Pandemic in Potosí: Fear, Loathing, and Public Piety in a Colonial Mining Metropolis

Abstract

In Pandemic in Potosí, Kris Lane artfully assembles and interprets primary sources on a topic both far removed in time and space from modern libraries and classrooms and yet immediately relevant: social responses to pandemic disease. Any concerns over the rigor of so timely a publication are quickly dispelled by Lane's engaging and thorough analysis and the clear significance of the primary sources that make up the majority of the text. The book is Lane's second contribution to the Latin American Originals series by Pennsylvania State University Press, in which highly qualified scholars translate, transcribe, and interpret primary sources from colonial Latin America for an audience ranging from students to scholars. Lane succeeds in this ambitious task, compiling an accessible text that scholars and students alike will appreciate.In the preface, Lane raises the central question: How did societies without our modern medical and scientific capacities respond to pandemics? In the case of the deadly pandemic that ravaged Potosí from 1719 to 1722, a baroque religiosity shaped the answer for various groups: for chroniclers who lamented moral corruption that provoked divine wrath, for priests and other religious communities who became the first responders, and for the sick who placed their hope in Catholic ritual and saintly intercession. Yet, as Lane points out, comparison with other pandemics reveals common conflicts relevant far beyond the eighteenth-century Andes: between isolation and openness, between moral corruption and integrity, between class solidarity and division, between public health measures and false remedies, and between cosmic and natural causes. These tensions frame the primary sources and analysis that follow.In his introduction, Lane provides the context for the central primary sources, the longest of which is an excerpt from the voluminous History of the Imperial Villa of Potosí detailing the plague years by chronicler Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela. This section once again reaches a broad audience as Lane demonstrates both restraint in the number of citations and a comprehensive grasp of the relevant literature. Highlights include his brief introduction to the mita labor system—then a major point of contention between the crown and mining interests—and his discussion of contemporary European responses to plague in France and Spain that facilitated efforts to expand state power. In another section, Lane points out how the mixture of religious belief and humoral medicine contributed to the scapegoating of various groups in Europe—Jews, Roma, and (in Catholic countries) women. Chroniclers and officials blamed the plague on social and moral disorder that challenged “natural hierarchies,” “‘derang[ing]’ both the individual body and the body politic” (p. 23). The introduction neatly frames the sources that follow while gesturing toward areas of interest for scholars in related fields.The remainder of the text consists of Lane's transcription of various primary sources that illustrate the worldview described by Lane and that provide often-colorful anecdotes of this difficult time in Potosí. The themes of immorality and vice as root causes are borne out particularly well. While Arzáns's treatment of the pandemic is the central primary source in Pandemic in Potosí, Lane includes excerpts from other sources describing the pandemic in Cuzco and Arequipa as well as discussion from two medical experts detailing symptoms and recommending treatments. Lane's transcription and translation introduces the uninitiated into the language, style, and worldview of the time and provides insight that is of use to scholars interested in common themes.If there is one problem with this text, it is that some of its intended audience may be tempted to focus merely on Lane's detailed introduction rather than on the primary sources themselves. It would be difficult, however, to blame the faults of some potential readers on the author. Given the goal of creating an accessible text for a varied audience, Lane succeeds, even if his description of the narrative undercuts its conclusion. Nevertheless, this book provides something of interest for scholars and experts, and uses the lens of a pandemic, a cultural touchstone for the current generation of students, to introduce them to eighteenth-century Potosí.