

“Neither Spain nor Portugal received the benefits of the sweeping advance of capitalist mercantilism, although their colonies were those that, in substantial measure, supplied the gold and silver that fueled this expansion” (Galeano 2004:47 1997:29). As Galeano expresses it, “The Spanish had the cow, but it was others who drank the milk” (2004:41 1997:23). But the gold and silver stimulated the development of northwestern Europe, not the development of Spain, because the Spanish purchased manufactured goods from northwestern Europe.

“The metals robbed from the new colonial dominions stimulated European economic development, and it even can be said that they made it possible” (Galeano 2004:40-41 1997:23). The gold and silver made possible the economic development of Europe. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires and the Caribbean peoples established access to the minerals. The exploitation of the natural resources of Latin America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was principally an exploitation of gold and silver, which was found in great quantities in the Mexican plateau and in high plateaus of the Andes, and in lesser quantities in the riverbeds of the Caribbean.
