Columbus Day

This is the eve of Columbus Day- the real Columbus Day not the Federal Holiday which was on the 8^th this month – on the 8^th Columbus was still sailing and had yet to reach land but on the 7^th- 28 days out from the Canary Islands, the last land he had seen, he had spotted “an immense flock of birds” – probably plovers - which he followed until he reached land on the 12^th.  


 He, of course did not discover anything- people were already there but it was a voyage that opened the eyes of the European thrones. It was a brave voyage and it is good we celebrate the bravery.  If it had not been for Columbus I probably would be living in the mist shrouded hills of Scotland as a serf to the Laird of the manor. My people were given hope by the vision of a new land where they could start all over again and we stole it from the inhabitants and worked hard and paid off politicians to keep it.

For four years in my childhood I lived in El Salvador and in that place Columbus Day was called “The Day of the Race” meaning Spanish Heritage. On this day there would be celebrations of the Spanish Conquest of Central America. I remember murals of the brave mounted Castillian Captain and the dewy eyed Mayan maiden looking adoring up at him in admiration and thanksgiving for bringing her Christianity and western ideas. I was later to find out more I studied the campaigns against Cuzcatlán and Pipil tribes and the effects of smallpox and peonage as the heritage of the “Race”.  

On December 12th  there was a festival called the “Day of the Indians” which celebrated Indian Heritage. The 40 families who ruled the nation did not show up for these events but this was a day when the folk lore of the Indian people was celebrated and my brother, sister and I were dressed up in white working clothes, straw hats and play machetes. It was a day when they especially honored the Virgin of Guadalupe who seems to be a focus of the blending of the Christian Mariology and pre-Columbian feminine deity..   
 

Columbus day is not a bad day to remember with honor the bravery of the first explorers, to give thanks for the chance for families to start over, asking forgiveness for the conquest and the racism, and asking the Blessed Virgin to help redeem  the past and to see a new future for all of us.