Tim Johnson, associate professor of Spanish at Central College, has co-authored a new book, “Basques and Vicuñas at the Mouth of Hell: A Documentary History of Potosí in the Early 1620s,” University of Nevada Press, with Kris Lane, France V. Scholes Chair in Colonial Latin American History at Tulane University.
The project began when Lane discovered a previously unknown and uncatalogued manuscript in the New York Public Library.
“The document was a first-hand account of the violent conflict between rival Spanish factions vying for power in the silver-mining boomtown of Potosí in the early 1620s,” Johnson explains.
Over the next six years, Lane uncovered additional rare documents, which he and Johnson transcribed from their original manuscript form and translated into English. The resulting book presents eyewitness narratives of a Spanish civil conflict that played out in Potosí, then the largest and wealthiest city in the Western Hemisphere.
“These contrasting accounts offer perspectives from both sides of the violence,” Johnson says. “Some support the Basques, whose business success translated into political power, while others align with the Vicuñas — non-Basque Spaniards resentful of Basque dominance.”
“Basques and Vicuñas at the Mouth of Hell” sheds light on a little-known chapter of colonial Latin American history, offering readers a compelling glimpse into the tensions that shaped Potosí’s turbulent past.
