¹ Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Anthropocene Time’, History and Theory 57, no. 1 (2018): 5–32.

² This sense of the word ‘climate’ comes from the inclination of the world’s axis with respect to the plane the earth’s circuit around the sun, in accordance with the definition of the Greek term κλίνω, ‘to incline’. The Greek cosmography inherited by Europeans distinguished two geographical concepts: climates and climatic zones. Climates (climata) were a kind of geographic coordinate that divided the globe into fourteen horizontal strips, seven in the northern hemisphere and seven in the south. Climatic zones (zonae), on the other hand, were the traditional ones: the North Frigid Zone, North Temperate Zone, Torrid Zone, South Temperate Zone, and South Frigid Zone. For a clear explanation of the climatic zones, see Nicolás Wey Gómez, The Tropics of Empire. Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies (Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 2008), 73–83; on the meanings of climate in the early modern period, see Jean-Marc Besse, Les grandeurs de la Terre. Aspects du savoir géographique à la Renaissance (Lyon: ENS Éditions, 2003), 49–50.

³ William Randles, Geography, Cartography and Nautical Science in the Renaissance: The Impact of the Great Discoveries (Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 2000).

⁴ Cf. Erik Swyngedouw, ‘Globalisation or “Glocalisation”? Networks, Territories and Rescaling’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17, no. 1 (2004): 25–48; Serge Gruzinski, Les quatres parties du monde. Histoire d’une mondialisation (Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, 2004).

⁵ From a cosmographic point of view, this new image was different from the old in three major aspects: in its shape (internal arrangement of its land and sea spaces), in its position in the universe, and its size or extension. Besse, Les grandeurs de la Terre, 54.

⁶ This idea of world consciousness is found in Serge Gruzinski, L’Aigle et le Dragon. Démesure européenne et mondialisation au XVIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2012), 12; another idea along the same lines – ‘affective global awareness’– was put forward by Jerry Brotton, ‘Terrestrial Globalism: Mapping the Globe in Early Modern Europe,’ in Mappings, ed. D. Cosgrove (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 71–89; cf. Alan Strathern, ‘Global Early Modernity and the Problem of What Came Before’, Past & Present 238, no. 13 (2018): 317–44; Jean-Michel Sallamnn, Le grand désenclavement du monde, 1200–1600 (Paris: Payot, 2011).

⁷ This characteristic of the Strait as an opening to the world, connecting cultures and ecosystems and also creating new ones, as well as functioning as spaces that encourage thinking about the world as a whole, led me to call places like the Strait of Magellan a “world-passage”. See Mauricio Onetto Pavez, ‘Geopolítica americana a escala global. El estrecho de Magallanes y su condición de “pasaje-mundo” en el siglo XVI’, Historia 53, no. 2 (2020): 521–59.

⁸ The south was also a category constructed in this century, both commercially, imaginary and cartographically. On this subject, see Sandra Young, ‘The “Secrets of Nature” and Early Modern Constructions of a Global South’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 15, no. 3 (2015): 5–39; Chet Van Duzer, ‘Cartographic Invention: The Southern Continent on Vatican MS Urb. Lat. 274, Folios 73v-74r (c.1530)’, Imago Mundi 59, no. 2 (2007): 193–222.

⁹ Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘The Planet: An Emergent Humanist Category’, Critical Inquiry 46, no. 1 (2019): 1–31.

¹⁰ Cf. Jack A. Goldstone, ‘The Problem of the “Early Modern” World’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41, no. 3 (1998): 249–84; Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, The Global Lives of Things. The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World (New York: Routledge, 2016).

¹¹ For example, this subject is not addressed in the standard volume on the cartography of this period: David Woodward, ed., The History of Cartography, vol. 3, Cartography in the European Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

¹² Mateo Martinic, Cartografía magallánica 1523–1945 (Punta Arenas: Ediciones de UMAG, 1999).

¹³ Silvia Tieffemberg, ‘Derroteros y viajes a la ciudad encantada de los Césares: relatos y constelaciones’, Anales de Literatura Chilena 16, no. 23 (1995): 13–27; Rodrigo Moreno, ‘El estrecho de Magallanes como antesala del Pacífico: evolución cartográfica y toponimia entre los siglos XVI y comienzos del XVIII’, Anuario de Estudios Americanos 70, no. 2 (2013): 419–39; Joaquín Zuleta, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. Sumaria Relación (Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2015).

