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We’re Not Celebrating Columbus
In Latin America, the names of this holiday underline decolonization and plurality.
So, it’s that time of the year.
Right before White Women Dressed Up As Pocahontas Night, more commonly known as Halloween, and Celebrating the Genocide of North American Native Peoples, officially Thanksgiving.
This weekend it’s time for Columbus Day, when we commemorate the discovery of America by a European, some ten thousand years after the continent was actually discovered by humans.
1492, when this Italian pirate arrived on the island of Hispaniola in a Spanish ship, is remembered in Spain as the culmination of the power of the crown.
The kingdom had just been united and the Moors expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, and the colonial domination of the Americas was about to begin.
So was the genocide of millions of people, the looting of natural resources, and the slave trade.
Some of the biggest crimes against humanity of all time began with Columbus disembarking on Hispaniola more than five centuries ago.
It’s incredibly descriptive that this island today is the home of two countries, the paradise for European and American tourists that is the Dominican Republic, and the…
