in fourteen hundred ninety-two...
Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America. Now, some have argued Columbus actually discovered the West Indies, or that Norsemen had discovered America centuries earlier, or that you really can't give credit for discovering an indigenous people with a developed civilization. Those people are communists. Columbus discovered America.
This is an excerpt from America: The Calendar (also America: The Book). I pull through the daily pages from the calendar, tossing the day before in the trash. Most make me chuckle or at least smile. And while this one did that... it also got me thinking about how misrepresented and over celebrated this man was. He was really quite evil by most standards...
In 1493 Columbus returned with an invasion force of seventeen ships, appointed at his own request by the Spanish Crown to install himself as Viceroy and Governor of and the Mainland of America (the Caribbean islands). Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa–ola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of slavery and systematic extermination against the native Taino population. Columbus's programs reduced Taino numbers from as many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the governor's departure in 1500. His policies, however, remained, with the result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely 22,000 Indians remaining alive.
Folks... that's on par, if not greater than the toll of Jews obliterated by Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler's slaughter houses and in percentages far greater that the estimated 75% erradication of European Jews. And we have festivals and parades and bank holidays. Nice.
The genocidal model for conquest and colonization established by Columbus was to a large extent replicated by others such as Cortez (in Mexico) and Pizarro (in Peru) during the following half-century. During the same period, expeditions such as those of Ponce de Leon in 1513, Coronado in 1540, and de Soto during the same year were launched with an eye towards effecting the same pattern on the North American continent proper. In the latter sphere the Spanish example was followed and in certain ways intensified by the British, beginning at Roanoake in 1607 and Plymouth in 1620. Overall the process of English colonization along the Atlantic Coast was marked by a series of massacres of native people as relentless and devastating as any perpetrated by the Spaniards.
Columbus: sailor, explorer, trendsetter.
[1] all figures were excerpted from Indians Are Us by Ward Churchill
posted by Improvocateur @ 10:34 AM
1 Comments:
funny you should mention this... growing up in bradenton, fl, one of our more "popular" attractions in the area is the hernando desoto monument (http://www.nps.gov/deso/index.htm), supposedly one of the "landing spots" of desoto and his men as they went on their pillage through the SE (http://www.nps.gov/deso/historyculture/places.htm). we lived just around the corner on shaw's point, and would often take walks there as a family, as it's a gorgeous spot where the manatee river, gulf of mexico and tampa bay meet. or friends and i would sneak up there to drink, smoke cigarettes, or makeout in the mangroves (oh yeah, don't get me started on the number of snakeskins we'd see the next day). and of course, every year, a required field trip there to see the camp re-enactment and watch the same 1970s movie.
fun fact of the area: we'd had the "hernando desoto celebration" every year as part of our heritage. there's a parade and of course a big conquistador boat, and a group of men dressed up like conquistadors with the hats and there's a queen for Hernando (old time view: http://www.fcit.usf.edu/florida/photos/reenact/desoto/desoto.htm)
come to think of it, my father was actually a conquistador one year. i definately remember the red shirt and yellow sash...
back in high school, they changed the name of the celebration to strictly the "heritage festival" and removed desoto from it. sure, they still had the boat and the guys running around, but it had to be more PC. (this was also about the time that many tribes were protesting the use of the seminole likeness as the mascot for FSU. the seminole nation now receives millions of dollars and scholarships for tribe members, just to use the likeness and the name). now, looking for the festival, i find that it's back to everything desoto (http://www.desotohq.com/). funny how the south rises right back and spits in the politically correct face of our nation.
mind you, desoto doesn't make a national holiday or anything, although there is a day during the festival that kids get off from school for the parade and all.
people do white sales in the northeast for columbus. do they dress up like Chris? or Queen Isabella?
ok. there's my randomly related comment for the day.
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