It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat’s blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred years, clawing back sections of the peninsula from its Moorish occupiers, and a nobleman demonstrated his pedigree by holding up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath his pale skin—proof that his birth had not been contaminated by the dark-skinned enemy—Robert Lacey, Aristocrats

The historical Spanish obsession with the purity of blood evolved into an elaborate caste system which reached its apogee with the colonization of South America and the subsequent intermingling of settlers with both South American Indians and imported African slaves, all of whose mixed offspring needed a separate classification, of course.

It was an intricate system—designed to pit sections of society against each other and play on the subsequent fear of overthrow by the lower classes, so that Spain could continue to exert its top-down control. But it also signified the relative social importance of the caste members, usually in a pejorative sense, meaning that only certain rights, occupations, and institutions were open to them.

If you had been born in Spain, then you automatically qualified as a member of the elite. If you had been born in South America, but your bloodline was “pure” then you were accorded privileged status, but of the second order, and the most influential posts were out of reach. However, if your ancestors had the temerity to dally with the Indians or blacks, then a complicated algorithm was brought to bear.

The four primary groups were the peninsulares (Spanish-born whites), followed by the criollos (who were also white, and of Spanish descent, but who had been born in South America), the indios (a catch-all term for any member or descendant of the various indigenous groups of South America), and the negros (black Africans or their descendants, usually slaves or freed slaves).

This however is a simplification, and the colonial authorities were anything but simplistic in their discrimination. Being more fluid than labels suggest, the various castes intermingled—a situation exacerbated by the gender imbalance of Spanish settlers—causing the colonial administration a huge headache. It was solved with a simple bureaucratic sleight of hand: classification based on the “purity” of blood.

Mestizo was the label given to products of the union of a Spaniard and an Indian. Those who were half-black and half-Spanish, were mulattos. Children to Indian and black parents were zambos, and the intellect of Galileo couldn’t save them from a lifetime of drudgery.

Spain attempted to regulate intermarriage, but with little success. To improve the prospects of their children, mestizos and mulattos often attempted to “purify” their bloodlines by marrying someone whiter than themselves, hoping to flush out the “bad” blood.

The result of all these rigorously calculated ruttings was a population with varying elements of the genetic smorgasbord of South America and beyond. Fortunately, the impressive Spanish bureaucracy had a system of classification to reflect the varying fractions of “good” and “bad” blood in each person, and allotted them their role in society accordingly, labeling them castizos, cholos, coyotes, pardos, moriscos, chinos, cambujos, lobos, ladinos, or bozales, among many other sub-classifications which varied from place-to-place, and over time.

As seen in the painting at the top, artists traveled to the New World to capture this elaborate system of castes, and the descriptions attached to the paintings revealed the racial biases of the time. For example, a cambujo was the label given to the offspring of a lobo and an india, who were described in an 18th century painting as “slow, lazy, and cumbersome.”

Caste membership didn’t simply determine what occupation you could hold, but also whether you could bear arms, attend university, or even the clothes you were allowed wear.

This intricate system was most clearly visible in colonial Peru. Even by the time the independence wars spread its shores in 1820, Peru was still a feudal society—in racial and social terms at least.

Indios slaved in the mines, and negros toiled in the low-lying coastal farms which fed the country. The peninsulares held all the positions of power and influence. The criollos acted as their subordinates, or often made up the professional and business classes. And the mestizos were the working class in the towns and cities, doing all the menial jobs in proximity to the whites that the elite felt they couldn’t “trust” indios and negros with.

Aside from racial prejudice, that “lack of trust” was based—at least partly—on fear, which Spain was keen to exploit to keep the various castes and sub-castes in their allotted place.

The educated criollos had a lot to gain from an independent Peru: the highest positions of authority would be open to them, and they could benefit handsomely from the liberalization of trade, which Madrid had monopolized.

However, Spain knew that the best way to control a populous country like Peru was by setting sections of society against themselves. Out of one million souls, the whites barely numbered one hundred and fifty thousand. And since the successful slave revolt in Haiti in 1804 they had even more reason to be afraid. For them, a free Peru could mean death.

