Gurney
Purasangre de la sangre más pura
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Crusaders like Cortes and Pizarro, Fernando de Soto, Drake and Raleigh, Magellan and Balboa equal in daring, intelligence, magnitude of spirit, resourcefulness and achievement any of the great men of the Greeks and Romans. The story of the heroic age of exploration remains to be told in full, and maybe one of you one day will make big book or big movies. I say also now: for those who seek to make a difference and have some artistic or visual bent, movies are the golden key to the minds of the many. What Mel Gibson does is worth a thousand books or “activisms” for your side. Learn to make movies, if you can, and you can start with video. In any case, there is just one great epic that tells the story in its proper form, the great poem of Camoes, a man born to piracy and high adventure. This man lost an eye in war in Ceuta against the Moor; he then lived as a brigand and vagabond in imperial Lisbon, getting into one duel and fight after another, composing poetry, getting drunk. His mother saved him from prison, but he was pressed into service in the colonial navy and army. He arrived in Goa and from there participated in many adventures, military and diplomatic, as a man of low rank but high spirits. All the while he was writing his great poem the Lusiad, and when he was shipwrecked off the Mekong with his Chinese girlfriend, he carried the text of this timeless work above his head to save it from the water. No one reads it anymore, and his life would make a great movie. But he is right that the voyages of these new crusaders equal any great expedition even from the myths and legends of the past.
Here we have Jason’s Argo made anew, and not just once, but in every one of these nations of the West. England’s glory during these years might never be equaled again by any people. Even the kings of Portugal, who started the age of colonization and exploration, had English blood. The Gothic restlessness of the steppe shook in the lords of Iberia with a Titanic energy. Before the great voyage to the Orient of Vasco da Gama, spies—and I mean just one or two men—went alone on expeditions in Egypt and down the Red Sea, into the heart of Arabia, fearlessly, incognito, to collect information crucial for the coming expedition. Perched on the beaches of the great Eurasian mass, these men went, in just a hundred years, from sailing a few almost-rafts that they barely knew how to navigate, to explorers of new worlds and founders of global empires that lasted for centuries. You must understand how amazing this feat was: there was no tradition of seamanship in Portugal or Spain, let alone France or England...it all had to be done from scratch. Do you know at all to respect the sea? If you’ve ever traveled a ferry on even a relatively calm sea like the Adriatic, on a windy day a large modern ferry, as big as a city block...it will swing right and left. You won’t be used to it. The Atlantic has waves ten feet or more as a matter of course and these men were traveling on wooden ships with 15th Century tech; you must be crazy to have no awe of this. For romance of the sea you should read Melville.
Columbus is celebrated, yes, but there were others who were even greater than him, or at least his equal, and few know about them. They don’t receive the glory they deserve because, first, many of the writers who could have done this were prejudiced against their strong religious faith and their piety: you see, most of the modern glorifiers of antiquity usually had an axe to grind against Christianity or the Church, so they didn’t want to promote these men, or admit that the champions of the faith were the most shining exemplars of the classical man in our time. Even Nietzsche stays away from them and, in a moment of weakness, speaks nonsense about the “superiority” of the Aztecs. On the other hand, the Church has been embarrassed about these men. More than anyone else they spread its power and gospel through the world, and even before that, they saved Europe itself from the Moors and the other threats. They’re the direct descendants of the crusaders who liberated Spain and other parts of Europe. The Church doesn’t want to admit that once Ferdinand and Isabella cleared Spain of the enemies of Christ, God blessed that nation with a century of prosperity and pre-eminence, and gave it the foundation of world-empire. But the Church was embarrassed by them, by the conquistadores, by their cruelty and their pagan love of vitality and action, so it tried to disavow them while making use of their strength. So their story remains largely untold, although it’s one of the peaks of history and of manly achievement.
