Flo is finally advocating for his bill after three straight days of campaign calls and two full of school and no sleep.
On October 12, 1492 was when Christopher Columbus landed in what is now known as the Bahamas. This is the primary reason we celebrate this day. But why should we celebrate it?
In 1492, people already knew the Earth was round, in fact, most people who had an education knew that. It was already discovered 2,000 years before Columbus was even born, when Ancient Greeks proved it. This idea was started by misguided historians in which the idea spread to everyone, including teachers.
Apparently Christopher Columbus found the new world. While it was an inhabited hemisphere for over 14,000 years at that point, Leif Ericson was actually the first European to find it, when Ericson traveled to Greenland and formed two settlements there.
Christopher Columbus's original voyage to the new world was to find a new trade route from Europe to India, however when he arrived, he saw gold and took notes in his handy dandy diary, instead of finding this new landmass not even known to (the vast majority) of the eastern half of the world, he wanted the gold.
During his original 1492 voyage, Columbus described the people as friendly and hospitable. Even when the Santa Maria was shipwrecked, the Lucayan people spent hours retrieving the crew and cargo. Seeing that they were kind and hospitable, he wrote in his diary:
When he returned to Spain, along with what was once twenty five native peoples, whose numbers have dwindled to 7, he convinced the Queen to invest in the new world, for wealth and prosperity beyond her wildest dreams.
She gave him 17 ships, 1,500 soldiers, and a [inks]load of weapons.
Guess who came back to the Bahamas?
Columbus, who had an unbelievable amount of power with all those soldiers, demanded the Lucayans gold, men, and for his men to have sex with the Lucayan women.
The Lucayans refused and you know what happened to those who refused?
They got their ears and noses cut off as a way to serve as a warning to others.
The Lucayan people rebelled, and Columbus, being the as hat he is, saw it could be a great excuse to start a war.
The war was short, the Lucayan people only had primitive tools against swords, guns, horses, and bayonets. Not only this, during the war, there were Lucayan soldiers who were fed to hunting dogs while they were still
alive.
Even though Columbus had won, he didn't have enough gold to sustain his greed, so instead he enslaved 500 people, and during the way back, 200 of them died. 500 more were enslaved in the "new world", many Lucayans fled to the mountains to escape enslavement.
You wanna know what happened to those who escaped enslavement?
The same fate as the soldiers:
they became dog food.
Columbus still wanted some butter. So he made up a system to get more gold.
It was basically a tribute system where those who gave him enough gold in time got a necklace to show Columbus and his soldiers that that person payed tribute, with those who payed getting an item to show they payed, but those who did not pay enough or in time?
That's right, Columbus decided to cut off limbs of those who didn't pay enough or in time, and they would wear the limb like the item, and would forever be without that hand.
Columbus was finally content with all the gold he stole.
Now Columbus was rewarding his upper level commanders in his little military with sex slaves. Yes, as he put into his diary:
In addition to Columbus ruining the ecology of the place of which belonged to the people he enslaved, who, keep in mind, saved his life, now brought various European diseases, and within the next 50 years,
between three to five million people died.Columbus, getting so much gold from the Americas, had all but destroyed Africa's gold economy, which led some countries to participate in the slave trade, which means Columbus was the true father of the African slave trade.
And now we have a federal holiday for someone who is responsible for ruining the environment, torturing innocent people, killing millions, and responsible for a booming slave trade in four continents?
Some of you might say "But Columbus Day is an American tradition!!!111!1!!!11!1"
It is not.
The Knights of Columbus, which my own father is a part of, was responsible for the establishment of this holiday. They wanted their kids to have a good catholic to look up to, so they pressured Franklin Delano Roosevelt to make it a federal holiday.
It is not an American or an Atlasian tradition.
Bartolomé de Las Casas was someone who was just like Christopher Columbus.
He was a wealthy man who traveled to the new world and owned a plantation with a large number of slaves.
Unlike Columbus, de Las Casas went through a transformation in his life. After he witnessed the horrific treatment of the Native people by wealthy landowners, he gave up his land, freed his slaves, became a priest, and spent the rest of the time he was alive to fight the colonization that produced atrocious crimes against native peoples, the only way he could fight this was to try and help as many people as possible.
He stood against the cruelty taken against these people, and earned the title
Defensor de los Indios, the Defender of the Indians.
Bartolomé spent the remaining fifty years of his life fighting for their equality. He is considered to be one of the first advocates for human rights.
Columbus was a murderer whose greed shaped an awful trade that enslaved human beings and tortured, raped, and dismembered limbs of many people.
Bartolomé became the "Defender of the Indians" and fought for their equality for most of his adult life. He was one of the worlds first human rights advocates, and even though his own people were against him, he still fought for equality and justice.
I believe that in order to be a truly equal country, we need to eliminate Columbus day and replace it with Bartolomé Day, for those whose ancestors were murdered raped, and enslaved, we should replace the father of the slave trade to someone who fought for everyone.
Sources for this information:
The Oatmeal, a webcomicA People's History of the United StatesLies My Teacher Told MeThe actual journal entries by Columbus
I also amended the bill:
The day would be pronounced Bart-oh-low-may day for those confused.
