The Famous Thirteen: an inspiration revisited

Imagine this:
You've just managed to fund an expedition against the received wisdom of the authorities. You have 160 people, all eager to get their hands onto something big. You get local interpreters that guide you through an enormous area where no European man has ever been. Of course, your men are getting more exhausted by all sorts of privations, and then at last reinforcements arrive! What do you do? You carry on, yet few days later it becomes clear that more people will be needed to continue this adventure. Once again, what do you do? You split their number. Again. And again. Guess how many men you end up with in this enterprise? Thirteen.

The story of the Famous Thirteen.
A 16th century story which became part of history. Inspiring, worth being retorld.

The Famous Thirteen was the name which history gave to a small group of Spanish fighting men (for that is what a Spanish conquistador was) that overtook the Inca Empire of Peru in the first half of the 16th century. Their apparently small action did, as we shall see, created a decisive moment in the Conquest of the Americas. However, this was not one of the moments mentioned by Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), the Austrian novelist and biographer, in his Decisive Moments in History who rather chose to highlight Balboa's feat of discovering the Pacific Ocean and getting wet in the ceremony of claiming possession of the newly discovered South Sea for the King of Spain.

This episode of history does not remember these thirteen men because of a battle they fought, even though in the course of their lives they fought many. That was their job, after all. The emphasis here is on the fact that when all others chose to go back, they chose to stay, knowing they would face all sorts of dangers. Between safety and hope, they chose the latter.

Francisco Pizarro (1478-1541), a bold, illiterate man in his mid-forties, must have thought that unless the momentum that carried him and his men from Panama is sustained, conquering the Inca Empire would be impossible. And so it is that on a small island (la Isla del Gallo), where for all intents and purposes Pizarro and his companions are stuck, many miles away from the South American mainland, with little food and water left, he unsheathes his sword and draws a line in the sand with his blade. Pizarro then says: "Friends and comrades, on this side and direction is penury, hardships, hunger and thirst and fighting the natives; on the other side and direction is comfort and safety. This way one goes to Peru to become rich, that way one goes to Panama to be poor. Let each man choose for himself". And in doing so, he jumped the line to the side of Peru. We are told that thirteen men did. These men may have been superstitious, illiterate, cruel, but we cannot fail to admire their bravery, which fuelled their thirst for gold and glory.  

Riches of the Andean region (part I)

Our previous post was a chance to revisit a historical episode of the Spanish Conquest of the Inca Empire. Today I am going to jump many years in order to mention, not so much political history as economics history which I will try my best to describe in layman's language, as I am certainly no economist.

When the Spanish Conquest of the Americas came to an end around 1540, there must have been a question in everyone's mind, that is, in the mind of those who have risked life and limb coming from the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Leon to these remote lands, newly incorporated to the known world. Where is my pot of gold? Will there be any gold from the Incas left, since all the action seems to be finished? In other words, what would the economic future of the Americas be like other than the exploiting of the mines of gold and silver?

The answer included a much familiar tune of "baaaah" as in "Baaah Baaah black sheep, have you any wool" Wool was to play a important role in the economic history of South America. To understand this, we must remember that many of the Conquistadors were soldier mercenaries from poor regions of Spain like Extremadura (literally Extreme and Hard) . Men like Francisco Pizarro, the Conquistador of Peru, had fought in many battlefields in the Old World, after escaping the extreme poverty of their youth (the story is told that in childhood Pizarro had had to eat pods and acorns such as those which were fed to the pigs in Extremadura). Now that these men had land of their own by right of conquest they must have thought of bringing the roaming Merino sheep of the Castilian plateau to the lands of the New World. Perhaps for some former hired-hand shepherds, now grazing landowners, this would have felt like finally having arrived.

Yet in the Andean region there was already an native source of wool in the alpacas, llamas and vicuñas. Would they be displaced by Spanish Merino sheep? What happened to them? That will be the subject of the next post.