The salt mines of Santa Maria and Peñol Blanco in the second half of the sixteenth century. Border, joint labor and territorial articulation

Abstract

This article analyzes the territorial articulation process occurred from the discovery
and exploitation of various salt efflorescence near the northwestern Zacatecas and
San Luis Potosi in the second half of the sixteenth century. The commercialization of
salt from the Salinas de Santa Maria and Salinas del Peñol Blanco, not only boosted
mine production of Zacatecas and other areas such as Pachuca and Guanajuato, but
in the same way, under this commercial momentum other compulsive mechanisms
were Developer, aimed to regulate the transfer of indigenous workers enrolled in
the district of Tlaltenango. This comprehensive process, little studied, on the other
hand, allows us to understand how that throughout this period the salt extraction
(necessary element for the amalgamation of silver by the method of patio) acquired
a remarkable range of expertise and generated a territorial configuration process in
the Septentrion of the New Spain.