Spain relentlessly exploited this fear to suppress the liberal ideals which had been gaining popularity since the revolutions in France and the United States. And it was a successful strategy, until Napoleon seized the Spanish throne, Madrid lost its grip on the colonies, and an age of revolution was born.

While independence for Peru and the rest of Spanish America saw the abolition of both slavery and the caste system, colonial racial ideology took a little longer to dissipate.

As for the labels, they live on and many are still in use today—although mostly stripped of their pejorative connotations.

For the chronicler, the charm of history lies in the fact that—if only he waits a sufficient time before setting down his tale—he can always trace the fall of an empire to the loss of a horseshoe nail.

It’s difficult to subscribe to any grand theories of history when examining the historical record. If you zoom back enough, events can appear to have some kind of order, some kind of logical cause-and-effect.

However, when you zoom in, it’s akin to witnessing Brownian motion through a microscope. Chaos seems to rule. While we are—on some level at least—rational beings, we often pursue an irrational course of action. Chance and chaos have played too large a role in the events of history for any grand theory to neatly explain anything.

We can, however, follow a chain of events back to its source. And often, the fall of an empire can indeed be traced to the loss of a horseshoe nail, given the requisite distance and perspective. The events described in the (fantastic) book from which the above quote is taken—The Incredible Yanqui by Hermann Deutsch—are a case in point.

Deutsche’s narrative non-fiction account concerns the life of a man who was extremely well-known one hundred years ago, but who has since been forgotten. Lee Christmas, a Louisiana native, was at the beginning of what he hoped would be a long career working the railroad when he fell asleep, drunk, at the throttle and crashed straight into an oncoming locomotive.

The incident led to him being blacklisted, and for three years he could do no better than tramp around the South feeding off scraps of back-breaking labor. In 1894, he finally caught a break. The rapid expansion of the railroad led to a labor shortage and an amnesty was proclaimed. Lee Christmas was in line to get his old job back, and his pride, once he passed the newly instituted color vision test.

To Lee’s great surprise, he was declared color-blind, and barred from his chosen profession for life. He had heard that the expanding banana plantations in Honduras were in need of railroad engineers, suspected the Honduran national railroad would have no color vision test, and boarded the next steamer south from New Orleans.

Back behind the throttle, this time a tiny wood-burning train rather than one of the great Moguls he was fond of, Lee carried huge blocks of ice down to the coast from Central America’s solitary ice factory, and hauled bananas back up the narrow-gauge railroad all the way to the provincial capital, San Pedro Sula.

One April day, over two years after he had emigrated from New Orleans, Lee was returning from San Pedro Sula with his usual load. As he pulled into the siding at Laguna Trestle, he noticed some men up ahead, loitering beside the tracks, but was unconcerned. However, as he came to a halt, a further group sprang from the bushes, armed with rifles and jabbering in Spanish. Unbeknownst to Lee, a group of revolutionaries had taken control of Puerto Cortés that morning, and Lee’s little train was required to carry their rebellion inland.

The bandits commandeered the train and ordered Lee to continue on to Puerto Cortés. The revolutionary “general” wanted nothing more from Lee than his services as an engineer. His men were to be ferried to San Pedro Sula the following morning, and he left Lee under no illusions about what would happen if he didn’t comply.

Lee figured that if he was going to be shot at, he could do with a little protection. He was up half the night, but was happy with what he had rigged up—a little traveling fort in front of his cab. A Hotchkiss cannon was mounted at the head of the flatcar and the sides were walled in with three-quarter inch scrap iron fronted by a row of sand-bags—protection for a line of marksmen on either side.

The rebels, however, were unaware that news of their revolt had already reached San Pedro Sula. The comandante of the local garrison decided not to wait for orders from the capital, took a company of men and rode through the night down towards the coast.

The following morning, just as the rebels were readying to board Lee’s train, scouts brought word: the federales would be upon them shortly. The train was stationed at the far end of a large lake, and the only route across was the trestle that spanned the water and bore the single line of narrow gauge track that led inland to San Pedro Sula. The rebel leader ordered the mouth of the trestle barricaded with the only thing to hand—the gigantic 200-pound blocks of ice that were still in the back of Lee’s little train.

