Columbus: The Good, the Bad, and the Blunt Reality

What is to be made of Columbus regarding his contact with the Americas? A lot, but a few things, in particular, should be considered. First and foremost, Columbus meeting the Arawaks in Hispaniola led to the first settlement of Latin America by Europe. The modern world would not be the same without this occurrence because much of today’s globalization is predicated on this meeting. Here is what is meant. When you travel to, say, Chile, Mexico, or Puerto Rico, the signs, menus, etc, are all in Spanish. From a geographical standpoint, that should not make any sense. Spain is a large portion of a small peninsula in the southwest portion of Europe, yet the same language spoken in this land is the one spoken a continent away in a world with different climate, food, and people. Obviously, this is because Columbus claimed his “findings’’ for Spain as they were his financiers. But the impact of this colonization cannot be understated. After Spain started to claim lands in Latin America, England, France, Holland, and other European countries did the same. Fast forward four hundred years later, and a small collection of countries in the western side of Europe have influenced how millions of people speak, dress, eat, etc. That is, Columbus’ initial interactions with the Arawaks opened the door to the Eurocentric, globalized society we now live in. It is funny that two peninsulas and two small nations, Spain and England, together (obviously in separate empires) controlled pretty much the entire globe. What language do we speak in the U.S.? English. Our neighbors to the south? Spanish. Essentially, an entire side of the globe, which at one point had dozens of indigenous languages, none of which had such a monopoly on the other, have been cast aside in favor of two languages that come from just two nations. Now, Latin America is more specifically impacted by this meeting because of how Columbus treated the Arawaks. While ethnically Latin America has plenty of indigenous people, with countries like Guatemala and Bolivia having actually a majority of people being of predominant native descent, in most Latin American countries there has at some point been discrimination against these cultures in favor of Spanish and Portuguese ideals. We can often see evidence of discrimination and disenfranchisement when we look at where power in certain nations is held. Take Brazil for instance. The majority of its country (around 49%) self-identifies as “mulatto”, an outdated term for people of mixed African, Native, and European descent, yet most of Brazil’s leaders, including the current president, are white, and as is most of his cabinet. These sort of ethnic disparities in Latin America can surely trace their origins to a founding story of Columbus and his men enslaving the Arawaks and subjecting them to subhuman treatment and genocide. Now, what this sort of harsh reality leads to is schools celebrating Columbus as more of an explorer rather than a conqueror to not taint the origins of the western hemisphere. After all, the Columbian conquest lead the way to the creation of the United States, so who wants to think that their nation was founded partly on the displacement and genocide of existing peoples? Something else that is different in how the subject is taught in schools rather than how it is presented in some readings is that Columbus is seen to be a man of business rather than as a pure explorer as he is seen in schools. For better or for worse, a businessman is what he was. His exploration of the west indies was not some starry-eyed voyage, it was a corporate exchange. Must like a modern entrepreneur would produce a product and sell it in exchange for venture capital dollars from an investment firm, Columbus promised to acquire returns for his financiers, the Spanish nobility, in exchange for funding for his voyage, and since Columbus would keep 10 percent of the profits, given the size of his voyage, his expedition was an astute business venture. So I guess as Americans we really were capitalists from the beginning. Just highly unethical ones. Harsh truth.