Taino Genocide Day (Colombus Day) Tomorrow

[Orcris]

Well, tomorrow's the day that Americans celebrate how the first European imperialist since Leif Ericson to operate in the Americas committed genocide against the Caribbean natives. Honestly, I'm astonished that we still celebrate this holiday. Even most liberals I know are against it. I hope that, sometime in the near future, there will be some major push for the government to stop making this an official holiday.

[Per Levy]

Well, tomorrow's the day that Americans celebrate how the first European imperialist since Leif Ericson

tbf, leif eriksson wasnt a "european imperialist". as for the day, yeah its dumb and insulting, but many hollydays are.

[Comrade Jacob]

Disgusting reason for a celebration.

[DasFapital]

To quote the Coup:
" I would like to take a moment to say fuck Columbus"

[tachosomoza]

tbf, leif eriksson wasnt a "european imperialist". as for the day, yeah its dumb and insulting, but many hollydays are.

Not an imperialist, but he did refer to the natives as "Skrælingar", or barbarians.

[Hrafn]

Not an imperialist, but he did refer to the natives as "Skrælingar", or barbarians.

Well.


The origin of the word is not certain, but it is probably based on the Old Norse word skrá which meant "skin"; and as a verb, "to put in writing" (written accounts, such as the Icelandic Sagas, were put on dried skin in Iceland). The Eskimo, both Thule and Dorset, as well as other indigenous people whom the Norse Greenlanders met, wore clothes made of animal skins, in contrast to the woven wool clothes worn by the Norse.

Given that the Norse had either never encountered the Greenlandic Inuits at the time of Leif's travels, or just had very brief encounters, Leif would've had very little culture exposure to them. To immediately, at first contact, describe the people they encountered as people wearing hides seems pretty natural to me. For any later connotations you have to keep in mind, the sagas are all written centuries later.

On a separate matter, how was Columbus a imperialist?

[Rational Radical]

Well.



Given that the Norse had either never encountered the Greenlandic Inuits at the time of Leif's travels, or just had very brief encounters, Leif would've had very little culture exposure to them. To immediately, at first contact, describe the people they encountered as people wearing hides seems pretty natural to me. For any later connotations you have to keep in mind, the sagas are all written centuries later.

On a separate matter, how was Columbus a imperialist?

Perhaps it seems natural to you because you've internalized white supremacy,living in a euro centric world which categorize people as savage ? Oh and as far as Columbus, idk maybe forcing Natives to work extremely long hours to extract gold for Spain which caused millions of deaths as well as genociding them maybe ?how are the slave owning presidents of the united states slave masters ? I couldn't possibly figure it out.

[RedAnarchist]

Colombus was a greedy prick who should have drowned in the middle of the Atlantic.

[DDR]

The oatmeal did a great comic on the subject:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day

BTW Columbus Day (AKA: Hispanicness Day / Spain Day / Day of the race / Virgin of the Column [patron saint of kicking the French in the ass] Day) is the 12th.

[Japan]

Columbus was a dick who basically opened the floodgates that resulted in the utter destruction of the Native Americans, with exploitation, slavery, repression, and violence for those left. No one should celebrate Columbus Day.

[A.J.]

Season 4, episode 3.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

On a separate matter, how was Columbus a imperialist?

Well, he expanded the Spanish empire into the Carribean, for starters.:rolleyes:

He also was firsthand responsible for insane gold-suppliance laws and genocidal repression of the native population, which lead to a total of nearly 10 million native Caribbean peoples being slaughtered (the arawak, which took the majority of the casualties, do not even exist to this day; all were slaughtered in Columbus and co.s' first years on the island), with the majority being murdered by the diseased Spanish savages within the first decade of Spanish occupation on the island, and the remaining straggler population (in the tens of thousands) being killed off after that.

Sorry, but its' literally impossible for people to regurgitate Columbus apologia without coming off as fucking monsters. The guy was a former slave-owner, a christian jihadist, a murderer, a white supremacist, and is hailed by every eurocentric moron in America for having 'discovered' the country, forgetting the fact that the native peoples had discovered and been living on the continent for around 15'000 god-damned years. It's like claiming that Alexander the great discovered India when he tried to invade it. People had 'discovered' and had been living there for centuries, but apparently Alex was from Europe so 'obviously his finds count for more than those savage natives!' This did not turn out so, however, because Alexander wanted to follow in the footsteps of folks like Cyrus and make sure that all regions of the empire were taken into account (the guy killed a general for calling him 'a sucker for the orient lifestyle' at a party, in more or less the same words). Surprisingly, even a Greek imperialist wasn't as eurocentric as some moron Americans today.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I sometimes ponder an alternate historical scenario where the axis won the war in world war 2, and after a few centuries of white supremacist terror, the racist laws boiled away and Europe became a German USA.