¹⁴ Ricardo Padrón, The Indies of the Setting Sun. How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020); Rainer Buschmann, Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899 (New York: Palgrave, 2014).

¹⁵ Alfred Hiatt, Terra Incognita. Mapping the Antipodes before 1600 (London: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

¹⁶ William A. R. Richardson, ‘Mercator’s Southern Continent: Its Origins, Influence and Gradual Demise’, Terrae Incognitae 25, no. 1 (1993): 67–98; Mike Zuber, ‘The Armchair Discovery of the Unknown Southern Continent: Gerardus Mercator, Philosophical Pretensions and a Competitive Trade’, Early Science and Medicine 16, no. 6 (2011): 505–41.

¹⁷ Xavier Castro, Le voyage de Magellan (1519–1522). La relation d’Antonio Pigafetta & autres témoignages (Paris: Chandeigne, 2007); Romain Bertrand, Qui a fait le tour de quoi? L’affaire Magellan (Paris: Editions Verdier, 2020).

¹⁸ ‘Instrucciones que dió el Rey a Magallanes y a Falero para el viaje al descubrimiento de las islas del Maluco’, Medina, Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de Chile: desde el viaje de Magallanes hasta la batalla de Maipo: 1518–1818 (CDIHCh), vol. 1 (Santiago: Imprenta Ercilla, 1888), 75.

¹⁹ ‘Instrucciones que dió el Rey a Magallanes y a Falero para el viaje al descubrimiento de las islas del Maluco’, Medina, CDIHCh, 76.

²⁰ On the importance of spices in Europe, see Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008); Timothy Morton, The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

²¹ Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Straits. Beyond the Myth of Magellan (Oakland: University of California Press, 2022), 10.

²² See Andréa Doré, ‘Dos estreitos de Malaca ao estreito de magalhães: a viagemde Magalhães Elcano na perspectiva asiática’, in 1519: Circulação, conquistas e conexões na primeira modernidade, eds. L. E. de Oliveira Fernandes and L. G. Assis Kalil (Sao Paulo: Paco e Littera, 2021); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, L’empire portugais d’Asie, 1500–1700 (Paris: Éditions Points, 2013).

²³ Peter Sloterdijk, Esferas II: Globos (Madrid: Siruela, 2004), 716.

²⁴ By courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb407345506, last accessed 5 March 2022.

²⁵ ‘Relación escrita presentada al Emperador por Andrés de Urdaneta de los sucesos de la armada del Comendador Loaisa desde el 24 de julio de 1525 hasta el año 1535. Valladolid, 26 de febrero de 1537’. Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Patronato Real 37, R.36.

²⁶ Regarding the speed of the connections that began at this time, see Jan de Vries, ‘The limits of globalization in the early modern world’, The Economic History Review 63, no. 3 (2010): 710–33.

²⁷ Sailing through the Strait of Magellan is difficult due to its complex maritime system: numerous channels, straits, fjords, mountains, and bays. In it, there are at least four different sea currents that make it difficult to traverse, even today. Its climate also makes navigation difficult, not only because of the low temperatures, which range between 2  and 10 °C, but also because of the strong winds that come from the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the South Pole. For an idea about the geographical and climatic conditions of the area, see Mateo Martinic, Historia de la Región Magallánica, vol. I (Punta Arenas: Ediciones de la Universidad de Magallanes, 2006).

²⁸ For an analysis of how these authors present Magellan’s accomplishment, the spatial construction of America, and its relationship with Asia, see Ricardo Padrón, ‘(Un)Inventing America: The Transpacific Indies in Oviedo and Gómara’, Colonial Latin American Review 25, no. 1 (2016): 19–23; Louise Bénat-Tachot, ‘La construction de l’Asie magellanique: étude comparée des chroniques de Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo et Francisco López de Gómara’, e-Spania 28 (2017), URL: http://journals.openedition.org/e-spania/27328, last accessed 13 February 2022.

