SPEECH IS SILVER, SILENCE IS GOLD

SPEECH IS SILVER, SILENCE IS GOLD

Vasco Núñez de Balboa was an explorer. Balboa had an obsession—the discovery of El Dorado, a legendary city of vast riches. He also had the habit of declaring his missions clearly to his troop. As far as the mission was concerned, declaration was a safe thing to do, but in those times, when half of the crewmen were either bonded laborer or slaves bought from other countries, it was a risky thing to announce your intent to everybody. Balboa never heeded that.

Early in the sixteenth century, after countless hardships and brushes with death, he found evidence of a great and wealthy empire to the south of Mexico, in present-day Peru.

As was his nature, he announced that by conquering this empire, the Incan, and seizing its gold, he would make himself the next Cortés.

The problem was that even as he made this discovery, word of it spread among hundreds of other conquistadors. He did not understand that half the game was keeping it quiet, and carefully watching those around him.

A few years after he discovered the location of the Incan empire, a soldier in his own army, Francisco Pizarro, helped to get him beheaded for treason and thus Pizarro went on to take what Balboa had spent so many years trying to find.

Author unknown