Raza Day Redux: The Good Tidings Of Christopher Colombus
8 October 2007, 3:45 PM. By jessie.soto
“Columbus Day” a.k.a “Día de la Raza” celebrates the arrival of Spanish Italian sea Captain Christopher Columbus into the New World. Of the indigenous people he found here, he wrote:
It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion [...] I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern them as I pleased.
“Conquer” and “govern” he did. Not only that, he brought with him a number of cool things from Europe. So, to “celebrate” this marvelous feat, Guanabee is compiling a handy list of the things we have Colon to thank for:
- Christianity: no more human sacrfice, party poopers!
- Cereal: Cap’n Crunch, no soggies.
- Syphilis: buuuu
- Slavery: technically, they already had that here
- Genocide: same as above
- Rape: same as above
- Imperialism: same as above
- Maps: leaving a small trail of bread crumbs works just as well
- Cattle: no biggie, dog tastes like chicken
- Smallpox: buuuuu
- Poultry: tastes like dog
- S/M: technically, they already had this here
Are we forgetting something?
Christopher Columbus [Wikipedia]
Image: [AP]
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Merengue-house
Arroz con Pollo
Good looking women
Cerveza Corona
Corruption (they had that there, tho)
Moustaches
Cafe con leche
I just want to thank the conquistadors for disease & doing away with our native civilazations. Thank you, assholes!
..”and would be good servants..” ,
what an asshole- that about sums it up for me!
What the hell do we have Columbus day for anyway? He didn’t “discover” anything, neither did the others- how you can discover a land that was already inhabited?!
@Mexi-Rican Mami: I’m with you! Thanks for posting.
In I way I am kind of glad that ChrisCo came to the “new world” because without the intermexing of races I could only imagine how more prieto I would look. Don’t start hating on me because I know some of you coco’s out there are glad too, just imagine if we all looked liked indigenious aztecs.
@snakeclocks: I happen to think that the indigenous people of the America*s* are some of the most beautiful in the world. It’s a pity that so many people only see beauty in hegemonic imagery, faces, body-types etc.
@ La emperatriz: You must look like the “maria’s” that you see on the frontera asking for change. I’m just saying that hispanic people are very racist. Look at the presidents of Latin American countries and they don’t like anything like the indigenous people that preced spanish/portuguese colonialism. Just be glad that you don’t like Celiz Cruz. Trust me I am.
We are how we are because of this clash, I think it’s useless to discuss something that happened 500 years ago.
@snakeclocks: You don’t make any sense, dude. I mean hispanic people AT LEAST mixed with the locals overtime.
Instead, anglos got to the New World and hunted Indians for fun. Killed Buffalos, exterminated almost all American Indian populations, and those who survived where given a casino for all their troubles…..
@snakeclocks: It’s rather tragic that your attitude (if I understand it correctly) willingly and deliberately perpetuates a system of eugenics. I just think it’s about time that we let go of Columbian precepts.
@deep (1) I only know of North American tribes that have casinos on their land (2) those that have “survived” still face threats from government and or corporate land-grabbing and (3) let’s not forget threats of land development (for grazing, lumber, gold etc.) or the numerous militias seeking shelter - just for starters.
…um…I suppose we forgot a pretty obvious one…
SPANISH!!!
Although he was an Italian, he flew for dear Catholic Spain, and Cortes, Ponce de Leon, Balboa, Pizarro and co. quickly took care of that minor linguistic detail that’s such a constitutive part of our cultures.
It’s a mixed blessing, and I know not every one of us exactly uses it very well, but it’s a great way to confuse the few, remaining anglophone norteamericanos who are afraid of latinos and seduce the ones that have no fear.
Next task: doing the same with Nahuatl, Zapotec, Quechua, and the variety of native languages. Time to hit the libraries for some lessons in the Flor y Canto.
In the meantime: gracias!?!
Thanks to him and his Spanish backers, the plundering and pillaging of natural resources and natives began.
His subsequent followers left poor work ethics and bribery as a way of doing business in Latin America. Just read about Peru, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico (yes, it is part of the USA) and others, where the rich get richer, and the poor instead of working and pulling themselves by their bootstraps blame government for their lack of initiative.
Sorry state of affairs, then these poor souls come to the USA thinking they can live as in the places they come from….
this is the day i give thanks that i can tan nicely during the summer.
