Summary Of Trading Roles By Jane Mangan

In her book, Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí, Jane E. Mangan offers a unique and compelling study of this fascinating settlement, focusing on Potosí’s growth and the development of its urban economy in the late 16th century through its decline in the late 17th century. Through her exploration of Potosí’s marketplace, rather than it’s infamous silver mines, Mangan reveals complex social and economic networks that challenged traditional colonial identities and relationships. Mangan devotes particular attention to how gender and ethnicity were both constructed and subverted in the marketplace; how the various ethnic associations and social connotations linked to goods, specifically chicha and bread, influenced aspects of their production, sale, and consumption; and how the importance of cash money (the peso) in the urban environment shaped the complex credit networks of credit, petty trade, pawning, and lending. Mangan first addresses the development of urban trade in colonial Potosí and how the size and success of the silver industry brought together indigenous peoples (primarily mita laborers
Mangan explains, ‘Both gender and ethnicity factored into economic opportunities afforded by the two types of enterprises… For bakeries, ethnicity mattered more than gender… For chicha, however, gender mattered’ (Mangan, 102). Bread was a Spanish industry, viewed as a virtuous enterprise by the town council, whereas the chicha, a native Andean drink made from fermented grains, most often corn flour, was held in low regard and considered a vice; however as the demand for both of these products grew, the production methods and identities associate with both chicheras and bakeries