by NORMAN STOCKWELL
Chicano students from the University of Wisconsin at Madison protest Columbus Day on October 12, 1992, the Columbus quincentennial. 500 years of resistance. PHOTO/UW-Madison Library Archives
The first Indigenous People’s Day was proclaimed on October 12, 1992, the quincentennial of the infamous voyage of Christopher Columbus to this hemisphere. At the 1990 Continental Gathering of Indigenous Peoples in Quito, Ecuador participants from 120 different nations collaborated to write:
“The Indians of America have never abandoned our constant struggle against the conditions of oppression, discrimination and exploitation which were imposed upon us as a result of the European invasion of our ancestral territories.”
The Italian explorer, Columbus, sailing under the flag of Spain, is credited with the “discovery of a New World,” although his expedition had sought a passage to Asia, a very old part of the world. As the late Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano points out in this powerful essay from the The Progressive in October 2007:
“Were colonial invasions encounters, whether those of yesterday or those of today? Shouldn’t they be called rapes or violations instead?”
As Galeano tells us, our hemisphere is still dealing with the curse of Columbus.
The Curse of Columbus
Did Christopher Columbus discover America in 1492? Or was it the Vikings before him? And before the Vikings, what about the people who lived there? Didn’t they exist?
Official history relates that Vasco Núñez of Balboa was the first man who saw both oceans, standing on a peak in Panama. Were the inhabitants of that area blind?
Who gave maize and potatoes and tomatoes and chocolate and the rivers and mountains of America their names? Hernán Cortés? Francisco Pizarro? Were the people who were already living there mute?
We have been told, and still are, that it was the pilgrims of the Mayflower that populated America. Had it been empty before?
Because Columbus didn’t understand what the Indians were saying, he concluded that they didn’t know how to speak. Because they wore no clothes, were gentle, and gave away everything they had, he concluded they lacked the capacity for reason. And because he was certain of having discovered the Orient by the back door, he believed they were Indians from India.
Afterwards, during the second voyage, the admiral promulgated an act establishing that Cuba was part of Asia. The document of June 14, 1494, stated as evidence that the crew of the three ships recognized it as such. Whoever said otherwise was given thirty lashes, fined 10,000 maravedíes, and had his tongue cut out.
The notary, Hernán Pérez de Luna, attested, and the sailors who could write signed at the bottom.
The Progressive for more