Crossing the Line in the Sand: Francis Drake Imitating Ferdinand Magellan in Juan de Miramontes's Armas antárticas

Abstract

This article examines the third canto of Juan de Miramontes's colonial Latin American epic, Armas antárticas (1608-1609), in which Francis Drake narrates the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan to Elizabeth I of England. The study begins by analyzing how Armas antárticas portrays Magellan as an epic hero and defuses certain long-standing controversies surrounding him by appealing to classical epic models and judiciously drawing from historiographic texts. Despite the general effectiveness of this portrayal, however, Armas antárticas creates entirely new problems for the perception of Magellan by presenting him as a precursor of Drake. In fact, the text poetically and ironically suggests that Magellan transgressed the antimeridian of the Line of Tordesillas, and in doing so preceded Drake in his piratical activities in the Pacific. In this way Armas antárticas evinces unexpected parallels with ideas about piracy and international law expressed by the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius in Mare liberum (1609).