CompuServe Messages

Guy >…Valenciana mine, known as the "Boca Mina",… My first reply was very cryptic as I had local phone line problems and tried to complete the message before being disconnected. From 1540 to about 1700, all silver mines in the Guanajuato district started as adits into vein outcrops. As the Veta Madre slopes down at 42 degrees, these adits usually turned into dry masonry staircases. It was customary to name these adits "Boca de la Mina" (mouth of the mine), shortened to "Boca Mina". The Valenciana Boca Mina is of great historical importance as it through it came the ore that financed the Spanish Empire's last great fling, making the owner into the Count of Valenciana and also into the (rumored) richest man in the world in the last half of the 1700's. The ore was brought out by "tenateros" (indian porters), who used a walking -stick about 10" long to help them climb the 1,000 odd feet of stairs to the surface; there were about 5,000 underground workers during this period, including the personal bearers of supervisors, who went everywhere piggyback. As befitted the importance of the Boca Mina, it was capped by an elegant stone building in carved limestone (Cantera). In the late 1700's the Boca Mina was replaced by a series of shafts using mule-power whims (Malacates de Sangre) and the Boca Mina was abandoned, becoming a tumbledown rubbish dump, until rescue started in 1992. …Chris