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These aspects, grounded on old and new sources, enable a shift in the focus
from women’s other activities (analysed by Mangan and Numhauser) to
women’s mining activities. In this sense, it is important to go beyond the
view that mining consisted only of underground hard labour, as Dana
Velasco Murillo wrote, criticizing the relegation of women to the
background,
considering them as peripheral figures.
In this article, I will therefore focus on women directly involved in the
activities
of silver production, refining, and trade. Why is this so important? I claim
that it is not just a matter of saying thatwomenwere also present in the work
of
the mines. To carefully scrutinize women’s involvement in mining
activities
leads us to reconsider two important topics. First, to historicize what is
now called “informal” labour and Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining
(ASM)
associated with precarity and in which women are so important today,
as we have seen in the introduction to this Special Theme. Second, to
re-read the history of mining in Potosí with particular attention in order to
obtain a broad and more complete perspective of changes over time and of
the position of women in the different settings and periods, illuminating
the complex world of work in these mines.