The opening gong for the age of international trade was struck in 1522 when Juan Sebastián Elcano succeeded in sailing around the world. Elcano’s coat of arms bears a talking globe which says, in Latin, “you were the first to encircle me.”
Elcano’s achievement encouraged Spanish navigators to try to reach the Far East starting from Mexico’s Pacific coast.
On November 21, 1564, a convoy of boats left the port of Barra de Navidad, Jalisco, with the aim of reaching the Philippines … and then somehow finding their way back, a serious challenge due to unfavorable winds.
“Five boats started out from Barra de Navidad, but the first one of them to make it to the Philippines and back was a patache, a little sailboat named the San Lucas, piloted by Alonso de Arrellano,” Guadalajara’s award-winning historian, Padre Tomás de Hijar Ornelas, told me. “The San Lucas got separated from the convoy, but made it to the Philippines, discovered several islands and then sailed back to Mexico, following a route plotted by Andrés de Urdaneta, which involved sailing northeast from Manila to Japan to catch the favorable Westerlies that brought the San Lucas to the shores of northern California, after which it followed the coast back down to Barra de Navidad.”
The grueling voyage
For the next 250 years, the Manila galleon followed this route, making a round trip from Acapulco once a year. The grueling return typically lasted five or six months, and dozens of crew members would succumb to scurvy, dehydration, starvation, or heat stroke.
In spite of all this, the tornaviaje, as it was soon called, proved very profitable.
America was now linked, by trade, both to Europe and to the Far East. Globalization had become a reality.
Please login or subscribe to view the complete article.