At first glance, Maluco, la novela de los descubridores, by the Uruguayan novelist Napoleon Bacino Ponce de Leon (Montevideo 1947) is about Hernando de Magalhaes' first expedition around the world, as described by the fleet's jester who, in a letter addressed to an aged Charles I of Spain, in his declining years, asking that the king intercede "with your son, our beloved Phillip, and ask that he reinstate the pension that I lost because I sought the truth in villages and public squares." Of course his claim implies acknowledgement of himself as one of the nineteen survivors, thus documenting...