Few understand the voyages, for example, of even one of the most famous among them, Vasco da Gama and how in many ways it exceeded the feats of Columbus. This man circumnavigated Africa and found the sea route to the Indies—what Columbus had actually set out to do (or so the story goes...I believe Columbus had some secret maps...) Such voyage was attempted long before by the Phoenician Hanno, but no one knows what really came of that. The travel was difficult. When you reach a certain point of the West African coast you can’t just continue to hug along it...you have to pull out to the west and swoop around—this is likely how South America was discovered. Do you know what starvation, scurvy, and tropical disease is? Do you understand tropical heat? Sure, some of you might, but know that off the West Africa coast, when a wind blows in your face it’s not a relief: it’s like a hairdryer going off in your face, nonstop. And yet he reached India, he found spices, he found monkey, he made the Zamorin submit with big guns. His investors made thousands of percent return. Just seven years later another conquistador returned, Almeida, with a great armada that tore a swathe of destruction along the Indian Ocean. He burned down Mombasa, though outnumbered, because of the arrogance of its Arab rulers—imagine the stench that must have wafted as far as Japan! This man defeated a huge armada of Ottomans, Arabs, Mamelukes at the Battle of Diu, to avenge the death of his son: and this was momentous time. Space itself on our world changed. The great overland routes of trade were now outflanked by the seafaring nations of western Europe, which from this moment began to dominate the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.
Do you understand America had a great destiny in this design as well? When the colonists founded Jamestown, let’s say there were no more than two hundred or two hundred and fifty years from that act to the time of Commodore Perry: the American people had tamed the continent and pushed their way to Asia across the seas in no time at all. It would have happened even faster if they hadn’t been hampered by the domination of England...once they gained their independence their expansion was very fast (the Constitution, the ideology, the doctrine of rights, is all so much nonsense and has nothing to do with any of this...it barely all even lasted through the lifetimes of the founders of America, who were seeking merely dominion and freedom of space to expand). The great destiny of America had always been the conquest of the Far East and the domination of China, which obsessed the leading minds of that time. All of this has now been forgotten and America’s great fate has been thwarted—at least for now. What do you know then of men like this, or of Afonso de Albuquerque who followed Almeida, who captured Hormuz and Muscat with seven ships, who opened the way to the Spice Islands of legend?
I prefer as usual not to talk of such men: they are so far from your possibilities that the example is almost depressing. I want to encourage you again with someone else from this age, a man more to my taste, and more within the realm of what is possible, of what is about to become possible again. This is the brilliant right-hand-man of Cortes, Pedro de Alvarado. He was a man of knightly family from southern Spain, but had fiery red-blond hair, which amazed the Mexicas: they believed he was a child of the Sun, and called him Tonatiuh, the mane of the sun. He was of boundless courage, carelessness, and also boundless cruelty. Cortes left him in charge briefly in Tenochtitlan where he massacred all the Aztec nobles in the Great Temple during a banquet...for no reason at all. During the battles he distinguished himself by insane charges into the thick of the enemy by which he was outnumbered by hundreds to one: yet he never lost heart, he went right for their garish flower-decorated lieutenants and cut them down, striking fear into the multitude. Don’t believe the lies about gunpowder. Guns were very basic at this time, and on many occasions the Spanish didn’t have guns at all. The armor, the pikes, the Toledo steel blades, the discipline and know-how from decades of fighting the Moor—all of this was far more important. And above all, bravery and daring, the same that led Pizarro to take down an empire with a retinue of thirteen men. What I want to say about Alvarado, though, is this: once conquests were made, he never stopped. His thirst for space, for new worlds, for new conquests, was without end. In his letters you see this is his only interest. Though made governor of a huge area—the present-day states of Guatemala, of Honduras, these are his creations—he nevertheless showed no interest at all in ruling them. He squeezed them of whatever money he could, never paying any taxes back to Spain, and always planned new adventures and new conquests. This man was a born pirate: right before his death he was planning a great expedition for the conquest of China and the Spice Islands. Alvarado was a nemesis to civilization, and this is right and good. God sends such men to chastise mankind.
