It was Lope Martín, an Afro-Portuguese mariner, who in 1564-1565 finally transformed the Pacific into a vital space of contact and exchange, weaving all continents together and launching our global world.

But this sweet moment of victory lasted only two months, when the flagship of the fleet—14 times bigger than the vessel on which Martín and his companions had sailed—also accomplished the elusive vuelta, the return to America, guided by a no less remarkable navigator and friar named Andrés de Urdaneta.

The expedition commander had remained in the Philippines to establish a Spanish base in Asia, but his representatives aboard the flagship lost no time in accusing Martín of having absconded.

The accounts of subsequent chroniclers and historians, tainted by this controversy, have portrayed the Afro-Portuguese pilot piratical and given the credit instead to Urdaneta.

(Yet another remarkable chapter in the life of Martín has him outwitting, through an astonishing mutiny, the captain of the ship transporting the Black man to his death, and quite possibly spending his final years as head of a small European band in Micronesia.).

Martín was indisputably the first to “open” the Pacific, allowing plants, animals, products and ideas to begin flowing across the great ocean.

After his voyage, and for two and a half centuries, large Spanish galleons sailed every year across the Pacific, taking silver to Asia and returning with Chinese silk and ceramics, Southeast Asian spices and slaves from as far as the Indian subcontinent.

As the Spanish empire in the Americas crumbled in the early 19th century, American ships came to replace the old Spanish galleons.

The United States would go on to take control of Guam and the Philippines (early Spanish hubs), open direct trade with Japan and China and forge a vast network of transpacific interests that has reshaped the world.