Behind their icy barricade, the rebels took position, with the armored flatcar affording the sharpshooters both protection and a vantage point. The government troops—instead of waiting for the ice to melt in the sweltering tropical heat—forsook prudence and charged into battle, across the trestle, towards the revolutionaries. Lee sat in his cab, watching the spectacle unfold.

The rebels had given him a rifle but he had no intention of joining the battle, and was just hopeful that his “side” would be victorious.

When the shooting began, it’s hard to know exactly what went through the head of Lee Christmas. He could have sat in his cab and watched it all play out. He was no military man and had no experience of combat.

But when the bullets started flying, Lee grabbed his weapon and jumped down from the train, raced towards the barricade and took position, engaging the federales as they charged across the trestle.

To the relief of the rebels, the battle ended quickly; after a lucky shot felled the enemy comandante the federales withdrew. On sight of this, the rebels cheered, embracing the yanqui as one of their own. Lee was promoted to Captain on the spot, the rebel leader insisted on calling off their planned expedition to San Pedro Sula, so their victory could be properly celebrated.

Lee Christmas would go on to become the most famous soldier of fortune in an age of mercenaries. He took part in numerous Central American revolutions, put down several more in the service of governments, and was regularly featured in the Sunday Supplements back home. He was a genuine celebrity, before that term was widely used.

His actions were also indirectly responsible for the ascension of one of the banana magnates who would have such a pernicious influence over Central America in the first half of the twentieth century.

A question remains. A horseshoe nail demands our attention. Why did Lee Christmas leap from the sanctity of that train to join that first revolution? Was it a rush of blood? Was it fear which instigated a surge of adrenaline so powerful that it propelled him into action? Or was he a born soldier, a man of action, waiting for his cue?

A historian can get away with posing these questions, but a historical novelist must answer them. It is in these gaps in the historical record where a writer truly goes to work.

I’m looking forward to releasing Bananas For Christmas this summer, and sharing the story of Lee Christmas with a new generation.

Most travelers to Bolivia bypass the city. After touring the Salt Plains to the south, most head on to the lights of La Paz, planning to tour Lake Titicaca, cycle the world’s most dangerous road, or move on to Cuzco and Machu Picchu.

Others take a less-traveled path into Chile and the Atacama Desert then travel up to Ica, the condors of the Colca Canyon, and the mysterious Nazca Lines. Those coming from the north tend to skip Potosí altogether. This, however, is a mistake.

Its primary tourist attraction is the old silver mine. While it’s not much to look at – from the outside at least –  this mine once provided a huge portion of the Spanish Crown’s revenue.

In the 1540s, the first Spanish explorers described a “thumb of silver” sticking out from the Altiplano. Mount Potosí was soon renamed El Cerro Rico, in honor of a huge outcropping of silver ore which ran down one side of the mountain, hinting at the vast riches which lay beneath.

Development was rapid. As Yale history professor John Demos describes (in his superb article The High Place):

From then on, for half a century, the boom around the cerro rico (rich hill) developed fantastically. In 1547 Potosí’s population was about 14,000, in 1571 perhaps 40,000, by 1600 at least 150,000. This raised it to the demographic level of the chief capitals of Europe and Asia (London, Amsterdam, Canton, Tokyo), and made it by far the largest human community in the Western Hemisphere. Moreover, its population formed an astonishing, unprecedented mix. A 1611 estimate included 3,000 Spaniards, 40,000 non-Spanish Europeans (French, German, Italian, Portuguese, English, among others), 35,000 Creoles (American-born, many of mixed-race parentage), 76,000 Indians (themselves representing numerous different ethnic and cultural backgrounds), and 6,000 Africans (nearly all held as slaves by white Potosínos).

Initially, African slaves were brought to work the mine. But when they struggled to adapt to the 4,200 meter (nearly 14,000 feet) altitude, the Spanish turned to the Indians.

