Columbus toppled: Latin-America indigenous rise up after 5 centuries

[marksimonbrown]

Columbus toppled as indigenous people rise up after five centuries

Rory Carroll in Caracas and Lola Almudevar in Sucre
Friday October 12, 2007
The Guardian
Ref: http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,,2189421,00.html

Explorer's reputation is victim of region's pink tide of leftwing 
governments 

He had been sailing west for five weeks and sensed he was close when 
at 2am on October 12, with nothing but stars and moon to illuminate 
the waves, it was spotted: a dark lump ahead. Land. Christopher 
Columbus had reached the New World.

At sunrise he took a small boat and armed men to shore and planted a 
royal standard. With a solemn oath he took possession of the 
territory for the king and queen of Spain. Natives emerged from the 
trees and watched from a distance, puzzled. It was 1492.

More than five centuries later the anniversary of that event resounds 
with an ominous clang. Millions of people in central and South 
America lament that encounter in the Bahamas as the beginning of 
their ancestors' annihilation.

The indigenous inhabitants lost everything to the invaders: gold, 
land, freedom, culture, until there was almost nothing left. Disease 
and slaughter wiped most of them out. "It was a calamity," said Mark 
Horton, an archaeologist and Columbus expert at the University of 
Bristol.

Now, however, a counter-attack is under way. After centuries as 
underdogs, indigenous people are rising up - peacefully - to seize 
political power and assert their heritage.

The so-called pink tide of leftwing governments has surged on the 
back of indigenous movements intent on dismantling the region's 
eurocentric legacy - starting with Columbus.

Across the Andes the explorer once feted as a hero by the 
Europeanised elite is having his story rewritten, his statue toppled 
and his name turned to mud. Leading the assault is Venezuela's 
president, Hugo Chávez.

"They taught us to admire Christopher Columbus," he said during a 
recent televised address, his tone incredulous, while flicking 
through a 1970s school textbook. "In Europe they still speak of the 
'discovery' of America and want us to celebrate the day."

Instead Mr Chávez has renamed October 12 "indigenous resistance day" 
and mounted a campaign against colonial residue. Textbooks are to be 
revised under a curriculum that will stress the opposition to Spanish 
conquest as doomed but heroic.

This week the president, who boasts of having an indigenous 
grandmother, renamed the cable car system which soars over Caracas, 
the capital, as Warairarepano, which means big mountain in an 
indigenous coastal tongue.

"For Chávez this is a natural cause because of his philosophy about 
the mistreatment of the downtrodden and the need for redress," said 
Larry Birns, of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs thinktank.

City authorities confirmed this week that a bronze Columbus statue 
which activists toppled from a Caracas plaza three years ago will 
remain under wraps. Repairs were almost complete but it would not 
return to its plinth because the site had been renamed: Avenue 
Columbus is now Avenue Indigenous Resistance. The statue is expected 
to go to a museum.

In contrast, a statue of María Lionza, a legendary indigenous queen 
who is the subject of a thriving cult, has been prominently restored. 
Last night thousands of devotees made their way to the holy mountain 
of Sorte for an annual festival which honours her and an indigenous 
chief and black slave killed by the Spanish.

Rehabilitated

Scholars tend to assign Columbus a walk-on part in history as the one 
who opened the New World door but had little role in the bloody 
aftermath. "He was part of a process that was inevitable, of Europe 
coming into contact with the wider world," said Dr Horton. "It's 
mistaken to see him as a totem of the bad guys. He actually wasn't 
too bad."

It has been a rollercoaster reputation. A dispute with Spain's king 
and queen landed Columbus in chains and disgrace. The Victorians 
rehabilitated him as an inspiration for their own explorers, a 
valiant image which largely endures in the west. Spain hopes DNA 
analysis will prove he came from Castille, while Italy hopes to 
confirm he was Genoese.

The 500th anniversary in 1992 prompted debate in the US about whether 
he should be recast as a villain but the controversy petered out, 
leaving the navigator a bruised but still revered figure. US 
schoolchildren get the day off on what remains Columbus Day.

In South America, however, radical leftwing governments in Bolivia, 
Ecuador and Venezuela are busy overturning what they see as his 
legacy: centuries of domination by Spaniards and their descendants, 
pale-skinned elites who continued oppressing darker compatriots even 
after the continent gained independence.

"Even now they conceive us as animals, as dogs. That has got to 
change, which is what we are fighting for - to be recognised as equal 
citizens with equal rights," said Wilber Flores, a congressman and 
president of Bolivia's indigenous parliament.

In Venezuela Mr Chávez enshrined indigenous rights in a new 
constitution and made the country's 35 tribes visible through state-
funded TV stations which broadcast from regions barely known to city-
dwellers.

In Ecuador President Rafael Correa, who often wears traditional dress 
and speaks in Quechua, has rallied indigenous voters behind his 
effort to "reinvent" the country along socialist lines.

President Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and Bolivia's first 
indigenous leader, has also fused indigenous rights with a socialist 
agenda hostile to Washington. He regards the US as the latest 
manifestation of a predatory colonialism that started in 1492. Last 
month it voted against a United Nations declaration on indigenous 
rights.

Rapacious

Mr Morales has accused the US of raiding Bolivia's natural resources 
and persecuting coca farmers as cocaine producers when in fact they 
are cultivating a plant that has had other, innocent, uses since the 
Incas.

He will mark the anniversary of Columbus's landing with a visit to 
the coca growing region of Chapare, which is playing host to a summit 
of indigenous people from across Latin America.

In an interview with the Guardian the Bolivian leader suggested the 
rapacious intruders who crossed an ocean thirsting for riches, and 
those who later invented capitalism, should have been studying, not 
conquering, the natives.

"Indigenous communities know how to live in harmony with mother earth 
and that is the difference between us and Europe and the United 
States."