In the America's with David Yetman

(David) Recently, the world commemorated the 500th anniversary of the voyages of Christopher Columbus.

Those journeys made Europeans aware of a world new to them a world they soon invaded and transformed.

(Announcer) Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey.

Additional funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Laura and Arch Brown and by the Guilford Fund.

In the year 1492, Americans discovered Europe.

They saw three ships approaching an island off the coast of Florida.

Those three ships had been organized by one Christopher Columbus.

The results for the Americans were not that great.

For the Europeans, they were terrific.

But the entire story, including the story of Columbus, is much more complicated than I was taught as a child.

All of Columbus expeditions to the Americas originated in the port city of Huelva in Spain, in the small sailing town of Palos de la Frontera.

Nearby is a famous monastery where Columbus lived off and on for seven years and shaped his thinking and his voyages.

This building is the monastery called La Rabida, which now houses a bountiful collection of paintings commemorating the entire expedition and background of Columbus.

And it was here that Columbus arrived in 1485, hoping that the monks would help him.

"I'm Christopher Columbus, and this is my son.

I'm looking for a place to stay."

And here is then his place where he has roots for the next seven years.

Particularly without the help of one monk named friar Juan Perez had connections with the crown, with particularly with Queen Isabela.

Nothing would have happened.

In this small room are a series of frescos, rather old ones, that depict the various stages of Columbus's relationship with the monks of the monastery as explaining to them and how he ultimately got the help of the monks here get the permission of the Queen and the authorization.

And you move them from the contemplation of everything, the explanation, the gathering of the people and the waving goodbye of the boats all in one room, the glorious history, according to the monastery of the beginning of the Evangelization of the Americas.

This is sort of the inner sanctum of the monastery with a very special shrine to the Virgin Mary.

Every single country in Latin America is represented through their shield here.

The entire part of the altar is engraved silver.

It is so special that popes have come here, including recent popes, to sanctify the place and to give special recognition to this as the origin of the evangelization of the Americas.

The frescos tell more about the story.

Importance of Columbus and his mission of Catholicism to the New World is emphasized in this particular monastery.

Over the centuries, a lot of destruction of the original walls, of the paintings and the mosaics was destroyed, both by earthquake and just by aging.

But enough remained that 18th and 19th century artists could imitate the original design.

Throughout this its become a museum.

You have recreations of virtually everything paintings of Columbus in imagining what he looked like, what the preparations looked like imitations of the ship, then imitations of where he would have stayed.

The rooms looked like his actual room here, and what the monk's corridors were like back in Columbus's time.

It all has become an attempt to recreate and bring alive what Columbus was up to.

How he worked here, how we got permission here, and then ultimately how he set off on the expedition with the help of the monks of this monastery.

For Columbus to obtain his ships, he needed a nearby location for lumber and naval storers.

Not far from Huelva is a national park which preserves the character of the forests that supplied the timbers for ship construction and a true treasure, a beach that looks pretty much the way it did 500 years ago.

(Man) [Speaking Spanish] (David) We're driving along a beach in Doana National Park, which is just to the east of the port of Huelva.

It's unheard of in Spain to have a long stretch of beach that isn't wall to wall condominiums, high rise for the visitors in the summertime.

But its a national park, and it's the longest stretch of beach left in Spain.

There are people who work in here within the national park, but they are clam gatherers and fishermen who traditionally have made their living and they're allowed to continue.

(Man) [Speaking Spanish] (David) And then inland, there is a massive swamp, a wetland, the largest in the country, and then there's a forrested area that has vegetation somehow between the two.

And that combination gives rise to a diversity of wildlife that's really found in very few other places along the Mediterranean.

(Man) [Speaking Spanish] (David) This forest, which for me is a very unusual shape of the trees, always heavily lumbered for wood, for building ships, the pines that we see, were not the best wood.

There was another tree called the Sabino, which is a relative of our juniper, and it was favored because the pine would rot in the saltwater and the juniper would endure the onslaught of the sea.

His three ships have been faithfully copied in a harbor setting, not far from where Columbus departed, the small town of Palos de la Frontera.

When I was in school, every schoolchild knew the names of Columbus's three ships the Nia, the Santa Maria and the Pinta.

What we didn't realize was the details about the ships really how tiny they are.

Each of these smaller boats, they call them caravels, a traditional fishing boat design from a Spaniard travel boat, had probably 23 to 25 sailors aboard.

Everybody that included the captain, everybody there, the Santa Maria, which was called a No, much larger boat.

It had between 40 and 45 people, a total of between 90 and 100 sailors for the expedition for all three boats.

And the quarters were very tight.

So the Santa Maria was by far the biggest ship.

And although it held a lot of stuff, it was also more not anywhere nearly as maneuverable in the water.

It was much heavier, had a hard time tacking or turning, and the other boats were were much more capable of making quick maneuvers that they might have to avoid any kind of bad storms and that sort of thing.

[In Spanish] .

This was the general purpose room.

They would have the food prepared in here and at night they could sleep.

[In Spanish] They always had three people on duty.

People take their turns maintaining the sails, watching the rudder, watching all of the operations of the ship, which were numerous.

