Place · city

Huancavelica

Huancavelica is a city in the central Andes of Peru, at about 3,700 metres. Its mercury deposits, found in 1563, were worked from the 1570s with forced mita labour and supplied the mercury used to refine silver at Potosí, making it vital to the Spanish colonial economy. The mines were notorious for killing workers through mercury poisoning and accidents.

Huancavelica
Image: Jorge Gobbi from Buenos Aires, Argentina · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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Viceroyalty of PeruSocioeconomy

Mentioned in 1 state history

Viceroyalty of Peru

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Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Huancavelica. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/huancavelica
MLA
“Huancavelica.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/huancavelica. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Huancavelica.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/huancavelica.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Huancavelica’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/huancavelica (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