Vicente Yáñez Pinzón
Vicente Yáñez Pinzón (Palos de la Frontera, approx. 1462-1514) was a Spanish navigator and explorer, co-discoverer of America and the first European navigator to reach Brazil. He sailed alongside Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to the New World, in 1492, as captain of the caravel La Niña. He discovered the coasts of the extreme north of Brazil in January 1500, three months before the arrival of Pedro Álvares Cabral to Porto Seguro.
The years of youth
Vicente Yáñez was born approximately around 1462 in Palos de la Frontera, Spain, making him the youngest, by far, of the Pinzón brothers, and it is very likely that he took the nickname Yáñez from Rodrigo Yáñez, a sheriff from Palos who would be his godfather, as was the custom of the place. Tradition in Palos points to his plot on Ribera Street. From a very young age he learned the art of sailing from his older brother, one of the most outstanding navigators of the time, and he participated from his adolescence, which was time of war, in combats and assaults. He married twice, the first with María Teresa Rodríguez, who gave him two daughters: Ana Rodríguez and Juana González. The second, upon returning from his last trip to Yucatán, in 1509, with Ana Núñez de Trujillo, with whom he lived in Triana. until his death.
The first documented news about Vicente Yáñez are several complaints about assaults on Catalan and Aragonese ships that he carried out, since he was only fifteen years old, between 1477 and 1479, a time of war with Portugal, in which Palos actively participated and that worsened its usual wheat shortage. His neighbors complained of being hungry, and royal orders to various places to allow the supply of grain to Palos were disobeyed. The Pinzón, assuming their responsibilities as natural leaders of the region, attacked caravels that were mainly transporting wheat.
Captain of the caravel La Niña

Vicente Yáñez was the first to accept his brother's invitation to enlist when Martín Alonso decided to support Christopher Columbus's expedition. Together they visited, house by house, their relatives, friends and acquaintances, encouraging the most prominent sailors in the area to embark. They rejected the ships seized by Columbus, hiring more suitable ships, and contributed half a million maravedíes from their treasury.
As captain of the Niña, his interventions were fundamental during the trip, encouraging the expedition to continue when even Columbus himself wanted to return. He quelled the protests of the sailors of the ship Santa María , coming to their rescue when the ship was shipwrecked and bringing the Admiral back to Spain.
In 1495 he prepared two caravels, the Vicente Yáñez and the Fraila, to participate in the armada that Alonso de Aguilar, elder brother of the Great Captain, was going to lead against North Africa, but the Wars of Naples ensued and they headed to Italy, from where they did not return until 1498, passing along the coasts of Algiers and Tunisia.
The discovery of Brazil
That same year, the Crown decided to allow individuals to undertake voyages of discovery. After capitulating in Seville with the all-powerful Bishop Fonseca in the name of the Catholic Monarchs, on November 19, 1499, Yáñez left Puerto de Palos with four small caravels, on his own initiative and at his expense. He was accompanied by a large number of relatives and friends, including, as notary, Garcí Fernández, the famous physicist from Palos who supported Columbus when no one else did, his nephews and captains Arias Pérez and Diego Hernández Colmenero, first-born son and son-in-law, respectively, of Martín Alonso, his uncle Diego Martín Pinzón with his cousins Juan, Francisco and Bartolomé, the prestigious pilots Juan Quintero Príncipe, Juan de Umbría, Alonso Núñez and Juan de Jerez, as well as the sailors Cristóbal de Vega, García Alonso, Diego de Alfaro, Rodrigo Álvarez, Diego Prieto, Antón Fernández Colmenero, Juan Calvo, Juan de Palencia, Manuel Valdobinos, Pedro Ramírez, García Hernández and, of course, his brother Francisco Martín Pinzón.
