Mineral del Monte

Mineral del Monte, commonly called Real del Monte (Spanish  [rea'l del mo'nte]  or El Real, is a small mining town, and one of the 84 municipalities of Hidalgo, in the State of Hidalgo in east-central Mexico.

It is located at an altitude of 2,700 metres (8,900 ft). As of 2005, the municipality had a total population of 11,944.

History

The Mine District of Pachuca—Real del Monte has a long and rich heritage. The mines in the district are conservatively estimated to have produced 1.2 billion Troy ounces of silver and 6.2 million ounces of gold. That is 6% of the silver mined throughout the world during the last five centuries. Some of the mines have continued limited production until the present day.

Gold and silver were discovered after the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 1520s. The Colonial Spanish began mining in the late 16th century. The mines were later abandoned. but reopened in the late 1730s under Pedro Romero de Terreros. The native Mexican Amerindians were often enslaved to work the mines, despite the Royal mandate for Colonial Jesuit Reductions and later Franciscan Indian Reductions. In 1766, miners protested unfair labor and wages in what is considered by many to be the first real labor strike in North American history.