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Some cities in the US have been replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People's day and history in the US is being revised to give a much more negative view of Columbus in recent times.
How do Latin Americans feel about Columbus? Is there a growing anti-Columbus attitude there as well?
Some cities in the US have been replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People's day and history in the US is being revised to give a much more negative view of Columbus in recent times.
How do Latin Americans feel about Columbus? Is there a growing anti-Columbus attitude there as well?
Columbus Day is usually reflected as the day of Hispanidad among many Latin Americans
Some cities in the US have been replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People's day and history in the US is being revised to give a much more negative view of Columbus in recent times.
How do Latin Americans feel about Columbus? Is there a growing anti-Columbus attitude there as well?
You mean it is being revised to give a much more accurate view of Columbus. Murderer, rapist, ego filled man.
Anyways...in Mexico that date is known as el "Dia de la Raza" referring to the mestizo raza of course, as it marks the meeting of the Europeans and indigenous. Mexicans have a complex connection to men like Columbus, who though they recognize as vile and who brought on the forthcoming destruction of many native civilizations...he also marked a beginning, a birth of a nation and 'la raza cosmica' (the cosmic race, of which whose ancestry is from all reaches of the planet and therefore represents the future of humanity.)
To answer your question though...yes, there has been growing anti-Columbus attitude in the rest of the Americas for years. Within the Native American populace since forever. Here is one article from 2002: BBC Mundo | AMRICA LATINA | Protestas por el Da de la Raza
Criollos (white people) in Latin America love to vituperate Columbus and Conquistadors trying to be on the safe side.
Of course, criollos, particularly those in Mexico, can't be identified with Spanish, Gachupines, so they do all those really idiotic things as if they had nothing to do with the people that put them in place.
A barometer is the location of the statue of Hernan Cortez, moved around continuously.
It's a safe bet, since it does not affect nobody..and poor Colombus, Cortez, Pizarro and Almagro are dead.
As the Yiddish joke goes..."that dead man is guilty".
How many people have actually read Columbus' (and those of the men that accompanied him in his four voyages) logs?
Sometimes its good to read primary sources instead of repeating what others have been saying. Usually there is quite a difference between what the primary sources say and what people say the primary sources say. lol
Most people that say anything about Columbus (whether positive or negative) have never read a single primary source from the era.
I personally don't think there is much of an anti-Columbus sentiment in Latin America with a few minor exceptions (indigenous groups tend to not be too happy about the man). Heck, in Puerto Rico they are building (or putting together is much more accurate) one of the largest statues of Columbus ever made.
I personally think Columbus was a man of his times and some people today want to judge him on our modern morality, when history can't be judged through modern lenses.
When I was in college I had a sociology professor who once rhetorically asked "didn't the people from the past know that slavery is wrong?" All I could think about was that slavery has been part of human nature for thousands of years, even the Bible makes references to slavery and doesn't even condemns it; which speaks volumes to how old this practice has existed for. About a year ago I heard someone blame Columbus for 'initiating' slavery in the New World. Similar to my reaction to the rhetorical question of my ex-professor, all I could think about was the slavery that was already practiced by various indigenous groups, including the Aztec, Mayan, and Incas since thousands of years before Columbus was even born.
This very same 'target forgetfulness' applies in many other aspects of indigenous life before contact with Europeans. The Aztec, Mayan, and Inca empires were created by the invasion and subjugation of one group of indigenous people against another group. Take the Aztecs as an example. Not only did they subjugated to their rule a plethora of indigenous tribes in Central Mexico, but they constantly waged war on their neighboring indigenous communities in order to capture boys and men to subject to slavery and also to offer as sacrifices to their gods (the whole point of the pyramids was to sacrifice people to the various gods). In fact, the oppression that the Aztecs subjugated and constantly harassed its neighboring indigenous civilizations is the reason Hernan Cortes managed to find indigenous allies in conquering and defeating the Aztecs. Without the alliances with indigenous groups filled with hatred and resentments towards the Aztecs, precisely due to the abuses the Aztecs committed against them; Cortes would had never been as successful as he was in conquering Mexico.
In the Caribbean, the Caribs were known for practicing cannibalism (hence the origin of their name) and were feared by the more peaceful Taino people, who were often the target of the Caribs hostility. Not only did the Caribs raided Taino villages in order to capture boys and later fatten them before cooking them and eating them, but they also capture girls and women for the purpose of turning them into sexual slaves. Whatever child was born out of those rapes was usually fattened and eaten as well. The terror the Caribs had among the Tainos was noted by Columbus and his men, because all they had to do was mention the Caribs and the Tainos reacted with the greatest of fear and worry, clearly visible on their faces, with great lamentations following through.
Even the Mayans, who until recently were seen as a 'peaceful' indigenous civilization, now is known that they were in fact a very sanguinary civilization. The evidence of this is on the hieroglyph they left in many of their pyramids and monuments.
To make matters even more interesting, what killed most of the indigenous population was not warfare or mistreatment, but rather simple diseases introduced by the Europeans for which the indigenous population had no natural antibodies to effectively survive the infections. I have even heard some people blame Columbus on the account of 'germ warfare,' claiming that he intentionally encouraged the spread of diseases. When I first heard this, all I could think about was how can Columbus be accused of 'germ warfare' when germ theory didn't arise until a good 400 odd years AFTER Columbus died. The reality is that not even the Europeans knew what was going on as the indigenous people, especially in the Caribbean, were dying like flies after the initial contact. In fact, by the time Francisco Pizarro arrived at modern Peru, the Incas had already suffered an outbreak of a disease that was originally introduced by the Europeans years before Pizarro's adventure.
The list is quite long.
The good thing about life is that it moves in circles. Eventually the anti-Columbus nonsense that has taken hold in certain areas of the West will subside and possibly even reversed, especially as people begin to investigate themselves the primary sources and will spot the inconsistencies between what they say and what people say they say.
Columbus actually may have been a Jew exploring and claiming the New World as a homeland for persecuted Jews of Spain following the Spanish Inquisition:
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