WANTED: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS: GRAND THEFT, GENOCIDE, RACISM

[Orwellian_Ghost]

"One who has gold," observed Christopher Columbus in his travel log, "does as he wills in the world, and it even sends souls to Paradise."

Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress

by Howard Zinn

The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)-the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a "national interest" represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.

"History is the memory of states," wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies. From his standpoint, the "peace" that Europe had before the French Revolution was "restored" by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation-a world not restored but disintegrated.



http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html


ROBERTO MUCARO-BORRERO: Well, I think today is just a blatant example of the continuation of the campaign of genocide against indigenous peoples throughout this hemisphere and the propping up of racist propaganda, which, I think, is very significant in a country like the United States that is supposed to be championing human rights throughout the globe, but yet here we are celebrating a man who, as you stated, began the genocide of indigenous peoples, exploitation of resources in this hemisphere and also was the first person to initiate the transatlantic slave trade in this hemisphere.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that.

ROBERTO MUCARO-BORRERO: Well, he was the first one, Christopher Columbus, because of the outcry of some of the people in Spain against enslaving native peoples, indigenous peoples, particularly Tainos, and other indigenous peoples around the Caribbean and South American area, that they substituted the bringing in of peoples from the African continent to take over the places of people—indigenous peoples working in mines and these areas or to provide labor for sugar cane plantations, etc., etc. And it was Columbus that initiated this, because this was already going on from the Portuguese people who were already going to the coast of Africa to enslave, capture and enslave people for those kind of purposes.

http://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/10/indigenous_activists_blast_columbus_day_as

[Buzz Clik]

1. Oh, yeah. Columbus Day. Always a fun holiday at DU.

:eyes:

[Richardo]

2. !

:party:

[Throd]

9. Almost as fun as the Hiroshima anniversary

[Buzz Clik]

47. Comparing Columbus's arrival to dropping the atomic bomb? And I thought I'd seen it all.

[Throd]

49. No, I'm comparing the flappy-armed flame wars that erupt on DU.

St. Patrick's day was particularly volatile this year as well.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

13. Is it all suppose to be fun and games?

More to the point these dirty truths need to be told over and over. The lies that are told through the silence must be overcome. Would you be one to perpetuate that silence?

__________________________

The massacres continued. Columbus remained ill for months while his soldiers wandered freely. More than 50,000 natives were reported dead from these encounters by the time the Admiral had recovered from his sickness. And when at last his health and strength had been restored Columbus's response to his men's unorganized depredations was to organize them. In March of 1495 he massed together several hundred armored troops, cavalry, and a score or more of trained attack dogs. They set forth across the countryside, tearing into assembled masses of sick and unarmed native people, slaughtering them by the thousands. The pattern set by these raids would be the model the Spanish would follow for the next decade and beyond. As Bartolome de Las Casas, the most famous of the accompanying Spanish missionaries from that trip recalled:

Once the Indians were in the woods, the next step was to form squadrons and pursue them, and whenever the Spaniards found them, they pitilessly slaughtered everyone like sheep in a corral. It was a general rule among Spaniards to be cruel; not just cruel, but extraordinarily cruel so that harsh and bitter treatment would prevent Indians from daring to think of themselves as human beings or having a minute to think at all. So they would cut an Indian's hands and leave them dangling by a shred of skin and they would send him on saying "Go now, spread the news to your chiefs." They would test their swords and their manly strength on captured Indians and place bets on the slicing off of heads or the cutting of bodies in half with one blow. They burned or hanged captured chiefs."

At least one chief, the man considered by Columbus to be Hispaniola's ranking native leader, was not burned or hanged, however. He was captured, put in chains, and sent off by ship for public display and imprisonment in Spain. Like most of the Indians who had been forced to make that voyage, though, he never made it to Seville: he died en route.

With the same determination Columbus had shown in organizing his troops' previously disorganized and indiscriminate killings, the Admiral then set about the task of systematizing their haphazard enslavement of the natives. Gold was all that they were seeking, so every Indian on the island who was not a child was ordered to deliver to the Spanish a certain amount of the precious ore every three months. When the gold was delivered the individual was presented with a token to wear around his or her neck as proof that the tribute had been paid. Anyone found without the appropriate number of tokens had his hands cut off.

...

http://www.the7thfire.com/Native_American/Native_American_Holocaust-Pestilence_and_Genocide.html

[Buzz Clik]

48. I guess Columbus Day is like Christmas for DUers with high levels of angst.

They tell the Columbus story every motherfucking year, and then wonder why we find them to be intolerable bores.

