| Abstract: | This article discusses the characteristics of the (principally indigenous) work force in the mines of Charcas, Bolivia, in the last decades of the eighteenth century. It analyses the ways in which mine workers were disciplined under law and in daily practice, as well as their resistance to such discipline, so as to assess the application and impact of mining legislation. The chief obstacles to proletarianization lay in the characteristic mixture in the mines of wage labourers and peasants, as well as in the different concepts of work held by Spaniards and Indians. An increase in coercion during this period, both by the State and private individuals, so as to recruit and retain workers provoked different strategies of resistance among the Indians, as is illustrated by a significant joint protest among smelting–mill workers in Oruro and Paria in 1793. |
