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nautical trade and emigration. Two-thirds of Potosí’s mines and the municipal council were controlled by Basques by 1602. Basque leaders bribed royal bureaucrats to look the other way when taxes were due; if non-Basque miners posed a competitive threat, Basque gangs provided muscle. When royal officials tried to sell off a Basque mineowner’s lease for unpaid taxes, a Basque gang stabbed to death the would-be purchaser in Potosí’s central square. Resentment grew among colonists from other parts of Spain, many of whom lived in wildcat mining camps outside the city. In furtive meetings anti-Basque miners took to identifying themselves with caps made from vicuña wool (the vicuña is a relative of the llama) and called themselves Vicuñas. Basques had no need to identify themselves by dress; they spoke their homeland’s native tongue, Euskara, which is unrelated to Spanish.

The struggle gained intensity in August 1618, when a new lawman came to town. In the loosely governed city, he was that most terrifying figure, a tax inspector. “Punctual and tidy, intelligent and modest, he enjoyed nothing more than fulfilling his duties,” wrote the Bolivian historian Alberto Crespo of the inspector. “His name was Alonso Martínez Pastrana and he was not Basque.” This humorless bean-counter soon learned that Potosinos had been cheating massively on their taxes. The king was supposed to be paid one-fifth of the silver from the mines, as well as part of the revenue from mercury sales and coin minting. Martínez Pastrana calculated that Potosinos had collectively shorted the king 4.5 million pesos, more than the mines’ official annual output. Because Basques owned the biggest mines and dominated the city government, they were responsible for most of the fraud. Eighteen of the twenty-four members of the municipal council owed back taxes, the inspector said; eleven of the offenders were Basque. Three years later, after a battle with corrupt treasury officials, Martínez Pastrana finally was able to ban overt tax cheats from membership on the municipal council.

In June 1622 a Basque gang leader was found dead on the street, his hands and tongue cut off and minced. Vicuñas correctly were blamed. Furious Basque goon squads roamed the squares, threatening to lynch the “Moors, treasonous Jews and cuckolds” responsible for the murder. If they met a stranger in the street, one account claims, they challenged him in Basque; anyone who responded in Spanish would perish. After a round of murders, a stone-throwing Vicuña mob converged on the home of Domingo de Verasátegui, head of a powerful Basque family—he was one of four wealthy brothers, two of whom were on the municipal council. He was saved only by the sudden appearance of the head of the royal court, who personally escorted him to the safety of the city jail. Verasátegui died a few months later of natural causes, unusual in Potosí.

The crown appointed a new governor for Potosí the following May. (The governor, or corregidor, was the highest district-level authority.) Felipe Manrique was a violent man with a short fuse—years before, in a moment of rage, he had slain his wife. On his journey to Potosí the widower met and was smitten by Verasátegui’s widow, inflaming Vicuña suspicions. They razed the governor’s house, shooting Manrique four times in the process. A full-fledged riot exploded two months later when a Basque tipped his hat to two Vicuñas “in a very arrogant manner.” Manrique dispatched military patrols but couldn’t stop several thousand Vicuñas from pillaging the homes of prominent Basques.

Seventy years before, Fujian’s Zhu Wan had learned the hard way that incorruptible pursuit of duty is not always a means for successful career advancement in government service. Zhu was driven to suicide. The implacable tax collector Martínez Pastrana was luckier: he escaped with his life, though not his career. His superiors bowed to pressure and ended his mission in August 1623, a few weeks before the Vicuñas burned down Governor Manrique’s house. He ended up in bitter retirement in Lima, where a street