Columbus Day?


Photo by Andrew James via Unsplash

Rileigh Juba, Assistant Editor

I’m thinking of a holiday that is the source of endless controversy. Schools often have a day off for celebration every second Monday of October. Has it rung a bell? If you guessed Columbus Day, you are correct. Why are there people who want to hold on to such a seemingly irrelevant holiday, and why are there people pushing so hard to change it?

There is a rather large movement to completely replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day (or Día de la Raza in some places); this is due in part to Columbus’ legacy. The Italian explorer, funded by the Spanish monarchy, set sail in 1492 in pursuit of a new trade route from Europe to Asia, and stumbled upon what he thought was India. Funnily enough, he neither discovered a new land nor landed on any part of Asia. European arrival ushered in a new era which gave rise to the Columbian exchange, colonialism, and the decimation of native peoples. 

One prime example of this is the Taíno, a people whose bountiful culture and influence permeated a large portion of the Caribbean. They were inventive, organized, and generous, the latter of which the Spaniards used to their advantage. Upon interacting with them during his first voyage, Columbus said, “They will give all that they do possess for anything that is given to them, exchanging things even for bits of broken crockery . . . They were very well built, with very handsome bodies and very good faces . . . They do not carry arms or know them . . . They should be good servants.” Within a short amount of time, he kept his word; the men were removed from their villages to slave away for the Spanish in mines and plantations. In the men’s absence, the rest of the Taíno could not grow and harvest as before, and so they began to die off. Conquistadors took Indigenous wives for themselves, spread new and deadly diseases, fought against and killed a great deal of natives, and pushed many to choose between slavery or death. A mere fifty years later, about three million Taíno — about 85% of the original population — were dead, largely due to diseases like smallpox.

This was no isolated incident. Throughout the next century, Columbus and the other conquistadors who followed him, conquered, pillaged and colonized the Americas and Caribbean. Along the way, they consistently exploited the native peoples. In their wake was  murder and rape, diseases for which there was no immunity, the encomienda system, and the transatlantic slave trade. 

Therefore, for many Indigenous peoples, the call for Día de la Raza is a call for pride. In our history books, they are still depicted as hopeless savages. To this day, Native Americans are referred to as “Indians,” and they are still sequestered to the reservations they were forced onto by the government. The official change in holiday would bring attention to the rich cultures of  people groups who have been mistreated for hundreds of years. Rambeau, chairperson for the Lake Erie Native American Council, said, “It’s not that hard to give us, acknowledge us for a day, acknowledge us for what our people suffered.” The closest holiday we have to respecting these people is Thanksgiving, and even there, the treatment of  Indigenous peoples is misrepresented. 

Those that are in favor of keeping the celebration of Columbus Day are emotionally invested in the longstanding view of Columbus as a hero. Many Italian Americans make up the latter; they see the change of the holiday as an erasure of some of their culture. Basil Russo, national president of the Italian Sons and Daughters of America, said “Columbus’s epic journey planted the seed for the great American experiment, in that it opened the door to over 500 years of worldwide immigration by people’s coming to America to seek a better life for their families. That’s Columbus’s legacy, and that’s the legacy that we’re fighting to preserve.” Russo also goes so far as to claim the day is important not only to Italian-Americans, but to immigrants as a whole, as a symbol of their “struggle to overcome bias and prejudice in this country. . .”

I believe that everyone deserves to have a time set aside to celebrate who they are in such a way that is empowering to the parties involved and harmless to those who aren’t. This is why Italian-Americans should yield this day to Indigenous people and choose another day to dedicate to either another, more laudable Italian figure or a simple celebration of their heritage. Both groups have made significant contributions to American culture and it’s only fair that both have the chance to appreciate that.