@snakeclocks - Celia Cruz ain’t indigenous, she Afro-Cuban. And she wouldn’t have been here or as fabulous as she was without African slavery, oppression and a brutal plantation economy. So, thank you very much Columbus, for Celia Cruz!
And thank you Columbus for me too. Without you, I wouldn’t be here today.
Columbus was not Italian - he was from Genoa (well, as far as we know).
And thanks for recognizing that the Spaniards screwed over the natives, but the natives had already been screwing each other over for centuries.
all right, that’s it. your site is officially lame, reactionary, and not funny. before, i was willing to let some stuff slide in the name of snarky, clever, witty stories. but you’re not even funny anymore, just nakedly reactionary rightwing idiots masquerading as somewhat liberal but mainly “irreverent” and “apolitical” witsters (why don’t you all just price your moms out of their apartments, move in with your ironic mambo record collections and increased disposal incomes, and just call yourselves hipsters already.)
but anyway, I think you’ve run up against that wall that all rightwing and other reactionaries encounter when their lame politics meet the demands of real humor. i.e., you are choking on your political chicken, and it ain’t funny.
again, if your humor had continued after the whole editor shift thing, I’d probably still check in to see what you had to say because some of it was funny, even if I found most of your politics backwards.
now, though, you just plain suck, and I’m erasing this site from my blog checker. I hope your adverts take note, and I hope others think twice about putting their eyeballs on your boring copy.
guanabee–white
guanabee–mainstream
guanabee–eurocentric
guanabee–hipsters
guanabee–funny
guanabee, but you are none of the above.
ya basta-
Are you fucking snorting glue?
strictly speaking, i don’t think there’s really any consensus as to whether syphilis first arose in europe or in the americas.
Man, are you all kidding me? I hope you fools don’t live in California, keep this dumb Columbus-is-a-hero shit on the East Coast. Ya basta, I’m with you, this site is not for me. It’s misogynist, narrow minded and confused.
Cristobal Colon no es un heroe. For the ones that want to leave, too bad. It is good to read different perspectives and chuckle when ideas go counter to what you thought!
Ya Basta has a good point. Did anyone notice the ad for Ann Coulter? Guanabee, what were you thinking?!
And let’s not forget that the colonization and the effects it has on indigenous peoples is extremely destructive.
… Dia de la raza, yes, but was it / is it worth the cost?
Agreed, the Ann Coulter ad made me cringe. I understand there are bills to pay and mouths to feed, and that writing for dinner sucks but that ad? There have to be better people to ask for ends from!!!
@ya basta, gotta agree, sambumbio, etc.: I guess we should just smack ourselves all on the collective forehead and realize that people read text in monotone. I don’t think that the post implied that Columbus was a hero. At worst an opportunisitic thief and John the Baptist for la Conquista, or at best an extremely conflicted and tragic figure that yields a melancholic situation defining Latin America and Latinos in America: confusion. But I suppose we should all be so clear-headed as you all.
As much as you’ve think you’ve done yourself a favor by not following the blog, you have fulfilled the blog media secret: traffic, traffic, and more traffic. And, well, it should be encouraged!!!
So, instead of whining about how lame and hipster and east coast the blog can be, access the inner Lalo Alcaraz or Gustavo Arellano or Rudy Acuna (were he to have levity) and get cracking with the humor!!! So instead of watching people choke on their own chicken why not either try a piece of chicken yourself or help us get the bone out of our throats. Or does being an implied leftist mean sticking to comfy ideas at the expense of people or their gestures? I associated that with right-wingery anyway.
At any rate, neither are as easy as you think. Or do you just want to spectate and be bedazzled by boring copy?
It’s not funny to miss the humor or parody or even satire with being ham-fisted. I should know, I’m doing it right now. But good grief, lighten up!
Maybe we should have a commenters theory group or teach in or laugh in, or some kind of pendejada over a game of loteria.
@yabasta: You’ve got to love merengue house though. That stuff is the shit!
You go about “natives killing each other” like people in europe are so damn united (try the cruzades , for example) the real shit about this is the partial (as in almost total) elimination of native culture and knowledge, you think calmecac taught shit? that was one of the aztec schools, you think the zero is unimportant, how about the YEAR YOU BASE YOUR DATES ON, that’s all native knowledge this columbus fucker messed up, so yes, i would rather be aztec. Also, im really dissappointed on you guanabee, you were supposed to be on the latin side of shit…but well, you are still as american as it gets.
