The article analyzes the classifications assigned to the Strait of Magellan in the political-territorial configuration of the New World during the sixteenth century and related global dynamics happening at the time. The text is divided into three parts. The first is a theoretical reading of the historiographic problems and the temporalities surrounding the discovery of the Strait, which led to its identification as a "world-passage." The second examines the facts, actors and territorialities that consolidated it as a geopolitical reference point between 1520 and 1560. And, finally, the third studies the variations in its strategic importance in the period between 1560-1580, variations that reveal its role in delineating, synchronizing and speculating on a series of continental issues that affected simultaneously local and global spaces.