[Richardo]

3. Really? I've never ever never ever never ever heard that before!!!

Never ever! What cutting edge material.

[HamdenRice]

4. So you've changed your view of slavery and now think it was a bad thing?

The second article takes the position that enslaving Africans to work in the plantations of the Caribbean was a terrible, brutal genocidal thing -- a position I agree with.

But in the past, you've said that slavery was the same as modern office work.

So which is it?

If Columbus simply replaced genocide against Tainos with Africans doing work that was the equivalent of working in office cubicles -- your past idiosyncratic view -- then wouldn't that a net improvement?

[Orwellian_Ghost]

7. Never changed it

Always have been quite consistent in opposing slavery and indentured servitude as well as the institutions which promote and facilitate them.

You too have been consistent in your support of those institutions that promote oppression and servitude.

You have always been a supporter of the ruling classes. You are on board with all of their programs and one needn't parse too finely to see how the colonialism of Columbus' day is still quite alive in today's programs through economic measures that you applaud.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

34. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[HamdenRice]

56. In this post, you said slavery was no worse than modern work

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=6085125

In the subsequent discussion, you defended that comparison and minimized the whippings, mutilations, slave catching and sale of family members that was endemic to slavery. Don't you remember?

Now in this thread you seem to be suggesting that slavery was comparable to genocide.

Have you changed your view?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. lulz

[Democracyinkind]

5. Does anyone else feel like the nineties?

Which is not to say that themes that have been heavily explored before should be banned from discussion... It just loses its edge once it has become general knowledge.

[Robb]

11. Well, it's much easier to argue in favor of general knowledge.

For example, I declare anyone who says the sky is not blue to be a freeper idiot sheeple bastard.

...See? :D

[Sebastian Doyle]

6. Chris Columbus was an idiot who got lost

and 517 years later, he's still glorified by some, and those people he "discovered" are still called "Indians" by many.

Glenn BecKKK must really idolize this clown. He wishes his stupidity could last as long. :evilgrin:

[Romulox]

10. Columbus may have been a very bad man, but the genocide was perpetrated by colonial Europe

Not by a rogue explorer.

The colonial European powers still haven't fully divested themselves of their ill-gotten gains in the New World to this day. But I guess Columbus is a good diversionary focal point for our anger. :shrug:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. Um, genocide was perpetuated by Columbus.

He wiped out large swaths of the Taino.

Also, he was European. And he set up colonies.

So I'm not sure why you're trying to distinguish between Columbus and colonial Europe.

[Romulox]

17. All by his lonesome, hmmm?

:eyes:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. Well him and his crew. Why do you ask?

Hitler didn't gas all the Jews by himself, but it's not like that absolves him of genocide.

[Romulox]

22. "Columbus may have been a very bad man, but the genocide was perpetrated by colonial Europe"

"Not by a rogue explorer.

The colonial European powers still haven't fully divested themselves of their ill-gotten gains in the New World to this day. But I guess Columbus is a good diversionary focal point for our anger. :shrug:"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6757278&mesg_id=6758533

This whole exchange could've been a lot more efficient if you'd just read the post before you responded to it. It's your call though. :shrug:

[Orwellian_Ghost]

21. No, of course not

Have you read any of the diaries of Las Casas.

This is something we do not have to speculate upon. The diary entries are explicit. Columbus was more than just a "mercantile sailor" he was we know from first-hand writings beyond cruel and barbarous.

The day is named in his honor so I'm not sure why you would dismiss such discussions about the man. And of course most people will also expand upon the matter as it relates to today's version of colonial conquest.

[Romulox]

23. I'm not dismissing this discussion at all. Just calling for it to be broadened a bit.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

27. That's fair

n/t

[Hannah Bell]

37. columbus's family ("colon") ran a/o got the profit from sectors of caribbean/

latin america for hundreds of years, e.g.:

The petition of Don Pedro Nuño Colon de Portugal, descendant of the explorer, Christopher Columbus, and sixth Duke of Veragua and Marquis of Jamaica, requesting that Mariana of Austria, Queen Regent of Charles II of Spain, make some compensation for the loss of income the Duke had suffered since the British took Jamaica in 1655.