During storms, everybody was on alert so nobody could take a turn sleeping.

[In Spanish] So they had a hot meal once a day at noon.

[In Spanish] And only when the sea was calm and when the sea was rough, they would not make a fire it was too grave a danger of the ship catching on fire.

[In Spanish] They usually had goat and pork that were dried and salted so they could have fresh fish when the weather permitted.

Otherwise they would keep salted cod and sardines.

No surprise that from here came salted hams as well.

[In Spanish] Without the rudder the ship would wander all over the place.

Going from the Canaries, Columbus knew they would have the trade winds to carry them once those trade winds ended wherever they wound up and he didn't know, they would have to figure out how they were going to get back.

And he had no idea how they were going to get back.

[In Spanish] Yeah, so this is the Pinta over here.

It was considerably smaller, 23, perhaps 25 sailors, total crew on that one.

Well, the captain of this one was one of the real heroes of Columbus's voyage, Martin Alonzo Pinzn.

He was a natural leader.

Everybody knew who he was.

Everybody knew he was brilliant.

He knew the seas.

He knew the tricks.

He knew the crew.

He understood their needs.

He could read them.

He had worked together, unlike Columbus, who was aloof, who really who was an Italian among Spaniards, knew a little Portuguese, but the crew could never really identify.

He was a foreigner.

This fellow was the one who actually saw first land and yelled out, "LAND HO!"

And everyone, of course, cheered.

Nasty part of this was that there was a prize that Columbus claimed it for himself.

He was not the one who saw it, but he thought, "Ill just keep that money, thank you."

Columbus was the admiral of the three ships.

Each one of the individual ships had its own captain.

Sometimes their ships were so far apart they could hardly tell where each other was.

They had no sensitive, sophisticated instruments to determine where they were.

[In Spanish] This was a permanently illuminated lighthouse so that they could see each other.

They pretty easily could get lost if they didn't have this.

This is a beacon to the other ships, to where they were.

When they set off west from the Canary Islands, which is a stepping stone.

They had no idea where they were going.

Columbus thought that they were going to India.

He thought maybe when they did arrive in the Americas that he was in maybe Japan, and he never learned otherwise.

Columbus, when he departed, didn't know where he was going when he got there, he didn't know where he was.

And when he came back, he didn't know where he had been.

However, the ultimate result of this famed voyage changed the world forever.

[In Spanish] (David Gonzles) It was a shared effort.

On the one hand, you had Columbus, but there was also significant contribution from the Pinzn and the new families and from all those who pay their taxes.

So the fleet could be built.

Because the crown didn't bring much financing, the King and the Queen just provided good intentions and documents.

[In Spanish] The Crown ordered Palos de la Frontera to provide two ships the Santa Maria had to be financed by the expedition.

You also had the participation of the sailors from Palos, Moguer, and from other parts of Spain, but the most expert ones were those from the province of Huelva, together with the Portuguese.

Columbus didn't get support for his project in Portugal.

Columbus came to Huelva due to something not so well known.

.

The Duke of Viceu conspired against King Joao, the second of Portugal and due to some family links with the rebels, Columbus had to escape.

He could help in La Rabida especially from friar Juan Perez He was also the friar who took Columbus to the king's camp grounds in Granada while they were fighting the Moors.

[In Spanish] There he was able to establish a relationship with Isabel and Fernando and obtain support for his project.

As it is well known, Columbus mathematical calculations about distances were deemed incorrect by the geographers of his time.

[In Spanish] (David) In each of the the voyages, they carried four different kinds of liquids.

They had four large barrels down in the basement that carried just water.

They had cooking oil.

They carried vinegar as a cleaning agent.

[In Spanish] Okay When the weather got so bad they couldn't cook, they had this hardtack very hardened flour cake that they would dip in wine and that was their food.

This winch actually was better name was used to raise and lower the anchor, but also to raise and lower these very heavy barrels of water, wine, vinegar and oil.

Each of these ropes that are firmly anchored here led to a control.

A certain portion of the mast in the sails.

When the weather got really bad, they would lower the sails, but they would also the cross pieces that held the sails onto the mast.

They would lower them too.

This is the almost the upper deck and we got one more deck to go.

Oh hi, Cristbal, que tl?

So only Columbus got his own spot in the boat.

[In Spanish] I see the only one who could sleep above deck was the Admiral Christopher Columbus.

(Miguel) [In Spanish] As a reference for the Caravels, we have used a Santa Maria ship, placing ourselves there to figure out the framing and the different characters and for that, nothing better than the colleagues who work here with us.

They pose to obtain the best possible angles and then represented them in the painting, playing with the perspective and the vanishing point, and trying to recreate the scene of an intense storm surge.

[Singing in Spanish] (David) The environs of Huelva were alive with music in Columbus's time, just as they are now.

All the ships, crews, officers and sailors alike were imbued with that music.

So inevitably was Columbus.

[Singing in Spanish] There are two cultural phenomena in Andalusia and especially in Huelva, that set them off from the rest of Spain is a special kind of flamenco called Fandango and the accompanying guitar.

