Mining cultural landscape: the gold region of Minas de Corrales (Uruguay) through vintage photography (19th century)

The territories of Northern Uruguay were exploited for livestock and mining use, the latter being less recognized by historiography. The remaining constructions of the mining activity are scattered along 300 square kilometers with easy access, constituting a heritage and tourist attraction. The heritage sites are concentrated in four points: Usina de Cunapiru, Santa Ernestina, San Gregorio and Minas de Corrales, the main populated center. From the Cunapiru plant, whose industrial architecture dates back to 1867, it is possible to relate the mining cultural landscape, a European imperialist high-tech enclave (1867 - 1914), immersed in a rural world where ethnicities and nationalities from different parts were mixed, free and enslaved workers, workers and peasants. Together with the grinding machines, the mining railroad and the early use of electrical energy for the region, livestock production linked to the salting houses of Rio Grande do Sul coexisted, using smuggling and cross-border relations as a mechanism of economic action. Part of that tangible and intangible heritage was recorded through photography, the only means to demonstrate in Europe, how the capital stock of French and English companies was invested. The periodic press also allows us to reconstruct a cultural landscape populated by diverse languages and customs, defined by a journalist in 1881, as "the Babel of the North".