‘La gente deseosa | de hollar la tierra’ (III. 236): Desire, Expansion and the Mystery of Providence

In the Indo-Pacific, the turn of the century saw increased investment in augmenting and consolidating territory in the Philippines and Moluccas in response to Dutch expansion, culminating in a speedy (if short-lived) ‘reconquest’ of Ternate and Tidore in 1606 by a fleet dispatched under Montesclaros from New Spain. Such initiatives were to some extent the aftershock of the much more ambitious debates of the 1570s and 1580s about a possible conquest of China.2 See Manel Ollé, La empresa de China: De la Armada invencible al galeón de Manila (Barcelona, 2002), pp. 231–32. To the south, the vast hypothetical Terra Australis which continued to appear on maps became a renewed object of interest. A number of expeditions were sent to the Solomon Islands from Callao to claim the new continent: in 1567 and 1595 under Álvaro de Mendaña with Pedro Fernandes de Queirós as pilot, and in 1605 under Queirós. The latter explored Vanuatu and other Pacific islands, returning to Madrid in 1607 to publicise his findings and agitate for a new era of discovery and colonisation, while his rival Luís Vaz de Torres sailed what would later become known as the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea on his return to Manila.

These initiatives had more than a circumstantial impact in Lima. In addition to the stir and deployment of local resources that the three official missions to the Terra Australis which embarked from the city must have generated, further projected voyages constantly disrupted the small naval community during the 1580s and 1590s. In Lima again by 1579, Mendaña, still titling himself ‘adelantado de las Islas Occidentales’, governor of the Western Isles, continuously mounted plans to establish a new colony in the Solomon Islands. In 1582 and 1583, for example, we find him recruiting men, soliciting contracts and partnerships to fund the expedition, and haggling over the purchase of ships. During the reign of Hurtado de Mendoza, he appears as an expert on maritime defence, redacting a detailed report on the protection of the royal fleet and being named its official inspector in 1592–93.3 Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, MSS Harkness 891–93, 898–99; Annie Baert, ‘Alvaro de Mendaña (1542–1595), un explorateur du Pacifique sud au destin tragique’ (2003) <http://ile-en-ile.org/alvaro-de-mendana/>. In 1597, the returning Queirós, possessed of a millenarian zeal, spread the word in Lima of the magnificent conquests for Christ and Spain which awaited in the new world of the south, before departing to make his case before Philip III in 1600. The chequered trajectory of both explorers on their return to the Viceroyalty attests to the very real sense of a choice between the defence of the Peruvian coast and the backing of new explorations. Until Hurtado’s arrival in Lima, Mendaña repeatedly faced the disappointment of seeing his crew and equipment forcibly requisitioned on the incursion of a corsair, or to escort the silver fleet. In a new surge of confidence after the capture of Hawkins in 1594, by contrast, the flagship and most of the weapons for his forthcoming voyage were provided out of Crown property which had been designated for Lima’s defence. The two priorities clearly competed for attention and resources in court, port and plaza, then, and the primary role in adjudicating between them seems to have been assumed by the viceroy.

It seems unlikely that Miramontes could have escaped reports of these competing aspirations. At the very least, his career in Callao from the late 1580s would have brought him into contact with the grand plans and discoveries of figures such as Mendaña and Queirós. The elucidation of this context allows us to see how two apparently separate movements within Lima – on the one hand, a hotly contested polemic over how to bring peace to the rebellious territories of the Spanish empire, and on the other, a new idealism over the possibilities of new conquests and new worlds – could be interconnected in both fact and perception with the fight against piracy. I contend that both sets of aspirations, never yet brought to bear on criticism of the poem, shed some light on the underlying structure of the navigations and attempted conquests of which it is composed.