Jamaica had been the exclusive fief of the descendants of Columbus since 1536 when it was given as a reward to the family. This document is dated 1671 by the text at the top of the second leaf, where the Duke refers to Spain's cession of Jamaica to Great Britain "last year in 1670."

In his argument the Duke puts special emphasis on the tremendous gain Spain received by virtue of his ancestor's discovery. In citing various sources he estimates that within the first 170 years after its discovery, the New World had produced for Spain some one billion, 190 million pesos.

Despite these figures, the present heir to Columbus' titles and estates was reduced to an income of sixteen thousand ducats. The Duke mentions no specific amount of compensation that he would like for Jamaica, but points out that Puerto Rico is of approximately the same worth.

The last four pages are a glowing description of Jamaica, its towns, people, products, etc., ending with an itemized accounting of just how much rent the island had produced annually for the Duke before the British occupation (40,950 pesos silver). Two years after this petition was printed, the Duke was made the 26th viceroy of New Spain - a fair reward for the loss of Jamaica. His term, however, was short. He reigned only six days before dying in Mexico City.

http://www.ilab.org/db/detail.php?lang=es&booknr=91302167.

[Romulox]

44. OK. And that means that genocide in the new world wasn't perpetrated by Colonial Europe?

You a big defender of, say, France's behavior in Haiti? :shrug:

[Hannah Bell]

46. ?? i don't see the connection between what i said & your response.

the assignment of fiefdom to connected families is part of the picture of europe's conquest of the new world. i added the info because most people don't know about columbus's descendants' role.

[SIMPLYB1980]

12. Can't wait to see what you post around Christmas.

http://www.angelfire.com/movies/oc/tirades/xmas.html

[Orwellian_Ghost]

15. Um no

nice conflation but please stick to the topic and stop assuming things. That might limit your post count but try.

I've always had a warm spot for X-mas though I don't support it the way most do and I've always seen through the lies of Columbus day and understood the need to see the dirty truth about this cruel celebration. How about you? Do you support the celebration of genocide?

Wow I guess many Unreccer's here support the heinous acts of Columbus?

[SIMPLYB1980]

20. Yawn.

[tsuki]

16. You forgot sex slaver, and pedophile. nt

[armyowalgreens]

18. I love how DUers give the man a pass because he did all of it "a long time ago".

After all, we cannot judge the Nazis. That was so long ago. It was a different time with different morals.

:eyes:

[Flaneur]

25. Yeah, let's dig up his bones and put them on trial.

[armyowalgreens]

28. The Straw man is strong in this one.

[LostInAnomie]

24. Yeah! Let's get him!

[demoleft]

26. rumours go that he's dead and gone. i do not think you'll ever get him alive.

you're right, he was also all you describe. but he was backed up by catholic church and the spanish crown, the "homunculus" theory gave the religious morals a way on - it was not men they were harassing and killing, just sub-humans.

his standards were different: words like genocide or racism are modern, belong to us.
do not involve him in what he could not get.

good to remember, but i think we'd better put historical facts in their own environment. we risk to judge deeds with our present standards. 500 years have gone, though at every war or guerrilla the systems and actions are quite the same.

ciao.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

30. An excerpt from 1542

And of all the infinite universe of humanity, these people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness and duplicity, the most obedient and faithful to their native masters and to the Spanish Christians whom they serve. They are by nature the most humble, patient, and peaceable, holding no grudges, free from embroilments, neither excitable nor quarrelsome. These people are the most devoid of rancors, hatreds, or desire for vengeance of any people in the world. And because they are so weak and complaisant, they are less able to endure heavy labor and soon die of no matter what malady. The sons of nobles among us, brought up in the enjoyments of life's refinements, are no more delicate than are these Indians, even those among them who are of the lowest rank of laborers. They are also poor people, for they not only possess little but have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are not arrogant, embittered, or greedy. Their repasts are such that the food of the holy fathers in the desert can scarcely be more parsimonious, scanty, and poor. As to their dress, they are generally naked, with only their pudenda covered somewhat. And when they cover their shoulders it is with a square cloth no more than two varas in size. They have no beds, but sleep on a kind of matting or else in a kind of suspended net called bamacas. They are very clean in their persons, with alert, intelligent minds, docile and open to doctrine, very apt to receive our holy Catholic faith, to be endowed with virtuous customs, and to behave in a godly fashion. And once they begin to hear the tidings of the Faith, they are so insistent on knowing more and on taking the sacraments of the Church and on observing the divine cult that, truly, the missionaries who are here need to be endowed by God with great patience in order to cope with such eagerness. Some of the secular Spaniards who have been here for many years say that the goodness of the Indians is undeniable and that if this gifted people could be brought to know the one true God they would be the most fortunate people in the world.