²⁹ Gruzinski, L’Aigle et le Dragon, 318.

³⁰ To understand the importance of people like Alvarado at the time, see George Lovell, Christopher Lutz, and Wendy Kramer, Strike Fear in the Land. Pedro de Alvarado and the Conquest of Guatemala, 1520–1541 (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020).

³¹ ‘Adelantado Pedro de Alvarado: estado en que tenía una armada’, AGI, Patronato Real, 192, N.1, R.1.

³² ‘Consultas del Consejo de Indias, Medina del Campo, 3 de diciembre de 1531’, AGI, Indiferente general, 737, n. 20; ‘Consultas del Consejo de Indias, Ávila, 28 de junio de 1531’, AGI, Indiferente general, 737, n. 11–n. 17.

³³ ‘Capitulación entre el Rey con Pedro Sancho de Hoz, Toledo, 24 de enero de 1539’, AGI, Indiferente general, 415, L.1, fs. 233r-233v.

³⁴ ‘Carta de Pedro de Valdivia al Príncipe Maximiliano, Santiago, 26 de octubre de 1552’, in Miguel Rojas-Mix, Cartas de Don Pedro de Valdivia que tratan del descubrimiento y conquista de la Nueva Extremadura (Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 1991), 180–1.

³⁵ The Spanish Crown was aware that travel reports and various visual records related to the Strait of Magellan were being published in France, England, and Portugal. In 1557, the French cosmographer André Thevet described his experience in Brazil, in which he added the observations that came to him from present-day Patagonia. In the same years, the French admiral Guillaume Le Testu composed his manuscript Cosmographie Universelle (1555–6), which included fifty-six maps, sixteen of which included the Strait and twelve the Terra Incognita. André Thevet, Les singularités de la France antarctique (Paris: La Découverte, 1983 [1557]); Guillaume le Testu, Cosmographie Universelle selon les navigateurs tant anciens que modernes (Paris: Arthaud, 2012 [1556]).

³⁶ I explore this idea in my article ‘Geopolítica americana a escala global’.

³⁷ ‘Carta de Pedro de Valdivia al Emperador Carlos V, La Serena, 4 de septiembre de 1545’, Rojas Mix, 75.

³⁸ ‘Parecer de Andrés de Urdaneta al Virrey Antonio de Mendoza sobre utilizar los puertos de Nueva España para el comercio de la especería y no el Estrecho de Magallanes, Nueva España, [n.d.] 1554’, AGI, Patronato real, 46, R.10, f. 7.

³⁹ ‘Parecer de Andrés de Urdaneta’, 10; Years earlier he had read about being in the Moluccas and controlling the circuits of the Persian Sea and the spices that travel from Asia to Turkey. ‘Relación escrita presentada al Emperador por Andrés de Urdaneta de los sucesos de la armada del Comendador Loayza desde el 24 de julio de 1525 hasta el año 1535. Valladolid, 26 de febrero de 1537’, Archivo General de Indias, PATRONATO, 37, R.36.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 11.

⁴¹ Ibid., 11.

⁴² ‘Relación escrita por Maximiliano Transylvanus al Rey, Valladolid, 5 de octubre de 1522’, Medina, CDIHCh, 263.

⁴³ On the context of financing the voyage and the importance of families such as the Fuggers and Welsers, see Fernández-Armesto, Straits, 97–114; Antonio Sánchez, ‘Making a Global Image of the World: Science, Cosmography and Navigation in Times of the First Circumnavigation of Earth, 1492–1522’, Culture & History 10, no. 2 (2021): 10–2.

⁴⁴ Gabriela Moretti, ‘The other world and the «Antipodes». The myth of the unknown countries between Antiquity and the Renaissance’ in The Classical Tradition and the Americas: European Images of the Americas and the Classical Tradition, Vol. 1, eds. W. Haase and M. Renhold (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), 242–4.

⁴⁵ By courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library: https://cutt.ly/pA0NFek, last accessed 5 March 2022.

⁴⁶ Andrés Vélez Posada, ‘El Estrecho de Magallanes: ingenio de la Tierra’, Anales de literatura chilena 33, no. 33 (2021): 22.

