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The Naming of America (2023)
érica, no invoco tu nombre en vano [America, I don't call your name without hope] Pablo Neruda, Canto General AMERICA, we learn as schoolchildren, was named in honor of Amerigo Vespucci, for his discovery of the mainland of the New World. We tend not to question this lesson about the naming of America.
Amerigo Vespucci, the pickle dealer at Seville, who went out, in 1499, a subaltern with Hojeda, and whose highest naval rank was boat-swain's mate in an expedition that never sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant Columbus and baptize half the earth with his own dishonest name." Most important, if the first series of documents are indeed forgeries, the "first" of the four voyages (dated 1497) never took place, and thus Vespucci could not be given priority of one year over Columbus on reaching the American mainland, nor could he be considered the first to explore the coastline of Central America, Mexico, and the southeastern coast of the United States. Hudd opens with a reference to Bristol's 1897 celebration of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of North America by John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), the Italian navigator and explorer who had sailed for England, laying the groundwork for the later British claim to Canada.
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