Christopher Columbus is a household name that can be found everywhere in the West, from a city in Ohio to federal holidays in the U.S., Italy, Spain and numerous countries in Central and South America. In fact, South America has an entire country named after him. Nations worldwide have many streets, statues, memorials and historical sites all in honor of a single individual: a discoverer, a conqueror and a terrorist.
Did that last word provoke you? According to the Oxford Dictionary, a terrorist is “a person who uses violent and intimidating methods in the pursuit of political aims.”
Since we were children, American society has glorified Christopher Columbus as a man who tamed those “Indian savages,” liberated them and educated them. To us, he is the man who discovered America, found “empty” land and pioneered the future. To us, he is a hero.
We have been told that he accomplished a lot in his life, that he was the first European to arrive in the New World, but this isn’t true. In 2021, BBC published an article that Vikings had arrived in North America centuries before Columbus’ voyage: “Scientists say a new dating technique analysing tree rings has provided evidence that Vikings occupied a site in Newfoundland, Canada, in 1021AD.”
When Columbus did arrive, he thought he was on the other side of the world. The U.S. Embassy mentioned how “Columbus believed he had found a new route to India, hence the use of the word Indians to describe the peoples he met. Columbus would make three subsequent voyages and would die believing he had found a new route to India and Asia, and not, in fact, the gateway to North and South America.” From this, you can already see that he was not a successful individual not only because he wasn’t the first person to discover the New World, but he wasn’t even the first European to discover the New World. When he did come here, he thought he was on the other side of the world.
Putting all his nonachievement aside, he has still been integrated into our lives through the imposition by our government. This is confusing considering Christopher Columbus never even came as far as stepping foot on any of the modern-day United States.
According to a 2015 Vox article by Dylan Matthews, “Columbus ordered 1,500 men and women seized, letting 400 go and condemning 500 to be sent to Spain, and another 600 to be enslaved by Spanish men remaining on the island.” Owning human beings for your own or country’s economic benefit is a crime against humanity and should not be celebrated.
“Exhausted Indian carriers, chained by the neck, whose heads the Spaniards severed from their bodies so they might not have to stop to untie them.” explained historian Benjamin Keen from The University of Massachusetts. All of this beheading happened under the authority of Columbus himself.
Tulane University explained how he imposed sexual violence on Indigenous peoples and carried out sex trafficking on peoples many of which were 9-10-year-old Indigenous girls.
Just imagine this happening to someone in your family or your community. There would be outrage and while some may not bat an eye, I theorize that the vast majority would at the very least label this person a terrorist. Yet we fail to do so for someone who has done much more than this. Just imagine that your son was sold as property to do strenuous labor and your daughter was sold as property to be raped.
We need to hold all terrorists accountable– this is not an attempt to discount terrorists across the globe– but to recognize that when European settlers committed the same horrors, they were hailed as heroes.
As this country continues to celebrate Columbus’ existence on the second Monday of October; think about your values, your ethics and your morals. Does he fit into them? When we look back at the Oxford Dictionary definition of a terrorist, does he not epitomize and personify one?
Today only 16 states still recognize Christopher Columbus Day and unfortunately, Illinois is one of them. The D303 annual calendar recognizes the second Monday of October as “Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day” on its website.
Many Italian-American organizations argue that taking away Columbus Day is an attempt to erase Italian-American history and pride from this country, “There is no good reason to take away one group’s day of celebration and replace it with another group’s day of protest.” explained the Italian Cultural Society of Sacramento. Having a day of celebration for a community of people compared to a person is very different. Indigenous Peoples Day celebrates everyone in that group while Columbus Day celebrates a person.
If you want a day of recognition for a group of people, then you should call it what it is– Italian-American Peoples Day. This is a much broader term that doesn’t zone in on a particular individual who is a terrorist. After all, saying Italian-American Peoples Day includes everyone in the community while Columbus Day is a lot less explicit in the representation. And if you really want it to be for a specific person, there are plenty of good and moral Italian-Americans to choose from. It is essential to teach and celebrate Italian-American history and pride in this nation, but that doesn’t mean we have to celebrate someone as evil as Columbus to do so.
Perhaps for most of us, Christopher Columbus Day is just another Monday off school and we don’t even think about its actual significance. While that may be true, observing a day for a person is a day for observing their actions, and Columbus did not perpetrate good actions. Obviously, no human is perfect, but what Columbus did cannot and should not be looked past.
We should celebrate the people who truly pioneered this land, who helped early settlers adapt to the new life, who bore the brunt and who died in millions. Not the man who imposed atrocities– raping, pillaging, enslaving and massacring– not the man who created fear and trepidation; not the man who committed an ethnic cleansing; these are the traits seen in a terrorist, these are the traits seen in Christopher Columbus.
