Las minas de oro del río santa bárbara en el austro ecuatoriano: De las quejas españolas coloniales del siglo xvii a la ideología prehispánica profunda de los pueblos aborígenes

Some Spanish early colonial enterprises were interested in gold, silver and quicksilver searching in Ecuador's South Region. Many investigations outline the constant problem faced by the Spanish miners in their activities, due to the lack of indigenous hand labor, their work defection or the sickness faced by them. Just a few studies have focus its attention on the indigenous believes written on the Spanish chronicles, when they describe how the indigenous resist to the minerals extraction activities. This manuscript reveales how from the Santa Barbara gold mines we can acknowledge the animistic believes of that era and how they allowed us to analyze their connection to a profound inherenced andean religiosity of the prehispanic times.