He was appointed governor:
Let us know: in remuneration of the seruicios and expenses and the damages that you received in the said journey, you the said Bicente Yáñes, which governs our merced and will be, be our captain and Governador of those lands of their own non-bradas, from the tip of Santa Maria de la Consolación following the coast of the fast

The story of this trip appears in several chronicles. Of them, the Decades of the New World, written in 1501 by the Milanese Pedro Mártir de Anglería, are the closest in time and based on reports from eyewitnesses, including Vicente Yáñez himself, but, above all, Diego de Lepe, the Palermo captain who made a "twin" from Pinzón, he left Palos a month and a half or two months later and continued his course until overtaking him on the Amazon River. The version of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo in his General and natural history of the Indies is also quite interesting, since he & # 34; he knew and treated & # 34; to Pinzón who provided him with many of the data that he narrates. As for the respective Chronicles of Father Bartolomé de las Casas and Antonio de Herrera, that of Brother Bartolomé is based on Anglería and that of Herrera on the Dominican.
In its peculiar and flowery language, Anglería reports that, after passing the Canary Islands and the Cape Verde Islands, Vicente Yáñez's ships headed southwest until they lost sight of the North Star. For the first time, Spanish sailors crossed the equator and entered the Southern Hemisphere. Serious contingency, because logically they did not know how to guide themselves by the stars of the southern sky.
Oviedo does not recount the trip. As for Las Casas, he substantially follows Anglería, although with more austere expressions, stating that "taken the path of the Canary Islands and from there to those of Cape Verde, and leaving from Santiago, which is one of them, On the 13th day of January, 1500 years, they took the route to the South and then to the East, and having traveled, as they said, 700 leagues, they lost the North and passed the equinoctial line. After it, they had a terrible storm that made them think they would perish; They traveled along that eastern or eastern route for another 240 leagues. Herrera says the same, but states, when he narrates the passage of the equinox line, that Vicente Yáñez was "the first subject of the Crown of Castile and León to cross it." Finally, Anglería tells us:
(...) on 26 January they saw land from afar, and observing the turbidity of the water of the sea, they cast the probe and found a depth of 16 cubits, which they commonly call braced. They approached and disembarked and, having remained there for two days, for they found no man at that time but they saw his footprints on the beach, recorded on the trees and rocks near the coast the names of the Kings and their own, with news of their arrival, and left.Peter Martyr of Angleria (Decades of the New World, 1501)
Nothing more. The paucity of words by the exuberant Pedro Mártir is astonishing, especially compared to the previous tirade and what Las Casas says about the same event when he states that on January 26 they saw land far away; This was the cape that is now called Sant Agustín, and the Portuguese the Land of Brazil: Vicente Yáñez then named it Cape Consolación.
The Sevillian friar inserted two very important statements in his work: first, that the cape that Pinzón arrived at and baptized as Consolación was the cape known as San Agustín. Second, that Vicente Yáñez took possession of the land. Fray Bartolomé follows the story of the Milanese, but does not hesitate to complete it with the information and convictions that he has been collecting over the years. For him there was not the slightest doubt: the Santa María de la Consolación cape was that of San Agustín, the first land discovered in Brazil by Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, who took possession of it. Faced with the hostile attitude of the indigenous people, they decided to raise the sails and continue sailing until they reached:
(...) another river, but not with enough depth to be travelled with the caravels, so they sent to the ground to recognize it four skifes of service with armed men. They saw on an eminence near the coast a multitude of indigenous people, whom, sending in front of an infantry soldier, invited to try. It seemed that they tried to seize and take with them our man, for just as he had thrown them to attract a cascabel, they, from afar, did another with both a golden stick of one elbow; and when they bowed the Spanish to take it, they rode it quickly in the spirit of apprehending it; but our infant, protecting himself with the shield and the sword of which he was armed, stood up until his companions.
The sad result of this first bloody confrontation was, according to all the chroniclers, eight Spaniards dead and more than a dozen wounded, with the casualties being much more numerous among the indigenous people. The chroniclers agree in the narrative, with the clarification of Oviedo, who says that it was a "piece of carved gold" that the Indians used as bait.
From this episode some authors venture to deduce that the indigenous people knew of the Christians' ambition for gold. Firstly, the "gold stick" that, little by little, from chronicler to chronicler, became a "worked piece of gold" was not recovered, so we will never know if it was really gold or not. However, this fact, as well as a cross found by Diego de Lepe's expedition, which according to Professor Juan Manzano would not have surprised them so much, nor would Juan de la Cosa have highlighted it on his famous map, if they had believed that the Yáñez's men had placed there, are the weak arguments with which this author doubts that the true discoverer of Brazil was Pinzón, and attributes, without further ado, said merit to the expedition of the Portuguese Duarte Pacheco in 1498, which no one knows exactly where it went, because political circumstances advised keeping it secret.
