Skip to main content

Rediscovering Columbus

By

I was trying to remember when Columbus Day (a.k.a Día de la Raza) was. According to wiki today is the day he made landfall on the Julian Calendar. It would be the 21st on the modern Gregorian Calendar. It is a holiday celebrated throughout the Americas, but I imagine with alot of mixed feelings in Latin American countries, especially among the indigenous population. Interesting to see that Chavez changed the name to Día de la Resistencia Indígena in Venezuela, commemorating Indigenous Resistance. I don't know how much native blood Chavez has in him but I guess it fits better with the socialist image he projects.

Comments

  1. James FergusonOctober 12, 2009 at 8:58 AM

    A few years ago my wife and I were in Spain and we visited Cadiz, the port from which Columbus sailed to America on his second and fourth voyages. No statue or marker like there is in Barcelona, which he apparently spent some time in but never sailed from. Cadiz is a small unassuming city, remembered by Mark Twain fans because here is where his "Innocent Abroads" first made landfall in Europe. In 1492, Columbus had to work his schedule around the massive Jewish deportations taking place at the time,

    http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/jewish/1492-jews-spain1.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonOctober 12, 2009 at 9:42 AM

    I suppose this probably came as a bit of a shocker to Italian-Americans,

    "Alfonso Ensenat de Villalonga has disputed conventionally-accepted narratives on the explorer's origins - that he was the son of a weaver in Genoa, Italy, or that he was from Catalonia or Galicia in Spain.

    In fact, he was from Genoa, but he was "the son of shopkeepers not weavers and he was baptised Pedro not Christopher," Mr Villalonga told Spain's ABC newspaper on Sunday.

    And his family name was Scotto, and was not Italian but of Scottish origin.

    "He had light-coloured eyes and freckles. He also had blond hair even though it quickly turned white. That's how his contemporaries described him. Nothing like the traditional images (of him), which are totally invented," the historian said."

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/4959361/Christopher-Columbus-was-actually-a-Scotsman-called-Pedro-Scotto-historian-says.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. TripplerOctober 12, 2009 at 4:29 PM

    Here in Minnesota where there is a great deal of Native America activism, Columbus's name is dirt. He is rightfully viewed as an imperialist, genocidal murderer, and robber of gold and resources. History shows that this viewpoint is well justified.

    Isn't it kinda funny how just a few years ago his name was being considered for sainthood among certain right wing Catholics? Very strange, indeed.

    Luckily, we have historical forums such as this one to set the record straight.

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonOctober 12, 2009 at 4:52 PM

    Of course the funny part is that they can't even get the right day. I assume Italian Catholics don't go by the Julian Calendar.

    ReplyDelete
  5. MartiOctober 15, 2009 at 11:13 AM

    Now the US federal holiday for Columbus is the 2nd Monday in October, which happened to fall on Oct. 12th this year, the date that was official before they got all gung-ho for Monday holidays.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

By
A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...
170 comments
Read more