Things could not have gone worse for Vasco Núñez de Balboa, a young nobleman from Jerez de los Caballeros. He enlisted in Rodrigo de Bastidas' expedition, which left Cadiz in 1501 and sailed for the first time along the Caribbean coasts of present-day Colombia and Panama. The small fleet became unserviceable when it reached the west of the island of Hispaniola, and the expedition members had to walk through the jungle several conference until they reached Santo Domingo. There, he participated in a conquest organized by Governor Nicolás de Ovando and was rewarded with land where he tried to start raising pigs, but failed and fell into debt.

Since his creditors would not allow him to leave the island, in 1510 he embarked clandestinely in the fleet of Martin Fernandez de Enciso, but was discovered and was about to be abandoned on an island. Surviving a near shipwreck, bankruptcy and a sentence to die on an abandoned island, Balboa arrived in what would become Cartagena de Indias. They soon learned that Ojeda had failed in his attempt to found a settlement in an unhealthy place of warlike Indians. Wounded and disenchanted, he had abandoned his men and returned to Hispaniola. Enciso's men were then faced with the choice of returning or looking for another place to found a new settlement.

In that moment of uncertainty, his intuition and determination were decisive: he had traveled those coasts in 1501 and remembered a peaceful indigenous settlement with abundant resources. Following his indications, they headed towards the western coast of the Gulf of Urabá, near the current border between Colombia and Panama, where they established the settlement of Santa María la Antigua del Darién in November 1510. It would be the first Spanish city founded in the American continent.

Balboa took advantage of the discontent towards Enciso, due to the lack of incentives, to propose the appointment of a cabildo to govern the city. The expeditionaries self-elected the members of the corporation and the most voted was Balboa, who in a short time had established his leadership based on empathy and encouragement to the host. With this legal maneuver, the chapter of Santa Maria la Antigua began to act as the highest royal institution in the territory, of course over Enciso, who decided to return to Spain to reclaim his rights.

The news of this foundation reached the other governor sent to Tierra Firme, Diego de Nicuesa, who was some 300 kilometers to the west, in the isthmus, and had also failed to dominate the territory of Veragua. Nicuesa returned to claim the new population, but the town council of Santa María prevented him from disembarking and refused to recognize him. Disgusted, he set sail for Hispaniola to validate his capitulations, but his ship was shipwrecked and he died at sea.

Beginning in August 1511, Núñez de Balboa, who had become the undisputed leader, took advantage of his empathy to negotiate pacts with more than twenty chiefs in the area. This proximity favored that the Indians informed him of the existence of another sea to the south. The Castilians had been searching for more than a decade for a strait that would allow them to pass to the other ocean and reach Asia from the west. America was still perceived as a barrier that hindered this goal. Balboa was not satisfied with the successes achieved and in September 1513, after crossing the isthmus through the jungle and the mountain range, he reached what he called the South Sea. The geostrategic impact of this finding was enormous: it changed the perception of the New World and prompted the first land circumnavigation that turned the Pacific into a "Spanish lake" and opened the door to the dominion of the Philippine archipelago.

Although the story of Vasco Núñez de Balboa did not end well, his bequest marked the process of territorial domination of America. He became the paradigm of the conquistador and many, like Cortés, imitated him; however, they barely managed to maintain the balance in which negotiation prevailed over violence.