Columbus' true face

[airiefairie]

History is written by the winners - this is a well known principle. For example, October 11 was Columbus Day. Ever since the 18th century, Columbus' arrival on American soil in 1492 is being celebrated in the United States, all throughout Central America, the Caribbean, Spain, Argentina, Uruguay etc. But what is actually being celebrated? And if

Comments

[sophia_sadek]

During my childhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania only Catholics celebrated Columbus Day. Everyone else was aware of the shamefulness of the man's deeds. Many folks around here in SF observe the alternative Indigenous People's Day.

I had been under the impression that the Spanish had wiped out the Arawaks until I read that Alexander Humboldt encountered Arawaks during his explorations in South America. Americans do not value Humboldt because he was a humanitarian who advocated against slavery and in favor of Native rights. He was also a scientist which was another strike against him in the eyes of American puritans.

BTW, if Irish Catholics knew more about Patrick, they would not consider him a saint. He was an opponent of Irish independence and culture.

[mahnmut]

Yeah but Paddy rid the Emerald Island of all those pesky snakes!

[sophia_sadek]

Those "snakes" were the leaders of the Druids. They were only pesky in the minds of religious bigots.

[mahnmut]

He should'a left them dwaggins, tho'.

[telemann]

Turns out Cristobal Coloms was Catalan too, not Italian. DNA tests on remains in the Seville, Spain cathedral also have confirmed it's Columbus' body.

[sophia_sadek]

Are they sure they have the right set of bones? It is easy for things like that to get mixed up, especially in the case of such a famous person.

[telemann]

Yes. Absolutely certain. 100 percent. That's what the DNA test proved anyway.

[sophia_sadek]

The DNA test only proves the nationality of the bones. It does not prove that the bones actually belonged to Columbus.

[oportet]

I think you have to put the blame for the reverence on textbooks and teachers. You can't find a K-8 book that tells the story you just told, and I don't think it would be easy to find a high school text book that tells it either. It's hammered into our heads for 10+ years that he was a hero who discovered America - and while that can be undone, it would make more sense to just not hammer it in there in the first place.

[sophia_sadek]

Cultural indoctrination demands it.

[a_new_machine]

And then when you try to undo it, you get people complaining about how this is just "white guilt" stuff, not a serious problem, and that trying to write Columbus as anything but a hero is revisionism.

[brother_dour]

I would hesitate to tell that story to a K-8th grader. How you explain child prostitution of 9- and 10-year-olds to a 10-year-old is beyond me. There is some degree of pragmatism involved.

But at the very least, college-age students should be learning about history from a fair an unbiased point of view (which generally proves that our cultural heroes were pretty rotten bastards)

[peamasii]

The West selectively loves some violent heroes because they "get stuff done". Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, etc.
Shouldn't there be a Genghis Khan day though? I mean that guy is responsible for more deaths than anyone else (40 mil?).

[ddstory]

He ain't no westerner, and that's the problem.

[underlankers]

If we want to get picky about it, the guy responsible for most deaths ever is either Pol Pot, who killed a quarter of his own country, Francisco Solano Lopez, responsible for *half* his country dying and 90 percent of the male population or Zhang Xianzhong, who took a city of Four Hundred Thousand human beings and reduced it to Twenty.

Of course you're right that the West has problems with distinguishing between its heroes and its monsters, but then between the various brutes that made civilization in the West there's only picking between evils, for there is also nothing of good among any of them. Millions or hundreds of thousands of dead people slain by their actions removes them from ordinary moral calculations.

[peamasii]

Wow, I just pulled this out of Wikipedia, can't believe someone actually wrote this sentence

[underlankers]

Eh, if Columbus were alive today and did everything he did then now, as an agent of the private sector all the libertarians would rationalize, minimize, bowdlerize, and excuse his atrocities while accusing any critics of corporate genocide as filthy red Communists, partying like it's 1969. The people on the Left would object to what he's doing not because starving people to death so that work makes them free is inherently a wrong premise in itself (keep in mind I do not qualify Social Democrats as Left) but *because* he's on the Right. His actual victims would be ignored save in maudlin pieces about 'Oh, how horrible' and the man himself would be a regular talk show guest on FOX News much like Pat Robertson and his blood diamonds, or Rios Montt, or any of the umpty-dozen little tinpot butchers the USA's propped up in the last few years. People would find him not morally wrong, in other words, in most cases except where pre-existing ideas combined to make him so

[kayjayuu]

Eh, if Columbus were alive today and did everything he did then now, as an agent of the private sector all the libertarians would rationalize, minimize, bowdlerize, and excuse his atrocities while accusing any critics of corporate genocide as filthy red Communists, partying like it's 1969.

Citation needed.

[404]

I doubt you'll get the response you are looking for.

[underlankers]

Pat Robertson and his making a shitload of money off of blood diamonds. Not to mention people like Rios Montt, Pinochet, the Shah, and all the other dictators the libertarians find hunky-dory who did things like what Columbus is infamous for. Libertarians and liberty do not tend to go together very well.