Potosí in the context of "Potosí Department"

Guanajuato (Spanish pronunciation: [gwanaˈxwato], Otomi: Ndänuë) is a municipality in central Mexico and the capital of the State of Guanajuato. It is part of the macroregion of the Bajío. It is located in a narrow valley, which makes its streets narrow and winding. Most are alleys that cars cannot pass through, and some are long sets of stairs up the mountainsides. Many of the city's thoroughfares are partially or fully underground. The historic center has numerous small plazas and colonial-era mansions, churches, and civil constructions built using pink or green sandstone. The city historic center and the adjacent mines were proclaimed a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988.

The growth of Guanajuato resulted from the abundantly available minerals in the mountains surrounding it. Its mines were among the most important during the European colonization of America (along with Zacatecas also in Mexico, Potosí in Bolivia and Ouro Preto in Brazil). One of the mines, La Valenciana, accounted for two-thirds of the world's silver production at the height of its production.

The silver standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of silver. Silver was far more widespread than gold as the monetary standard worldwide, from the Sumerians c. 3000 BC until 1873. Following the discovery in the 16th century of large deposits of silver at the Cerro Rico in Potosí, Bolivia, an international silver standard came into existence in conjunction with the Spanish pieces of eight. These silver dollar coins were an international trading currency for nearly four hundred years.

Qullasuyu (Quechua and Aymara spelling, listen; Collasuyu, Kholla Suyu; Spanish: Collasuyo) was the southeastern provincial region of the Inca Empire. Qullasuyu is the region of the Qulla and related specifically to the native Qulla Quechuas who primarily resided in areas such as Cochabamba and Potosí. Most Aymara territories which are now largely incorporated into the modern South American states of northern Chile, Peru, Bolivia and the Argentine northwest were annexed during the reign of Sapa Inca Huayna Cápac in the sixteenth century.

Recently, there have been movements to form a "Greater Qullasuyu" (or Qullana Suyu Marka) which would incorporate a territory similar to the former Tawantinsuyu in extent. This ideal has been proposed by the office of the Apu Mallku and the parliament of the Qullana. Qullasuyu was the largest of the four suyu (or "quarters", the largest divisions of the Inca empire) in terms of area. This suyu encompassed the Bolivian Altiplano and much of the southern Andes, running down into northwest Argentina and as far south as the Maule river near modern Santiago, Chile. Along with Kuntisuyu, it was part of the Hurin Suyukuna or "Lower Quarters" of the empire.

The global silver trade between the Americas, Europe, and China from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries was a spillover of the Columbian exchange which had a profound effect on the world economy. Many scholars consider the silver trade to mark the beginning of a genuinely global economy, with one historian noting that silver "went round the world and made the world go round". Although global, much of that silver ended up in the hands of the Chinese, as they accepted it as a form of currency. In addition to the global economic changes the silver trade engendered, it also put into motion a wide array of political transformations in the early modern era. "New World mines", concluded several prominent historians, "supported the Spanish empire", acting as a linchpin of the Spanish economy.

Spaniards at the time of the Age of Discovery discovered vast amounts of silver, much of which was from the Potosí silver mines, to fuel their trade economy. Potosí's deposits were rich and Spanish American silver mines were the world's cheapest sources of it. The Spanish acquired the silver, minting it into the peso de ocho to then use it as a means of purchase; that currency was so widespread that even the United States accepted it as valid until the Coinage Act of 1857. As the Spanish need for silver increased, new innovations for more efficient extraction of silver were developed, such as the amalgamation method of using mercury to extract silver from ore.

Cerro Rico (Spanish for "Rich Mountain"), Cerro Potosí ("Potosí Mountain") or Sumaq Urqu (Quechua sumaq "beautiful, good, pleasant", urqu "mountain", "beautiful (good or pleasant) mountain"), is a mountain in the Andes near the Bolivian city of Potosí. Cerro Rico, which is popularly conceived of as being "made of" silver ore, is famous for providing vast quantities of silver for the Spanish Empire, most of which was shipped to metropolitan Spain. It is estimated that eighty-five percent of the silver produced in the central Andes during this time came from Cerro Rico.

As a result of mining operations in the mountain, the city of Potosí became one of the largest cities in the New World. It is said that revolutionary hero Simon Bolívar once waved a flag from the top of this monumental mountain in a historic moment that symbolized the founding of a new nation. Just a year later, congress decided to change the colors to yellow-red-green and include a coat of arms featuring the iconic condor, alpaca and Cerro Rico mine.

Mining in Bolivia has been a dominant feature of the Bolivian economy as well as Bolivian politics since 1557. Colonial era silver mining in Bolivia, particularly in Potosí, played a critical role in the Spanish Empire and the global economy. Tin mining supplanted silver by the twentieth century and the central element of Bolivian mining, and wealthy tin barons played an important role in national politics until they were marginalized by the industry's nationalization into the Bolivian Mining Corporation (COMIBOL) that followed the 1952 revolution. Bolivian miners played a critical part to the country's organized labor movement from the 1940s to the 1980s.

By 1985, however, the production of every significant mineral in the country had failed to exceed the output registered in 1975. Moreover, the international tin market crashed in 1985. The mining sector in 1987 accounted for only 4 percent of GDP, 36 percent of exports, 2.5 percent of government revenues, and 2 percent of the labor force, compared with 8 percent of GDP, 65 percent of exports, 27 percent of government revenues, and about 6 percent of the labor force in 1977. Spurred by a massive increase in gold production, however, the mining sector rebounded in 1988, returning to the top of the nation's list of foreign exchange earners.