They were slaves in all but name. Under the mita system, Indians were drafted – forcibly – as indentured laborers to work the mine. While they earned a nominal wage, many didn’t survive the appalling conditions in what the Indians came to call “the mountain that eats men.” By the time the Spaniards bled the mine dry three centuries later, this “mouth of hell” swallowed eight million souls.

Those who stayed above ground – the European settlers – profited handsomely. Silver was everywhere from horseshoes to church altars – even the streets outside the cathedral were resurface with silver bars. The mythical city of El Dorado had been made real, but silver.

Soon “Potosí” became a byword for unimaginable wealth across the world. Treasure hunters, prospectors, professional gamblers, matadors, and prostitutes descended on the city where the rich merchants and nobles competed with ostentatious displays of wealth. The city’s coat of arms bore the following legend: I am rich Potosí, Treasure of the world. The king of all mountains, And the envy of all kings.

Locals claim that the Spanish dug enough silver out of the ground to build a bridge all the way to Madrid. That’s not altogether fanciful. 99% of colonial Latin America’s exports was silver – most of that coming from Potosí.

The Spanish people, however, benefited little from the silver gushing into Seville’s Casa de Contratació. The Crown owed most of it to creditors all over Europe, and thus the wealth of Potosí ended up stimulating development across the continent.

After the Argentines declared independence at the start of the 19th century, they struck north, seeking to cross the Altiplano to launch a land assault on the capital of Spanish America, and the heart of Madrid’s power on the continent: Lima.

While Potosí’s fortunes had faded – the silver had dwindled – the city was still important enough to remain a primary objective, and was captured by Argentine forces who liberated the miners – many of whom enlisted. The city soon returned to Spanish hands though, as the Argentine army was driven back, and the retribution for the independence supporters left behind was especially fierce.

Today, all across Latin America, the regions that were richest in natural resources are now the most underdeveloped and poverty-stricken; Potosí is just one tragic example.

At the time of Argentina’s capture of Potosí during the independence wars, the area now known as Bolivia was more populous than all of Argentina. Now, the latter’s population is six times that of its northern neighbour.

Eduard Galeano, in the superb The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, called Potosí: an open wound of the colonial system in America: a still audible “J’accuse.”

The mine is still operational today, and tourists can experience the working conditions first-hand. I took a tour of the mine in 2005. I was already experiencing some of the effects of altitude sickness – confusion, disorientation, shortness of breath – but nothing too serious. Potosí was the highest I had been for an extended period. That is, until I entered the mine.

We were driven up to the market below the mine. Our tour guide – an ex-miner who had to retire after his arm was crushed by an ore-cart – explained that it was traditional to buy miners gifts of alcohol, hand-rolled cigarettes, coca leaves, and dynamite.

The mine is something of a free-for-all now, with 8,000 miners working in a variety of independent cooperatives. The problem is, nobody has sufficient capital for modern tools, so the methods used to extract the few metals that are left – such as tin – are quite crude.

Indeed, the conditions are particularly poor for the workers. Miners’ life expectancy averages at 40 years. The miners themselves reckon they have about ten years on the job before they succumb to an accident or silicosis (black lung disease).

The few older workers we saw were given the easiest jobs. Men kept them on their teams despite them not pulling their weight, as they were considered lucky. Our guide decided to give two of them a break from shovelling loose rock, and handed me a shovel.

Two minutes later, I had to stop – to the jeers of the guide and the old miners. The air is already noticeably thin at 4,200m (almost 14,000 feet), and we had descended down three levels of the mine where the air was filled with black soot.

There were seventeen more levels, but we didn’t want to go any lower. We were hoping to make it out in one piece. There is no “safety” as such, just the watchful eyes of your solitary guide. We walked down tracks while our guide listened out for the ore carts that would crush us without losing pace.

When he heard one approaching, we had to find some nook or cranny to jam ourselves in, clear of the track.

While travelling uphill, all these carts had to be pushed by hand by groups of miners. We passed several such groups, sweating, pleading for something to drink, but we had already given all our gifts away.

The whole experience had a profound effect on me. A few months later, while living in Northern Peru, I had an idea for a historical novel set during the South American independence wars called A Storm Hits Valparaíso. I knew I had to include the story of Potosí and the Indians that worked the mine, and my character Pacha was born.

