Santa Fe 2023
56º Latitud Sur - De Castilla a Tierra del Fuego
Ocean Planet
The image that changed the world
[1523 - 2023] Five Hundred Years of Cartography
When the echoes of the festivities commemorating the Fifth Centennial of the first circumnavigation around the world begin to fade, what remains is that which is most important: the consequences of a voyage initiated by Magellan and culminated by sailors who were never called to change the world: Sebastián Elcano and Francisco Albo. Although the world was already known to be spherical, their reports from 1522 confirmed that it was completely navigable. The certainty of one sole worldwide ocean transformed the notion of a terrestrial globe into an Ocean Planet and altered the rules of international commerce forever.
The Turin World Map of 1523 is the oldest world map to incorporate the results of the Magellan/Elcano expedition. It is a copy of the Padrón Real, an ultra-secret map in the custody of the Casa de la Contratación in Seville whose authorship has been attributed to Giovanni Vespucci, nephew of Amerigo. The great revelation in this planisphere is that it is the first to include a complete representation of the Pacific Ocean, the largest ocean in the world, covering one third of the Earth’s sphere, separating America from Asia and the West Indies from the East once and for all. It also points to the correct geo-localization of the Strait of Magellan at 52 degrees south of the equatorial line.
In the popular cartographies of the southern shores, the Strait took on the name of Tierra del Fuego [Land of Fire] and it was speculated that the mythical land Terra Australis Incognita began there; a supercontinent that had been thought to cover most of the Southern Hemisphere since antiquity. Subsequent discoveries revealed that Tierra del Fuego was an archipelago and later that our planet was oceanic in nature. Today we know that oceans cover more than 80% of the Southern Hemisphere and that there is only 2% of land between 40 and 60 degrees south.
The sailors on Magellan and Elcano’s expedition of 1519 embarked on a journey from Castile to Tierra del Fuego and were entrusted with the mission of navigating unknown southern latitudes. The New World had become an enormous obstacle that stood in the way of Europe’s treasured route to the “Spice Islands”.In other words, a definitive passage that would connect European ports with eastern markets by navigating in a westerly direction.
This objective was finally achieved in 1565 with the return trip from Acapulco to Manila navigated by Andrés de Urdaneta. The discovery of the Strait of Magellan did not bring the Far East closer. However, it proved to Pedro de Valdivia —who was already in Peru— how far the Kingdom of Chile could be expanded. Valdivia would go on to proclaim himself as the Kingdom’s first governor. Furthermore, the southern passage would be the only route communicating the Atlantic with the Pacific and the western ports of America with those in Europe until the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914.
Antarctic Ocean
Pacific Ocean
Although we frequently speak of globalization, multiculturality, and social networks as if they were contemporary issues, it was the Magellan/Elcano expedition that crossed the point of no return; paving the way for international maritime commerce and conditioning our future as a global and interconnected society to this day. It was a journey we all unknowingly embarked on to some extent.
Today over 90% of all goods and raw materials depend on maritime transportation whose routes connect the continental shores and archipelagos of all nations. Likewise, the technological communications war that began on board the wind-propelled galleons five centuries ago is now waged at the speed of light, dramatically determining our highly technified lifestyle. Although wireless communications travel through the air and the sky in the way of electromagnetic radio waves —much like electricity and visible light— 90% of all audiovisual information travels through thousands of kilometers of fiber-optic cables laid on the sea floor, hidden from our eyes whose gaze covers the entire surface of the Earth.
56° South Latitude is a parallel that crosses the turbulent waters of the Drake Passage surrounding Cape Horn and the Diego Ramírez Islands on the southern tip of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago and the American continental shelf. Here the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans converge. Further south lies the austral ocean surrounding Antarctica, whose existence as the fifth ocean and its right to be preserved is still being debated.
Western Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost region of Patagonia, is part of Chile and belongs administratively to the Region of Magallanes. For its isolation and extreme climate conditions it constitutes an example of irreplaceable natural heritage despite being increasingly exposed to the consequences of resource exploitation and mass tourism. A number of research centers and private initiatives strive to preserve this natural sanctuary under a project known as Cape Horn Biosphere Reservation and Diego Ramírez-Drake Passage Maritime Park.
Acknowledgments
The Museo Instituto de América in Santa Fe is a magnificent exhibition space located in one of the most historically relevant coordinates worldwide. Its spacious halls are host to a permanent exhibition that preserves the memory of the voyages of Columbus and an entire generation of men and women who changed the world. Here, in 1492, in the time of the Catholic Monarchs, a mere ten meters from the Alhambra, was the camp from which the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada —the last bastion of Al Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula— was besieged and conquered. That same year, in this very place, the Capitulations of Santa Fe —the clauses of Columbus’ first voyage to the West Indies— were agreed and signed.
It has been a privilege for me to display this collection of paintings at the Instituto de América Museum in Santa Fe and for this publication to remain as a tangible testimony of the work, time, and effort that many people have put into achieving these objectives. I would especially like to thank Juan Antonio Jiménez, director of this cultural institution, with whom I have had a fruitful collaboration from the onset and who has facilitated the preparatory work throughout. Likewise, I would like to thank the painter José Antonio Muñoz, who was my student more than 25 years ago, and had the original idea that motivated me to present my paintings at his hometown museum.