M. vs P.M. contrast!
A.M. we visited Potosi's Catedral. It's vast! Think St Peter's, Vatican City!! It's ornate! More Gold Leaf than the Basilica di Santa Maria in Rome!! And it was built by the Spanish, funded by the silver extracted from Cerro Rico, in the name of God.
P.M. we visited Casa Nacional de la Moneda (National Mint). It too is vast - but not ornate! Also built by the Spanish, to convert silver ore into macuquina coins, or Pieces of Eight as Pirates knew them! A fine building, housing the original machinery which melted down ore into ingots, pressed and cut the silver and stamped the Spanish crown onto the circular blanks. All powered by slave labour!
We saw four wooden pressing mills designed and built in Austria - each made to be turned by four mules - the Spanish found mules weren't up to the job and died after 6 months - so they imported 20,000 slaves from Africa to take the mules places! No information was provided on their life expectancy.
It's thought that eight million native South American forced labourers died in the extraction and processing of silver during Spanish occupation of Potisi.
From Cathedral to Mint - hard to come to terms with.
