Rewriting the textbooks

“Mano Sangrante” (Bleeding Hand) in Sao Paulo, Brazil, by Oscar Niemeyer. The sculpture symbolizes the suffering and oppression of the people of Latin America.

As the leaves fall from the trees, spiraling down the canyons and hills, a gentle whisper calls from the ancestors. Before this land had the name “America,” it was filled with farmers, families and century-old traditions. Before “The New World” was even a twinkle in Columbus’ eye, the spirit of this land spread across civilizations of Aztecs, Incas and Maya, instilling pride in the people. These people listened to the earth as a voice of God, telling them how to live and how the universe moves — science and religion locked into one.

rebecca s. rivas

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean, bringing with him a religious message of his own. His presence hit the Caribbean shores like a hurricane, bringing a catastrophic current of disease and hardship that crushed the natives’ way of life.
Columbus, however, laid the foundation for the Americas as we know them today. Countries all over North and South America, from Mexico to Argentina, celebrate his landfall in the Caribbean on Oct. 12 as Columbus Day. In the United States, Columbus is the only name other than Martin Luther King Jr. who has a holiday in his honor — the presidents are lumped into one day.
U.S. children are taught to believe that Columbus opened the door for world exploration and that he went against all odds to prove the world is round and not flat. Yet they are not taught that he also brought over 5,000 slaves back to the Old World in the course of his voyages.
Columbus and the later conquistadors made the Indians abandon their way of listening to the earth — their way of life. When the Spanish explorers met the Inca ruler Atahualpa in the 1530s, they handed him a Bible, explaining that this was the word of God. Atahualpa brought the book to his ear, listened carefully, and then threw the book to the ground saying, “What kind of God is this that does not speak?” The Europeans attached a stigma to these people as savage and less-civilized beings, which often is still felt today. An examination of anthropological discoveries, however, reveals that these civilizations had an advanced grasp on art, agriculture, science — and spirituality.
Native Americans take a different view of Día de la Raza. On Oct. 12, known generally in the U.S. as Columbus Day, indigenous people throughout the Americas take the opportunity to change the textbook views, acknowledging the devastating costs of colonization. Also called Native American Day among tribes in the United States, the day is set aside to remember the hardships native cultures endured and still face today.
For centuries, the spirits of many indigenous peoples of the Americas were shackled under the yoke of imperialism. Now, they are often held under the oppression of multinational corporations, where many impoverished natives work under brutal conditions on coffee and cocoa plantations.
However, in the 1960s and 1970s, revolutions among native peoples in both South and North America demanded that history be rewritten to honor indigenous cultures. People like Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas and the machete-wielding campesinos who fought off the airport in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico revived these types of revolutions and renewed the importance of native ancestry.
These traditions lie in the hearts of many who carry the blood, and many who just respect it. In essence, this day is a reminder that cultural identity and civilization preceded discovery, and all that goes into books is not gold. It’s a day to celebrate not only a popular hero, but also a spirit that lived in this land long before it was “discovered” a brief 500 years ago.