I want you to be like this: to listen to these instincts in you. When he was put in charge of territory, Alvarado could have very easily settled down to the life of a governor; most men would. Enticed by the prestige and honor, they would play the part: then also, their vanity would fool them into thinking that they could govern well. Well, maybe you can govern well, or maybe you can’t. But Alvarado knew what he was. And he didn’t try to be more than one thing. Be one thing. Single-minded purity of purpose is true manliness. He knew he was a born beast of prey, and never pretended to be more or less than this. This self-assured sense of who he was made him insanely attractive even to the natives he oppressed and massacred: despite his cruelty, they couldn’t help being drawn to his charm, his lofty manner, his outrageous magnificence. They worshiped him as a god. The other Spaniards were in awe as well. You must see that nature blesses all men who have faith in their own blood and in their instincts...nature blesses them with such magnetism. Alvarado is the avatar of our new age, and I predict this: within fifty years a hundred Alvarados will bloom from deep in the tropical bestiary of the spirit. They will sweep away the weakness of this world.
BAP habla en este parágrafo de los conquistadores españoles y de los exploradores portugueses (y desliza algún nombre inglés que yo no transcribiré)
Cruzados como Cortés y Pizarro, Fernando de Soto, Magallanes y Balboa, igualan en atrevimiento, inteligencia, grandeza de espíritu, inventiva y logros a cualquier gran hombre de los antiguos Griegos y Romanos
Por ejemplo, Camoes, un hombre nacido para la piratería y la aventura: perdió un ojo en Ceuta, en guerra contra el jovenlandés; luego vivió como bandido y vagabundo en la Lisboa imperial, de duelo en duelo, escribiendo poesía, y emborrachándose. Su madre lo sacó de prisión, pero fue enrolado a la fuerza al servicio de la armada colonial. Llegó a Goa, donde vivió muchas aventuras, y mientras tanto escribía su gran poema "As Luisiadas" y cuando naufragó en el Mekong en compañía de su novia china, salvó su obra llevándola sobre su cabeza mientras estaba en el agua
Había sangre inglesa en los portugueses, y gótica en la de los españoles. Pensad lo que era viajar por el Océano con la tecnología del siglo XV: una hazaña increíble. Debéis leer a Melville
Colón es festejado, sí, pero hubo otros que fueron más grandes que él, o al menos sus iguales, y pocos los conocen. No reciben la gloria que merecen por su relación con la Iglesia, en un doble sentido: uno, los historiadores actuales, agnósticos y ateos, no quieren promover hombres que fueron campeones de la fe católica; dos, la propia Iglesia se avergüenza de estos hombres, que difundieron el Evangelio y salvaron a Europa de los jovenlandeses y de otras amenazas, por su crueldad, y su pagano amor hacia la vitalidad y la acción (Nota de Gurney: antes de todo esto está la Leyenda Negra de toda la vida)
BAP habla ahora de Vasco da Gama: circunnavegó África y encontró la ruta marítima hacia las Indias. Una vez allí, encontró especias, monos, y sometió a los Zamorin (Nota de Gurney: unos indios de la India, también conocidos como Samoothiri). Sus patrocinadores consiguieron un retorno de beneficios absolutamente fabuloso
Y luego está Almeida, que con una gran armada esparció la destrucción a lo largo del Océano Índico. Quemó Mombasa por la arrogancia de los árabes que la regían, y derrotó a una enorme armada de otomanos, árabes y mamelucos en la Batalla de Diu, para vengar la muerte de su hijo
Todo esto cambió el mismo espacio de nuestro mundo, y las grandes rutas de comercio por tierra fueron entonces flanqueadas por las naciones marineras de Europa occidental, que desde ese momento comenzaron a dominar el Índico y el Pacífico
Entendéis que América tuvo también un gran destino en este proyecto? Desde la fundación de Jamestown, en poco menos de 250 años el Comodoro Perry llegó a Japón y rompió su aislamiento. Todo habría sido aún más rápido sin la dominación de Inglaterra. El gran destino de America siempre ha sido la conquista de Extremo Oriente y la dominación de China, y eso era algo que obsesionaba a las grandes mentes de aquella época. Todo eso se ha olvidado, y ese gran sino ha sido frustrado -al menos por ahora