A programmatic episode here is Drake’s account in the third canto of Magellan’s death on the island of Cybú (Cebu) in the Philippines. The bellicose inhabitants of Cybú are, of course, not Amerindians, but are nevertheless described in terms familiar from the latter’s representation in the epic tradition. ‘Una feroz gente, áspera y dura […] indómita, soberbia, levantada’ [a fierce people, rough and tough (…) untamed, proud, striving] (III. 242), they combine features of both Oña and Ercilla’s Araucanians. As these do at various points, they scorn agriculture in favour of war; lord it over their neighbours; practise human sacrifice, devil worship, cannibalism, necromancy and borracheras (III. 243–44, 251); and feign peace with the new arrivals while treacherously planning war (III. 255–56). Unlike the other indios de guerra of Armas antárticas, however, they also inhabit a locus amoenus which is nothing short of paradisaical. Indeed, the landing of Magellan’s flagship at the ‘valle deleitoso’ [delightful valley] which ‘la convidó a tomar algún reposo’ [beckoned it to take some rest] (III. 235) as a rosy dawn awakens is painted with an unmistakable resemblance to another celebrated resting point on a return voyage of discovery. The ‘vale ameno’ [pleasant valley] of the the Ilha dos Amores, the Island of Love, of the ninth and tenth cantos of Os Lusíadas also invites a group of weary sailors to enjoy a fitting respite from their travails, having in fact been conjured up by the Lusitanians’ patron deity, Venus, and populated with amorous nymphs precisely for that purpose.4 Luis de Camões, Os Lusíadas, ed. by Maria Letícia Dionísio, 6th edn (Sintra, 2007), p. 350, IX. 55. Quotations from the poem are taken from this edition and designated by canto and stanza number. The episode, in which Vasco da Gama and his men enjoy uninhibited lovemaking and feasting within a tropical paradise, while a magical globe displays the world they have begun to open up and a prophecy describes the governor-captains of India who will follow them, was one of the most iconic and most imitated of Camões’s poem. As Blanco puts it, without it, ‘it would be difficult to think of such a complete fusion of the libido sciendi, to which the cartographical unfolding of the globe presented by Tethys gives expression and satisfaction, the libido dominandi, which results in the opening of the route to the riches of the Indies, and the libido fruendi, which the Portuguese poet symbolises in the erotic paradise of the island of Venus.’5 Blanco, Góngora heroico, pp. 379–80.

The landings in both poems, then, are infused with a desire in which the colonial lusts for pleasure, for power and for knowledge are intertwined, and they begin in very similar fashion. After a first glimpse of the beach, leafy springs and hills, the longing of the mariners for land is stressed (‘la gente deseosa | de hollar la tierra salta en la ribera’ [the people longing for land jump on shore], AA III. 236; ‘os fortes mançebos que na praia | ponham os pés, de terra cobiçosos’ [the strong young men set foot on the beach, greedy for land], OL IX. 66), and their gleeful activities on landing are described, as they run along the beach, bathe in the pools, and hunt wild animals. From this point on, though, their arrivals in paradise take a very different turn. While Vasco da Gama’s men plunge into the forest ‘para ferir os cervos’ [to wound the stags] (OL IX. 67) only to find the water nymphs, already wounded by Cupid’s arrow, fall meekly into their nets, Magellan’s, diving naked into the water ‘como el ciervo herido’ [like the wounded stag] (AA III. 237) are unaware that the roles in the chase have been reversed. Having unwittingly crossed a forbidden ‘raya’ drawn in the sand (III. 245), they themselves are shortly to become the prey of the watching inhabitants. While Da Gama finds himself led to the bed of the love-struck Tethys, his compatriot, rushing to pursue the barbarians his men have put to flight, is himself struck by an unhappy arrow (III. 261), this one steeped in a very literal poison.