A hypothesis with which, according to the historian Julio Izquierdo Labrado, we cannot agree because it is too adventurous and gratuitous, not only because the arguments, we repeat, are very weak, but because secrecy and discovery are not concepts. that they get along well. Discovering is not just arriving, it is taking possession, recording names, recording that you have arrived, having a notary record the event, knowing with greater or lesser accuracy where you have arrived, measuring, mapping and, above all, inform kings, cosmographers, chroniclers, sailors, to name a few professions, and the general public, in such a way that the lands reached are incorporated into the general knowledge of the culture, of the civilization that sends that expedition. That's discovering. And that did not happen after the arrival, if it ever arrived, of Duarte Pacheco to the Brazilian coast, but of Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, the only sailor who deserves the title of discoverer of Brazil. Title that, by the way, was not spared or discussed, as we will see, by his contemporaries, neither Spanish nor Portuguese.
Nor did anyone dispute the title of discoverer and first explorer of the Amazon River, the place where the reported confrontation took place, at the mouth of Pará, and from which they left saddened because of the dead, until they reached what they believed another river that was 40 leagues away. In reality, as Oviedo already states in his chronicle, it was the other shore, the other mouth of the immense Amazon. Astonished, they verify that the fresh water goes 40 leagues into the sea, and they renew all the water in their vessels. Determined to investigate the secret of such a powerful river, they head towards it and, according to Anglería:
They discovered that from large mountains they rushed with great rivers of rapid currents. They say that within that piélago there are numerous islands fertile for the richness of their soil and full of villages. They say that the indigenous people of this region are peaceful and sociable, but not useful to ours, since they did not obtain from them any appetizing profit, such as gold or precious stones; in view of this, 30 captives were taken from there. The indigenous call the Mariatambal region; however, the one located east of the river is called Camamoro, and western Paricora. The indigenous indicated that there was no despicable amount of gold within that coast.Peter Martyr of Angleria (Decades of the New World, 1501)

Oviedo categorically affirms that Vicente Yáñez Pinzón was "the first Christian and Spaniard to report this great river", which he already calls Marañón, a name that Las Casas also uses, although he claims not to know who or why they named it that way. Furthermore, the Dominican adds the surprise that the macareo phenomenon produced in them, "because being in the river with the great impetus and force of the fresh water and the sea that resisted it, they made a terrible noise and "He raised the ships four levels high, where they suffered no danger."
Entertained in this exploration of the Amazon, they were overtaken by Diego de Lepe's expedition, which had been following them from Palos. Thus, in the Amazon, Pinzón's discoveries on Brazilian lands concluded, strictly speaking. From there, Anglería tells us, they followed the coast heading "west towards Paria, in a space of 300 leagues, to the tip of land where the Arctic pole is lost." This point is especially interesting and we will return to it later, when dealing with the controversy surrounding the situation of Cape Santa María de la Consolación.
Anglería continues reporting on Pinzón's trip, his arrival at Marañón (the Orinoco, although Las Casas calls the Amazon that way). From there they continued to the Gulf of Paria (present-day Venezuela), where they loaded three thousand pounds of Brazilian wood, one of the few products that reported profits on this trip. With a northwest wind they sail between several islands, very fertile but sparsely populated due to the cruelty of the cannibals. They disembark in several of them, discovering the island of Mayo, but the indigenous people flee. They find huge trees and, among them, an amazing marsupial animal.
They had already traveled 600 leagues, and had already passed by the island of Hispaniola, when in the month of July they suffered a terrible storm, which wrecked two of the four caravels they were carrying in the shallows of Babueca, and carried away another, violently tearing it from its anchors and making it disappear from sight. They were desperate when, fortunately, when the storm stopped, the caravel that they thought was lost returned, manned by 18 men. The chronicler Pedro Mártir states that «With these two ships they headed towards Spain. Battered by the waves and having lost many companions, they returned to Palos' native land, along with their wives and his children, on September 30.