A Storm Hits Valparaíso will be released next month. It has been a labor of love for five years, and I’m very excited about finally publishing it.

You can read an excerpt staring Pacha and Potosí here (scroll down past the writer talk), and more background on A Storm Hits Valparaíso here. If you would like to get an email when A Storm Hits Valparaíso is released, subscribe to my newsletter here. 

The strange story of the gunboats which came to patrol the world’s highest lake – without guns.

The Peruvian Navy took a chance in 1861. It ordered two huge iron gunboats—the Yavarí and the Yapura—for patrolling Lake Titicaca, which at 3,838 meters is the world’s highest navigable lake.

‘Navigable’ is often added as there are smaller, higher lakes elsewhere in the Andes, but these are more isolated and lack the requisite depth for larger ships.

But that’s not the case for the 100-mile long Lake Titicaca, the largest fresh-water body on the South American continent proper* and the mythical cradle of the Inca civilization. It was here that the Sun was born and the first Inca descended from the heavens to create the Inca Empire.

But protecting this magnificent lake with modern ships was no simple matter. There were no ship-building facilities and one of the world’s largest mountain ranges, the Andes, lay in-between the Pacific Ocean port of Arica—where the boats were to be received piecemeal from England—and the lake which they were supposed to patrol.

Nobody really knew how long it would take to get the boats up and over the mountains and onto Lake Titicaca’s waters. But these logistical issues had to be surmounted. War was brewing with Chile and it was imperative for Peru to assert some kind of military presence on the 100-mile long freshwater body that formed part of its border.

The Peruvian Navy had only an armored frigate and a monitor, plus four lesser ships, to defend the Pacific coastline, so new ships had to be ordered for protecting its “eastern coast”.

The best laid plans…

At first things went relatively smoothly. Within two years, the Thames Iron Works and Ship Building Company in London had the gunboats shipped, in crates, around Cape Horn to Arica—then a Peruvian port.

From the desert coast, with the Andes looming before them, porters hefted the crankshafts to their shoulders, while mules stood, knees quivering, under the weight of hull sections and crates containing more than 2,766 ship parts.

The 466-kilometer journey wound up steep and treacherous trails, including a pass at 4,700 meters. The route took the porters across the moonscape of the driest desert in the world, passes higher than the tallest European peaks, and the sub-zero windswept wastes of the Altiplano.

Six months later, the contractor, hopelessly overwhelmed by the task, was fired, leaving pieces of ship scattered between the Pacific ports and Puno, the largest city on the Peruvian side of Titicaca.

Outside events conspired against the project as grumbling muleteers, an earthquake, a peasants’ revolt, and war (this time with Spain over some guano-rich** coastal islands, brought the project to a halt numerous times.

Five years on, new requests were sent out for more muleteers and 1,000 local Indians to help with the task. By January 1869, enough pieces had arrived for the keel of the ship to be laid in Puno.

And despite some unfortunate deaths within the team, including building site accidents and drowning, British engineers and local workers managed to painstakingly rebuild the ships, bit-by-bit, beginning with the Yavarí.

Finally, on Christmas Day 1870, the Yavarí was the first to slide into the clear blue waters of Lake Titicaca. It took three more years for its sister-ship, the Yapura, to follow.

Fueled by llama shit

Because of a lack of coal, the Peruvian Navy began shoveling a more abundant local fuel source into the ship’s boilers: dried llama dung. More space was needed, however, to accommodate the manure piles.

The Yavarí was cut in half in order to add 12 meters to her hold, bringing her to a total length of 50 meters. It was not until 1914 that her steam engine was replaced by a Swedish-made Bolinder engine, a four-cylinder that ran on normal diesel.

The many problems with getting the ships assembled and functioning seemed to have taken attention away from their initial purpose, and so the mounting of guns on both ships were delayed again and again before ultimately being abandoned.

Steamships lost and found

Without guns, the Yavarí continued her service as a cargo-ship and the Yapura as a hospital ship, but, by the 1970s the Yavarí was rusting on the lake shore.

