Balboa rose to colonial prominence soon after being discovered as a stowaway on Enciso’s boat. Enciso was the lawyer and right hand man of Alonso de Ojeda, who was marooned on the Panama mainland. This group originally set up a survival camp at what would become Portobelo and then moved to Nombre de Dios. This nomenclature resulted from, as the legend goes, a marooned Spaniard’s exhausted exclamation of relief at arriving at the spot of Nombre de Dios. Balboa used his experience and communicative savvy to lead the Spanish followers from starvation to survival in the east Darien region of Panama. His popularity soared and the Spanish deposed Ojeda of his alcade mayor position and elevated the stowaway and indebted Balboa to leading Antigua del Darien.
Balboa was able to maintain his position by way of sheer will and determination. His domination was more officially solidified when Diego Colon appointed Balboa his lieutenant on Tierra Firma and lobbied on Balboa’s behalf to King Ferdinand. Ferdinand made Balboa a provisional governor of the Darien region. Balboa did much to strengthen native alliances to simply survive and then thrive in Panama. Balboa’s zenith rose with his calculated and arguably courageous embarkment to the Pacific Ocean in 1513. Balboa was the first European to discover the Sud de Mer and that gained him notoriety the Spanish court first, and then attention of his enemies as well. Supporters of the humiliated Enciso and Ojeda had influence back in Spain, and the King sent Pedro Arias de Avila, a 70-year old military man, to be Panama’s new governor and command an armada to the new world.
Much changed with Avila’s, or Pedrarias as he was called, arrival. Animosities abounded between the Pedrarias and Balboa camps, with Balboa being arrested on occasion. The situation grew more tenuous when Balboa was given a position of supervision corresponding to his discovery of the Pacific. Pedrarias made the deciding brushstroke and eliminated Balbo from the colonial equation by indicting him on treasonous charges and executed him by beheading.
The year 1519 saw Pedrarias move the principal colonial seat from Antigua del Darien de Santa Maria across the isthmus to Panama, where it would stay and become the capital. Pedrarias also oversaw the reestablishing of Nombre de Dios on the eastern coast, as it was almost a straight shot across from Panama (City). Pedrarias did not continue the native sympathy policy that Balboa had. It seemed that he was more interested in enslavement of the Indians for the building of infrastructures to link the two oceans. Nombre de Dios became the gateway for such men as Pizarro in the new world and Spain’s “conquest”.
These encroachments were not done entirely independent of native resistance; assuredly there was not a “roll over and die” mentality among the natives. The bacteria the Spanish brought with them did decimate the indigenous population that was already thin in the Panamanian region, thus limiting major efforts at rebellion. It seems due to the thinning out of native population, either internal native conflicts, European-native conflicts, and disease, the “conquest” was more successful in Panama. Successful in the sense that Spain was allowed to place an influenced and dominating foothold in the new world, thus opening up all of western South America and the ensuing silver boom that began with Pizarro’s “conquest” of Peru.
There were some valuable commodities intrinsic to Panama’s mainland, yet they were few. These included small gold and silver deposits undoubtedly exhausted soon after Balboa’s establishment of Antigua and the following proliferation of colonists. A generally inhospitable place, many commodities and foodstuffs were imported into the country.
Nombre de Dios and then Portobelo, after 1597, became the locus of giant markets annually held. The trade floodgates had been opened in the western hemisphere. Similar to the European medieval trade fairs, the Nombre de Dios fairs brought natives into the picture as well. These Indians by this point were probably used as servants and/or slaves to help run the fair.
More to come…
Anderson, Charles L.G.. Life and Letters of Vasco Nunez de Balboa. Wesport, Conn.: Greenwood Press , 1941.
Gallup-Diaz, Ignacio. "A Legacy of Strife: Rebellious Slaves in Sixteenth-Century Panama´." Colonial Latin American Review 19 no. 3 (2010): 417-435.
Ward, Christopher. Imperial Panama. Albuquerque, University of Mexico Press. 1993.
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