The Mita System

The Effects

- a system developed by the silver trade

- Inca practice of requisitioning draft labor adopted by Spanish authorities

- Spanish authorities annually required each native village to send one-seventh of its male population to work for four months in the mines at Potosí

- The system recruited workers for particularly difficult and dangerous chores that free laborers would not accept

Death rates of draft laborers were high, and many native men sought to evade mita obligations by fleeing to cities or hiding in distant villages

Analyze the economic system developed by the silver trade and its effects

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