If anyone sees that Ann Coulter ad again, send me the link to daniel@guanabee.com
I don’t see anything wrong with the list in the post above, it all holds true in some way. You all make it seem like the Indian cultures in the Americas, prior to Columbus, were living in some utopia society. The Aztecs killed, enslaved and raped many of its neighbors. Also there were various diseases present in the New World before the Spanish arrived: dysentery, common bacterial infections, salmonella and other food poisonings, viral influenzas and pneumonias, viral and rickettsial fevers, typhus, tuberculosis, among others.
I think nobody got what Guanabee was trying to say: that the Spanish brought along with them some bad things along with some good things. And that life for many of the Indian cultures living in the America’s was good without any intervention.
Why don’t you read more about Aztec history, like how they enslaved so many other people and “modified” history so that they could claim they descended from royal blood? Why do you think so many other groups in the central valley were willing to help out Cortes? Because they were pissed off at the tributes they had to give to the Aztecs and were only too willing to see someone else in power. And in Peru, the Inca had only recently come to power, and their empire was already showing weaknesses.
I know that the Spanish did terrible things and nobody can honestly say that Columbus was a nice guy who only wanted the best from everyone. I’m just saying that it’s not as if the people already living in the Americas were living in peace with no problems until those dirty Spanish came.
All you ass monkeys would be speaking some crazy Indian if it wasn’t for this hero! The Mexican Government should be throwing parties for this guy at the Canta Bar in Tepiscoelollo and arresting you stupid communists who do nothing but spread your propaganda and defend people like the Taliban.
Stop acting like a bunch of racist bastards!!!
Deangelo
I don’t think people here are saying that Guanabee is saying Columbus was a hero. It’s more subtle than that. What I think ya basta and others are talking about is tthat Guanabee is pulling a neat little ideological trick by equating the European genocide of the Americas with what was already going on here. Nativist white people love to hear shit like this, because it validates the “euro-centric” racist view that what they did was okay because they are superior, and that their continued presence and way of life is okay and is not hurting anyone. See the posting by Deangelo/Deangleo above for an example of this line of thinking that Guanabee appears to be supporting with this kind of relativist “all humans are corrupt and bad, so let’s not be too critical of the Europeans.” There are tons of problems with this attempt to dismiss reality, which I won’t even try to get into here. One quick example would be the total poverty that most North American natives continue to live in, as well as the elevated rates of suicide among Native youth and adolescents compared to their peers.
Those with some consciousness and real understanding of history and the current situation get it. Those who are aligned with the project of masking history in favor of the dominant make a joke out of it to pretend that they don’t see how they are contributing to ongoing genocide, exploitation, modified slavery, and ecocide. Either way, it’s not about a lack of sense of humor–people from all political walks have a sense of humor, thank god. It’s about a lack of consciousness and clarity. Someone above said that Guanabee is “confused.” I think that’s probably the most accurate thing in all these posts. They are confused, and lack clarity about what they are saying and how they are saying it. This is a sign of colonized thinking.
when you have to explain the joke, it’s no longer a joke, so they say (and i’m sure to you ‘they’ is the dominant culture, i think it’s the Baldwins). when you have to explain yourself (and quite well, IMHO) your beliefs come off as nothing short of condescending higher consciousness.
i don’t think that anyone at g-bee is trying to eradicate the notion that the native americans (south and north, natch) didn’t get the short end of the stick. what they were trying to point out was the ludicrous nature of the cartoon. obviously, if you must explain the mere fact that it was frigging _joke_ to the majority you don’t get the joke.but in the end, i think most of you justified something even less subtle–humor is subjective. but you gotta roll with that, right?
someone might not find you funny, even as silly as they themselves are.
I could not agree with you more el smrtmnky. Some people did not get joke and went off on a rampage. Others like Oscar, fail to see that Deangelo is just messing with everybody. I think its great that everybody can express their opinion on the subject and we truly do not have to be rude to each other.
Anyone for a nicely made manhattan..oops I meant, margaritas…
it’s CANE night, Sambumbio, so it has to be a _mojito_
tha fuck…are yall serious?? this site aint giving columbus any real praise. its laughing at how we celebrate something that brought us so much bullshit. incredible.