In 1984, the sight of the abandoned ship moved an Englishwoman to action. Meriel Larken launched the Yavarí Association to save the old steamer, even getting a donation from Prince Phillip. Fifteen years later, with the help of contributors and a lot of hard work, the ship opened for tourists.

The Yapura is still used by the Peruvian Navy, last I checked, but it is not entirely clear to what purpose. According to a local guide I talked to this autumn, it was no longer a hospital ship and each time I’ve been in Puno it has been docked at the same mooring, looking somewhat forlorn.

I have visited the Yavarí, though, which has been restored very well. If you are intrigued as I am by the steamship-era she represents, or just fascinated by the odd story of her journey across the mountains, then she’s definitely a sight worth seeing.

—-

Notes:

* Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela is larger, but is usually not regarded as a ‘real’ lake, since it is connected directly to the sea.

** Guano is excrement from seabirds, cave-dwelling bats and seals. An important nitrate-rich source for gunpowder

Links:

The Yavarí project’s home page: http://www.yavari.org

—

Christopher Marcus is a writer, illustrator, and inner city shaman (his secret identity). You can read his free short stories about how to survive a variety of life’s situations at www.shadeofthemorningsun.com - including one that guest stars the Yavari. He is also an avid traveler and loves to read and write about many things, including Andean history and odd historical events.

Picture credits: Charlotte B. Frederiksen at www.rejse-historier.dk. Please ask permission before use.

An estimated 6 million African slaves were “imported” into Brazil between the 1500s and the 1800s. One consequence of this was that the colonists were vastly outnumbered.

Brazil’s inhospitable geography (a vast, barren interior surrounded by impenetrable jungle), meant settlements hugged the coastline. When a slave escaped, the first thing they did was head inland.

The harsh Brazilian interior, known as the sertão, became home to scattered runaway communities known as quilombos. The word itself derives from the Kimbundu word kilombo – Angolan tribes who organized themselves into defensive communities to resist slavers – and the tradition crossed the Atlantic with those taken.

But the quilombos didn’t just consist of escaped slaves and their free-born children, they also sheltered Brazilian Indians, oppressed Portuguese, army deserters, fugitives, as well as Jews and Arabs escaping religious persecution by Catholic zealots.

They were most prevalent in Northwestern Brazil where the conditions on the sugar plantations were particularly vicious. In fact, the Portuguese Crown had to intervene on more than one occasion to insist the slave-owners provided a minimum of food. This wasn’t, it should be noted, motivated by a concern for the rights of slaves, but rather to prevent reduced productivity levels affecting lucrative exports.

The various quilombos were under constant attack both from regular army troops and specialized slave-catchers. Aside from the intrinsic value of the escape slaves and the havoc their occasional raiding parties wreaked on plantations and towns, the very existence of the quilombos gave hope and encouragement to those still in chains.

While the quilombos were able to trade with freed blacks and disaffected whites to gain weaponry, their firepower was rarely a match for the colonial troops and often had to resort to hand-to-hand combat. Here, they were superior and had developed a martial art which was to form the basis for capoeira.

Slaves would spend what little free time they had practicing capoeira so that they would be able to defend themselves after the opportunity came to escape. So as not to arouse the suspicions of their masters, it was disguised as a form of dance.

When escaped slaves made their way to the quilombos, they found settlements to be quite small, having little opportunity to develop given the constant threat of discovery by either colonial troops or the dreaded slave-catchers.

Palmares was the exception, but it was more than a simple quilombo. At it’s peak, towards the end of it’s near century-long existence, it was a vast collection of settlements the size of Portugal itself, a kingdom home to 30,000 people, the biggest fugitive community in the history of Brazil. The largest army ever seen in the Americas would be needed to destroy it.

In 1607, a forty-strong group of runaway Angolan slaves founded Palmares in a mountain range directly north of the sugar plantations of Pernambuco. Over the next twenty years it developed into a considerable settlement, bolstered by a continual stream of fugitives and the disaffected until it got drawn into the Dutch-Portuguese War.