BAP prefiere, como hace habitualmente, no hablar de tales hombres (Nota de Gurney: jajaja, claro, pero ya ha deslizado su pequeña gota de veneno del bueno). Quiere motivarnos con un hombre de aquel tiempo, pero más de su gusto y más dentro del reino de lo que es posible: Pedro de Alvarado. Mano derecha de Cortés, de familia de caballeros del sur de España, pelirrojo que fascinó a los Mexicas, que creían que era el hijo del Sol, y lo llamaron Tonatiuh, que significa "La melena del Sol". No tenía límites en su coraje, arrojo y también crueldad. Por ejemplo, sin motivo masacró a los nobles de Tenochtitlán durante un banquete. Durante los combates se distinguió por sus locas cargas contra el grueso del enemigo. Y no creáis las mentiras sobre la ventaja tecnológica de la pólvora, porque en aquel tiempo las armas de fuego eran muy básicas. Fueron las armaduras, las picas, las hojas de acero de Toledo, la disciplina, el saber hacer de décadas (siglos en realidad) de lucha contra el jovenlandés. Y por encima de todo, el valor y al atrevimiento, lo mismo que llevó a Pizarro a someter a un imperio con un séquito de 13 hombres
Alvarado nunca paró. Su sed de espacio, de nuevos mundos y conquistas no tenía fin. No servía para gobernador, sino que era un pirata de nacimiento: justo antes de su muerte estaba planeando una expedición para la conquista de China y las Islas de las Especias (=las Molucas)
Alvarado fue una némesis de la civilización, y esto es bueno y correcto: Dios manda a hombres así para castigar y enseñar a la humanidad
BAP os exhorta: Quiero que seáis así, que escuchéis esos instintos dentro de vosotros. Sed una sola cosa: la pureza de la mente que tiene un sólo propósito es la verdadera hombría
Alvarado es el avatar de nuestra nueva edad, y BAP predice que dentro de 50 años, un centenar de Alvarados florecerán en el bestiario tropical del espíritu. Ellos barrerán la debilidad de este mundo
Crusaders like Cortes and Pizarro, Fernando de Soto, Drake and Raleigh, Magellan and Balboa equal in daring, intelligence, magnitude of spirit, resourcefulness and achievement any of the great men of the Greeks and Romans. The story of the heroic age of exploration remains to be told in full, and maybe one of you one day will make big book or big movies. I say also now: for those who seek to make a difference and have some artistic or visual bent, movies are the golden key to the minds of the many. What Mel Gibson does is worth a thousand books or “activisms” for your side. Learn to make movies, if you can, and you can start with video. In any case, there is just one great epic that tells the story in its proper form, the great poem of Camoes, a man born to piracy and high adventure. This man lost an eye in war in Ceuta against the Moor; he then lived as a brigand and vagabond in imperial Lisbon, getting into one duel and fight after another, composing poetry, getting drunk. His mother saved him from prison, but he was pressed into service in the colonial navy and army. He arrived in Goa and from there participated in many adventures, military and diplomatic, as a man of low rank but high spirits. All the while he was writing his great poem the Lusiad, and when he was shipwrecked off the Mekong with his Chinese girlfriend, he carried the text of this timeless work above his head to save it from the water. No one reads it anymore, and his life would make a great movie. But he is right that the voyages of these new crusaders equal any great expedition even from the myths and legends of the past.
Here we have Jason’s Argo made anew, and not just once, but in every one of these nations of the West. England’s glory during these years might never be equaled again by any people. Even the kings of Portugal, who started the age of colonization and exploration, had English blood. The Gothic restlessness of the steppe shook in the lords of Iberia with a Titanic energy. Before the great voyage to the Orient of Vasco da Gama, spies—and I mean just one or two men—went alone on expeditions in Egypt and down the Red Sea, into the heart of Arabia, fearlessly, incognito, to collect information crucial for the coming expedition. Perched on the beaches of the great Eurasian mass, these men went, in just a hundred years, from sailing a few almost-rafts that they barely knew how to navigate, to explorers of new worlds and founders of global empires that lasted for centuries. You must understand how amazing this feat was: there was no tradition of seamanship in Portugal or Spain, let alone France or England...it all had to be done from scratch. Do you know at all to respect the sea? If you’ve ever traveled a ferry on even a relatively calm sea like the Adriatic, on a windy day a large modern ferry, as big as a city block...it will swing right and left. You won’t be used to it. The Atlantic has waves ten feet or more as a matter of course and these men were traveling on wooden ships with 15th Century tech; you must be crazy to have no awe of this. For romance of the sea you should read Melville.
