Forum Post: Start talking about NAFTA, neoliberalism and the 500 year occupation of the Americas!
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 12, 2011, 11:02 p.m. EST by sonaorillasdelrio
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Wrote this on Columbus Day and wanted to share it. Bring NAFTA and neoliberalism into the analysis and see how international financial institutions are wrecking our world at home and abroad, putting people out of work here and forcing people out of their homelands and north to find work.
Occupy Wall Street in Occupied America – New Potential for Migrant Rights Movement as #occupywallstreet Protests Spread
Today the hemisphere celebrates Columbus Day in honor of the Italian explorer who unwittingly “discovered” America in 1492. Columbus’ “discovery” of the continent now known as America unleashed one of the largest genocides in recorded history. As a result of European expansion, occupation and colonization of the Americas, the native population dwindled from approximately 30 million people in 1492 to eight million people in 1650, just over 26% of the pre-Columbian population (1).
For this reason throughout the hemisphere Columbus Day is also known as Genocide Day, Indigenous Genocide Day, International Indigenous Resistance Day, and other variations on that theme. What a great opportunity to reflect on current forms of resistance, namely the Occupy Wall Street movement and its potential for immigrant rights organizing.
To get us started, let’s look at the history of occupation in this hemisphere. This land is occupied land and has been for over 500 years. From Columbus’ first reflections on the native population, he had his mind set on control and exploitation:
“They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned… . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
He was, of course, working in the interest of Spain, who set its sights on colonization of foreign land in order to increase its dwindling economic and political power in Europe. Once the Americas were discovered as a land rich in natural resources and filled with expendable people, most of the European continent followed suit. In the proceeding 500 years, the indigenous population experienced genocide, colonization, slavery, and occupation, (though accompanied by an ever-existent spirit of resistance).
''Columbus was not a particularly evil person. He was a murderer, a robber, an enslaver, and a torturer, whose crimes led to possibly the most massive conglomeration of crimes and horrific accidents on record. But Columbus was a product of his time, a time that has not exactly ended. If Columbus spoke today's English he'd say he was "just following orders." Those orders, stemming from the Catholic "doctrine of discovery," find parallels through Western history right down to today's "responsibility to protect," decreed by the high priests of the United Nations.
''A sense of where Columbus was coming from can be found in a series of, aptly named, papal bull(s). These decrees make clear that the church owns the earth, bestows privileges on Christians, hopes to plunder riches, hopes to convert non-Christians, and considers non-Christians devoid of any rights worthy of any respect -- including any non-Christians yet to be encountered in lands completely unknown to the church. Native Americans were literally pre-judged before the church (and its kings and captains) knew they existed.''
respice; adspice; prospice...
Celebrate the native peoples of the Americas on Columbus Day, not the man that destroyed them.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/12/christopher-columbus-sadist-there-shouldnt-be-a-holiday
''COLUMBUS, THE INDIANS, AND HUMAN PROGRESS'' :
''The holiday’s popularity has been waning for some time. In cities like Seattle and Minneapolis, it has been already been renamed Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a reminder that Columbus’s voyages set off a chain of events that wreaked havoc on native populations in the New World. It’s time to make that piecemeal commemoration official: stop celebrating Columbus and start celebrating the native cultures he began the process of displacing.
''Of course, not everyone would be pleased. These days, the strongest argument in favor of the holiday comes from Italian Americans, who helped originally promote Columbus Day as a way to mark their heritage and to celebrate a Catholic hero in a decidedly anti-Catholic country. But does anyone really want to ride a float commemorating a vicious slave trader who caused 50,000 natives to spontaneously commit suicide? I’d argue that they can come up with better symbols of Italian American pride.''
fiat justitia
"To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves- unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)-that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly."
I love that Jeremy Corbyn says he'd never use the nuclear weapon if he becomes Prime Minister of Britain. Sadly, Bernie Sanders says he'll continue using drones. I wonder what he'd say if posed the question about nukes. Sigh. We really can do better as human beings. One thing we could do is learn from our pathetic past.