In New York City and several other cities in the US, and in Italy and Spain, thousands of people, mostly of European lineage, will gather this week to celebrate the historic voyage of the brilliant and brave sea captain, Christopher Columbus, who in 1492 sailed across the Atlantic to a world unknown by Europeans at the time.
Columbus was in search of a new route to Asia, so that the Europeans could continue trading in the Indies, which is what they called Japan, India, China and the other countries in Asia. Chris Quan, at the website chinahighlights.com, says of the route which came to be called the Silk Road, that the Europeans traded furs, cattle, and honey along the route, and they returned to their countries with silk, along with porcelain, paper, tea, and bronze products from China; fabrics, spices, dyes and ivory from India; and cotton, wool, and rice from Central Asia.
Much of the terrain along the Silk Road was dangerous, and traders oftentimes had to fend off bandits who were after their wares. History.com says the Silk Road was opened in 130 B.C. by the Han Dynasty, and it was closed in 1453 A.D. “when the Ottoman Empire boycotted trade with China.” There was another path to Asia, the Mediterranean route, but the viability of that was considerably reduced by political instability and pirate attacks on merchant ships.
The treacherousness of the traditional routes to Asia spurred the Europeans to explore sailing around the African continent, but it wasn’t until 1498 that Vasco da Gama successfully navigated around the Cape of Good Hope, and made it all the way to India. Though this expedition wasn’t a “discovery” to the peoples living on the African continent, it was to the Europeans, and the route would remain popular until the completion of the Suez Canal, in 1869.
Asia is to the east of Europe, and Columbus was privy to the fact that the world was round, so you could get there by sailing west across the Atlantic. Unbeknownst to him, however, in between lay the continent now called the Americas. After more than two months at sea, braving storms and doubt, Columbus and his crew touched ground in the Caribbean. They were greeted as fellow human beings by the peoples they met, and they returned kindness with the worst savagery – murder, rape, and slavery. When Columbus returned to Spain in 1493 he had potatoes, spices, coconuts, and natives to “display” in Europe.
Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic was a tremendous triumph for Europe. Aided by diseases spawned in the squalor of their congested cities, and their superior artillery, they decimated and overcame the peoples of the Western Hemisphere. With the vast new territory under their control, they turned to Africa, for labor. Over 200 years they bought/captured more than 12 million Africans, transported them to the Americas, and used them and their children to extract the wealth of the earth here, solely for their gain.
With the riches of the Americas to support their military complex, the Europeans conquered the African continent, Arabia, and India. They extended their tentacles as far away as China, but their success there was limited partly because that country was too far away, too much out of their sphere.
From 1492 onward the Europeans have been the dominant race on the planet. The militaries of the Europeans are the most powerful, and their standard of living is among the highest. If there is a financially poor European in the world, it’s because they rejected material wealth, suffer from mental illness, or have given their lives away to hard drugs.
The Europeans fully appreciated how the “conquest” had dramatically increased their fortunes, and 300 years after Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and landed in the West Indies on October 12, 1492, Italians in New York decided to make a tremendous splash about him. History.com says that New York’s Columbia Order was the first to celebrate Columbus Day, in 1792, and that thereafter “Italian and Catholic communities in various parts of the country began organizing annual religious ceremonies and parades in his honor.”
In 1892, 400 years after the landing, people in other cities in the US, and in Spain, had huge celebrations in honor of Columbus. History.com says that that year, US president Benjamin Harrison encouraged Americans to “express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life.” By the early 20th century the day took off in the rest of the Americas, with Hispanics, who were absolutely proud of their Spanish lineage, organizing parades to honor the great man. In 1937, the US recognized Columbus Day as a national holiday.
While the Europeans took off in 1492, the progress of the peoples of Africa and the Americas was set back. The Europeans planned a massive show for the 500th anniversary, the quincentennial of the landing, but the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere and the children of Africa living in the Americas, said Basta!, this day of your great pride, it is a story of genocide. The rumblings had started some time before the planned quincentennial. Native American leaders in the US declared that celebrating Columbus was offensive. In 1980, Burning Spear (Winston Rodney) sang, Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar, and it became an anthem for the non-European English-speaking peoples of the Americas.
Across the Americas, Columbus Day became known by other names, such as Pan-American Day (Day of the Americas), and Día de la Raza, a celebration of Hispanic culture. In Belize, where the day became known as Pan-American Day, neither name was fully embraced. Those names celebrated both the indigenous peoples and the peoples/culture created by the fusion of the Europeans and the peoples of the Western Hemisphere, but indigenous leaders said genocide, slavery, and robbery were embedded in any celebration that included Columbus.
Last year, responding to the call of indigenous Belizeans, the GOB replaced Pan-American Day with a new holiday, Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance Day, the first of which will be celebrated on Monday, October 10. The feature is the Maya, the only 100% indigenous group in Belize, but because of our special blend, few if any Belizeans will not participate in the celebrations.
The core Belizean groups have considerable indigenous blood running through their veins. Mestizo Belizeans are products of Maya and European (Spanish); Garifuna Belizeans are products of various African tribes and the Kalinago, and Maya through intermarriage in Belize. Kriol (Creole) Belizeans are products of various African and European tribes, and the Maya and Miskito.
Ours is a tremendous melting pot; we are a multiethnic country, and we are conscious of the terrible injustice done to our Mayan and African ancestors. On Monday, Belizeans all over will overwhelmingly express kinship with our Mayan brothers and sisters, celebrate them for defending the beautiful culture. Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance Day to all Belizeans!