Cerro Rico - wikipedia Cerro Rico For a mountain in Mexico 's Sierra Madre Oriental, see Cerro Potosí. Cerro Rico Cerro Potosí / Sumaq Urqu View of Cerro Rico from Potosí Highest point Elevation 4,782 m ( 15,689 ft ) Coordinates 19 ° 37 ′ 8 '' S 65 ° 44 ′ 59 '' W ﻿ / ﻿ 19.61889 ° S 65.74972 ° W ﻿ / - 19.61889 ; - 65.74972 Coordinates : 19 ° 37 ′ 8 '' S 65 ° 44 ′ 59 '' W ﻿ / ﻿ 19.61889 ° S 65.74972 ° W ﻿ / - 19.61889 ; - 65.74972 Geography Cerro Rico Location in Bolivia Location Bolivia, Potosí Parent range Andes Cerro Rico ( Spanish for `` rich mountain '' ), Cerro Potosí ( `` Potosí mountain '' ) or Sumaq Urqu ( Quechua sumaq beautiful, good, pleasant, urqu mountain, `` beautiful ( good or pleasant ) mountain '' ) is a mountain in the Andes near the Bolivian city of Potosí. Cerro Rico was famous for providing vast quantities of silver for Spain during the period of the New World Spanish Empire. The mountain, which is popularly conceived of as being `` made of '' silver ore, caused the city of Potosí to become one of the largest cities in the New World. After 1800, the silver mines were depleted, making tin the main product. This eventually led to a slow economic decline. At the start of the 20th century, liberal reforms and an increase in government policies favoring foreign investment led to a decrease in nationalization of natural resources and an increase in ownership by private companies. Almost immediately following the change in Peruvian mining code in 1901 that allowed for the privatization of mines, a New York - based company purchased `` 80 per cent of the mines in the Cerro de Pasco region of the central andes ''. The newly formed Cerro de Pasco Corporation pursued immediate large - scale extractive mining, which contributed to a long - term change in the local eco-system. The need for large quantities of timber to build the mining infrastructure necessary to extract minerals, also caused high amounts of erosion and deforestation. Dams needed to produce electricity for this massive private project caused floods, which altered the land and damaged the natural environment. 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 and 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. It is known as ' mountain that eats men ' because of the large number of workers who died in the mines. Some writers such as Eduardo Galeano, in his work Open Veins of Latin America, estimates that up to 8 million have died in the Cerro Rico since the 16th century. Though this number has been attributed to the entirety of the Viceroyalty of Peru by Josiah Conder, who added that these numbers also take into account any depopulation of areas around mines. The work of historians such as Peter Bakewell, Noble David Cook, Enrique Tandeter and Raquel Gil Montero portray a more accurate description of the human - labor issue ( free and non-free workers ) with completely different estimations. 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 ''. Contents 1 Bolivian Mining Cooperative 2 Mine 3 See also 4 References Bolivian mining cooperative Bolivia 's cooperative mining sector, whose center is in Potosi, has been given many privileges included favorable tax treatment and exemption from labor and environmental regulations since the election of socialist president Evo Morales in 2006. After centuries of brutal Spanish extraction and forced labor, decades of foreign control and private investment in the late 20th century, and the failure of the state - run mining company COMIBOL led to the displacement of 25,000 miners following plummeting mineral prices in the 1990s, `` informal, self - managed associations '' began selling `` unrefined product to private operators ''. FENCOMIN ( National Federation of Mining Cooperatives in Bolivia ) was a vital player in insuring the successful popular election of Evo Morales and also functioned as one of the leaders in drafting Bolivia 's new constitution establishing a plural mining economy ( state, private, and cooperative ). However, over the last ten years