It is estimated that 185,000 kilograms of gold and 16,000,000 kilograms of silver flowed from Latin America to Spain during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, coming principally from mines in Bolivia and, later, Mexico. A Catholic priest described these mines as veritable mouths of hell, in which slave or indentured laborers—men, women, and children treated “like stray animals”—died from exhaustion, abuse, or poisoning within four years of arriving. In an ironic and cruel twist, however, Spanish law (the Compilations of the Laws of the Indies) prohibited the exploitation of the “Indians” working in the mines and granted them the right to own and profit from them. In other words, while in reality indigenous people were being worked to death, the letter of the law treated them as rightful owners of the mines, explicitly denying the fact of their extermination.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 337