The NYC Department of Education now celebrates “Columbus Day” as Italian Heritage Day / Indigenous Peoples Day. The US national holiday is still called “Columbus Day.” We fully support changing the name of the day, but it will take an act of Congress to change it. A generation ago, Columbus was considered a great man. Now we know he was an evil man who unleashed an apocalypse in his God’s name.
Columbus Day in New York City
New York City’s big Columbus Day celebrations include:
- Columbus Day Parade
- Hispanic Day Parade
- Indigenous Peoples Day NYC Powwow
- National Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Parade
The Origin of Columbus Day
The US celebration was founded to stop the lynching of Italian Americans by white supremacist Confederate traitors.
After the US Civil War (1860-1865), many Italians who migrated to the United States came from Southern Italy. It’s only 100 miles from Africa so Italians were comfortable with mixing. They took work that had formerly been done by the African Diaspora, lived in and married into African communities. They became targets by association.
American racism is so violent that it is difficult for many of us to fully comprehend ~ unless you are on the receiving end. Lynchings, murders, rapes, maimings, burnings – you cannot process the inhumanity – even against women and children, continuously and for no reason at all. People don’t want to talk about it, but it is our American history. This nonsense stills devils American life.
There was a lynching of Italian Americans in 1891 that became an international incident. The U.S. even paid reparations to Italy. Hoping to calm things down, the U.S. government started Columbus Day to send the message that Italians are Americans too. It worked. Italians went from being “others” to just being Americans. That’s why the Italian American community holds so tightly to Columbus.
Back then the scholarship about the evil of Columbus himself, and the evil he unleashed on the world was not general knowledge. We were taught colonial fairy tales, but now you can’t say you didn’t know.
Columbus Unleashed an Apocalypse With a Pandemic, Genocide, and The Atlantic Slave Trade
Most Latin Americans reject Columbus because he unleashed a multi-dimensional Indigenous genocide that began with an pandemic with a 85-95% death rate. The COVID death rate is around 3%. For perspective, imagine that everyone who died of Covid is alive, but all of us now living are dead. It happened in about a year. Can you imagine the shock of being the 1 in 20 who survived?
We are taught that Indigenous Peoples just gave up and died, but actually they were worked to death by the colonizers in slave labor camps. That’s genocide. When there were no Indigenous workers left, the Europeans began kidnapping and enslaving Africans, and worked them to death too.
Even worse, it was done in Jesus’ name, even though that is the exact opposite of the teachings of Christ. The Spanish claimed they were spreading Christ, but brought the apocalypse instead.
Christopher Columbus Was Personally an Evil Man
It turns out that Christopher Columbus was himself an evil man. He tried to start the TransAtlantic Slave Trade by selling Indigenous Taíno in Spain. The Spanish rejected him, but that was the beginning of this mess.
After his voyages, Columbus was so infamous for the maltreatment of Indigenous peoples that his own Spanish sponsors called him back to Spain, jailed him, stripped his power, and put him on trial. He had brought them such riches that the Spaniards eventually let him go, but never let him have power again. Those were his own sponsors.
Even the “Discovery” Was Based on a Lie
The Americas were discovered long before Columbus.
- Indigenous Peoples discovered the Americas between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago.
- The calabash bottle gourd is generally believed to have made the journey from Africa to the Americas over 8,000 years ago.
- Columbus “discovered” the Americas a little over 500 years ago. So the calabash vegetable is smarter than him.
Columbus Day commemorates the day around October 12, 1492 when the expedition of Christopher Columbus sighted land in what is now the Bahamas. But even that pivotal moment was based on a lie. A lookout sighted land first. But to claim a reward, Columbus lied and said he saw land first, but didn’t report it. True to form, Columbus was a thief.
Columbus Wasn’t a Great Navigator, He Was Lost
Spaniards have rebranded history to make themselves look good. They spin the Reconquista, pushing Muslims out of Spain, as a grand military strategy, brilliantly executed. Actually, it was a bunch of unrelated skirmishes. “Reconquista” is nothing more than a brand. But the Spaniards did bring their pleasure in abusing and killing people of color to the Americas.
Columbus wasn’t a great navigator. He was just lucky enough to survive the journey.
When Columbus encountered the Indigenous Taíno in the Bahamas, he and his crew were lost and going to die. The Taíno saved them. In return, the Spaniards abused the Taíno.
The Spaniards asked for gold. The Taíno showed them where it was and said they could take whatever they wanted. Columbus and his relatives repaid this kindness by enslaving the Taíno. If you didn’t provide enough gold to the Spanish colonizers, they cut off your arm. Eventually the free gold ran out. Ouch!
Conquistadors were Common Criminals
Conquistador where worse than common criminals. They only conquered by betraying their hosts. They are nothing to be proud of.
These statues of evil men are everywhere in town plazas across the Americas (including New York City). Columbus statues usually point to Spain. The only consolation is that those Columbus statues are now bird toilets. What a metaphor.
The evil of this character and his sponsors continues to devil the Americas. The social, political, religious systems the Spaniards and other colonizers planted in the Americas were designed for the people at the top to steal everything with impunity. The Spaniards are gone, but the same systems remain in place. That’s why there is so much social upheaval in Latin America.
Why would anyone attach their cultural brand to such a flawed character who stands for unspeakable crimes against humanity?