Columbus is celebrated, yes, but there were others who were even greater than him, or at least his equal, and few know about them. They don’t receive the glory they deserve because, first, many of the writers who could have done this were prejudiced against their strong religious faith and their piety: you see, most of the modern glorifiers of antiquity usually had an axe to grind against Christianity or the Church, so they didn’t want to promote these men, or admit that the champions of the faith were the most shining exemplars of the classical man in our time. Even Nietzsche stays away from them and, in a moment of weakness, speaks nonsense about the “superiority” of the Aztecs. On the other hand, the Church has been embarrassed about these men. More than anyone else they spread its power and gospel through the world, and even before that, they saved Europe itself from the Moors and the other threats. They’re the direct descendants of the crusaders who liberated Spain and other parts of Europe. The Church doesn’t want to admit that once Ferdinand and Isabella cleared Spain of the enemies of Christ, God blessed that nation with a century of prosperity and pre-eminence, and gave it the foundation of world-empire. But the Church was embarrassed by them, by the conquistadores, by their cruelty and their pagan love of vitality and action, so it tried to disavow them while making use of their strength. So their story remains largely untold, although it’s one of the peaks of history and of manly achievement.
Few understand the voyages, for example, of even one of the most famous among them, Vasco da Gama and how in many ways it exceeded the feats of Columbus. This man circumnavigated Africa and found the sea route to the Indies—what Columbus had actually set out to do (or so the story goes...I believe Columbus had some secret maps...) Such voyage was attempted long before by the Phoenician Hanno, but no one knows what really came of that. The travel was difficult. When you reach a certain point of the West African coast you can’t just continue to hug along it...you have to pull out to the west and swoop around—this is likely how South America was discovered. Do you know what starvation, scurvy, and tropical disease is? Do you understand tropical heat? Sure, some of you might, but know that off the West Africa coast, when a wind blows in your face it’s not a relief: it’s like a hairdryer going off in your face, nonstop. And yet he reached India, he found spices, he found monkey, he made the Zamorin submit with big guns. His investors made thousands of percent return. Just seven years later another conquistador returned, Almeida, with a great armada that tore a swathe of destruction along the Indian Ocean. He burned down Mombasa, though outnumbered, because of the arrogance of its Arab rulers—imagine the stench that must have wafted as far as Japan! This man defeated a huge armada of Ottomans, Arabs, Mamelukes at the Battle of Diu, to avenge the death of his son: and this was momentous time. Space itself on our world changed. The great overland routes of trade were now outflanked by the seafaring nations of western Europe, which from this moment began to dominate the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.
Do you understand America had a great destiny in this design as well? When the colonists founded Jamestown, let’s say there were no more than two hundred or two hundred and fifty years from that act to the time of Commodore Perry: the American people had tamed the continent and pushed their way to Asia across the seas in no time at all. It would have happened even faster if they hadn’t been hampered by the domination of England...once they gained their independence their expansion was very fast (the Constitution, the ideology, the doctrine of rights, is all so much nonsense and has nothing to do with any of this...it barely all even lasted through the lifetimes of the founders of America, who were seeking merely dominion and freedom of space to expand). The great destiny of America had always been the conquest of the Far East and the domination of China, which obsessed the leading minds of that time. All of this has now been forgotten and America’s great fate has been thwarted—at least for now. What do you know then of men like this, or of Afonso de Albuquerque who followed Almeida, who captured Hormuz and Muscat with seven ships, who opened the way to the Spice Islands of legend?