Yet into this sheepfold, into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days. And Spaniards have behaved in no other way during the past forty years, down to the present time, for they are still acting like ravening beasts, killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before, and to such a degree that this Island of Hispaniola once so populous (having a population that I estimated to be more than three million), has now a population of barely two hundred persons.

The island of Cuba is nearly as long as the distance between Valladolid and Rome; it is now almost completely depopulated. San Juan and Jamaica are two of the largest, most productive and attractive islands; both are now deserted and devastated. On the northern side of Cuba and Hispaniola he the neighboring Lucayos comprising more than sixty islands including those called Gigantes, beside numerous other islands, some small some large. The least felicitous of them were more fertile and beautiful than the gardens of the King of Seville. They have the healthiest lands in the world, where lived more than five hundred thousand souls; they are now deserted, inhabited by not a single living creature. All the people were slain or died after being taken into captivity and brought to the Island of Hispaniola to be sold as slaves. When the Spaniards saw that some of these had escaped, they sent a ship to find them, and it voyaged for three years among the islands searching for those who had escaped being slaughtered , for a good Christian had helped them escape, taking pity on them and had won them over to Christ; of these there were eleven persons and these I saw.

More than thirty other islands in the vicinity of San Juan are for the most part and for the same reason depopulated, and the land laid waste. On these islands I estimate there are 2,100 leagues of land that have been ruined and depopulated, empty of people.

...

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/02-las.html

[demoleft]

31. it's de las casas against sepùlveda at the time...

...there was debate at the time.

(Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda) "was the adversary of Bartolomé de las Casas in the Valladolid Controversy in 1550 concerning the justification of the Spanish Conquest of the Indies. Sepúlveda was the defender of the Spanish Empire's right of conquest, of colonization and of evangelization in the so-called New World. He argued on the base of natural law philosophy and developed a position which was different from the position of the School of Salamanca, which had Francisco de Vitoria as one of its most famous representatives.

The Valladolid Controversy was organized by King Charles V (grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella) to give an answer to the question whether the Native Americans were capable of self-governance. Sepúlveda defended the position of the colonists, claiming that the Amerindians were "natural slaves" as defined by Aristotle in Book I of "The Politics." "Those whose condition is such that their function is the use of their bodies and nothing better can be expected of them, those, I say, are slaves of nature. It is better for them to be ruled thus." He said the natives are "as children to parents, as women are to men, as cruel people are from mild people".

He wrote this in Democrates alter de justis belli causis apud Indios (A Second Democritus: on the just causes of the war with the Indians). Although Aristotle was a primary source for Sepúlveda's argument, he also pulled from various other Christian and classical sources, including the Bible. De las Casas utilized the same sources in his counterargument. According to De las Casas Jesus had power over all people in the world, including those who never heard of Christianity. De las Casas thought they should be governed just like any other people in Spain, while Sepúlveda thought they should become slaves."

source: wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Gin%C3%A9s_de_Sep%C3%BAlveda

so you see, in their context things were much in the gray area.
thanx for the excerpt.

[Blue_Tires]

29. lol...i haven't seen that "wanted" poster since college...

[Mudoria]

33. * Yawn *

[Nye Bevan]

35. Blah blah blah

genocide... conquest... indigenous peoples.... theft... destruction.... these oh-so politically correct Columbus Day posts practically write themselves, don't they?

How about some posts on Washington's Birthday about how he owned many slaves and argued that slaves who had been freed during the Revolutionary War should be returned to their "rightful owners"? Just as Columbus Day should be renamed Indigenous Peoples Day (according to many people) Washington DC could be renamed "Slavery is Bad City".