⁴⁷ Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, Libro I (Madrid: Imprenta de M. Ginesta, 1875), 49. This castle is located in what is now Ghana; Besse places this break in the fifteenth century, thanks to Portuguese voyages. Les grandeurs de la Terre, 65–71. Other works show that since the trips to the East made by the Franciscans in the thirteenth century, this idea of uninhabitable areas had been renewed. See Patrick Gautier Dalché, ed., La terre: connaissance, représentations, mesure au Moyen Age (Paris: Brepols, 2013), 68.

⁴⁸ Pedro Martir, De Orbe Novo, Década IX, in Stelio Cro, ‘La “Princeps” y la cuestión del plagio del “De Orbe Novo”’, offprint from Cuadernos para Investigación de la Literatura Hispánica 28 (Madrid, 2003), 123.

⁴⁹ ‘Relación escrita por Maximiliano Transylvanus al Rey’, 269–70.

⁵⁰ See the Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo [1524–1525]. I use the translation by Castro, Le voyage de Magellan (1519–1522), 110.

⁵¹ Articles by Gabriela Moretti and John Headley, together with Jean-Marc Besse’s book, are among the most recent studies that directly address the notion of habitability in the sixteenth century. Moretti explains in a very scholarly discourse how the ancient philosophers founded the idea that the earth had uninhabitable zones. Headley shows that the notion of habitability changed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, based on the writings of scholars such as Giovanni Battista Ramusio in Italy. Meanwhile, Besse discusses the question in the context of some philosophical debates and early representations of the earth; See Gabriela Moretti, ‘The other world and the «Antipodes»; John Headley, ‘The Sixteenth-Century Venetian Celebration of the Earth’s Total Habitability: The Issue of the Fully Habitable World for Renaissance Europe’, Journal of World History 8, no. 1 (1997): 1–27; Besse, Les grandeurs de la Terre. Although they recognize the importance of the southern region in this process, they do not examine the importance of America, and especially of the ‘southern region’, or the stages of how knowledge about it was constructed, nor the representations of it, as Surekha Davies has shown in Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 27–9.

⁵² ‘Relación escrita por Maximiliano Transylvanus al Rey’, 257. See Freedman, Out of the East, 213–4.

⁵³ By courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, https://cutt.ly/9A02YOp, last accessed 13 April 2022.

⁵⁴ By courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library: https://cutt.ly/3A02hJR, last accessed 13 April 2022.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 276.

⁵⁶ See Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts. The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).

⁵⁷ Edward Peters, ‘The Desire to Know the Secrets of the World’, Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 4 (2001): 608.

⁵⁸ ‘Relación escrita por Maximiliano Transylvanus al Rey’, 258.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 265.

⁶⁰ Cf. Besse, Les grandeurs de la Terre, 39, 72. See also Wey Gómez, The Tropics of Empire, 240–51.

⁶¹ Copernicus, in chapter 3 of his book De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium, Libri VI, highlighted discoveries made by Europeans in America as sources of a balanced earth and sky, part of a larger solar system; see De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium, Libri VI, Nuremberg 1543 (Palo Alto: Octavo Corporation, 1999); and Thomas Goldstein, ‘The Renaissance Concept of the Earth in Its Influence upon Copernicus’, Terrae Incognitae 4, no. 1 (1972): 41.

⁶² On the debates over the possession of the ‘globe’ between Iberians, see Brotton, ‘Terrestrial Globalism’, 82–8.

⁶³ Headley, ‘The Sixteenth-Century’, 13.

⁶⁴ ‘Parecer que dio D. Diego Hernando Colon en la Junta de Badajoz sobre la pertenencia de los Malucas’, in Colección de los viajes y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV, Vol. V, ed. M. F. de Navarrete (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1837), 333–4.

⁶⁵ Peter Martyr d’Anghera, De orbe novo, the eight Decades of Peter Martyr d’Anghera, Volume II (New York, London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912), 166–8.

⁶⁶ François Hartog, Régimes d’historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps (Paris: Seuil, 2003), 147.

