Cerro Rico

Cerro Rico (Spanish for "Rich Mountain"), also known as Cerro Potosí ("Potosí Mountain") or Sumaq Urqu (Quechua sumaq "beautiful, good, pleasant", and urqu "mountain"; literally "beautiful (good or pleasant) mountain"), is a mountain in the Andes near the Bolivian city of Potosí. Cerro Rico—popularly conceived as being "made of" silver ore—is famous for having provided vast quantities of silver to the Spanish Empire, most of which was shipped to metropolitan Spain. It is estimated that approximately 85 percent of the silver produced in the central Andes during this period came from Cerro Rico.

As a result of mining operations, the city of Potosí became one of the largest cities in the New World. According to tradition, revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar once waved a flag from the summit of the mountain in a symbolic act associated with the founding of a new nation. One year later, Congress decided to change the flag's colors to yellow, red, and green and to include a coat of arms featuring a condor, an alpaca, and Cerro Rico.

Today mining in Cerro Rico remain an important economic activity, and is carried out by various mining cooperatives that work in underground mines as well as in the larger open-pit San Bartolomé mine operated by Empresa Minera Manquiri.

The mountain is largely barren, although a small number of plant species have colonized it, and vizcachas inhabit its slopes.

The Cerro Rico de Potosí was the richest source of silver in the history of mankind. The extraction of mineral ores in Cerro Rico de Potosí began in 1545 by the Spanish Empire. Between the 16th and 18th century, 80% of the world's silver supply came out of this mine. After dramatic modifications in first century of Spanish mining in the hill including a mountaintop removal Cerro Rico acquired its current shape in the 17th century.

After centuries of extractive mining methods that severely damaged the local ecology the mountain continues to be mined for silver to this day. Due to poor worker conditions, such as a lack of protective equipment against the constant inhalation of dust, many of the miners contract silicosis. They have a life expectancy of around 40 years. The mountain is still a significant contributor to the city's economy, employing some 15,000 miners.^{[citation needed]}

As a result of centuries long mining, in 2011 a sinkhole in the top appeared and had to be filled with ultra-light cement. The summit also continues to sink a few centimetres every year. In 2014, UNESCO added Cerro Rico and Potosí to its list of endangered sites, owing to "uncontrolled mining operations" that risk "degrading the site".

The Spanish Empire used a forced labor system called "Repartimiento de Indios" (also known as "Repartimiento") to extract silver from Cerro Rico, though in 1574 the Spanish Viceroy Francisco de Toledo reintroduced the mita, an annual forced labor system used by the Inca Empire. During the first decades of extraction, the mines in Potosí had vast deposits of pure silver and silver chloride deposits, which made the extraction of silver relatively easy. Native American labor in the Andean regions was preferred by the Spanish Crown, as opposed to African slave labor, due to high mortality and low productivity rates.