The Dutch West India Company was founded to invade Northeastern Brazil, seize control of the sugar trade, then colonize the continent. After invading Pernambuco in 1630, and capturing Recife and Salvador, they sought an alliance with Palmares. But before it could be consummated, Spanish reinforcements arrived, tilting the balance of power, and the Dutch were forced to sue for peace and cede much of their gains.

After the Dutch were finally expelled in 1654, the Portuguese turned their attention to Palmares. Incursions increased in their size and intensity until 1677 when, after a particularly devastating attack, the leader of the renegades – Zumba – sought peace. The price of the negotiated pardons for him and his men was the abandonment of their settlements, and the forcible return of any inhabitants not born there.

One of his subordinates – Zumbi – refused to accept the terms, organized a rebellion, then had him poisoned and assumed command. For the next fifteen years, Portuguese waged near constant war, with Zumbi repulsing every single assault.

Portugal then gathered together a huge army of 9,000 soldiers, by far the largest ever seen in the Americas at that point. Led by the two top Portuguese generals, and bolstered with heavy artillery, they finally conquered Palmares.

Zumbi managed to survive, despite being wounded, and continued the rebellion for another two years before being betrayed then castrated, mutilated, and beheaded. As a deterrent against any future escapees, and to refute popular belief that Zumbi was immortal, his head was displayed in the central praça of Recife.

The anniversary of his death (November 20th) is now celebrated as a day of Afro-Brazilian consciousness and Zumbi is a national hero. In 1988, one hundred years after the abolition of slavery, the Constitution of Brazil granted collected ownership of their lands to the last remaining quilombos.

Emigration was common in Ireland; some left to find work, some to escape a criminal charge, and some to avoid the terror of deportation to Australia. Many left to escape religious persecution, others to raise an army, hoping to return and free their native land. But O’Brien left Ireland at the age of twenty-five to plough a different furrow.

He was born into a family of farmers and shopkeepers, relatively well-off for Catholics who had to endure the savagery of the Penal Laws. His father passed away when he was just sixteen, bequeathing him some commercial interests as well as a pair of fine horses, but these steeds were to be O’Brien’s downfall: he lost everything to his unbridled passion for racing, forcing him to mortgage his home – and ask his brothers to do likewise – to keep out of the Debtor’s Prison.

O’Brien decided to try his luck in London, where he first heard of the independence struggle in South America. It captured the imagination of his romantic soul. Returning immediately to bid farewell to the remainder of his family, he secured passage on a Portuguese vessel bound for Rio de Janeiro, his friends providing him with letters of introduction.

Standing on the deck, as his ship cut through the large waves of the open Atlantic seas, with his dreams of opening a merchant house in Buenos Aires, O’Brien was entitled to feel a certain amount of nervous optimism about his future, but his fortunes were about to change once again.

The ship had an uneventful journey until it was dashed on rocks around the island of Fernando Po, off the coast of West Africa. Only O’Brien and a handful of crew survived the wreck. Stricken with fever, his luggage turned to flotsam by the ocean, he made his way, on foot, through the jungle. It was two days before he found a populated cove and vital medical assistance.

After recuperating, he talked his way on to an English packet-ship, and was able to resume his journey to Brazil. Amongst his fellow passengers were a Quaker couple and their young daughter, Rebecca.

O’Brien fell deeply in love with the lass, who was besotted with his roguish charms and tales of adventure. Sick of the subterfuge required for their relationship to flourish, O’Brien approached Rebecca’s father and made his intentions clear: he wished to marry her and sought the Quaker’s approval.

A few days later, after some pressure was exerted on the ship’s captain, O’Brien was forcibly disembarked onto a passing Brazilian ship; Rebecca’s father refusing to countenance his continued presence.

Heartbroken, but in one piece, O’Brien eventually made it to Rio de Janeiro and set about tracking down some of his contacts. A job had been promised, through friends, by a retired English general, which could provide him with the means to earn his passage to Buenos Aires and set himself up in business. However, bad luck had not yet run its course for the Irishman as the general had passed away three months previously.

