I’m sure it’s happened to you, as it did to me again last night: Some starry-eyed collegian told me Christopher Columbus shouldn’t be celebrated because of his treatment of Indians, armed with nothing more than her University professor’s insistence.
If Mark Twain was right that a lie can travel halfway around the world before truth has a chance to put on its shoes, imagine the damage a lie can do over 500 years.
Let me introduce you to Francisco de Bobadilla – liar and Columbus usurper. The criticism of Columbus today comes from de Bobadilla. Who was he? The man who wanted Columbus’ job as Governor of Hispaniola.
In 1500 the King and Queen sent him here to investigate claims that Columbus wasn’t being fair to the European settlers (which means Columbus was protecting the Indians). So de Bobedilla came here, and in just a few short days investigated (with no telephones or motorized vehicles to help him), then arrested Columbus and his brothers for Indian mistreatment and sent them back to Spain, sans a trial. Oh yeah, he appointed himself Governor. Coup de Coeur for power lead to Coup d’ etat, as usual.
The King and Queen called shenanigans and sent for be Bobadilla two years later, but he drowned on the trip home. Columbus was reinstated as Admiral. So what we know of Columbian malfeasance comes from a defrocked liar, de Bobadilla.
Nor was Columbus involved in the slave trade, as America haters like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky have asserted. One of his boats crashed in Haiti. He had no room for 39 men, so he started a colony there. Columbus came back a year later to find the Taino Indians killed all of them and left them where they fell. Columbus went to war with the Tainos and took 500 POWs, not slaves. They were released after the war. Big difference.
Also wrong is blaming Columbus for bringing genocidal microbes to kill the Indians. His detractors make fun of him for thinking he was in the East. So was his evil plan then to bring disease to wipe out the East?
Europeans didn’t know of germs until Italian physicist Girolamo Fracastoro proposed the theory 40 years after Columbus died. Also, had an Indian built a boat and traveled to Europe and back, he would have contaminated the Indians too. Trans-continental contamination was going to happen at some point, making the first carriers irrelevant.
Brown University recently changed the name of the holiday from Columbus Day to “Fall Weekend” due to the Columbus slave allegations. Hypocrisy alert: Brown University was founded with slave trade money, according to their own report. But they didn’t vote to change the name of their college! Hypocrites.
Happy Columbus Day!
Tom,
Other C-day news. The Red October Sub Shop in Staten Island recently named two sangweeches for noteworthy Italians-Americans. One is called the Columbus because he invented Italian-Americans and the other is called the Carl Paladino, partly because it's shaped like a penis, and partly because so much shit spills out of it when you go to lift it to eat it, it reminds you of the "conservative" candidate's mouth.
Congrats again to us Italian-Americans. Personally, I'm very proud of Mr. P.
As far as Columbus not deliberately waging germ warfare on the native population, who knows. You get a lot of your info from Wikipedia. But it could be you're right. But then, it could be he was too stupid to realize he could have done it if he wanted. Point is, millions died, on purpose or by accident and it's time to move on. As Tony Soprano used to say, in that show you watched regularly in order to know just how detrimental it was to Italian-Americans -- "Whadaya gonna do?"
Anyway, here's to our Admiral Of The Ocean Seas. It's a shame he died penniless but he's not the first Italian-American to be screwed over by the big boys.
We love him. "Sail on, sail on, sailor!"
Posted by: Bruno the italian dog, Brown Uinversity Medical School or c/o Bella Napoli Bikini Waxing Salon (next door to Angelo's Pizza, Providence, RI | Monday, 11 October 2010 at 03:27 PM
Columbus wrote to the Spanish monarchs in 1493: "It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity, to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sell...Here there are so many of these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they are as good as gold..."
Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: "A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand."
Posted by: Bozo | Monday, 11 October 2010 at 05:31 PM
The guardian reviews a book that counters the claims in this opinion piece: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/aug/07/books.spain
Posted by: Grant | Monday, 11 October 2010 at 06:38 PM
Columbus never set foot on American or North American soil. He landed in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Central America and Venuzuela, Which leads me to the question that I have been asking for 60 years: Why do we celebrate him in the U.S.A.? We should be celebrating the Vikings for discovering America..."Ya Think"?
Posted by: BUZZY | Monday, 11 October 2010 at 09:30 PM
Do you know who Amerigo Vespuccie was........come on anybody....alltogether now? Look him up in the Library, does anyone out there read BOOKS anymore> Thank You. This is meant to stimulate your mind.
Posted by: BUZZY | Monday, 11 October 2010 at 09:36 PM
Boy oh boy -- more late breaking news about Columbus day. I don't know how you feel about Carl "Tiny Cazzis" Paladino's comments about gays but you want to talk about Bobadillo? Turns out Bobo, as he called himself, and many of the boys below decks were carrying like ferrets down there. The ship's surgeon kept wondering what kept happening to his store of duck fat.
Nobody has stated that the Admiral of The Ocean Seas was himself a finook or participated in the goings on. I don't believe it to be true. But so randy was the Italian and Spanish crew that the joke at the time, all around Spain and southern Europe, was that Nino had his bowsprit up Pinto's stern all the way across.
Carl "Tiny Cazzi's" Paladino should inform himself of this Italian history before discriminating against people.
Posted by: Bruno the italian dog, Brown Uinversity Medical School or c/o Bella Napoli Bikini Waxing Salon (next door to Angelo's Pizza, Providence, RI | Tuesday, 12 October 2010 at 06:57 PM
Bruno you are cracking me up!
Posted by: Tommy De Seno | Wednesday, 13 October 2010 at 07:13 AM
Columbus: Genocide of the Arawaks. Pedophilie. Kidnapper. De facto enslavement (encomienda) of indigenous people.
Posted by: D | Thursday, 21 October 2010 at 02:00 AM
Tom,
Sad news. One of the Italian-American "minstrel show" performers, one of your I-A "Stepinfetchits", Denise Borino Quinn, of Roseland, who played Ginny Sack onThe Sopranos , that show you watched repeatedly to definitively certify its negative impact on Italians, died of cancer at age 46. She worked in a nail salon. Without acting experience, she, as you know, turned out true and moving portraits of humanity.
Posted by: Bruno the italian dog, Brown Uinversity Medical School or c/o Bella Napoli Bikini Waxing Salon (next door to Angelo's Pizza, Providence, RI | Sunday, 31 October 2010 at 07:02 PM
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One is called the Columbus because he invented Italian-Americans and the other is called the Carl Paladino, partly because it's shaped like a penis
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Columbus: Genocide of the Arawaks. Pedophilie. Kidnapper. De facto enslavement (encomienda) of indigenous people.
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Columbus: Genocide of the Arawaks. Pedophilie. Kidnapper. De facto enslavement (encomienda) of indigenous people.
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