THE GREATEST PUZZLE confronting the first-time visitor to South America is the pronounced Irish influence on the culture. It is notable in Chile, for instance, that there are several statues raised up to the incongruously named Bernardo O’Higgins (1778–1842) who, from a family hailing from County Sligo, is still venerated as the Father of Chilean Independence and the first Supreme Director of the country after emancipating it from Spanish control. Likewise, tourists in Argentina may be equally surprised by the plethora of Irish pubs and restaurants there, and it is much the same in Brazil where the statue of Christ the Redeemer above Rio is bathed in shamrock-green light every St Patrick’s Day, accompanied by huge celebrations in the city. The foundations for these ongoing ties binding South America and Ireland date back to the early 1500s when Spain and the counties to the south of Ireland formed strong trading associations, resulting in a little-known but significant Irish diaspora that followed in the footsteps of the Spanish Conquistadors who invaded Mexico and South America in that same century.
The bare bones of the history of the Spanish invasions of Mexico by Hernan Cortez in 1519 and South America by Francisco Pizarro across the 1520s are as well known as they are misperceived. In each case the invading force is believed to have been pitifully small yet triumphant through their innate superiority to the Inca and the Mexican Aztec, who were so benighted that they thought the Spanish with their comparatively pale skin to be the incarnations of their own pagan gods. Needless to say, the truth is very different. Indeed, it is stretching the point even to call those two invading forces Spanish; they certainly did not consider themselves such. That which we call Spain was at the time an uneasy alliance of independent realms only given a veneer of unity by the 1469 marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. But this still left Catalonia, the Basque Lands, Murcia, Andalusia, Valencia and several other historic regions of ‘Spain’ being gradually forced into a union for which they had little desire. This uneasy unification is still apparent in modern-day Spain, highlighted by the ongoing terror campaign of the Basque separatists known as ETA and the separatists’ vote of 2017 carrying the day in Catalonia. Then, as indeed now, most in Spain identified themselves first by their region of origin.
Cortez was from Extremadura and Pizarro from Castile. In the case of Pizarro, he did not, as many imagined, simply land in Peru in 1526 and take it over. A piratical adventurer, he had already made several trips to South America and in Panama picked up on tales of gold aplenty in Peru. But his 1524 invasion of that country was successfully denied by the native population. He tried again in 1526 but had no sooner landed than he was recalled by a ship sent after him by Pedro de los Rios, the Governor of Panama. Reluctant to retreat yet again, this is when Pizarro allegedly drew a line in the sand on the beach with the tip of his sword inviting ‘all good Castilians’ present to indicate their resolve to remain in Peru with him by stepping over it. The few who elected to remain with him in Peru are celebrated in Spanish history as the Famous Thirteen, which did much to promote the myth that Pizarro subjugated the whole of Peru with the help of only twelve men. In fact, even this attempt at establishing a Peruvian foothold was unsuccessful, forcing Pizarro and his Famous Thirteen to return to Panama with their collective tails between their legs. Undaunted, Pizarro left his men there while he returned to Madrid to convince Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, who doubled as Charles I of Spain, that there was much gold just waiting to be taken. He was granted a charter, three fully provisioned ships, artillery and 180 men-at-arms.
With such strength Pizarro returned to Peru where, now forearmed with the knowledge that none of the other tribes cared for the high-handed Inca, he soon managed to raise a native army of over 35,000. And it was much the same for Cortez, who likewise found little trouble in raising a local army of over 200,000 to assist in his campaigns against the all-powerful Aztecs. So much for the myth.
As for the equally widely held notion that the Aztec leader, Montezuma, thought Cortez to be the incarnation of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god, and that the Incas thought Pizarro to be the living image of their god, Viracocha, and that both tribes showered their invaders with gold, this was invented by Spanish historians to cover up the wholesale slaughter inflicted by both men in their brutal quest for ever more wealth. There is not a shred of evidence to support this claim and much to refute it. The story only rears its head decades after the events and it is hard to believe that the Inca and the Aztec could mistake the horrendous behaviour and decidedly mortal ‘appetites’ of their invaders for that of divine proclivity.
