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By Juan Carlos Rivera Torres
The smell of gunpowder is still freshly impregnated in the thin and concave walls of the amphoras (ancient Greek jars) extracted by Santos Rivera from the depths of the Caribbean Sea. The two small, ancient cannons known as falconets are also almost untouched: Sea salt and time have only slightly altered these artillery pieces that were perhaps fired more than once by a buccaneer, filibuster, pirate or a Spanish conquistador.
Rivera isn’t a researcher, much less an archaeologist. He doesn’t know anything about archaeology; he’d never even heard of that word. He’s just a modest fisherman who one day stumbled upon a magnificent hidden treasure.
Rivera gradually began extracting the pieces on that fortunate day. “First, I hauled up a small cannon and then the other one, since they’re very heavy,” he says. There’s a look of ambivalence in his eyes, lying somewhere between satisfaction and disappointment.
Without knowing anything about the history of pirates and buccaneers, Rivera, at 46, accidentally brought fascinating events to the surface from the depths of a past that now can only be seen in movies.
The falconets discovered by Rivera—each longer than three feet and weighing more than 100 pounds—were undoubtedly part of ships that waged battles to take control of the seas during the period of conquest and colonization.
These two “small cannons”—as Rivera calls them—are just a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous and extremely valuable treasure that exists along Central America’s irregular Caribbean coastline.
Within the depths of the ocean from Guatemala to Panama, “more than 50 vessels dating from colonial times are submerged, plus other objects of great historical value for the region,” says Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, the Honduran minister of culture.
Proof of Pastor Fasquelle’s statement are the pieces extracted by Rivera, along with a gigantic, heavy anchor measuring 6.5 feet tall and almost 6.5 feet wide, which was recently reclaimed by a group of researchers from the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History.
But that’s not all. While falconets, swords, lombardas (old, large-caliber cannons), munitions and a valuable arsenal of other pieces of artillery rest within the depths of the emerald-colored sea, five imposing fortresses lie just a few feet from the beach standing guard over the coast and giving the region an air of nobility.
These include the Castillo de San Felipe in Guatemala; two forts in Honduras, San Fernando de Omoa and Santa Barbara in Trujillo; La Inmaculada Concepcion in Nicaragua; and Portobelo and San Lorenzo in Panama. With their formidable walls and fortifications, each of these holds a piece of history and offers a captivating ambience in every nook and cranny for the hundreds of tourists who visit them.
Portobelo itself is a fascinating complex that holds a special place in the history of the New World. So much trade passed through this tiny port and so much wealth was stored here, that the Spanish crown decided to construct four separate fortresses to protect the narrow entrance to the bay leading to the town. Three—Santiago, San Felipe and San Jeronimo—are easily accessible to Portobelo visitors, while the fourth, San Fernando, requires a boat trip across the bay.
“The fortresses that these countries have are really impressive. We would all like to have one in our countries,” says Fernando Gonzales Vasquez, anthropologist for the Center for Research and Conservation of the National Patrimony in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica is the only country in the region that doesn’t have a colonial fortress on its coast. “Between the 17th and the 18th century, we had San Fernando de Matina, but since it was a building probably made from wood it had a temporary life… It only exists in chronicles, so there are no remains,” Gonzales Vasquez says regretfully.
All the fortresses were built between the 15th and 18th centuries by the Spanish Crown. Each one was a fundamental piece in the system of defense and protection of trade and its colonies. The fantastic tale of these fortresses began after the arrival of Christopher Columbus.
Fighting off pirates and buccaneers
For many years, Spain reigned unchallenged and held a monopoly on trade in the region. Its ships set sail from Spanish ports and peacefully crossed the Caribbean, set anchor on the coasts of the newly conquered territory and loaded the goods: cocoa from Nicaragua; indigo from El Salvador; and gold and silver from Honduras, all bound for Europe.
But the peacefulness ended for Spain around 1543, when French and English buccaneers, and later Dutch ones, arrived on the scene and unleashed a war with no holds barred. They stormed the ships loaded with merchandise, and attacked and plundered the Spanish ports established on the isthmus. So the Crown determined to begin financing the construction of fortresses along various points of the Caribbean coast and to overcome the endless hardships.
For example, to build the Omoa fortress on the northwestern coast of Honduras, Spanish officials had to surmount an endless number of obstacles: at first, they couldn’t find a quarry with the ideal type of stone for the walls of the fortress. Finally, they found it in Guatemalan territory, on the Bay of Amatique and the Puerto de Sal. Once they overcame that problem, the architects had to be patient, since it was extremely difficult to get a labor force.
First, the settlers tried to recruit and force the indigenous people to build the fort, but many of the natives were used to the more temperate climate of the plateaus of the interior of the country. Upon arriving on the stifling coast, they were either annihilated by smallpox or killed by the Spanish soldiers themselves. In an attempt to escape death, the natives and also the mestizos—used as reserves in the garrisons—fled from the cities to the mountains, but the Spanish soldiers searched for them high and low to enslave them for the construction of the fort. Because of the scarcity of labor, Spanish officials asked the Crown for permission to buy black slaves from English agents living in Kingston, Jamaica.
Against great odds, the Spanish settlers finished the fortress in 1779. That same year, at dawn on September 25, three ships appeared on the horizon. One of them opened fire on the fortress. They eventually left, but there were other attacks to follow. Now, more than two centuries later, the dents made by the heavy cannonballs on the walls tell tourists part of the story.
“The history of all the fortresses is similar. They were places of war; now, they’re sites of great cultural interest,” says Manuel Salazar, Guatemala’s minister of culture and sports.
New appeal
Given the great historical importance that the fortresses have, the region’s culture ministers agreed—during a meeting in Copan, Honduras, in the beginning of June 2006—to establish the Emerald Tourist Route to show the public the monumental patrimony of these lands.
The Emerald Route—so called because of the predominant color of the Caribbean—is a new tourism alternative that, beyond offering beaches and the ocean, reflects the ancient cultural riches of the isthmus: the formidable fortresses and their surroundings, ethnic groups and jungles. The objective is to increase the number of foreign visitors to the region.
At the same time, the governments of the countries, with the support of international organizations, are investing large amounts of money to restore the fortresses and prepare the spaces to attract domestic and foreign tourists.
“At this time, we’re creating a council to develop the area of Portobelo and uncover and restore the remains and architecture of the fort of San Lorenzo. These are monumental sites for Panama and humanity,” explains Reinier Rodriguez Ferguson, general director of the National Institute of Culture of Panama. The council, made up of the private sector and the government, will first create a visitors center. Then, it will tackle the restoration of the damaged parts of these two monuments, declared World Heritage Sites in 1980 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In Nicaragua, the government has also undertaken the restoration of its fortress, La Inmaculada Concepcion. “We have invested a lot of money, more than half a million dollars, and we’re receiving aid from the Spanish government,” says Julio Valle, Nicaragua’s minister of culture.
In addition to doing the restorations, the governments of the region, through their culture ministries, are trying to increase the awareness of residents of the nearby areas about the historical importance and to make every one of the citizens a guard of that patrimony.
In the 21st century, many archaeology and antiquities thieves are trying to convince residents to sell them historical objects. Without knowing it was forbidden, Rivera, the modest Honduran fisherman, attempted to sell the amphoras and the falconetes to a foreign collector, but officials stopped the transaction. Now, tourists can appreciate these pieces in the museum at the fortress.
Image: Fortaleza de San Jeronimo, Portobelo, Panama
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Bienvenido a la Feria Internacional de Turismo de las Américas (FITA)