Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 59
California in 1849, Klondike Alaska or anywhere else. The city of Potosi, at the foot of
the mountain at an average elevation of 14,000 feet, counted more than 150,000 people
in the census of AD 1611. At this time the Pilgrims had not even began thinking about
moving to North America. Potosi had a population comparable to London or Paris at the
time. European cities then were no more than large aggregations of miserably poor
people living in shantytowns usually around a castle or monastery. The hearts of these
cities were muddy, dirty, narrow streets fetid with the stench of human and animal
waste. It is said that at the time Potosi had an even denser population than the
European capitals. But Potosi was high in the mountains, and although it was bathed
with bright sunlight heavy with ultraviolet radiation it was always cold. These natural
conditions were a protective shield from the frequent plagues that ravaged Europe at
the time.
More importantly as a magnet for newcomers, most of Potosi’s European population
was very rich by continental standards. In the thirty year period between 1545 and 1574
alone, calculations based on the 1/5 or 1/10 cut the royal crown took from measured
mineral, and allowing for a suspected ¼ of the total that escaped measurement, show
that production added up to a then never before seen 1.69 billion pesos. By way of
comparison, a typical yearly salary for a criollo supervisor in 1570 was in the order of
100 pesos (about $40,000 in 2002 dollars). Using this conversion factor, the mines at
Potosi produced about 676 billion dollars (2002) during that thirty-year period alone.
This river of silver continued to flow out of the Cerro Rico, albeit with diminishing
strength, until about the War of Independence from Spain in the early 19 th Century. That
is the big reason why the Alto Peru, Bolivia today, acquired its reputation as the most
important silver producer in the world and one of the great mining countries anywhere.
Silver production was virtually exhausted by the end of the 18 th century. The advent of
the republic significantly slowed even more any mining exploitation still active. New
immigration, except for a few soldiers that had come down with Simon Bolivar’s
expeditionary army of liberation, ended as well. My first Bolivian ancestor, from whom
my family name comes, was one of those soldiers whose swords and arms brought
independence to the Alto Peru. Since then descendents of the same families, both
indigenous and expatriate, residing in the area at the time have made up the bulk of the
population. Class stratification remained strong, always giving the European stock
favorable access to land, education and other means of production. The descendents of
the former Conquistadors also had use of the semi-vassal labor of the subjugated
population. Among the ancestral traditions of Inca society, from whom the peasants
descended, subservience to their masters had become innate. The new Spanish
patrones found this feature very useful to establish and perpetuate their own
dominance.
The Republic, brought about in 1825, did not change the status of this social system.
Fifty years after its foundation, the main natural resource exploited in Bolivia was guano,
(bird dung) from the seemingly infinite bands of pelicans, cormorants and other birds
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