The Illusion of El Dorado — The Age of Exploration and New World Gold

Up to now, we have watched gold become the currency of the ancient world, uphold the power of empires, and at times become the very reason for conquest. In time, the people of Europe turned their eyes beyond the Mediterranean, toward the far side of the sea. Out there lay a land where inexhaustible gold slept — so it was whispered, under the name of a legend: El Dorado. In this episode, we follow as the conquerors who crossed the Atlantic driven by that fantasy met the gold of the Aztec and the Inca in the New World, seized it, and at the same time destroyed something — and we do so as calmly as we can. We want to look at this age, when the thirst for wealth moved on a scale rarely seen in history, from both sides: neither in praise nor in condemnation.

The dream of a golden land — the fantasy called El Dorado

El Dorado, it is told, originally meant ‘the gilded one (the golden man).’ In a certain place in South America, a new chieftain was said to coat his whole body in gold dust at the rite of his accession and to offer gold to a lake. As that story passed from mouth to mouth among Europeans, it swelled. Before long it changed its shape into the tale of a land where streets and palaces alike shone with gold.

The power of this dream to move people was by no means small. In 1492, when the voyage of Columbus became the occasion for the linking of Europe and the American continent, the hearts of those who crossed the sea held, alongside spices and territory, a strong expectation of gold. They were called conquistadors (conquerors). Many were not nobles but ambitious men chasing a fortune at a single stroke, or minor lords on the verge of ruin; having obtained from the crown permission for an expedition and a promise of their share, they gathered ships and soldiers with their own funds or with debt and set out to sea. More than a state enterprise, it had a side that came close to a dangerous speculation.

Here there is one thing at which we wish to pause. For the societies of the New World, gold was not necessarily ‘money.’ Among the Aztec and the Inca, gold is said to have been a sacred material bound to the sun and the gods, prized as ornament and as ritual implement. For them the center of value lay rather in maize and woven cloth, or perhaps in feathers, it is said. Before the same metal, one side saw an offering to the gods, the other saw wealth itself — and this passing-by of value systems runs beneath the tragedy that is about to unfold.

The fall of the Aztec — Cortes and the promised gold

In 1519, Hernan Cortes landed on the Gulf coast of Mexico leading a force of several hundred soldiers and advanced inland toward the Aztec. How could so overwhelmingly small a force topple a vast power? The answer is often misunderstood. The decisive factor lay not in firearms and horses alone but in alliances with surrounding peoples who held grievances against Aztec rule, as today’s research points out. Cortes skillfully used the local conflicts and marched with many Indigenous soldiers on his side. The conquest was, more than the feat of strength of a small band that came from outside, also a politics that drove into the cracks within.

At first, the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II is said to have welcomed the visitors and presented gold and crafted works. But the relationship eventually collapsed and turned into armed clash. In 1521, after months of fighting, the army of Cortes and its allied forces is said to have stormed and taken the capital Tenochtitlan; in the course of it the city was destroyed, and through combat, famine, and the disease brought in, an enormous number of people are recorded to have lost their lives. The number of the dead varies widely across the sources and cannot be fixed with certainty, but on the point that much of the population was lost, the various accounts broadly agree.

On the amount of gold plundered, too, exaggeration mingles in the telling. One report letter records sums of gold ingots and crafted works as the crown’s share, yet, interestingly, it is also told that when the capital fell, gold to match the legend was not found. The last ruler Cuauhtemoc is said to have been tortured as he was pressed about its hiding place, but there remains a view that the vast treasure had already been carried off before the conquest. The reality of the golden land may not have been as full of gold as the dream.

The Inca ransom — Pizarro and Atahualpa

Another great conquest occurred in the Inca empire to the south. In 1532, Francisco Pizarro came face to face, at the Andean town of Cajamarca, with the emperor Atahualpa, who had only just won a civil war. Pizarro’s band is said to have numbered only a hundred and some odd men, yet by a surprise attack they took the emperor himself alive. To pin down the one who stood at the summit was to paralyze a vast machinery of state — a stroke that struck at the vital point of rule.

Here the trade famous in history was born. Atahualpa is said to have offered, in exchange for his own release, to fill the room in which he was held with gold, and twice over with silver besides. From all parts of the Inca realm, ornaments and ritual vessels of gold and silver were gathered, and they were melted down and turned into bars. The amounts that came together differ in number across the sources, and the weights of the gold and silver ingots are also disputed, so nothing certain can be said; yet in every record it is common that the scale was one Europe had never seen before.

But the promise was not kept. Even after the ransom was paid, Atahualpa was not released, and in 1533, under the pretext of rebellion and the like, he is recorded to have been executed. Sacred ritual vessels were melted down without care, and the emperor was robbed of his life with the promise broken — this event tells, more eloquently than anything, of the violence of conquest and the logic of an age that placed gold above good faith.

The shadow that the gold cast

The gold of the New World did indeed flow into Europe. Yet we cannot close this chapter without seeing the shadow that its brilliance cast. What remained after the conquest was destroyed cities, lost cultures, and an Indigenous population sharply reduced by war, harsh labor, and disease. Above all, infectious diseases such as smallpox brought from Europe are thought to have caused immense harm among people who had no immunity. This is said to have had a large accidental aspect rather than being intended slaughter, but it changes nothing of the fact that, as a result, the very foundation of those societies collapsed.

Within European society of the time, too, there were voices that questioned this violence. It is worth remembering that there were figures such as the friar Bartolome de las Casas, who denounced the cruel treatment of the Indigenous and sought to defend their rights. It is not fair to judge the age of conquest one-sidedly by the values of later ages alone. Yet at the same time, the fact that there was dissent even among contemporaries forbids the easy relativizing of ‘it could not be helped back then.’ To look squarely at the harm done is not to condemn it with emotion, but to keep gazing at what happened without turning away — so we believe.

In this way, the fantasy of El Dorado, in exchange for countless victims, changed its shape into real gold and silver. Yet what flowed from the New World into Europe was not gold alone. Soon, in far greater quantity and far more quietly, a tide of white metal that would change the very terrain of the world economy — a tide of silver — was about to come surging across the sea.