I prefer as usual not to talk of such men: they are so far from your possibilities that the example is almost depressing. I want to encourage you again with someone else from this age, a man more to my taste, and more within the realm of what is possible, of what is about to become possible again. This is the brilliant right-hand-man of Cortes, Pedro de Alvarado. He was a man of knightly family from southern Spain, but had fiery red-blond hair, which amazed the Mexicas: they believed he was a child of the Sun, and called him Tonatiuh, the mane of the sun. He was of boundless courage, carelessness, and also boundless cruelty. Cortes left him in charge briefly in Tenochtitlan where he massacred all the Aztec nobles in the Great Temple during a banquet...for no reason at all. During the battles he distinguished himself by insane charges into the thick of the enemy by which he was outnumbered by hundreds to one: yet he never lost heart, he went right for their garish flower-decorated lieutenants and cut them down, striking fear into the multitude. Don’t believe the lies about gunpowder. Guns were very basic at this time, and on many occasions the Spanish didn’t have guns at all. The armor, the pikes, the Toledo steel blades, the discipline and know-how from decades of fighting the Moor—all of this was far more important. And above all, bravery and daring, the same that led Pizarro to take down an empire with a retinue of thirteen men. What I want to say about Alvarado, though, is this: once conquests were made, he never stopped. His thirst for space, for new worlds, for new conquests, was without end. In his letters you see this is his only interest. Though made governor of a huge area—the present-day states of Guatemala, of Honduras, these are his creations—he nevertheless showed no interest at all in ruling them. He squeezed them of whatever money he could, never paying any taxes back to Spain, and always planned new adventures and new conquests. This man was a born pirate: right before his death he was planning a great expedition for the conquest of China and the Spice Islands. Alvarado was a nemesis to civilization, and this is right and good. God sends such men to chastise mankind.
I want you to be like this: to listen to these instincts in you. When he was put in charge of territory, Alvarado could have very easily settled down to the life of a governor; most men would. Enticed by the prestige and honor, they would play the part: then also, their vanity would fool them into thinking that they could govern well. Well, maybe you can govern well, or maybe you can’t. But Alvarado knew what he was. And he didn’t try to be more than one thing. Be one thing. Single-minded purity of purpose is true manliness. He knew he was a born beast of prey, and never pretended to be more or less than this. This self-assured sense of who he was made him insanely attractive even to the natives he oppressed and massacred: despite his cruelty, they couldn’t help being drawn to his charm, his lofty manner, his outrageous magnificence. They worshiped him as a god. The other Spaniards were in awe as well. You must see that nature blesses all men who have faith in their own blood and in their instincts...nature blesses them with such magnetism. Alvarado is the avatar of our new age, and I predict this: within fifty years a hundred Alvarados will bloom from deep in the tropical bestiary of the spirit. They will sweep away the weakness of this world.
BAP habla en este parágrafo de los conquistadores españoles y de los exploradores portugueses (y desliza algún nombre inglés que yo no transcribiré)
Cruzados como Cortés y Pizarro, Fernando de Soto, Magallanes y Balboa, igualan en atrevimiento, inteligencia, grandeza de espíritu, inventiva y logros a cualquier gran hombre de los antiguos Griegos y Romanos
Por ejemplo, Camoes, un hombre nacido para la piratería y la aventura: perdió un ojo en Ceuta, en guerra contra el jovenlandés; luego vivió como bandido y vagabundo en la Lisboa imperial, de duelo en duelo, escribiendo poesía, y emborrachándose. Su madre lo sacó de prisión, pero fue enrolado a la fuerza al servicio de la armada colonial. Llegó a Goa, donde vivió muchas aventuras, y mientras tanto escribía su gran poema "As Luisiadas" y cuando naufragó en el Mekong en compañía de su novia china, salvó su obra llevándola sobre su cabeza mientras estaba en el agua
