Opinion: Did you say ‘Happy Columbus Day’?
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Portrait of Christopher Columbus (Painting by Sebastiano del Piombo)
Columbus Day remains a federal holiday. First declared in 1892 by Pres. Benjamin Harrison on the 400th anniversary of the Italian explorer’s fabled landing here to curb anti-Italian sentiment as immigration surged from the Mediterranean nation, Columbus Day fell on the same date this year.
Both occasions aim to recognize the experience of and appreciate a specific American population, heralding a mindset shift after 298 years.
Were we not, as high schoolers learning world history for the first time, told about the great European explorers who sailed on their giant ships across vast oceans where they “discovered” new land, including the archipelago where we or our parents and ancestors were born?
We grew up tormented by those voluminous textbooks, written mostly by western or western-educated authors. We memorized dates, made excruciatingly boring by uninspired and uninspiring lecturers but which we endured or incur an F.
“Enlightenment grows with education. Descendants of the populations whose lands were plundered never forgot how their ancestors were vanquished.”
We even celebrated those milestones blindly.
How did we accept what was thrust upon us without question?
Take the date Oct. 12, 1492, immortalized in a nursery song as the day “Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” The Italian captain supposedly “discovered” what in the Middle Ages was referred to as the “New World,” later named America after Florentine merchant Amerigo Vespucci. And that Ferdinand Magellan landed on and “discovered” a bunch of islands he named after the King who financed his search for riches.
In reality, of course, the continent where Columbus hit shore and the archipelago Magellan dropped anchor were already populated by people with their own language and laws - culture, indeed. So yes, the European conquerors did “discover” those places, if for themselves and their fellow Europeans.
Indigenous people such as the Aztecs and Mayans in what would later be called Estados Unidos Mexicanos, later designated as the lower tip of North America before meandering into the continents of Central and South America, already had their own systems of government. They perfected their brand of architecture and engineering, as those who’ve marveled at the pyramids south of the border have witnessed. They excelled in agriculture, growing countless types of corn, beans, peanuts, potatoes, peppers and tomatoes, that Europeans once thought were poisonous. Imagine Italian cuisine minus the juicy voluptuous orb!
Size matters, conquistadors believed. They internalized superiority, being taller, heftier, armed with bigger weapons and horses that they brought with them along with livestock for food and farming. They viewed inhabitants of the land they found as inferior and filthy because of their deep pigmentation and propensity to live off the land literally. And yet it was they who worshipped nature who died by the hundreds of thousands from illnesses brought by the foreign invaders, like small pox, measles and typhus.
Monuments were built for the colonizers, with countries like Colombia and the Philippines named to immortalize them.
But enlightenment grows with education. Descendants of the populations whose lands were plundered never forgot how their ancestors were vanquished.
Near the end of the previous century, the United Nations sponsored an international conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas. Delegates began discussion to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. By then Native Americans were already organizing to repudiate Thanksgiving as a celebration of the fabled community between the indigenous and the newcomers.
1992 marked the 500th year since Cristoforo Colombo started his voyage. Two years earlier, attendees of the First Continental Conference on 500 Years of Indian Resistance in Quito, Ecuador, resolved to begin promoting “continental unity” of indigenous peoples.
Among the first to launch counter-celebrations were conference participants from Northern California, asserting the “discovery” by Columbus had initiated European colonization that led to “genocide” of the indigenous population resulting from government policies
Ever radical, the city of Berkeley declared October 12 as a "Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People" and 1992 as the "Year of Indigenous People. Schools and museums organized activities to educate on the impact of colonization from the standpoint of the indigenous peoples.
Berkeley’s “Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People" (Source: Berkeleyside)
President Donald Trump proclaimed Oct. 13, 2019 Columbus Day and at the end of that month, proclaimed November as National American History and Founders Month to recognize the earliest colonizers from Europe. In his 2020 proclamation he denounced “radical activists who have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy.”
That same year California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared Oct. 12 Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
By 2020, at least 13 US states do not celebrate Columbus Day out of respect for the multitude and their progeny decimated by Columbus and other conquistadors. Today some 100 cities have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
In his Oct. 8 proclamation, Biden officially proclaimed Oct. 11 as a day for honoring the “invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples, recognizes their inherent sovereignty, and commits to honoring the Federal Government’s trust and treaty obligations to Tribal Nations.”
Biden emphasized “Federal policies (that) systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures” for which he vowed to recommit to supporting a new, brighter future of promise and equity for Tribal Nations — a future grounded in Tribal sovereignty and respect for the human rights of Indigenous people in the Americas and around the world.”
European explorers who crossed the seas ostensibly to set up training posts to acquire spices, precious metals and stones that enriched and turned their monarchs into superpowers eventually forced their hosts to yield to their might. Look no further than India, which fell under British rule, and of course the Philippines and this country. The pattern of subjugation continues to this day, when a particular race believes itself superior and entitled to take from and control another unable to stand up to them.
The behavior is learned, normalized, and encouraged throughout society. Unless robust response to expose and reject it occurs. And that is what abuse prevention advocates endeavor.
So this month, which happens to be Filipino America History Month when we highlight the contributions to this nation of people who came from the Philippines and their descendants, let’s also think about the people who for thousands of years nurtured but lost this land on which we now call home.
They, above all, deserve the honor.
San Francisco Bay Area-based Cherie M. Querol Moreno learned empathy, courage and responsibility from her journalist parents. The Positively Filipino and Inquirer.net correspondent is executive editor of Philippine News Today.
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