Ticket 2 Ride

Today is what we Americans were brain- washed into celebrating as Columbus Day, in honor of Christopher Columbus’ journeys to the Americas. What school children are clued into was the looting, rape, murder and enslavement of those he found in the New World. Columbus was a colonizer, a conqueror; he was not a saint, nor was he some benevolent traveler who distributed gifts like Santa Claus at Christmas.

There’s a lot of rationalizing done by people who argue that was just a man of his time, that he was no different than other explorers who are celebrated as a part of our history. That’s the very problem. We whitewash history to bypass the bad parts, to ignore wrongdoing and those events that conflict with who we say we are.

“This is just one more part of our history you libs want to take from us.”

We shouldn’t falsely celebrate what Columbus really meant to the Americas. Besides the looting, raping, murdering and slavery (as if that wasn’t enough), Columbus brought diseases to the New World, particularly small pox, that decimated indigenous populations. I guess he did come bearing “gifts.”

Historian Alfred W. Crosby coined a term, The Columbian Exchange, that refers to the impact of Columbus’ impact of trading living organisms between the Old World (Europe and Africa) and the New World (the Americas).

“Smallpox was a standard infection in Europe and most of the Old World in 1491. It took hold in areas of the New World in the early part of the next century and killed a lot of American Indians, starting with the Aztecs and the people of Mexico and Peru. One wonders how a few hundred Spaniards managed to conquer these giant Indian empires. You go back and read the records and you discover that the army and, just generally speaking, the people of the Indian empires were just decimated by such diseases as smallpox, malaria, all kinds of infectious diseases.”

As a school kid, we learned this rhyme:

Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492
The Nina, and the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, too.
Going over going under in the Atlantic Ocean’s thunder,
What a brave thing to do!
When Columbus set sail he knew the earth was round.
He was amazed at all the lands and the people he found.
Going over, going under, in the Atlantic Ocean’s thunder,
What a brave thing to do!
Columbus visited Bahamas, Cuba, South America, too.
On October 12 we remember him and his crew.
Going over, going under, in the Atlantic Ocean’s thunder,
What a brave thing to do!

Despite the President’s attempt to bring back the Columbus Day celebration, if we want to recognize the efforts of Italian-Americans, let’s pick a different day and call it something relating to that. Separate that effort from Columbus. What a great thing to do!