The First Wise Traveler to the West - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 19

— Lord Alfred Tennyson [22]
Columbus's New World landing set vast changes in motion. Genetic changes, cultural
changes, material changes, intellectual changes, and pathogenic consequences are only four
that nest inside the vast catalog of intermingled consequences flowing from Columbus's
voyages. Let us elaborate on these.
Some nine months after his crew first came ashore, a new race came into the world,
an admixture of European and Native American genes came forth. Mestizo , Spanish for
mixed, became the new race, now dominant in many parts of Latin America: around 60
percent of Mexico's present population, about 65 percent of the population of Ecuador, and
58 percent of Colombia. In this admixture, many students of Latin American politics find
the roots of Latin America's perennial political corruption—a subservient mestizo popula-
tion, long dominated by a powerful landed class, long accepting that class's right to rule.
Students of Latin American politics also link Latin America's constant cycle of revolution
and military dictatorship to mestizo presence—the patient, long-suffering mestizo who at
long last explodes into violence. (As the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset observes,
“Violence is reason exasperated.” [23] ) And in parallel fashion, sociologists attribute to the
mestizos the master-and-servant culture that is the foundation for the top-heavy (asymmet-
rical) distribution of Latin American wealth. Brazil is the extreme case. About 10 percent
of the population controls over 40 percent of the nation's wealth.
The material and cultural consequences of the New World discoveries were inordinate
in Spain's first 150 years in Latin America. It is estimated that a half-million pounds of gold
and thirty-five million pounds of silver were taken from the ground directly or stolen from
the Indians. This newfound wealth brought the first round of inflation to Europe (too much
money chasing after too few goods). Privateers and pirates cruised the Caribbean, attempt-
ing to intercept Spain's treasure fleet. Money that leaked out of Spain helped to spur north-
ern Europe's Industrial Revolution. New World gold helped build the Spanish Armada,
whose defeat in 1588 emboldened England and Holland to sail east and west to establish
their own colonial empires. As the Spanish monarchy weakened, one hundred years of wars
followed, with Britain, France, Prussia, and almost all the rest of Europe scrambling and
fighting to dominate Spain and its New World wealth. From the War of Spanish Succes-
sion in 1701 to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Europe was rarely at peace. War followed
war, spreading far beyond Europe to India, Canada, and the English settlements in North
America. And perhaps most important of all, British incursions into North America led to
the first large-scale, long-lived democratic regimes since the early Greeks sailed from their
mother republics to carry democratic banners westward to Sicily. In poetic terms, Colum-
bus's arrival in the New World set in motion a chain of events that carried democracy to
the modern world.