Huancavelica mercury mine
Mercurio de Huancavelica
- Date
- 1563 · confidence medium
- Place
- Santa Bárbara, Huancavelica, Peru
- Credited to
- Amador de Cabrera and Enrique Garcés (Spanish discovery); earlier Indigenous use of cinnabar
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
The largest cinnabar deposit in the Americas, whose mercury made silver amalgamation viable in the Viceroyalty of Peru. It was worked by the mining mita labour draft for more than two centuries.
Indigenous people knew and used cinnabar (llimpi) as a pigment before the conquest; crediting the 'discovery' to Amador de Cabrera (1563) or Garcés is the colonial chronicle version. Mining began around 1564.
What it led to
- Amalgamation of Potosí silver from 1572
- The Huancavelica mining mita, with high mortality from mercury poisoning
- A viceregal mining economy dependent on mercury from Huancavelica and Almadén