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Silver Mining And Social Conflict In Seventeenth-Century Peru: The War Of The Nations In Laicacota, 1665-1667, Meredith Dunham Dodge

Latin American Studies ETDs

In the mid-seventeenth century, there occurred in Laicacota, site of a rich silver strike in the Viceroyalty of Peru, a wave of social conflict. The violence arose from traditional peninsular regional animosities, known as the war of the nations, and pitted Basques against Andalusians, who were led by Gaspar de Salcedo. The unrest was exacerbated by Salcedo's drive to make access to the mines an Andalusian monopoly.

The Santiesteban administration was unable to halt the conflict, which it inadvertently encouraged by the appointment of a corregidor sympathetic to the Basques, Angelo de Peredo. After Santiesteban's death, violence increased. The Andalusians, …