Would people celebrate Hitler Day? Cheer for how he 'expanded' Germany and 'saved Europe's economy'? Because some people today seem to be awfully valiant in defending a guy who oversaw a genocide that took even more lives of native Americans than all of the jews slaughtered during the holocaust.

[Venas Abiertas]

(the arawak, which took the majority of the casualties, do not even exist to this day; all were slaughtered in Columbus and co.s' first years on the island), with the majority being murdered by the diseased Spanish savages within the first decade of Spanish occupation on the island, and the remaining straggler population (in the tens of thousands) being killed off after that.



Yep. Here are the results of the DNA studies on the Puerto Rican population:

Puerto Ricans, on average, have genetic contributions from Europeans, West Africans, and Native Americans of approximately 66%, 18%, and 16%, respectively. A recent study of Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 800 individuals found that patrilineal input, as indicated by the Y-chromosome, showed over 70% of Puerto Ricans could trace their ancestry to male European ancestors, 20% could trace it to male African ancestors, and less than 10% could trace it to male Native American ancestors. As for maternal DNA, 61.1% of those sampled were found as having Amerindian maternal mtDNA. This means that if a person could trace back in time from daughter to mother, she would eventually reach women who lived in Puerto Rico in Pre-Columbian time. The rest divides between 26.4% with female African ancestors and 12.5% with female European ancestors. Both of these findings are consistent with the popular belief from historical record that male European immigrants took for themselves wives from among the native Indian and, later, black slave populations.

These findings are consistent with the historical record that the native male Taino population was virtually wiped out shortly after the arrival of the European settlers to the Island.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Puerto_Rico

However, the results above also show that the majority of modern Puerto Ricans do have Amerindian ancestry, contrary to what many thought before that the natives did not make any or very little contribution to the islanders' bloodlines.

http://www.taino-tribe.org/pr-taino-dna.htm

[Hrafn]

Perhaps it seems natural to you because you've internalized white supremacy,living in a euro centric world which categorize people as savage ? Oh and as far as Columbus, idk maybe forcing Natives to work extremely long hours to extract gold for Spain which caused millions of deaths as well as genociding them maybe ?how are the slave owning presidents of the united states slave masters ? I couldn't possibly figure it out.


Well, he expanded the Spanish empire into the Carribean, for starters.:rolleyes:

He also was firsthand responsible for insane gold-suppliance laws and genocidal repression of the native population, which lead to a total of nearly 10 million native Caribbean peoples being slaughtered (the arawak, which took the majority of the casualties, do not even exist to this day; all were slaughtered in Columbus and co.s' first years on the island), with the majority being murdered by the diseased Spanish savages within the first decade of Spanish occupation on the island, and the remaining straggler population (in the tens of thousands) being killed off after that.

Sorry, but its' literally impossible for people to regurgitate Columbus apologia without coming off as fucking monsters. The guy was a former slave-owner, a christian jihadist, a murderer, a white supremacist, and is hailed by every eurocentric moron in America for having 'discovered' the country, forgetting the fact that the native peoples had discovered and been living on the continent for around 15'000 god-damned years. It's like claiming that Alexander the great discovered India when he tried to invade it. People had 'discovered' and had been living there for centuries, but apparently Alex was from Europe so 'obviously his finds count for more than those savage natives!' This did not turn out so, however, because Alexander wanted to follow in the footsteps of folks like Cyrus and make sure that all regions of the empire were taken into account (the guy killed a general for calling him 'a sucker for the orient lifestyle' at a party, in more or less the same words). Surprisingly, even a Greek imperialist wasn't as eurocentric as some moron Americans today.

First of all - I find the accusation that I'm a white supremacy-apologist utterly hilarious. Please, do provide any sort of logical explanation for your claim, or be silent. Hah.

Secondly - both of you are missing the point. Of course Columbus was a genocide-inducing, culture-destroying, slavery-imposing asshole. But for the love of Marx, he wasn't an imperialist, he was a colonialist. There are very, very few subjects on which I agree with Lenin, but this is one of them.