[Orwellian_Ghost]

39. Why is this important?

The fact that Columbus Day is still celebrated annually demonstrates the ongoing ability of contemporary society to rewrite history simply to avoid facing unsavory facts which, having shaped contemporary structures and institutions, call into fundamental question the benevolence of those structures and institutions. The almost total elimination of such horrifying historical realities from contemporary consciousness therefore bears testimony to the capacity of contemporary society to deceive itself. Indeed, the covert agenda behind the American elite’s desire to celebrate the annihilation of a people – an agenda that highlights the fundamentally fascist nature of European colonization - has been discussed by the late John Henrik Clarke, Professor Emeritus of African World History at Hunter College, an internationally renowned scholar and one of the world’s foremost authorities on African American history:

"The voyages of Columbus mark a starting point of world capitalism and the beginning of European colonial domination of the world. That is what the ruling powers want everyone to celebrate... The Columbus anniversary is a celebration of mass murder, slavery, and conquest. More: it exalts the continuing oppression of billions of people today. Columbus is something only oppressors (or fools) could celebrate... Because for the modern ruling class, the important point is not the actual contact between people - it is the world-historic growth of capitalism in Europe made possible by the plunder of the Americas. And that did not start before Columbus."

Columbus, an "opportunist and willful murderer… set in motion… the basis of Western capitalism and exploitation of both Africans and Indigenous Americans who had committed no crimes against European people, and did not know of European intention to conquer and enslave them."

...

http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq21.html

It's really more about the present than you might think. Your calling this post, which merely discusses the dirty truths of this national holiday, "politically correct" is really quite a right-wing knee-jerk response that belongs to those who are incurious or wish to sweep this history under the carpet.

Not only do large numbers of people not know this history but little is being done to change this celebration of genocide and even less in the way of meaningful reparations.

This is a nation born of genocide and suckled on slavery and the weaning has largely been kept to board rooms. You are exhibiting the worst form of mockery, anti-intellectualism and a-historical hubris that is typical of the arrogant imperialist mindset.

[Thickasabrick]

36. Columbus sucked. We should switch him for somebody worthy - I don't

want to give up the day.

[Burma Jones]

40. Leif Erikson Day is October 9......

Simple enough to switch.

Really piss off the Knights of Columbus though.

[armyowalgreens]

42. The knights of columbus are homophobic assholes.

They can kiss my ass.

[Burma Jones]

43. Some of them might jump at the chance........

and I like their funny hats.

[la_chupa]

38. does anybody even know it's Columbus Day?

The schools are not out, nothing is closed, most people think of it as Monday.

[TBF]

52. Here in Texas the schools were closed...

nt

[Burma Jones]

41. What are you? Some sort of anti-Catholic?

I would be more than happy to rename the holiday something like "Autumn Holiday"

[Libertas1776]

45. As far as the Italian American community goes

I am all for a "Garibaldi Day." Screw Columbus.

[autorank]

50. History is history k*r

Lift all veils!

[Orwellian_Ghost]

51. Some would rather not

observe or examine this history. This thread attests to that.

Of course I don't need to tell you that this history is very much alive today. Changing the style hasn't altered the substance. Yet many here defend the depravities.

[autorank]

54. The record is clear

Columbus was also a strong supporter of slavery, refusing to baptize the indigenous people of Hispaniola so that he could enslave them (Spanish law prohibited the enslavement of Christians), and auctioning Spaniards into slavery, including a young boy caught stealing, as punishment. Varela also notes that Columbus was "surprisingly greedy. He was always tremendously worried about making money." http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1017/p05s01-woeu.html

Celebrate the slave master or mourn the victims? Not a hard choice when you look at the facts.

[bertman]

53. Recommended. If one person learns about this sanitizing of our history this thread will

be a complete and total success.

The sadder part of this is that this type of "colonial" activity had been taking part in virtually every corner of the world for thousands of years. Every "strong" culture subjugated (read slaughtered the warriors then enslaved the survivors) its neighbors until it ran out of neighbors or until its empire was subjugated by another that was stronger yet.

Read a little about the first Crusade when christian knights slaughtered thousands of foreigners who just happened to live in cities that were on their route to the "Holy Land" and who didn't speak French or English or whatever, so they couldn't yell "stop killing us. We're christians like you." As if it would have mattered.

Humankind are savages. We just hide ours under a veneer of American "civilization" and export the slaughter to other continents--for now.

So, for all of you pacifists, take a lesson from this brief thread and the lessons of history it imparts: If you think modern Americans who call themselves patriots, minutemen, militiamen, "revolutionaries taking back America" or any other such names, will treat you any less savagely than Columbus' men treated the Tainos, you are mistaken.

If you aren't ready to fight. Be ready to be enslaved.

[MazeRat7]

55. Written by a true land lubber...

Once any of them sail from Europe to America in a 70' Carrak, they can have an opinion about the man. Until then, its drivel. I am amazed daily at what people write that they know nothing about.

Peace,
MZr7