much conflict has arisen between cooperative miners and state miners. In 2006, state miners and cooperatives clashed at Huanuni leaving 16 dead leading to the firing of Morales ' first Mining Minister, a member of FENCOMIN. Most recently in 2016, Bolivia 's Deputy Interior Minister Rodolfo Ilanes was tortured and killed, allegedly by a Bolivian mining cooperative. This outburst of violence has led to clashes between cooperative miners and the police leaving five miners dead and severing a decade of strong ties between cooperative mining and the Morales government. Mine Mine entrance Cerro Rico Cerro Rico de Potosí was accidentally discovered in 1545 by Diego de Huallpa, a Quechua Indian and native Peruvian silver miner for Spanish overseers, while he was searching the mountain for an Inca shrine or traditional burial offering. The red mountain, now known as Cerro Rico, sits nestled between Porco and Sucre mines which had previously been discovered being at lower altitudes and therefore easier to mine. However, once Cerro Rico was found to carry predominantly silver ores, mining focus shifted to the harvesting of the more costly ore over ores like tin, zinc, and lead found in Porco and Sucre. Now one of the largest silver mines in Bolivia, and in the world, the Cerro Rico de Potosí mine has estimated reserves of 1.76 billion ounces of silver and 540 million tons of ore grading 0.17 % tin. The mine is located in the south of the country in Potosí Department. See also List of mountains in the Andes Potosí mountain range Potosí References Jump up ^ Bolivian IGM map 1 : 50,000 Potosí ( Oeste ) 6435 - III Jump up ^ Roberto Choque Canqui, Jesús de Machaqa, La marka rebelde, Cinco siglos de historia, Cuadernos de Investigación 45, La Paz, Bolivia, 2003 Jump up ^ Teofilo Laime Ajacopa, Diccionario Bilingüe Iskay simipi yuyayk'ancha, La Paz, 2007 ( Quechua - Spanish dictionary ) Jump up ^ DORE, ELIZABETH ( 2000 ). `` Environment and Society : Long - Term Trends in Latin American Mining ''. Environment and History. 6 ( 1 ) : 1 -- 29. doi : 10.2307 / 20723118 ( inactive 2018 - 01 - 22 ). JSTOR 20723118. Jump up ^ DORE, ELIZABETH ( 2000 ). `` Environment and Society : Long - Term Trends in Latin American Mining ''. Environment and History. 6 ( 1 ) : 1 -- 29. doi : 10.2307 / 20723118 ( inactive 2018 - 01 - 22 ). JSTOR 20723118. Jump up ^ `` Modern Traveler ''. London : J. Duncan. 1830. Jump up ^ Bakewell, Peter `` Miners of the Red Mountain : Indian Labor in Potosi, 1545 -- 1650 ''. University of New Mexico Press 2010 '' Jump up ^ Demographic Collapse : Indian Peru, 1520 -- 1620 ( Cambridge Latin American Studies ) Jump up ^ Tandeter, Enrique. `` Coaccion y mercado. La mineria de plata en el Potosi colonial, 1692 -- 1826 ''. Siglo XXI Editores 2001. Jump up ^ `` Free and Unfree Labour in the Colonial Andes '' ( PDF ). Instituto Superior de Estudios Sociales ( CONICET - UNT ), Tucuman. 2011. Jump up ^ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/10/bolivia-cerro-rico-mountain-sink-city-potosi ^ Jump up to : `` What 's Behind Bolivia 's Cooperative Mining Wars ? ''. NACLA. Retrieved 2017 - 12 - 02. Jump up ^ Lane, Kris ( 2015 - 05 - 04 ). `` Potosí Mines ''. doi : 10.1093 / acrefore / 9780199366439.001. 0001 / acrefore - 9780199366439 - e-2 ( inactive 2018 - 01 - 22 ). ^ Jump up to : `` Metallogeny of Bolivia '' ( PDF ). uchile.cl. 2013. Retrieved 2013 - 07 - 21. Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cerro_Rico&oldid=847600271 '' Categories : Mountains of Potosí Department Silver mines in Bolivia Tin mines in Bolivia Geological type localities Four - thousanders of the Andes Hidden categories : Pages with DOIs inactive since 2018 Coordinates on Wikidata Talk Contents About Wikipedia Català Cebuano Dansk Deutsch Español Français Italiano Lietuvių Português Runa Simi Svenska 中文 5 more Edit links This page was last edited on 26 June 2018, at 14 : 17 ( UTC ). About Wikipedia

Question: what is the primary type of mining that takes place under the bolivian mountain
Answer: silver