This version of Magellan’s death is apparently unique to Miramontes. The tale of an arcane transgression, an unnamed foreboding, crossing an unseen ‘raya’, refusing an unknown tribute, and finally eating the ‘fresca, deseada y dulce fruta’ [fresh, desired and sweet fruit] (III. 255) which proves the mortality of the newcomers and bears within it the figurative poison of their captain’s demise, is highly evocative. It seems to speak in archetypal language of a fall from Edenic innocence, of prohibited desire and its punishment – except that the immediate sin is not clear. In Magellan’s only, brief, soliloquy, he dismisses such omens, affirming that his quest for ‘la fragante especería’ [the fragrant spices] (III. 241) of the Spice Islands is in accordance with the will of God and the papal disposition of Tordesillas. Magellan’s overall presentation in this canto is in fact far more positive than in many of the poet’s sources: Drake (admittedly a somewhat ambivalent mouthpiece) repeatedly acclaims him as a hero, and the historical mutinies and complaints of his men are silenced, as is the important role played by Juan Sebastián Elcano in bringing the spice-laden ship safely back to Spain.

However, there is one significant, neglected detail in Magellan’s tragic demise. He is shot when, ‘más presto | de lo que en aquel caso era importante’ [more hastily than the situation required] (III. 260), he leaps beyond the defensive trench to pursue an enemy who is already fleeing. The reader might recall a parallel scene in Os Lusíadas, when the reckless Fernão Veloso ventures alone into St Helena Bay. The soldier is ignominiously chased back to ship and Da Gama is wounded in the ensuing skirmish, with Veloso’s native pursuers receiving ‘red caps’ for their pains, as Da Gama jestingly refers to their spilled blood (V. 24–36). The whole episode acts as a humorously dismissive and somewhat grotesque prelude to the ambiguous curse of the giant Adamastor (37–60).6 The connections between the skirmish and the appearance of the giant are discussed by Quint, Epic and Empire, pp. 115–25. In Miramontes, the outcome is reversed, and for tragic rather than comic effect. At this moment, what has heretofore been a licit, defensive, successful and perhaps even Providential (cf. III. 249–50) engagement overflows into a more aggressive action of questionable ethical and pragmatic grounding, except that in this case the culprit is not the undisciplined, foolhardy soldier, but the general himself. It is at this point that the surviving men realise the impossibility (at least in the short term) of exacting vengeance, however ‘justa’, and conquering the coveted island, across which ‘ya el caribe fiero | por la áspera montaña huyó ligero’ [the fierce Carib had already fled, light-footed, into the rough mountain] (III. 266). Like the indios de guerra of Chile, Panama, Zacatecas or even the pre-Hispanic Andean jungle (XV–XVI), then, the islanders of Cybú are, for all their bellicosity, easily controlled in a purely defensive war, but apparently unamenable to total conquest by force. In a peculiar exception to their overall barbarism, they are, however, scrupulously compliant with ius gentium in their policy regarding the seafarers who arrive on their shore, providing a free landing, basic supplies and provisions for further commerce provided that a nominal tribute is paid and there is no trespass beyond where the law permits. While this opens up the possibility of an alternative, non-possessive, form of interaction and exchange, the initial promise of discovery, conquest and possession, with its echoes of Camões, his imitators and perhaps the expedition to Ancud of the third part of La Araucana, proves wholly, and paradigmatically, fruitless.7 In ‘Crossing the Line in the Sand: Francis Drake Imitating Ferdinand Magellan in Juan de Miramontes’s Armas antárticas’, Hispanic Review, 81.4 (2013), 393–415, Jason McCloskey traces a correspondence between the forbidden ‘raya’, Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, and the contested antemeridian demarcating Spanish and Portuguese territories in the Indo-Pacific. In the context of the above discussion, however, it is arguable that more immediate analogies might spring to mind for Miramontes’s local readers – not least the contemporary plans for new Pacific expeditions, and the ‘raya’ polemically proposed as the sine qua non of the guerra defensiva in Chile.