⁶⁷ The original of this map is in the Vatican Apostolic Library. I illustrate a facsimile version from the eighteenth century held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53023022k/f1.item.zoom, last accessed 25 May 2022.

⁶⁸ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia General de la Indias. Islas y Tierra-Firme del Mar Océano, Segunda Parte, Tomo I (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia/José Amador de los Ríos, 1853), 7.

⁶⁹ On the difference between global and universal history, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘On World Historians in the Sixteenth Century’, Representations 91, no. 1 (2005): 36.

⁷⁰ Serge Gruzinski, La machine à remonter le temps. Quand l’Europe s’est mise à écrire l’histoire du monde (Paris: Fayard, 2017), 15.

⁷¹ Fernández de Oviedo, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, islas y tierra-firme del Mar Océano (Madrid: Imprenta de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1851), Parte I, Libro II, Cap. X, 43; Libro VI, Capítulo XL, 231.

⁷² Francisco López de Gómara, Historia General de las Indias (1552) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2021), 205.

⁷³ Ibid., 78.

⁷⁴ Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Historia del Nuevo Mundo (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1987), 51.

⁷⁵ I cite the English translation by Clements R. Markham, which sought to reproduce the orthographic errors of the original text, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, by Father Joseph de Acosta (London, New York: Routledge, 2016), 4–5.

⁷⁶ We agree with Gruzinski when he says that ‘Peu à peu, sur toute la planète, le rapport au passé s’homogénéise à son tour. Ou plutôt, le temps des élites européennes s’offre à être le temp du globe, un temps universel partout orienté et découpé en passé, present et avenir’. Gruzinski, La machine à remonter le temps, 17.

⁷⁷ López de Gómara, Historia General de las Indias, 78.

⁷⁸ This process began with Columbus, as is demonstrated by Wey Gómez, 50–3.

⁷⁹ Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, 19.

⁸⁰ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia General de la Indias. Islas y Tierra-Firme del Mar Océano, Segunda Parte, Tomo II (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia/José Amador de los Ríos, 1853), 634.

⁸¹ López de Gómara, Historia General de las Indias, 74.

⁸² Acosta’s precise words were as follows: ‘(…) for that besides the vastness of the great Ocean, the heate of that Region, which they call the burning Zone, was so excessive, as it would not suffer anu man, how venturous or laborious so ever, to passe by sea or land from one Pole to an other [….] for the heat of the Sunne, which makes his course directly over this Region, and approcheth so neere as it is set on fire, and so by consequence causeth a want of waters and pastures’, Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, 25.

⁸³ Ibid., 25.

⁸⁴ Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 58–9.

⁸⁵ Cf. Benjamin Schmidt, Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).

⁸⁶ Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 68.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 68.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 59.

⁸⁹ Ramusio, Navigazioni e viaggi, 1: cited in Headley, ‘The Sixteenth-Century’, 3.

⁹⁰ Bruno Latour, Où atterrir? Comment s’orienter en politique (Paris: La Découverte, 2018), 10.

⁹¹ ‘Carta de Manuel de Espinal al Rey, Ciudad de los Reyes, 15 de Junio de 1539’, AGI, Patronato real, 192, 1, R.23.

⁹² ‘Parecer de Andrés de Urdaneta’, 5.

⁹³ Sylvia Wynter, ‘Columbus and the Poetics of the Propter Nos’, Annals of Scholarship 8, no. 2 (1991): 255.

⁹⁴ Besse, Les grandeurs de la Terre, 8–10.

⁹⁵ Chet Van Duzer, ‘Distant Sons of Adam: A Newly Discovered Early Voice on the Origin of the Peoples of the New World,’ Viator 47, no. 3 (2016): 365–85.

⁹⁶ For an overview of the antipodes in ancient times, see James Romm, The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 124–7; Moretti, ‘The other world and the “Antipodes”’.

⁹⁷ Berque, Écoumène, 14.

⁹⁸ Moretti, ‘The other world and the “Antipodes”’, 246.

⁹⁹ Ibid., 262.

¹⁰⁰ As in other eras, the subject of habitability had forced a reflection on the limits of the world but also on the Adamic origins of humans: see Headley, ‘The Sixteenth-Century’, 10.

¹⁰¹ Acosta, The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, 20.

