1493_ Uncovering the New World Columbus Created - Charles C. Mann [14]
Every American nation promised to contribute to the Columbus memorial when it was approved in 1923, but the checks were slow in coming—the U.S. Congress, for example, didn’t appropriate its share for another six years. In May of 1930 Dominican army head Rafael Trujillo became president in a fraud-ridden election. Three weeks later a hurricane wiped out Santo Domingo, killing thousands. Deciding that the memorial would symbolize the city’s revitalization, Trujillo staged a design competition in 1931. On the jury were eminent architects, including Eliel Saarinen and Frank Lloyd Wright. More than 450 entries came in, including these by (clockwise from top left) Konstantin Melnikov, Robaldo Morozzo della Rocca and Gigi Vietti, Erik Bryggman, and Iosif Langbard. (Photo credit 1.2)
SHIPLOADS OF SILVER
At a busy corner in a park just south of the old city walls in Manila is a grimy marble plinth, perhaps fifteen feet tall, topped by lifesize bronze statues, blackened by pollution, of two men in sixteenth-century attire. The two men stand shoulder to shoulder, faces into the setting sun. One wears a monk’s habit and brandishes a cross as if it were a sword; the other, in a military breastplate, carries an actual sword. Compared to the Columbus Lighthouse, the monument is small and rarely visited by tourists. I found no mention of it in recent guidebooks and maps—a historical embarrassment, because it is the closest thing the world has to an official recognition of globalization’s origins.
The man with the sword is Miguel López de Legazpi, founder of modern Manila. The man with the cross is Andrés Ochoa de Urdaneta y Cerain, the navigator who guided Legazpi’s ships across the Pacific. One way to summarize the two Spaniards’ contribution would be to say that together Legazpi and Urdaneta achieved what Colón failed to do: establish continual trade with China by sailing west. Another way to state their accomplishment would be to say that Legazpi and Urdaneta were to economics what Colón was to ecology: the origin, however inadvertent, of a great unification.
Legazpi, slightly the more well known, was born about a decade after the admiral’s first voyage. For most of his life he showed no sign of Colón’s penchant for maritime adventure. He trained as a notary, inheriting his father’s position in the Basque city of Zumárraga, near the border with France. In his late twenties he went to Mexico, where he worked in the colonial administration for thirty-six years. His life was jerked out of its cozy rut when he was approached by Urdaneta, a friend and cousin who was among the few survivors of Spain’s failed attempt, in the 1520s, to establish an outpost in the spice-laden Maluku Islands. (Formerly known as the Moluccas, they are south of the Philippines.) Urdaneta had been shipwrecked in the Malukus for a decade, eventually being rescued by the Portuguese. After returning he had refused all further offers to go to sea and entered a monastery. Thirty years later, the next king of Spain wanted to take another stab at establishing a base in Asia. He ordered Urdaneta out of the cloister. Urdaneta’s position as a clergyman made him unable by law to serve as head of the expedition. He chose Legazpi for the job, despite his lack of a nautical background. Legazpi’s thoughts about the likelihood of success may be indicated by his decision to prepare for the voyage by selling all of his worldly possessions and sending his