Galleons full of gold and silver from the Americas shook the economic and social life of Europe in the 15th century, caused wars during several centuries, and only when the sounds of the wars ended, the large and ever-lasting wealth from the Americas emerged, those of its culture and nature that largely fascinated Europeans throughout the last two centuries and will tremendously impressed beyond doubt peoples from all the continents in the Third Millenium.

The fact that today Spanish and Portuguese are spoken in such a large number of countries in the world -as well as English and French- and that the globalization of a large number of food products represents transcendental cultural realities of this moving and still controversial epoch of those great geographical and ethnographic events (comprising the unknown American continent and almost unexplored Africa and Asia), a stage that began from the midst of the Second Millenium and that seen at a distance was able to change the prevailing ideas on mankind, the Earth and the role played by this planet in the universe. If by any esoteric whim, an alleged "World Chef" crosses out, the American products of daily consumption in the coming century, such an absurd would irritate millions of people all over the world and this is so because they have the seal of the Americas, i.e. the chocolate, vanilla, potatoes, tomatoes, maize, just to mention some of the most universal ones, and not alluding to the occasion when Columbus saw for the first time of his life, someone smoking a raw cigar in Cuba. Medicinal herbs are another topic of items from the Americas as the coca leaf. Likewise it would have caused a general rejection in the countries of the Caribbean and the Americas, the fact of simply mentioning the absurd idea of depriving them from the sugar cane -the mother of sugar cane sherry and rum- coffee, rice and banana or plantain and the citrus and of every food made of wheat, that continues coming from Asia, Africa or the Middle East which still are today the main items of their cultures and economies after its introduction in the New World by Europeans. Convinced beforehand that these had to be the "lands of spice," though Christopher Columbus described in detail, everything he found and also the hope of finding abundant gold on his log book and he was smart enough to carry with him seeds, plants and some aboriginal Indians, semi-necked beings, deprived of the jewels and clothes that he once dreamed of. Undoubtedly, Columbus was the first who exported Cuban cigars when he returned to Spain in 1493 and who imported the first sugar cane on his second voyage, according to the Cuban scholar, Fernando Ortiz on his celebrated essay of "Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar" (Cuban Controversy of Cigar and Sugar) written in 1490 where he described the transculturation process that resulted from it, after the reciprocal discovery of Europeans and the peoples from the Caribbean and the Americas in the hard clash held by the two cultures where both were modified. Their languages met, and the predominant Spanish received new voices and what is more important the mestizaje (the fusion of races) also occurred. Something similar also happened in the present Brazil, a Portuguese-speaking nation.

THE WEALTH OF AMERICA In the 16th century the gold and silver found in the conquest of Mexico and Peru influenced the course of European history, food prices were raised, multiplying the wealth of the nascent class of bankers. Spain was the bridge for the transit of this wealth since this country kept on purchasing the goods to foreigners and struggling with those who wanted to seize the colonial empire. Thus the source was depleted in few centuries and when these bright lights were off, then the eyes were turned to the true wealth of the Americas, the ever-lasting wealth. - Many other rivers and falls. Its Amazon River (the most plentiful, deeper and wider of the world). - Lake Titicaca (the highest on Earth). - Mountainous ranges. - Aconcagua (the highest peak of the Americas). - The beautiful Caribbean beaches. - The only continental area covered by tropical and mild zones of both hemispheres on Earth. - The existence of all kinds of climates. - Kissed also by the two great world oceans, almost extended pole to pole. - Virgin tropical woods are still preserved and a vast biodiversity in flora and fauna. - The Americas have provided universal civilization with: cocoa, potato, sweet potato, tomato, avocado, cassava or manioc, peanut, vanilla, guava, papaya, pineapple, pepper, pumpkin and the like. - Plants as tobacco, coca, mate herb, sisal and zapotillo that yields the raw material for the manufacture of chewing gums, the rubber plant and precious woods. - Elements of the pre-Columbian culture still survive, those which flourished in the central and southern territories of Mexico (Aztecs), in Yucatan and the present Central American countries (Mayas and Quiches) and in South America in regions as Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia (the Inca Empire).

STUBBORN COLUMBUS Columbus, daring perspective did change the course of mankind, perhaps he was the most controversial man of the second millenium. Columbus sticks to the original idea of the likely route to the East, sailing towards the West. According to his estimates, if the Earth was indeed round, he would arrive to India, Cipango (Japan) and Catay (China) where he claimed that enormous wealth was found. He never thought that there was an unknown continent in the middle of his route and if he thought of that, he did well not to inform it. When he finally closed his eyes in Valladolid, Spain on May 20, 1506, a New World has already emerged and many wanted to seize his discoveries, though they continued claiming that these were the cherished and rich lands of spice.