Había sangre inglesa en los portugueses, y gótica en la de los españoles. Pensad lo que era viajar por el Océano con la tecnología del siglo XV: una hazaña increíble. Debéis leer a Melville
Colón es festejado, sí, pero hubo otros que fueron más grandes que él, o al menos sus iguales, y pocos los conocen. No reciben la gloria que merecen por su relación con la Iglesia, en un doble sentido: uno, los historiadores actuales, agnósticos y ateos, no quieren promover hombres que fueron campeones de la fe católica; dos, la propia Iglesia se avergüenza de estos hombres, que difundieron el Evangelio y salvaron a Europa de los jovenlandeses y de otras amenazas, por su crueldad, y su pagano amor hacia la vitalidad y la acción (Nota de Gurney: antes de todo esto está la Leyenda Negra de toda la vida)
BAP habla ahora de Vasco da Gama: circunnavegó África y encontró la ruta marítima hacia las Indias. Una vez allí, encontró especias, monos, y sometió a los Zamorin (Nota de Gurney: unos indios de la India, también conocidos como Samoothiri). Sus patrocinadores consiguieron un retorno de beneficios absolutamente fabuloso
Y luego está Almeida, que con una gran armada esparció la destrucción a lo largo del Océano Índico. Quemó Mombasa por la arrogancia de los árabes que la regían, y derrotó a una enorme armada de otomanos, árabes y mamelucos en la Batalla de Diu, para vengar la muerte de su hijo
Todo esto cambió el mismo espacio de nuestro mundo, y las grandes rutas de comercio por tierra fueron entonces flanqueadas por las naciones marineras de Europa occidental, que desde ese momento comenzaron a dominar el Índico y el Pacífico
Entendéis que América tuvo también un gran destino en este proyecto? Desde la fundación de Jamestown, en poco menos de 250 años el Comodoro Perry llegó a Japón y rompió su aislamiento. Todo habría sido aún más rápido sin la dominación de Inglaterra. El gran destino de America siempre ha sido la conquista de Extremo Oriente y la dominación de China, y eso era algo que obsesionaba a las grandes mentes de aquella época. Todo eso se ha olvidado, y ese gran sino ha sido frustrado -al menos por ahora
BAP prefiere, como hace habitualmente, no hablar de tales hombres (Nota de Gurney: jajaja, claro, pero ya ha deslizado su pequeña gota de veneno del bueno). Quiere motivarnos con un hombre de aquel tiempo, pero más de su gusto y más dentro del reino de lo que es posible: Pedro de Alvarado. Mano derecha de Cortés, de familia de caballeros del sur de España, pelirrojo que fascinó a los Mexicas, que creían que era el hijo del Sol, y lo llamaron Tonatiuh, que significa "La melena del Sol". No tenía límites en su coraje, arrojo y también crueldad. Por ejemplo, sin motivo masacró a los nobles de Tenochtitlán durante un banquete. Durante los combates se distinguió por sus locas cargas contra el grueso del enemigo. Y no creáis las mentiras sobre la ventaja tecnológica de la pólvora, porque en aquel tiempo las armas de fuego eran muy básicas. Fueron las armaduras, las picas, las hojas de acero de Toledo, la disciplina, el saber hacer de décadas (siglos en realidad) de lucha contra el jovenlandés. Y por encima de todo, el valor y al atrevimiento, lo mismo que llevó a Pizarro a someter a un imperio con un séquito de 13 hombres
Alvarado nunca paró. Su sed de espacio, de nuevos mundos y conquistas no tenía fin. No servía para gobernador, sino que era un pirata de nacimiento: justo antes de su muerte estaba planeando una expedición para la conquista de China y las Islas de las Especias (=las Molucas)
Alvarado fue una némesis de la civilización, y esto es bueno y correcto: Dios manda a hombres así para castigar y enseñar a la humanidad
BAP os exhorta: Quiero que seáis así, que escuchéis esos instintos dentro de vosotros. Sed una sola cosa: la pureza de la mente que tiene un sólo propósito es la verdadera hombría
Alvarado es el avatar de nuestra nueva edad, y BAP predice que dentro de 50 años, un centenar de Alvarados florecerán en el bestiario tropical del espíritu. Ellos barrerán la debilidad de este mundo