Admittedly, in figures such as Queirós’s utopic dreams for the colonisation of the Terra Australis, religious devotion and evangelical zeal loomed large, while in the ambivalent and failed conquests considered up to this point – the overthrow of the Inca Empire, Oxenham’s emulation of the conquistadors, and Magellan’s landing in the Pacific – the motivations of the protagonists are, at best, mixed. The same cannot be said, however, for the final major episode of attempted exploration and settlement recounted in the poem. The passages through the Magellan Strait constitute one of the leitmotifs of the work, and in canto XVIII, Sarmiento enters it at the king’s command to construct a fortified colony and debar unwanted access in the future. The plan to offset future threats from piracy, as well as Araucanian rebellion and Portuguese or French incursions from Brazil (XVIII. 1527–29), is depicted as a legitimate, prudent and essentially defensive enterprise, which contrasts strongly with its portrayal in other sources, such as the strident criticism of the venture in Barco Centenera. Sarmiento’s longing to ‘ofrecer las almas de aquel suelo | en santo y agradable sacrificio’ [offer the souls of that soil in a holy and pleasing sacrifice] (XVIII. 1521) stirs the Catholic monarch’s own determination to ‘amplificar la fe de Christo […] por ser de la romana Iglesia escudo […] al de bienes, fe y razón desnudo, | dalle bienes, razón y fe […] | gastando tus solados, tu riquieza | porque se remediase su probeza [sic]’ [extend the faith of Christ (…) since you are the shield of the Roman Church (…) to those who are naked of goods, faith and reason [you determine] to give them goods, reason and faith (…) spending your soldiers, your richness to remedy their poverty] (XVIII. 1526). Such assertions make this apparently the most altruistic of any of the voyages which feature in the work. Indeed, initially there are indications that this conquest, like that of Peru, is divinely favoured, as the seas are smoothed by Sarmiento’s piety (XVIII. 1521) and ‘El Redentor’ himself inclines the ear of the sovereign to support the venture (XVIII. 1523–25).

Yet in the event, the expedition meets with a catalogue of disasters which only confirm the continuing mastery of Satan over the Strait (XVIII. 1540). As we have seen, like the other indios de guerra of the peripheries of the Antarctic world, the inhabitants of this region prove utterly ‘intratables’, showing themselves impossible to conquer not only by force but also, apparently, by commerce or religious zeal. Their world is the dystopic antithesis of Cybú, whose hostile climate, disease-ridden air, barren land and stormy seas mercilessly consume the settlers stranded on its shore. As the thwarted epic proems of this canto suggest (XVIII. 1516, 1577), the Strait, like Chile, is a stage only for tragedy:

The bemusement and despair with which this voyage is recounted is entirely consistent with contemporary accounts of and reactions to the disaster, with a number of details being replicated in the testimony of the survivor Tomé Hernández and the official relación of Diego Flores.8 Cf. Barros, ‘Primer testimonio’; ‘Relacion del subceso que tubo la Real Armada de Su Mgd. […] para el Estrecho de Magallanes […] por mi Pedro de Rada escrivano mayor della qu’es como se sigue’ (c. 1582), San Marino, Huntington Library, MS 59416. Miramontes may have met Hernández in Lima, as Firbas suggests. Miramontes’s decision to close his epic with this extended episode is nonetheless significant. In many respects, the attempted conquest of the Strait and the incursion of Cavendish with which the epic closes parallel the conquest of Peru and the incursion of Drake with which it began. If at the outset, while the weeds of the devil choke up the soil to be sown with the Good News, ‘fue menester que el medio de la guerra | las plantas disipase desta tierra’ [it was necessary to remove the plants of this land by means of war] (I. 15), once the new shoots of Christianity have taken root, Lucifer ‘pretendió por los medios de la guerra | cortar las tiernas plantas desta tierra’ [aimed by means of war to cut off the tender plants of this land] (XIX. 1591). Aggressive war, it seems, is the tool no longer of Providence, but of evil. Intriguingly, a similar development occurs with respect to conquest, whether in principle violent or not.

