El Comercio Minero Terrestre Entre Chile Y Argentina, 1800–1840: Caminos, Arriería Y Exportación Minera

Abstract

This innovative and novel monograph examines the previously untold story of the metal trade between Chile and Argentina over the first four decades of the nineteenth century. Luz María Méndez Beltrán challenges the common assumption that Chile’s metal and mineral exports, colonial and modern, were all by sea. The book makes clear that this long-held notion is misleading, if not wrong. While the tonnage of metal shipped west to east was minuscule by today’s standards, it represented significant effort and value at the time. The maritime metal exports from Chile are well known and obvious, and the details of this commerce have benefitted from Méndez Beltrán’s earlier publications. But until now, the study of Chilean roads and trails during the early nineteenth century has been ignored. And totally unknown until this work were details of metal exports via mules.The book is another demonstration as to how the Andes shape Chilean history as well as that of western Argentina. To the extent that pre-railway animal-based transport limits any society, mountains add to the difficulty of commercial exchange. Chile’s mountains, both the coastal and the interior Andes, were at one and the same time the source of Chile’s mineral wealth and obstacles to be overcome in commercialization of that wealth. The characterization of transportation routes from 1800 to 1840 is clarified with three wonderful color maps. They depict roads and trails as they cross mountains and valleys between Santiago and Buenos Aires, as well as north from Santiago/Valparaiso to Coquimbo, and then farther north, from Coquimbo to the Atacama Desert.In the initial chapters Méndez Beltrán extracts descriptions of roads, trails, passes, mules, and muleteers from period travel narratives. To this, she skillfully blends period documents. As a bonus, the book includes some 83 plates reproducing nineteenth-century paintings and drawings, plus a few maps and several photos. Ten of the water-colors are printed in color on glossy paper. These visual delights alone make the book worthwhile. Another welcome feature comes in a 78-page prosopography of businessmen involved in metal exports. These career summaries are organized by decade, with entries further ordered by Chilean mining districts (Santiago, Coquimbo/La Serena, Huasco, and Copiapó).The book starts with a survey of Chilean roads and trails, including passes over the Andes and the road continuing on to Buenos Aires. Uspallata Pass, at 12,500 feet, is featured as the most important of the passes on the trail to Mendoza. The book then turns to mules, their breeding, and how muleteers went about their business. While the road from Mendoza to Buenos Aires was passable by cart, the Andes precluded cart transport due to trail narrowness and steep grades. Mule trains were the only feasible mode of commerce.With the nature of roads established, along with the usage of mules, a short chapter draws on customs records, adding to what can be known about the quantities of metals moving from Chile to Argentina between 1800 and 1840. Land exports of copper to the east predominated during the study period prior to 1820. During the postindependence decades, maritime exports boomed and land exports dropped to almost nothing. Silver exports were minimal prior to 1820, by land or sea, but in the first decades of the republic they grew rapidly by both means.One problem in writing mining history concerns how to communicate the reality of a ton of rock. A cubic meter (1.3 cubic yards) of copper ore will weigh roughly one metric ton (2,200 pounds). A metric ton of pure metal occupies much less space. One way the book helps to visualize copper metal comes with the detail that a mule crossing the mountains could be expected to carry 92 kilos of cargo, or 202 pounds. Thus, at least 11 mules were needed to carry a ton of metal. The book’s period opens in 1800 with about 304 metric tons of copper exported to Buenos Aires by land. The peak production of copper metal over this period came in the late 1830s, when in one year nearly 9,000 metric tons of metal were exported, but now mostly by sea. Over the years of the study, Chileans exported 76,333 metric tons of copper by sea, and 3,747 by land. Méndez Beltrán calculates the number of mules involved in the land component. The shipment of copper metal over the Andes required some 40,732 mule trips, nearly all of them in the years prior to 1821.El comercio minero is an important addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in copper history, mining history in general, Chilean economic history, and the history of transportation. With this book the author consolidates her place as the leading historian of Chilean mining history over the late colonial and early republican years.