[Invader Zim]

He also was firsthand responsible for insane gold-suppliance laws and genocidal repression of the native population, which lead to a total of nearly 10 million native Caribbean peoples being slaughtered (the arawak, which took the majority of the casualties, do not even exist to this day; all were slaughtered in Columbus and co.s' first years on the island), with the majority being murdered by the diseased Spanish savages within the first decade of Spanish occupation on the island, and the remaining straggler population (in the tens of thousands) being killed off after that.

Do you include those 80% of the entire 'New World' population who died of pandemics as a part of that 'slaughter'? I'm also intrigued to know precisely where you get the idea that the Caribbean had a 10 million population - which would place it as high as the entire North American continent.

[Japan]

Do you include those 80% of the entire 'New World' population who died of pandemics as a part of that 'slaughter'? I'm also intrigued to know precisely where you get the idea that the Caribbean had a 10 million population - which would place it as high as the entire North American continent.

Considering that the Central Mexican plateau alone had a population of 25.2 million before the arrival of Columbus, no.

[goalkeeper]

I'll just leave this here:

"Citizens! When Christopher Columbus discovered America 350 years ago, he certainly did not think that not only would the then existing society in Europe together with its institutions be done away with through his discovery, but that the foundation would be laid for the complete liberation of all nations; and yet, it becomes more and more clear that this is indeed the case...The discovery of America was connected with the ad ‘ vent of machinery, and with that the struggle became necessary which we are conducting today, the struggle of the propertyless against the property owners."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/30a.htm

[baronci]

Season 4, episode 3.

"My grandmother was part Fugawi...they were a nomadic tribe and when they ran around and got lost they went 'Where the fug a wi?'"

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I've always thought that, when it comes to expressions of American Indian anger and angst, no one does it better than Corporate Avenger:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJfLIKhM1nc

[Radio Spartacus]

The existence of Colombus Day as a federal holiday in the United States illustrates the level of indoctrination, from birth, Americans receive. Questioning the US Empire's global military hegemony is taboo; the Columbus narrative is a symptom of the overall problem: the bourgeois controls every facet of political socialization in society.

[Invader Zim]

Considering that the Central Mexican plateau alone had a population of 25.2 million before the arrival of Columbus, no.

This of course depends on how you define 'North America' - where does Central America end and North America begin? According to William M. Denevan, the population of North America was 3.8 million, though, as noted, I have seen estimates as high as 10 million, while he places the population of Central America (in which I include his tally for Mexico) at a little under 23 million, 24.3 million in South America, and 3 million for the Caribbean.

Denevan, 'The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 82, No. 3, Sep., 1992, p. 370.

Of course, Denevan would rank among those scholars who argue for a high pre-1492 population, others have argued that the entire New World had a population as little as 20 million. Suffice to say, the Caribbean did not have a population of 10 million in 1492 - no serious study has made that claim, at least that I'm aware of.

It is also the case that disease destroyed as much as 90% of the pre-Columbus New World population within just 100 years of contact.[1] Therefore, it is rather difficult to credit the claim that 'nearly 10 million native Caribbean peoples being slaughtered' as a result of genocidal repression. For a start, there were not 10 million indigenous people in the Caribbean to be slaughtered - the reality is perhaps half that tally. Moreover, given that the ravages of disease, which spread far faster than invading conquistadors and Old World explorers,[2] had an 80-90% mortality rate, it strikes me that the genocide of indigenous populations may have accounted for between 5-15%, at most, of those people. If Denevan's figures are to be taken at face value, then that suggests that perhaps 0.3 million indigenous Caribbean people were actually 'slaughtered'. Obviously there is considerable margin for error here, but 10 million slaughtered? Like I said, I'll need a source for that.

[1]J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (Yale, 2006), pp. 64-66.

[2]J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (Yale, 2006), p. 65.

[goalkeeper]

The existence of Colombus Day as a federal holiday in the United States illustrates the level of indoctrination, from birth, Americans receive. Questioning the US Empire's global military hegemony is taboo; the Columbus narrative is a symptom of the overall problem: the bourgeois controls every facet of political socialization in society.

It's pretty astounding that people can claim that the official fawning over Columbus is somehow systematic of some sort of widespread "indoctrination... from birth" that it taboo to question in 2013. I mean, the whole controversy over Columbus day and what it represents to Native Americans etc. even managed to make its way into that staple of American culture, The Sopranos.