As we have seen, in the very opening stanza of the poem, the planting of the eternal Word of God silences the oracles which until then had terrorised the Indies. This affirmation is treated very literally. Before the arrival of Christianity, gentilic augurs frequently intervene in the course of events. We encounter, for example, the fearful ‘voz’ which haunts the dreams of Atahualpa (I. 28); the ‘antiguo oráculo’ [ancient oracle] and raving idols which forecast to the people of Cybú their future domination by a foreign race (III. 249–50); the cave-dwelling ‘apolíneo espíritu’ [Apolline spirit] which menaces the Atlantic tribes of Africa (IV. 351); the future lords of Peru prophesied and sculpted by the ‘antiguos adevinos’ [ancient seers] of Vilcabamba (XIII. 1142–43); and the ‘nephando oráculo’ [abominable oracle] (XV. 1272) fed by the human sacrifices of their barbaric neighbours. Whether beneficent or demonic, these prophetic voices are united by the common characteristic that they do, in fact, guide and predict the future. After the arrival of the true Word, this is no longer the case. When Oxenham, like Virgil’s Turnus or Oña’s Caupolicán, is inflamed by a vision of the fury Aletho (IX. 743–53), her speech offers only empty illusion; the ‘ethïopes hechiceros’ [Ethiopian witch doctors] who foretell a favourable outcome to the new alliance with the English are likewise entirely deceived (V. 413–14).

More striking, however, is that, just as the ‘era de la Clemencia’ ushers out the voices of pagan prophecy, so too does the bidding of Providence become increasingly difficult to discern. As we have seen, the conquest of the Inca Empire (if not its aftermath) is unequivocally the result of divine favour, and confirmed by prodigies and miracles. While prodigies of nature do on occasion reappear in Hispanic Peru, in the colossal storm which threatens to sink Drake’s fleet at the summons of the Creator, for instance (VI. 456), or the terrestrial and celestial omens which precede the capture of San Juan de Antón (VIII. 688–90), such phenomena are lost on their observers, and ultimately have little impact on the action. On several occasions, the poet rhetorically wonders that God would allow such calamities to befall. This is an ‘incomprensible Dios’ who permits Drake to fuel new wars and new heresy with his robbery (VIII. 694–98), for the reign of Montesclaros’s predecessor to be beset with natural and military disasters (XIII. 1206), and, finally, the utter devastation of Sarmiento’s mission to convert the peoples of the Strait:

What remains clear from the preceding discussion is that, whether motivated by commerce or by strategic considerations, the desire for riches or to win souls for God, whether just or unjust, future conquests of the Antarctic world can no longer count on a Providential outcome. Whether pushing forward the frontier in Chile or Zacatecas, grasping at the elusive pleasures of the Pacific islands, or venturing into the new world of the south for king and Church, the maritime or territorial expansion of its boundaries meets with insurmountable obstacles. Chief among these is the nature of the frontier peoples themselves, but this is not to say that an escape from a violent stalemate, or a more positive form of encounter, is impossible. It is simply that the poem as it stands presents the reader only with the horrific failures of attempted expansions, not with the potential fruits of their alternative. As we have seen, the islanders of Cybú are, for all their bellicosity, perfectly prepared to engage in mutual assistance and dialogue on their own terms, terms about which the discoverers never trouble themselves to enquire. In a striking exception to the overall misery of the expedition to the Strait, its native inhabitants are unexpectedly moved to worship at the sight of the cross mounted above their enemy’s grave, whose light miraculously pierces their souls (XVIII. 1562–66). They are not, in other words, subhuman or irredeemable, as some contemporary accounts of the ‘giants’ in the region would suggest. Their incipient conversion, though, is God’s conquest, not man’s, and one which apparently need no longer be wedded to the material interests of the Gospel’s immediate agents in order to achieve its goals. This reorientation of the Spanish civic communities of the New World away from exploration, evangelical conquest and frontier warfare occurs in tandem with a recalibration of the make-up of the political community and its symbolic head, the viceroy. Lima, as we have seen, is at the heart of the new defensive efforts, and we now need to attend to the manner in which a new ethics and logic of conflict, and a new vision of governance, are intertwined.