Objective/Context:

This article explains the causes of the tax evasion on metals in the royal mines of the province of Pamplona in the New Kingdom of Granada (NRG), in which royal box metals were not declared from the year 1636 to 1678. However, there were miners, mayors of mines, indigenous and enslaved people dedicated to mining in that same period. The Madrid authorities sought to establish the amounts defrauded through two visits, one carried out in 1659 and the other in 1676.

Methodology:

In addition to fiscal, ordinary and general visits, were consulted accounts of the royal treasury of Pamplona and the historiography of the New Granada mining.

Originality:

These revisions made it possible to show how the tax on metals was cheated in this jurisdiction and offer answers to a widespread phenomenon throughout Latin America and evoked by historians but rarely exposed in its details and specific cases, given its nature and the scant documentary footprint.

Conclusions:

Among the results, it is highlighted that the values ​​potentially defrauded in the years analyzed, 1636-1678, reflect a higher production than that given in the stage with tax footprint: 1617-1635. It was also found that authorities from the Audiencia de Santa Fe and the Pamplona council participated in the fraud; it was a matter socially shared between miners and authorities.

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