[Singing in Spanish] (Isabel) It is said that by the 1400s people were already singing Fandangos and Sevillanas.

So you could say that for sure.

Christopher Columbus listened to Fandangos de Huelva.

[Singing in Spanish] One of the main features of the Fandango de Huelva is its great diversity.

You'll find the fandango is from the Sierra, from the very city of Huelva, Valverde, Cabezas Rubias.

In nine areas of the province you find 32 different styles.

[In Spanish] It is very difficult to explain this passion.

You have to feel it.

The fandango is made of five verses, very intense verses.

They combine feelings of being in love.

So it is very easy to identify yourself with any of the lyrics.

[In Spanish] [Singing in Spanish] [Counting beats in Spanish] [Singing in Spanish] Everybody here knows the Fandango de Huelva.

Because if not your mother, maybe your father or your neighbor, somebody around you sings it.

So it is a sound always present in their minds and it goes straight to our heart.

[Singing in Spanish] (David) Huelva of Columbus's time was one of the world's most active and wealthy ports, part of its affluence derived from a nearby mining complex which had been enriching the area for thousands of years before Columbus.

This is the Rio Tinto mine in southwestern Spain, not far from Huelva, an area that was well known to Columbus.

It ranks among the largest open pit mines in the world.

It looks as though it's a new excavation, but it's not.

It goes back 3500 years.

[In Spanish] (Juan) We can trace the historical relevance of Huelvas territories back to ancient times.

This is due to two essential circumstances.

First, because of the Iberian Pyrite Belt, very rich in concentrations of copper, gold and silver.

This is where the mythical Rio Tinto mines are located.

Identified by many as King Solomon's mine.

The other circumstance is Huelvas a strategic position between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean worlds.

[In Spanish] We can establish the origins of this culture almost 5000 years ago.

[In Spanish] This is a little bit of an exaggeration.

But I think it is a good description of the realities of that time that the ships came here with anchors made of lead and left with anchors made of silver.

[In Spanish] (David) The amount of minerals, gold and silver especially, but also copper taken out of here, made Huelva into an international port.

Is on the Atlantic, but metals could easily be transported in boats into the Mediterranean, into the northwest, into the low countries and even to England.

So what Columbus found here was a thriving port that was importing spices from Asia, textiles from Asia and gold and other commodities from Africa.

It was a booming business that Columbus came into and gave him some ideas of what he might accomplish.

Huelvas affluence declined over the centuries as the Spanish kings, the nobility gathered, the wealth plundered from the Americas into the North of Spain.

Huelvans now understand that Columbus is no longer the international hero he and his supporters strove to portray, yet they recognize that their home has a historic importance equal to any place in Europe and beyond.

They also offer a measured view of Columbus's importance.

(Carlos) Its a contradictory feeling being from Huelva, you know, on one hand its in Andalusia, which traditionally is one of the poorest regions in Spain, then at the same time, you know, and when you grow up and you begin to learn about the story and you see all the monuments and all the references around, you begin to feel this pride for, you know, what happened here 500 years ago, starting with the 500 anniversary that began to be, you know, a lot of more critical view of everything related to Columbus and what we call the discovery.

From here, we have always considered him more like an icon of the whole thing, but not as this super hero that really created all this change.

Yet the Pinzn family, I think, is another example of this process of revisiting the whole history of the of the discovery.

Even though we have always known that the Pinzn family was very important.

Was such a prominent in helping, you know, Christopher Columbus or Coln, as we call him here, to gather, the people on the boats up to really getting the boats to reach the coast of America without sinking before.

But I landed in Mexico and I felt so at home, Latin Americans are our brothers or cousins.

I felt it.

And I came up with this kind of silly thing that I began to tell every person that I knew in Mexico or in Latin America.

Like Muslims are supposed to go to Mecca once in a lifetime you should come once in your lifetime to Huelva, because once you come here, you can appreciate where all these cultural features in your Mestizaje come from, from the European part.

No, I think Coln was, I guess somebody sort of unnecessary in the whole adventure, like when we think of him from from here, from Huelva, once he did the right thing of getting the ships and finding the new land.

Anything else that came afterwards, you know, he lost relevance.

It was just his personal struggle to get rich.

He was somebody trying to do something for himself.

He wasn't trying to change the world.

He was trying to change his life for the for the better and his family, as it was proved later with all of their lawsuits that they presented to the to the Spanish crown.

He wasn't a hero because he could have done things way better once he landed in America.

And obviously we are learning a lot about the flaws of his character.

(David) For better or worse, the Americas were utterly transformed by the changes wrought by Columbus and his successors via disease, armaments, religion and culture.

Historians now are trying to build a view of Columbus to include the Pinzn Brothers as equal partners and present a portrait of the great Genoan organizer that is fair and objective.

[Singing in Spanish] Join us next time in the Americas.

With me, David Yetman.

Mexico City combines aspects of Spanish and indigenous or Aztec cultures.

These go back more than 500 years and many indigenous people claims that it was they who established the victory over the Aztecs and not the Spaniards.

(Announcer) Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey.

Additional funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Laura and Arch Brown and by the Guilford Fund.