Cerro of
Potosi
(Spanish for "Hill of Potosi")
Cerro of Potosi, Bolivia, 1584.
Artist unknown.
Enslaved Africans were brought to South and Central America to work in silver and gold mines in Bolivia, Mexico, Brazil, and Columbia. In Bolivia, after an initial attempt at using African labor in the mines of Potosi, colonists turned to the mountainous terrain. Despite this, by 1930, an estimated 59,000 people of African ancestry lived in Bolivia. Most were descendants of domestic workers in La Paz.
Black men and women mined for gold, as slaves, in the rivers of the Colombian mountains as early as the sixteenth century. They continue this tradition today but, as free men and women, they reap the benefits of their labor.