#anticolumbus

Please join me in creating a collective outlet for rage and hope. I invite peoples from indigenous communities and other colonized peoples of color in resistance to legacies of colonialism to come forward and share their words. Its not the job of said communities to educate white oppressors. This project isn’t about that, instead it’s looking to build connections and cultivate the expression of truth telling.

Directions In under one page in length address the legacy of Columbus in your own way. Concise hand written letters are preferred. There will be space to express the letters at the statue. These expressions will be video documented for the archives of this project. Media waivers/explicit permission will be needed for those who do participate and will be available on site. Email [email protected] to submit online letters and for any questions.

THE DAY will start with prayer at the Alcatraz gathering, departing pier 33 at 5am ish (get tickets here https://www.alcatrazcruises.com/website/sunrise-gathering.aspx) The gathering is done mid morning, so there’s time to grab a bite to eat before going up the tower. After the gathering we will hike up to the Columbus statue at Coit Tower. This route isn’t accessible to those with physical limitations. It’s .5 mile away from pier 33. I would take the Filbert or Greenwich steps. Meet at the Columbus statue at 12pm. https://goo.gl/maps/irvq7ci6FTU2

After reading the letters I will be going to the event “My heroes have always killed colonizers” in the evening https://www.facebook.com/events/414867268638202/

___________________________________________________ SHORT HISTORY LESSON: Columbus landed in what is now known as the Bahamas and later Hispaniola, present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic.Upon arrival, Columbus and his expedition of Spaniards met the Arawaks, Tainos and Lucayans—all friendly, according to Columbus’ writings. Soon after arriving, Columbus wrecked the Santa Maria and the Arawaks worked to save the crew and cargo. Impressed with the friendliness of the native people, He seized control of the land in the name of Spain. He also helped himself to some locals. In his journal he wrote:“As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.” When Columbus first saw the Native Arawaks that came to greet him and his crew he said.“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.”After several months in the Caribbean, on January 13, 1493 two Natives were murdered during trading. Columbus, who had otherwise described the Natives as gentle people wrote “(they are) evil and I believe they are from the island of Caribe, and that they eat men.”

On Columbus’s first trip to the Caribbean, he later returned to Spain and left behind 39 men who went ahead and helped themselves to Native women. Upon his return the men were all dead. With 1,200 more soldiers at his disposal, rape and pillaging became rampant.Several accounts of cruelty and murder include Spaniards testing the sharpness of blades on Native people by cutting them in half, beheading them in contests and throwing Natives into vats of boiling soap. There are also accounts of suckling infants being lifted from their mother’s breasts by Spaniards, only to be dashed headfirst into large rocks.Bartolome De Las Casas, a former slave owner who became Bishop of Chiapas, described these exploits. “Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel,” he wrote. “My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write.”

Columbus reported a plethora of Natives for slaves, rivers of gold and fertile pastures to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. So he was given 17 ships and more than 1,200 men on his next expedition. However, Columbus had to deliver. In the next few years, Columbus was desperate to fulfill those promises—hundreds of Native slaves died on their way back to Spain and gold was not as bountiful as expected. Columbus forced the Natives to work in gold mines until exhaustion. Those who opposed were beheaded or had their ears cut off. In the provinces of Cicao all persons over 14 had to supply at least a thimble of gold dust every three months and were given copper necklaces as proof of their compliance. Those who did not fulfill their obligation had their hands cut off, which were tied around their necks while they bled to death—some 10,000 died handless. In two years’ time, approximately 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead. Many deaths included mass suicides or intentional to avoid persecution.

In addition to putting the Natives to work as slaves in his gold mines, Columbus also sold sex slaves to his men—some as young as 9. Columbus and his men also raided villages for sex and sport.In the year 1500, Columbus wrote: “A hundred castellanoes 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 are now in demand.”There was also a practice known as the montería infernal, the infernal chase, or manhunt, in which Indians were hunted by armored war-dogs. Live babies were also fed to these war dogs as sport, sometimes in front of horrified parents.After a multitude of complaints against Columbus about his mismanagement of the island of Hispaniola, a royal commissioner arrested Columbus in 1500 and brought him back to Spain in chains.Though he was stripped of his governor title, he was pardoned by King Ferdinand, who then subsidized a fourth voyage.