SILVER, SWORD & STONE

The Peruvian-born author delves into the tripartite crux of Latin American exploitation by the Western powers.

Arana (Bolívar: American Liberator, 2013, etc.) skillfully moves between the past and the present in this story about age-old “metal hunger” and authoritarian strongmen. She begins with a poignant contemporary description of Leonor Gonzáles, a woman miner aged beyond her 47 years, a mother and grandmother living and toiling in the “highest human habitation in the world,” La Rinconada, in the Peruvian Andes, hunting for the illegal gold that Western mining companies need to keep economies buoyant. This lust for precious metals is a story that has haunted and corrupted this continent for centuries. Arana traces the histories of the first civilizations in Bolivia, Peru, and Mexico that used the metals for religious worship, long before the rumors of their "value" became known to European powers. The early Inca, Maya, and Aztec rulers were enlightened, yet they had begun to fight among themselves; Arana notes that it wasn’t until the 15th century that metal was used for killing—previously, it was the obsidian bludgeon. Not until the conquistadors landed on Latin American shores did the native peoples learn the murderous power of these shiny metals. The first meeting between Hernán Cortés and Montezuma, in 1519, marked the first fateful connection, and everything changed swiftly, according to the ancient prophesy—slaughter, plague, destruction. The numbers are telling: By 1618, Mexico’s Indigenous population of about 25 million people had plunged to less than 2 million. Added to this has been the depressingly enduring legacy of autocratic rulers, and Arana pointedly explores the ways that generational trauma has been passed down to this day in a heritable form of PTSD and constant worry. “A sudden revolt, a foreign intervention, a pigheaded despot, a violent earthquake might bring down the house of cards,” she writes, closing her impressively concise yet comprehensive history.

A profoundly moving and relevant work that provides new ways of thinking about the “discovery of America.”