¹⁰² Gautier Dalché, La Terre: connaissance, 156.

¹⁰³ López de Gómara, Historia General de las Indias, 76.

¹⁰⁴ López de Gómara, Historia General de las Indias, 77–8.

¹⁰⁵ Juan López de Velasco, Geografía y descripción universal de las Indias (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Fortanet, 1894), 4.

¹⁰⁶ Davies, Renaissance Ethnography, 7–8. As Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock points out, redefining monstrosity is a process of resignification of humanity itself: see his article ‘Invisible Monsters: Vision, Horror, and Contemporary Culture’. In The Ashgate research companion to monsters and the monstrous, eds., Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle (Burlington: Ashgate, 2012), 356; see Besse, Les grandeurs de la Terre, 19.

¹⁰⁷ ‘Relación escrita por Maximiliano Transylvanus al Rey’, 259.

¹⁰⁸ Davies, Renaissance Ethnography, 150–55. Davies shows the variants and difficulties of this process of cartographic construction, such as the need to create common motifs in the images of Patagonians and the European tradition in order for them to be recognized, 158–71.

¹⁰⁹ From the Spanish side, there are few references to the Patagonian, who always appears as a rumour told by a third person. Juan López de Velasco described them as follows: ‘On the coast and lands of the Atlantic, many very large men, ten and twelve feet high, have been found by all who have sailed it. Patagonians or giants, well-proportioned and endowed with great strength and lightness, and great archers and shooters, well-conditioned, although brave and fierce with each other in war’. López de Velasco, 540.

¹¹⁰ ‘Relación escrita por Maximiliano Transylvanus al Rey’, 266–7.

¹¹¹ Davies, Renaissance Ethnography, 171–5.

¹¹² Hartog, Régimes d’historicité, 37–8.

¹¹³ This idea of the importance of cartographic language and the southern part of the world is examined by Young, 10.

¹¹⁴ Young, The “Secrets of Nature’, 19.

¹¹⁵ Sylvia, ‘Columbus and the Poetics of the Propter Nos’, 255.

¹¹⁶ Wey Gómez analyses how a process of moral authority on these types of places begins with Columbus, 69.

¹¹⁷ Young, The “Secrets of Nature”, 17.

¹¹⁸ Davies, Renaissance Ethnography, 148–82.

¹¹⁹ The indigenous people of the region were mainly nomads who moved around and slept in canoes. Their diet was based on shellfish and animals such as sea lions, which they hunted with weapons made from whale bones or other animals. With the skins of these animals, they also dressed themselves to resist the cold. In no case were they as tall as travellers claimed. There are no studies on these groups from the sixteenth century. Most of our information is deduced from the extensive archaeological works that address earlier centuries or from the investigations initiated by European scholars in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, these indigenous groups became better known, thanks to the work of Austrian priest Martín Gusinde. For more on his work, see his book Die Feuerlandindianer; vol. 1; Die Selk’nam, published by the international journal Anthropos (Mödling, 1931); and Marisol Palma Behnke, Fotografías de Martín Gusinde en Tierra del Fuego (1919-1934). Imagen, materialidad, recepción (Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2013). For a study that explains the scientific interest in indigenous peoples of the southern zone from the perspective of the social sciences, see Jordi Estévez and Assumpción Vila, ‘Tierra del fuego, lugar de Encuentros’, Journal of American Archaeology 15 (1998): 187–219.

¹²⁰ Castro, Le voyage de Magellan (1519–1522), 103.

¹²¹ See my article ‘Apropiación geopolítica de la naturaleza americana. La misión de Juan de Ladrillero por el estrecho de Magallanes, 1557–1559’, Nuevo Mundos Mundos Nuevos, 2020 [https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/81531, last accessed 20 February 2022]; and also an article I co-authored with Andrés Vélez Posada, ‘De Panamá a Magallanes: ciencia, itinerancia y globalidad desde la figura de Juan Ladrillero (1490–1559)’, Trashumante 16 (2020): 34–57.

¹²² ‘Relación de Juan Ladrillero’, Archivo General de Indias, Patronato, 33, N.1,R.1, fol.18r-18v.