After Columbus After Columbus, the world was different. From 1492 to 1502, he organized four voyages where for the first time, Europeans traveled along the Caribbean Sea and discovered for Spain, The Lucayas or The Bahamas, the Lesser and Greater Antilles, he also explored a part of the northern coast of the present South America and a coastal portion of Central America and though he never met the goal of finding a new route, short and safe, to trade with the East, he made something much important, to open a new stage that completely change science, trade and the relations among powers, the era of the great geographical and ethnographical discoveries. There are different versions on its origin, the most accepted of them is that he was born between 1436 and 1451 in Genova, Italy, and that he was the son of a wool carder from whom he learnt this trade, but since his childhood, he was interested in navigation and the acquisition of this knowledge was thanks to his studies and practice. He settled in Portugal when he was about 25, where he designed a project on how to reach India sailing towards the West. This idea was first submitted to the Portuguese King John II (1483) and then to the King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabelle in 1486. It was not until 1492 that they had the Spanish crown support. Once the Spanish monarchs agreed to Columbus’ project, then he received the financing to arrange the first expedition with three caravels (the Pinta, the Niña and the Santa Maria) and a crew of 90 men. By that time certain technical advances were put into practice as the ordinary use of the compass by sailors and the navigation charts that ensured a safer trip, but still terrible ideas prevailed in relation to the danger of sailing on the present Atlantic Ocean and then the round shape of the Earth was still questioned and the simple statement of such an idea was regarded as heresy.

The spice rush

The revival of life began in small towns and European cities at the end of the Middle Ages. Arts and science were in route also for their Renaissance. Trade and the production of goods increased, but the wealthy family cannot be deprived of any of their Asian items. Nothing more pleasant for the nobility than to indulge in delicious tastes with which to season their insipid meats with spices as nugmets, cloves, ginger. Be delighted with cinnamon, or enjoying a tea or perfuming their bodies with eastern fragrances, cover them with silk and be decorated with topaz, diamond, white pearls, sapphire, gold, silver in an atmosphere of fine china, splendid damasks and precious woods. In the middle of the 15th century (May 1453), in a moment where Europe was the axis of the dynamics of the world known, the Turkish seized Constantinople. The day was unfortunate for merchants, when the trade by land was interrupted between the East and Europe. The close distance of Dardanelos Strait was as if that Europeans have lost contact with the Black Sea. The situation favored Venetians and Genoese, who indirectly held the control of the eastern market, forcing the other merchants to pay the articles 8 or 10 times more expensive. To challenge this commercial monopoly, a large amount of goods was required and of gold and silver. This circumstance forced Spain and Portugal to be the first ones interested in the search of another route towards the "spice lands" where it was claimed that gold, silver and precious stones were abundant.

Other discoveries

From Spain, after Columbus, tens of vessels started their voyages towards the Caribbean and then they went to the rest of the Americas. British, French, Dutch sailors did the same. Between 1492 and 1518, Spaniards explored almost all the Antillean islands and the continental coast of the Caribbean. Other four expeditions departed directly from Cadiz and from Huelva to recognize the northern coast of what are today Venezuela and Brazil, getting inside the Caribbean by the many routes found in the Lesser Antilles. These were the expeditions made by Alonso de Ojeda, Amerigo Vespucio and Juan de la Cosa, that of Pedro Alonso Niño and Cristobal Guerra, both between 1499 and 1500 and then those of Vicente Yañez Pinzon and Diego de Lepe. In 1500, Portuguese Alvares Cabral landed Brazilian coasts, forcefully had to change his route by the winds when he was heading to India . But it was only in 1539 that Portugal began the colonization of this rich region. Juan Ponce de Leon left Hispaniola in 1508 towards the present Puerto Rico (Borinquen) and Juan de Esquivel goes to Jamaica while Sebastian de Ocampo explored Cuba in 1509 and finally realized it was an island, then Diego Velazquez started colonizing it around 1511. The Spaniard, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crossed the present Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and discovered the Pacific Ocean while in 1520, Hernando de Magallanes, a Portuguese at the service of Spain, crossed by the south tip of the American continent, the strait that now bears its name, thus finding an outlet to the Pacific Ocean and from there to the Far East. The conquest of Mexico (1519-1521) by Hernan Cortes and that of Peru (1531-1533) by Francisco Pizarro made them find countless wealth and thus encouraging many other conquistadors to explore the jungles of the Americas, the course of their rivers, including that of the Amazon, climbed the Andean cordillera and marched towards most remote spots.