Zimapán,
Mexico
Silver mining in
Mexico
Almost every Mexican state has mining towns and metal mines. Two famous
metal mining towns are Real del Monte and
Panchuca1 (8000 ft), situated
close to one another in the Mexican State of Hidalgo, about fifty-five miles
north of Mexico City, deep in the central highlands. These were the two principal towns
involved in the Cornish-Mexican silver mining bonanza that began in the
early part of the nineteenth century (1820s). The central highlands were described as
inhospitable and hot, and were "wild, rugged and peppered with rock formations, cones, peaks
and spires".2
Zimapán
In 1522, Zimapán (B on map), which is situated in the far
north of Hidalgo, gave its name to a mining town that lies about 125 miles (200 km) northeast of
Mexico City and 65 miles further northwest of Panchuca and Real del Monte. Situated on the
Tolimán River, Zimapán's main industry since the seventeenth century has been the mining of
lead, silver and zinc
ores.
First Cornish miners emigrate in
1820s
Cornish mine captains were often recruited to run the mining operations in
Mexico, but found it difficult to recruit enough local skilled workers to carry out all the
necessary work. Consequently, many Cornish miners emigrated to Mexico during the 1820s,
attracted by the offer of better wages. Many Cornish miners, blacksmiths, mine agents, mine
captains and carpenters emigrated to, and eventually settled in,
Mexico. Cornish steam engines were also exported to Mexico to help
pump out water from deep mines. Some Cornish miners who remained in Mexico for the rest of
their lives were buried in a Cornish cemetery on a shaded, tree-covered hill outside Real del
Monte, Hidalgo.
Mocambo
Beach
Disaster
Between 1825 and 1827, Cornish
miners, crippled by malaria and dysentery, managed
to salvage 1500 tons of Cornish mining
equipment dumped in the sands of Mocambo Beach near the port of Verz Cruz,
and then manhandled it 250 miles from the Mexican coast up to the mining town of Real del
Monte (10,000
ft).
Silver and
quicksilver
In 1836, when corresponding with Damian Floresi at the Bolaños
mine, the Cornishman John Rule who also emigrated to Mexico, wrote
that he was trying hard to find other sources of quicksilver (mercury) in the mines of
Zimapán. In any case, the mines at Zimapán turned out to be highly productive in terms of
silver, as Count de Regla the Third (Don Pedro) managed to extract 3,000 tons of silver each
year from the Lomo del Toro mine, which was leased to the Real del
Monte Mining Company, headquartered in Panchuca.3
Aftermaths of
mining
The mines have become a mass of "abandoned ore chambers of massive
proportions, and tunnels and drifts of prodigious lengths"4. Lead, silver and zinc sulphides, typically mined over the
years at Zimapán, "are often accompanied by arsenic compounds such as arsenopyrite and
scorodite"5. As a result,
arsenic has ended up in the groundwaters of the Zimapán Valley, and has
originated from:
Whether mining-industry caused or naturally-caused, arsenic has infiltrated
the drinking-water supply (21 to 1070 µg/L) and found its way into the hair of the exposed
population (35,000).7
Cornish miners in Latin
America
Further details on the British and Cornish involvement in Latin America can be found
in a 1999 research paper entitled "Creating the
Cult of Cousin Jack": Cornish Miners in Latin America 1812-1848 and the Development of an
International Mining Labour Market, by Dr Sharron Schwartz, which discusses the export of
hard-rock mining skills
and steam technology to Latin America by Cornish miners,
aka 'Cousin
Jacks'.
Footnotes
1-4. The Search for Silver, A.C. Todd, (1977)
2000. 5-6. Garcia, Armienta & Cruz, 1999.
7. Armienta, Rodriguez & Cruz, 1997.
8. Dr Sharron P. Schwartz, Institute of Cornish Studies, Dec.
1999.
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