His relentless determination and indefatigable spirit saw him through and he was able to secure a loan, allowing him to continue to Buenos Aires and begin fulfilling his dream of opening a merchant house. But, like many wide-eyed Europeans in South America, he was swindled early on and forced to seek work in the Army. He enlisted in the newly-formed Mounted Grenadiers and was made a 2nd Lieutenant, soon seeing action during the siege of Montevideo, gaining promotion to Sergeant Major during the victory.

He was rewarded with a much-coveted place in the honour guard to the general who led the assault. An easy life lay ahead for O’Brien as this prestigious post would clear a path for rapid promotion. But, by 1816 he was disenchanted with the general’s politicking and resigned, making his way to Mendoza to join up with his old commander, San Martín.

San Martín remembered O’Brien as a promising young officer. His service record was impeccable, and his instincts in having misgivings about his last post were commendable. It was time to get the measure of this man. San Martín gave him the difficult task of defending the Portillo Pass, giving him command of twenty-five men.

There O’Brien was faced with the probing sorties of the Spanish raiding parties, and it was essential to defend these incursions resolutely to prevent the enemy returning with valuable information regarding the size and readiness of the Argentine forces. But O’Brien and his men faced a greater enemy: the Andean winter.

After six gruelling months, bedding down in the rocks and the snow, O’Brien returned with just eleven of his men. As a reward for the completion of his mission, and the capture of a Spanish Colonel, O’Brien was made Aide-de-Camp to San Martín, a great honour for the young foreign officer.

His adventures didn’t end there, though.

Simón Bolívar led the insurrection in the North, liberating what is now Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador while dealing with a few ambushes, jungle crossings, man-eating swamps, and civil wars along the way.

The lesser known José de San Martín deserted the Spanish Army and raised the flag of rebellion in Argentina. He scaled the Andes and took Santiago in a daring assault, then launched an attack on Lima by sea with the help of a disgraced British sea captain who was secretly angling to place Napoleon on the thrown of a unified South America.

By 1822, the Spanish had retreated to the highlands of Cusco and Upper Peru (or what is now known as Bolivia) and neither San Martín nor Bolívar had sufficient soldiers to finish them off, and the two generals had to come together somehow.

They had been corresponding for some time and San Martín had recently sent Bolívar reinforcements when he was locked in the battle for Quito. They agreed to meet in the port town of Guayaquil, just north of the Peru-Ecuador border, to discuss the conclusion of the war.

San Martín sailed up from Lima, while Bolívar raced down from Quito on horseback, surprising San Martín by arriving before him. They embraced awkwardly on the pier, the two Liberators of South America meeting for the very first time.

They entered the City Hall in Guayaquil alone, without witnesses, and no record was made of their conversation. In fact, neither man spoke of the incident at all afterward.

No-one was quite sure how the meeting would go. Essentially they were both on the same side, however neither would readily submit to the other.

To the consternation of his men, San Martín resigned as Protector of Peru and handed over control of his armies to Bolívar, who went on to immortalize himself in the final battles winning South America’s freedom.

San Martín died in exile, anonymous.

So, what happened in that room? Why did a man at the peak of his career, on the verge of glory, step aside?

I’ve spent the last five years trying to figure out the answers.

It’s hard to imagine what I thought of South America before I visited there, but I’m sure it was the standard stereotypes of violent druglords, corrupt regimes, and hedonistic locals.

While those things hold true – to a very limited extent – there is also so much more to the continent, and one of the most fascinating aspects of South America is its history.

From swashbuckling heroes to comic-book villains, South American history reads like an old-school adventure story and I’m looking forward to sharing some of the stories I collected on two separate trips around the continent.

I first went to South America in 2005. I only intended staying for a couple of months before continuing on to New Zealand. However, within a few weeks, I knew I wasn’t going to leave until I ran out of money.

I managed to stretch it out for nine months, and by then I was fully addicted. Even though I traveled to some interesting and exotic places in subsequent years, South America never strayed from the forefront my mind; it gets under your skin.

Returning was an inevitability, and I was able to spend another nine months there in 2009. Although that time I had I good excuse: research. But we’ll talk more about that later.

Please excuse the mess while the builders are at work making the place all pretty. You’ll hear from me soon, and in the meantime, you can learn a little about me here or contact me here.