AN EXPAT IN 1790- ANTHONY HELMS SOJOURN TO POTOSI AND HUANCAVELICA
The consulting gig in international mining can have its hardships, but more so when it was 1790 going to Peru and dealing with religious discrimination and corrupt officials. In Anthony Helms´ 1806 English translated book called Travels from Buenos Aires to Lima via Potosi we get one glimpse of the controversial Nordenflycht mission to restart the Spanish Crown’s famous Huancavelica mercury mine. The underground mine catastrophically failed with the massive 1786 Marroquin collapse because of the local governor/superintendent’s gross negligence in mining out the support pillars. The mine had previous major collapses, and combined with the very short lifespan of the miners from mercury poisoning, the dreadful place has earned the name of The Death Mine of Santa Barbara. Despite the special engineer and metallurgy review by some of Europe’s leading mining professionals, the old mercury mine failed to restart because of selfish politics of the Lima royalty.
Anthony Zacharias Helms was born in 1751, and joined Baron von Nordenflycht’s mining mission to Peru in 1789. Helms, at age 38, was the chief assayer in the Cracow mint, Poland, and worked with Nordenflycht who then was director of the Miczanagora mining district near Cracow. The mining mission departed Buenos Aires on October 29, 1789 to go overland to the world’s largest silver mine at Potosi in the high mountains of Bolivia. Helms wrote a daily travel log and short descriptions of the towns he stayed the night in. During this entire journey he travelled with his family. He stayed in Potosi a couple of months, working in the mint where he set up a lab to show the people refining methods on how to improve the local metal processing, which in so many words Helms derailed as being inferior. The population of Potosi then was around 100,000. You can still visit the old mint of Potosi today.
On January 30, 1790 he continued his trip to Peru, going first through the mining town of Oruro, which he remarked as being “in a state of decay and neglect.” He travelled north to La Paz, then population of 20,000, and continued on to Lake Titicaca. They went around the west shore of the lake going up to Puno. Suffering the Peruvian wet season, they travelled north to Cusco. He made a short observation on the cathedral. From Cusco their route went northwest through Limatambo, Carretas, Carrahuasi, Abancay, Andahuaylas, Congallo, Ayacucho, Huanta, and to the mercury mining city of Huancavelica. The mercury from Huancavelica was critical to processing the silver ores of Potosi in Bolivia. Huancavelica is in a deep canyon, but is at 3,700 meters of elevation whereas the mines are higher at 4,300 meters above sea level. Helms made some comments about these mines, then continued onward going through the towns of Cotay, Turpo, Vinnas, Jangas, Lunahauna, going down the Rio Cañete, to Asia, Mala, Chilca, Lurin, and then into Lima. From Potosi to Lima he covered 1,955 kilometers.
He made many observations on the failing economy of Peru, its graft, and a costly system requiring subsidies that marked the decades before the country sought independence from Spain. This is further reflected in the Viceroy’s mining tribunal that managed the mineral districts with judges, who were corrupt, and levied charges of rebellion, oppressing miners for short term gains instead of developing the resources of the land. In 1790 Lima had a population of 70,000, and once had the reputation as a flourishing South American city.
He stayed in Lima for three weeks before the mining commission sent the German mission back up to Huancavelica. He arrived in Huancavelica on May 6th, 1790. In addition to travelling with five German miners, he also was travelling with his family up to this frigid mining town. Helms recommended plans for improving the furnaces of Huancavelica to the more efficient Idrian type, his knowledge being one of the main reasons he was contracted in the first place. Huancavelica mercury furnaces were notoriously inefficient and used the only poor fuel source around, a type of Andean grass called Ichu. The proposal ended with Helms’ account saying “Pedro de Tagle [y Bracho], the governor (an old Creole) who, by pretended patriotic projects, had amassed a fortune of a million of piasters, had no other end in view but to derive a profit from furnishing the necessary building materials, for which he received more than four times their value.” Of course, today in Peru the very same scams are widespread. This project was suspended before completion, the governor was recalled to Lima, and Helms was directed north on January 14th, 1791 to work on improving the metallurgy process at the high-elevation cold mines of desolate Cerro de Pasco.
Helms worked for two months in silver-rich Cerro de Pasco, then his recommendations to the Viceroy of Peru were not funded, and he then decided to leave Peru, however, his contract was not easily abandoned. Early in 1791, Nordenflycht had filled a report called “Tratado del arreglo y reforma que conviene introducir en la minería del reyno del Perú para su prosperidad, conforme al sistema y practica de las naciones de Europa más versadas en este ramo, presentado de oficio al Superior Gobierno de estos reynos por el Barón de Nordenflycht.” While it is fairly common for consultant reports to be ignored, one must keep in mind that Helms had a year’s worth of travel in hardship just to reach the mining districts, and that he was considered an authority in his field. While in Lima, Helms then established a metallurgical lab in Lima, testing ores and a new process that local officials dismissed as being too expensive. The powerbrokers of Lima were set against the rest of the Nordenflycht mission, with Catholic pretexts to dismiss what they termed ideas from heretics because of their Lutheran beliefs. The debacle was far more complicated, including inquisition charges, and set a prime example of Peruvian graft ignoring best practices to protect their network of corruption. And of course Helms was seeing decision being made regarding metallurgy by far less informed people. His frustration is understandable.
On medical grounds Helms secured permission to leave the mission. Helms departed Peru in 1792, well before the completion of the Nordenflycht mission. In these times, the typical contract length with the Spanish Crown was for ten years. Essentially Helms was a subcontractor, and in Peru an expat, who made records that historians still analyse today about the shortcomings of the Lima bureaucracy. He arrived in Cadiz in May, 1793, and spent the next seven months in Madrid providing his services to complete his commission. He then spent the rest of his years and retirement in Vienna. He published is travel account in German in 1798. He died in 1803.
His 304-page 1798 book “Tagebuch einer reise durch Peru“ was translated into English and published in London in 1806, and then again in 1807 in an abridged version. Helms account is one of the earliest foreign descriptions of mining in Peru and Bolivia. The English abridged version omits his mineralogical descriptions, finding it somehow less related to nature than the lengthy botany exercises of the time. The typical nineteenth century head in the sky sketches of Amazon flowers and leafy plants in the name of science does little to capture the harsh social and economic realities of Peru during this time, thus making the work by Helms a South America classic. One should avoid this 1807 version because too much of the account is omitted. Helm’s visit to Huancavelica on the Nordenflycht mission was at the critical time when 216 years of mercury production came to a halt, and the Peru colony was faltering, heading into the rebellion and eventually Peru’s independence in 1821.
Helms stayed in Huancavelica for about seven month’s total. I have spent over five months in Huancavelica, a time just under what Helms had logged. The incredible history of this city hidden on top of the Andes captures the imagination and has spurred the research of many geographers and historians. The geology of this mercury district is equally fascinating; Santa Barbara is the world’s fourth largest mercury mine. Huancavelica has a different harsher allure than the trade tourists stops like Cusco, and for those that venture there the experience may transform into a lifelong passion.
Note:
Many things have changed in Peru and in South America, but it is always nice to read about a place and know that if you go there you will find something familiar. In this case we are refering to the Huancavelica´s main church of San Antonio located at the Plaza de Armas, it was completed in 1608. It was renovated and improved between the years 1673 and 1705. 182 years went by before Helms would have passed through its shadow, and another 227 years have gone by afterwards. It is still standing up.
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