Republican News · Thursday 17 October 2002

Protesting Columbus Day

On 12 October, known as Columbus Day (US) or Race Day (Spain and Latin America), thousands of indigenous activists and supporters, from Canada to Chile, blocked borders, closed main roads and conducted various other direct actions to demand basic human rights for all native peoples. Throughout the American continent, indigenous people marched in anti-Columbus Day parades to oppose governments' sponsored celebrations in remembrance of the Genovese sailor who changed history, bringing a legacy of blood, suffering and discrimination.

They called for an end to the new era of corporate colonialism driven by the forces of the free market and imposed on indigenous communities throughout the Americas.

In Colotenango, a village on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, thousands of Mayan Indians blocked roads across Central America and Mexico on Saturday 12 October, protesting Columbus Day and celebrating the region's Indian heritage.

Hundreds of Zapatista sympathisers marked the day by blocking the entrance to the main military base in the southern state of Chiapas, joining a nationwide protest against the subjugation of indigenous peoples.

In Chile, the Mapuche nation demonstrated in the capital Santiago and around the city of Concepción calling on the government to return the land that is being robbed from Mapuche communities by big landowners and corporations.

Indigenous activists marched from Costa Rica to Panama City, a distance of over 200 miles, to protest the ecological destruction caused by mining on their lands. In Managua, Nicaragua, there were protests against the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), condemned as a corporate welfare institution. Activists argue that the IDB has never been interested in supporting grassroots initiatives for economic, environmental and social justice.

For indigenous nations, the colonisation of the Americas began in 1492 and was built on the backs of Indian and African slaves as well as of European indentured servants. The trend repeats itself today, many considering corporate globalisation and US imperialism the second colonisation of the Americas.

On the eve of this year's Columbus Day, Día de la Raza or Native American Day, Amnesty International issued a report on the continued undermining of the identity of indigenous people and violations of their rights in a number of countries, especially Guatemala and Mexico. Human right abuses also occur in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Panama and Nicaragua.

''Basic rights of indigenous communities, including the right to land and to cultural identity - in the use of language, education and the administration of justice - are systematically violated'' in a number of countries, states the Amnesty International report. From Canada to the southernmost tip of Chile and Argentina, Indians are often treated like ''second-class citizens,'' and are among the poorest, most marginalised communities, it adds.

The rights group also underlines that ''racism and discrimination entrenched in most societies make indigenous people more vulnerable to human rights violations including torture and ill-treatment, 'disappearance','' and murder.

Mexico-Guatemala: Mayans from Guatemala and Mexico protested against government economic policies

Amnesty says that governments across the Americas lack the political commitment to enforce the rights of native communities, as demonstrated by the way authorities have been ''dragging their feet'' with respect to the adoption of the American Declaration on Indigenous People.

One illustration of government apathy towards the question of indigenous rights is the failure of Guatemalan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the genocide against indigenous communities. During the country's 36-year armed conflict, around 200,000 civilians - mainly indigenous men, women and children - were killed or ''disappeared'' in what was described as ''genocide'' by the Historical Clarification Commission.

''In a number of countries, including Guatemala and Mexico, non-Spanish speaking indigenous people are often questioned by police and have their statements taken without the assistance of an interpreter. In Guatemala, indigenous people have stood trial in capital cases in Spanish, which they do not speak,'' says the report.

In Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Guatemala and Nicaragua, indigenous claims to their ancestral territories have ''come up against violent opposition from landowners and companies exploiting natural resources, often supported by the authorities'.'

However, these policies and attitudes not only affect indigenous nations in the less well off American countries, but also the Indian nations living under US or Canadian administration. For American Indians, 12 October is a day of action against the legacy of Columbus the slave trader, racist and murderer. As Colorado AIM explained in its letter to the organisers of Columbus Day in Denver the Sons of Italy - New Generation: "We find Columbus as an individual, as well as celebrations of him, to be especially harmful and offensive... The main purpose of this correspondence is to request you, or perhaps more accurately to implore you in the spirit of community goodwill, to consider changing the name of your parade scheduled for 12 October. We are asking you to consider, after 500 years of invasion, death, and destruction of our indigenous nations, if you can find it in your hearts to change one word in the title of your parade?"

Their plea was again ignored. Seven people were arrested at the protest against the Columbus Day parade in Denver.

Denver: American Indians demonstrated against the Columbus Day parade that took place in Denver

The truth about the 'Great Discoverer'

Chile: Pehuenches (Mapuches of the highlands) demonstrated against Columbus Day celebrations and government's repressive and discriminatory policies in Santiago

The 'brave' and 'heroic' Columbus was not exactly what mainstream history books would have us believe. Before his journey across the Atlantic, Colombus was a slave trader for the Portuguese, transporting West African people to Portugal to be sold as slaves. Later, he initiated the first Trans-Atlantic slave trade and, together with his brother and son, continued slave trading of indigenous peoples from the Americas to Europe and from Africa to the Caribbean. Under his administration as viceroy and governor of the Caribbean Islands, 8 million people were killed, making his "contribution" to history the first mass genocide of indigenous peoples.

By conservative accounts based on Spanish surveys, the Taino numbered as many as 8 million in 1493. During Columbus' tenure as "viceroy and governor" of the Caribbean Islands and the American mainland from 1493 until 1500, he instituted policies of slavery (encomienda) and the systematic murder and rape of the Taino population. Dominican priest Bartolome de Las Casas was the first European historian in the Americas. He was an eyewitness and wrote in painful detail of the tortures he witnessed. In a survey conducted in 1496, he estimated that over 5 million people had been exterminated within the first three years of Columbus' rule. By the time of Columbus' departure, only 100,000 Taino were left, and by 1542, only 200 remained alive.

Las Casas estimated that 50 million Indians perished in Latin America and the Caribbean within 50 years of Columbus' landing. Scholars now reckon that 90 per cent of the indigenous population of the Americas was wiped out in a century and a half - the greatest demographic collapse in the history of the planet and the proportional equivalent of nearly half a billion people today. This is genocide, the wholesale killing of an entire race of people.

The Columbus legacy is steeped in blood, violence, and death. His actions set the foundation for legal and social policies - still used today in the United States, Mexico, Canada, South America, and in many countries around the world. These policies justify the theft and destruction of indigenous peoples' lands and knowledge by corporate and government interests. Media, films, judicial systems, educational systems, and other political and social institutions support this continued assault on the natural resources of indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples today remain at the margins of technological society - struggling to overcome the destruction of land, culture and language. In many ways, all peoples on this planet are affected. These attacks on indigenous peoples and their land and their knowledge contribute to the destruction of ecosystems and the erosion of human rights for all people. Today, not a single country in the Americas recognises native peoples as distinct nations with the right to self-government.