Word: columbus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...doubt that many students will truly "celebrate" Columbus Day; most probably won't think twice about the seafaring explorer on Monday. Yet, this holiday does confer hero status on Christopher Columbus, and it reflects the values and historical consciousness of our society...
Most Americans probably don't know much more about Columbus than the romanticized account of him they learn in grade school--that in 1492, he sailed out courageously from Spain, bound for India, but ended up discovering the New World. Every October, his holiday is supposed to commemorate a high point in Western history...
Well, it's time to shatter that idealized myth. When Columbus arrived on Cuba, Hispaniola and other islands in the Caribbean he instituted shockingly cruel and genocidal policies which rapidly decimated the populations of indigenous Arawak Indians. He was also a slave trader, and his own words condemn him. Furthermore, the claim that he "discovered" the New World is dubious--he accidentally came into contact with a culture that had existed for hundreds if not thousands of years...
...Columbus' first observations of the Arawak men and women who greeted him peacefully in the Caribbean was that "[t]hey would make fine servants....With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." He also believed that the Indians would be able to provide him with the immense quantities of gold he was seeking. When he returned to Spain, he promised the Spanish royals that he would return from his next vogage with "as much gold as they need...and as many slaves as they...
...Although Columbus made good on his word to send back many slaves, most of the Arawaks perished on the transatlantic journey or soon after their arrival in Spain. So he threw his energy into collecting gold. In Haiti, he ordered that all Indians over age 14 surrender a quota of gold every three months. The quota was unattainable--gold did not exist in the quantities that Columbus imagined. Nevertheless, Indians who did not meet the quota had their hands cut off and bled to death...