Knighthood and Governorships
This trip, which was the longest and most important carried out at the time due to its geographical results, was instead an economic disaster. Despite everything, the Kings were very interested in the possession of the immense coast discovered by Pinzón, so they tried to encourage him to return to it, so on September 5, 1501 they signed a capitulation with him in which, among other things, they named him captain and governor of "the said point of Santa María de la Consolación and following the coast to Rostro Fermoso, and from there the entire coast that runs northwest to the said river that you possess called Santa María de la Mar Dulce, with the islands that are at the mouth of the said river, which is called Mariatanbalo ». And they also granted him one sixth of all the products obtained from that land, provided that he returned to it "within one year, counting from the date of this capitulation and settlement."
Undoubtedly, the Catholic Monarchs demonstrate that they attach great importance to Pinzón's discoveries and that they trust in his worth to continue providing services to them. Therefore, to reward him for what he had achieved, at the same time that they encouraged and helped him to continue serving them, on Friday, October 8, 1501, he was knighted by King Ferdinand the Catholic in the Comares tower of the Alhambra, the Palace Royal of Granada.
Everything was useless, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón could not or did not want to make this trip. It is generally said that Captain Palermo's lack of resources prevented him from doing it. Surely it was like that. However, Yáñez could get credit when necessary, even if it was at very high interest. Therefore, it is not advisable to rule out the possibility that at such an early date, as a result of the Portuguese voyages to those coasts, he doubted the sovereignty of the Spanish kings over it due to the Treaty of Tordesillas and, consequently, its power to grant him his governorship.
Juan Manzano y Manzano tries to demonstrate that Pinzón returned to those lands discovered by him in 1504, in a great effort to clarify Anglería's confusing narration about the last trip of Vicente Yáñez where he mixes his adventures with Solís through the Gulf of Mexico with a return to the lands found in 1500, in an absurd and meaningless journey. Why would Pinzón return to Brazil? To verify that the Portuguese calculations were correct and report them to the Kings? This is possible, but the capitulation of 1501 said that Pinzón would be at his expense, bearing expenses that his painful economic situation made very burdensome, and that effort for what? To prove that neither he nor Spain had rights to this land? Sailing with so much secrecy that none of his contemporaries found out? Risking his life and that of his crew more than normal by carrying only one caravel? Had he not written down the data well on his first trip that he had to repeat it, go through the same places again? And when in 1513 he gave a statement, with such accuracy and honesty that he perfectly demarcated between the coast that he had discovered and that from which he had simply 'run', since he admitted that his discovery corresponded to his countryman Diego de Lepe, did he? Why are you not so specific about your arrival at Cape San Agustín, without the slightest reference to the fact that you had been there the second time and not the first time?
Too many questions without answers in this supposed second trip of Pinzón to Brazil, too many questions from a confusing and disorderly account of Anglería. The truth is that the adventures of Vicente Yáñez between 1502 and 1504 are still not clarified.
Expedition to Central America
His presence in America was confirmed during those years, probably to fulfill his obligations as Captain General and Governor of Puerto Rico, the island that his brother Martín Alonso Pinzón had discovered during the second voyage in 1493. However, since In the spring of 1505 we find him again in Spain, specifically in the Board of Navigators of Toro, in which, by a capitulation dated April 24, he was appointed captain and corregidor of the island of San Juan or Puerto Rico. He also participated as an expert summoned by the Crown in the Board of Navigators of Burgos in 1508 to once again take up the issue of the search for a passage to the Spice Islands. On his last trip to the Indies in 1508, Captain Pinzón together with Juan Díaz de Solís traveled along the coasts of Paria, Darién and Veragua, current Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. Not finding the desired passage, they surround the Yucatan Peninsula and enter the Gulf of Mexico up to 23.5º North latitude, making one of the first contacts with the Aztec civilization.
Upon returning from that trip, Vicente Yáñez married for the second time and settled in Triana, testifying in 1513 in the Columbian Lawsuits against the Admiral with his usual moderation. In 1514 he was ordered to accompany Pedrarias Dávila to Darién, but Vicente Yáñez was ill and asked to be excused. It was March 14, 1514, and this is the last document in which he is mentioned. According to his friend, the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Vicente Yáñez died this same year, probably at the end of September, with the same discretion that he lived, without knowing the place where he was buried, probably in the Triana cemetery.
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