Pizarro and those who followed in his murderous footsteps also failed in finding the one thing they all sought – the fabled city they called El Dorado. This was not because El Dorado did not exist, but because the Spanish had taken a masterly grasp on the wrong end of the stick when it came to the legend. El Dorado was not a city, but in fact a man. Prior to the inauguration of a new Inca leader, the king-to-be had to spend days in contemplative isolation before being stripped naked and coated in honey or oil so that copious amounts of gold dust would stick to every part of his body to present him to his people as the Golden King or the Golden One. But the invading Spanish convinced themselves that El Dorado, as they called it, was a city groaning with gold, and they started to interrogate captives as to its location. But the problem with torture is that the victim will quickly tell you whatever it is you want to hear in order to gain respite from the pain, and countless Inca kept telling their inquisitors that the city of El Dorado did indeed exist – but far, far away.
GUEVARA IN LIMERICK
Patrick Lynch of Galway moved to Buenos Aires in 1749 with his direct descendant Ernesto Lynch, born in 1928, later being better known to the world as the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. Inordinately proud of his Irish heritage, Guevara broke his Prague–New York flight at Shannon Airport on 13 March 1965 so he could join in the pre-St Patrick’s Day celebrations in nearby Limerick. Drinkers in Hanratty’s Hotel stood slack-jawed in amazement as he wandered up to the bar in his trademark camouflage fatigues and asked for a pint of Guinness.
From here he went on a pub crawl with Arthur Quinlan of the Dublin Sunday Tribute and the pair of them ended up at The White Horse on O’Connell Street with Guevara so drunk he could hardly stand. Quinlan recalled he had deliberately stayed sober in the hope of getting some information, but his drunken companion let nothing slip – apart from the fact that he could speak English, something he always denied in interviews.
So, the Spanish went to South America in search of gold and their long-term trading partners from Ireland tagged along for the ride, resulting in Argentina, for example, now playing host to the fifth-largest Irish population in the world. It is well known that, in times of trouble and famine, many Irish headed for New York and Chicago – but these were mostly from the north of Ireland. Those from the south made for Spain, Mexico or South America.
One such early escapee was William Lamport from County Wexford who, in 1630, sailed to Spain and then on to Mexico where, in 1641, he became involved in the independence movement, with his flamboyant antics the likely inspiration for the fictional character Zorro. There is even a statue of Lamport in the Monument to Independence in Mexico City. During the 1846–8 war between the United States and Mexico, hundreds of Irish troops in the US Army deserted and crossed over into Mexico to establish the St Patrick’s Battalion, still remembered as freedom fighters in both Mexico and Ireland to this day.
This Hispanic–Irish fusion can also be seen in reverse. The first Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, established in 1918, was Eamon de Valera, born in the Americas of an Irish mother and a Basque father. In 1806, when Britain tried to take control of a vast tract of Argentinian territory in what was known as the Invasion of the River Plate, all the Irish soldiers in the invasion force deserted and went over to the Argentinian army. During the Easter Rising of 1916, it was a man from Argentina who raised the flag of Independent Ireland above the General Post Office in Dublin (after the rising was crushed, Eamon Bulfin was deported, later to be appointed Irish Consul in Buenos Aires by the aforementioned Eamon de Valera). And such ties still bind, as shown by the Irish stance during the Falklands conflict between the UK and Argentina. Drawing accusations of treason and treachery from the popular press, the Haughey government condemned the British sinking of the General Belgrano and pressed the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire.
And it seems these links between Spain and Ireland run deeper than merely reciprocal trade deals in the sixteenth century. His work duplicated and confirmed by further studies conducted by universities in Norway and Spain, Dr Daniel G. Bradley of the Genetics Department at Trinity College Dublin recently revealed that, genetically, the closest living relatives of the Irish are none other than the Basques of Northern Spain, such findings resonating with an old legend of the Irish claiming them all to be descended from the sons of a man called Milesius, who is said to have come to Ireland from Spain before the time of Christ. On a darker note, it has long been known that Phytophthora infestans was the fungus responsible for the Great Potato Famine of 1845 that drove the Irish diaspora, but historically no one knew how it came to Ireland. Researchers have now discovered that it came from South America and most likely arrived on Spanish boats trading into Irish ports.