Columbus Day Terrorism and Indigenous People’s Day

On October 10, 2016, many Americans celebrated Columbus Day, a day bathed in controversy. The holiday is so controversial that Columbus Day has been replaced with Indigenous People’s Day by Albuquerque, New Mexico; Seattle, Washington; and the Portland, Oregon, Public School System.

They joined Berkeley, California, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as other municipalities across the country, that have either canceled Columbus Day, replaced it or celebrated as an alternative their own versions of Indigenous People’s Day.

In fact, many Americans wonder why Columbus Day is a federal holiday in the first place. To many Italian-Americans and right-wing whites, Christopher Columbus was simply the Italian explorer and navigator who discovered America in 1492.

So in 1934, when Italian-American community leaders and the Knights of Columbus, the world’s largest Catholic fraternal service organization, convinced Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to declare Columbus Day a federal holiday, they thought they had accomplished an honorable feat for an honorable man.

Christopher Columbus, the Racist and Terrorist
But who would have admitted that Columbus was much more than just an explorer and navigator? Who would have admitted that he was also a ruthless racist, a demonic slave trader, a mass murderer, a sex trafficker and sex offender, a thief and liar, a greedy and unscrupulous business man, and a terrorist who would make the Islamic State and the Confederate States of America envy his accomplishments? Who would have admitted such, except the bloody and hacked victims of his plunder and carnage?

Of course, history and truth admit it, and are ashamed.

Torture, Cruelty and Brutality
On his 1492 voyage, Columbus promised a reward offered by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to whomever first spotted land. But Columbus was, like U.S. Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump, such a cheapskate that after one of his sailors, Rodrigo de Triana, saw land, Columbus said the man only saw a glow the night before, and claimed the reward for himself.

Also, gaining a reputation for cruelty and heartlessness put Columbus at odds with the authorities and monarchs he labored for.

For example, Catholic law forbade the enslavement of Christians. How did Columbus dance around that dilemma? He simply refused to baptize the native people of Hispaniola.

Moreover, the man who replaced Columbus as governor of the Indies, Francisco De Bobadilla, arrested Columbus and his two brothers, put them in chains and shipped them back to Spain to answer for their crimes against the Arawaks, one of the native groups Columbus found on Hispaniola.

What crimes did Columbus commit against the Arawaks? Well, he forced them to work in his gold mines until they died of exhaustion. If a worker did not deliver his full quota of gold dust by Columbus' deadline, his soldiers would cut off the worker’s hands and tie them around the tortured person’s neck to send a message. He began that practice on his first voyage to the Americas.

On his second trip, Columbus brought cannons and attack dogs. If a native resisted slavery, he would cut off a nose or an ear. If slaves tried to escape, he had them burned alive. If escapees made it to the lush, green grass of the jungle, he sent the attack dogs to hunt them down. And when the dogs caught them, they tore off the arms and legs of the screaming natives.

Even crueler than that, if the Spaniards ran short of meat to feed their dogs, Columbus ordered his men to kill Arawak babies and serve them to the dogs as dog food. Thus, Columbus filled the air that blanketed the dense, pure forests of Hispaniola with the screams of torture and pain, and clogged the nostrils of Spaniards and Arawaks, men and women, children and pets with the odor of sizzling flesh.

Yet, quite ironically, when De Bobadilla had Columbus arrested, Columbus’ men grinned and joked as they tightened the shackles around the wrists and ankles of their now grim-sweating commander.

Surprisingly, however, because Columbus lived at a time when cutting off the nose of a rebellious slave was recreation and molesting a child was as acceptable as playing Powerball, supporters of Columbus believe his reputation does not deserve the savage condemnations reserved for terrorists, serial killers and sex offenders. But the gas chamber makes no distinction between the past and the present.

The Superiority of Indigenous People’s Day
In the catalog of the world’s worst perpetrators of terror and mass murder, history ranks Columbus in the top 20, somewhere between Hitler and Caligula, somewhere above Nero but below Vlad the Impaler.

That’s why Indigenous People’s Day makes so much sense. If you can’t suppress evil with good, you can at least raise good above evil. Thus, as Columbus Day celebrates the oppression of indigenous people throughout the New World, it is natural for the victims of the oppression to supplant Columbus Day with a holiday of their own.

So why can’t we end with a handshake this controversy between Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day? Indigenous People’s Day may shame Italian-Americans, but Columbus Day offends just about everyone else. Sometimes, it’s better to endure shame for the sake of justice.

Furthermore, as it was wrong for Congress to deny for all those years the righteous Martin Luther King, Jr. a national holiday, so it is right to revoke Columbus Day as a federal holiday. Because Columbus Day is the only national holiday that hangs a medal of honor around the neck of terrorism.

Hence, a calm conscience finds no wrong in replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day (or any other appropriate holiday for that matter). What Congress and Roosevelt did dishonorably, Portland, Albuquerque and Seattle rectified honorably.