Long heralded in Western culture as an innovative global explorer, only quite recently more criticism came.
I encountered these critiques early on. As a child I read quite a lot, such as from the public library (pre-Internet days), including works by anticolonial writers.
Furthermore, I encountered this critique in a lot of Reggae lyrics. Reggae, developed by Afro-Jamaicans – victims of colonialism, as such -, and known for relatively many (Rastafari-inspired) socially critical lyrics, of course were critical about Columbus as starter of European colonialism as such. Lyrics by artists like Burning Spear, Mutabaruka, Peter Tosh, Culture, and several others, described and lamented the genocide of Amerindians, through disease and explotation, by first Spanish colonizers, and the enslavement of Africans and the slave trade it necessitated.
SLAVERY AND GENOCIDE
That first Spanish slave trade in Africans was not yet as massive and structured as it would become over time, but it certainly was the start of something bad and dehumanizing, including massive enslavement and transportation of Africans, and high death rates and short lives among these Africans. Especially the British and Dutch “perfected” and amplified this slave trade in Africans and plantation slavery (starting in Dutch Brazil and Barbados), making it even more massive, but also the Spanish and Portuguese later profited from this British and Dutch expertise; Spain for instance contracted the transport of slaves in part out to Dutch or British companies.
There was a large genocide among Amerindians in the Caribbean area, and other parts of Latin America to differing degrees too. In some countries, the Amerindians became part of the racially mixed population, including Spaniards, Amerindians, Africans, and even others. In the Caribbean few Amerindians remained, and several islands became mainly populated with people of African descent, or mixed with Europeans.
This was also the case in Cuba, where I have been several times. In some parts of Eastern Cuba (close to Baracoa) there was some remaining Amerindian blood in the population, but mostly it was disappeared or diluted in Spanish and/or African blood.
In certain other parts, such as the small island Dominica, some Carib Amerindians remained, while in Puerto Rico some Amerindian blood is still there in a part of the population, as it is in an island like Aruba.
The colonial period of exploitation inaugurated by Christopher Columbus caused therefore genocide, slavery, and poverty lasting for centuries (up to now), as European colonies exploited the American colonies, and later applied the same colonial logic to Africa and Asia. Racism increased strongly with Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas, especially as part of a power and colonial logic. Amerindians and Afro-Americans are disproportionately more affected by poverty throughout the Americas and the Caribbean.
RACISM
If racism was "invented” with this American colonialism is harder to say. Arabs, Portuguese and Genoese already traded in African slaves before 1492, and saw them as inferior, and also in the Islamic world and parts of Europe and India there was historically a view of “inferiority” of African people, which can be viewed as early forms of anti-African racism. Significantly, there were also Black Africans in Islamic ruled, Moorish Spain (between 8th c-15th c.), besides locals, Berbers, and Arabs, but these Blacks were mostly slaves or servants. In that sense Blacks did not really rule over Spanish people, as I read somewhere about Moorish Spain; more North African Berbers and Arabs (along with converted locals) with Black African slaves.
This “White” or European sense of racial superiority, however, certainly got a boost with Columbus pioneering colonialism.
Columbus himself was neither in any way an heroic person. His biography shows perhaps an innovative, explorative, and adventurous man, but not a good, moral, and loving man. His zeal to gain more knowledge about the world – even if sincere – was trumped in his own mind by an egoistic urge to conquer and gain wealth: to rule and get rich. This at the cost of other people.
More details of his biography confirm this ruthless, wicked, and uncaring character, certainly as he forced women – even young girls - to have sex with him and others (i.e. raped them), and killed the weak and defenseless.
Only a deeply ingrained sense of Western, White superiority could make Europe blind for such moral and human considerations. Catholicism and Christianity was a part of this. Columbus, born in Genua, now Italy, later became a Portuguese citizen, called himself a Catholic.
COLONIAL GAINS
Though perhaps not the most devout Catholic, his stated goal to spread Christianity among the heathen was said to help convince the Spanish king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella, to back his journey to the West in the year 1492. The promises of riches even more though.
Isabella at first articulated some objections against genocide and enslavement of other people – as contrary to what she considered Christian love – but her and others’ objections soon muted in Spain, as wealth and colonial power came to Spain. Certain groups in Spain suddenly got to live in luxury. In that pre-capitalist era, colonial gains were not yet always “invested” thoughtfully, as the British would do later. The Britons’ more strategic, so-to-speak “Protestant” treatment of colonial gains by investing in planned economic development, eventually enabled the leading role of Britain in the Industrial Revolution.
Also, the Calvinist Dutch invested their colonial gains (from Suriname, Indonesia and elsewhere) much more deliberate in their economies, than the more “loose-spending” earlier Spanish and Portuguese colonizers. So, one can say that blood money was either spent on luxury or invested more durably, but either way created wealthy elites in several European countries.
In this sense, it stimulated inequality, but in fact helped shape the Western world as we know it now. The tropical products that first entered Spain from its colonies, like tobacco, potatoes, rum, and much more, became popular throughout Europe. This is thus also what Columbus started and normalized: the exploitation of other parts of the world for their food or agricultural and raw products, removing their ownership from the local people. Multinational companies as such have their origins in the colonial era, many specific ones too (like Dutch-British oil company Shell), and these are very powerful in today’s world, as we know.
All this is by now quite well known, or should be. From exhaustive, lengthy scholarly studies about colonial history, to e.g. Reggae and Calypso song lyrics, the figure of Christopher Columbus is now presented in quite other lights: as a criminal, a murderer, a racist, a rapist, and a thief on a large scale. He was all this without a doubt, but he was at the same time influential politically in high places. He got, though first hesitantly, the support of the Spanish monarchs, and later inspired British and other monarchs, and British seafarers with colonial aims, such as Henry Morgan, and Francis Drake. Also explorers and pirates mentioned, by the way, in Reggae lyrics.
STATUES
Knowing all this, I find it simply absurd that there are still statues for Columbus in several places in the world: quite a large one in the city of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain), somewhat smaller ones in other parts of Spain, a few in Italy (his native Genova, notably), some other European countries, and still several throughout the US (like in Central Park, New York), Latin America, and the Caribbean (like in Santo Domingo).
Objections and popular demands sometimes removed some of these, but many remain.
BARCELONA
The large one is Barcelona was the most noticeable, in my recollection. I went over a week to Barcelona, after I finished my academic studies in the year 2000. By then I was well in my twenties, and already a Reggae fan for over 14 years, plus I had read quite some anticolonial works. I was therefore not pleased with that large Columbus monument – close to the water front and where the Rambla begins – but neither paid very much attention to it. I was puzzled by the direction Columbus pointed, namely to Italy (his birthplace Genua), and not to the Americas from Barcelona.
ELSEWHERE: MADRID AND SAINT ANN'S BAY
I saw a few smaller Columbus monuments, after this, some of which I even almost did not see. Such as the one on the Plaza Colón in Madrid (named after Columbus, Colón being his name in Spanish). I was looking for a specific club on a nearby street, so my attention was here also distracted.
Mutabaruka, the Jamaican poet and musician (and radio host), once pointed jokingly at the irony of a statue of Marcus Garvey (Black Power thinker and activist) in his birthplace Saint Ann’s Bay, on the North Coast of Jamaica, with nearby in the same town a statue of Columbus. I went to Saint Ann’s Bay – a tranquil town with friendly, easy-going people - , and found the statue of Marcus Garvey, but did not see the one of Columbus.
OTHER STATUES
Of course, he was an influential historical figure, but a statue is a strange thing: it is not a impartial, neutral phenomenon. Inherently, statues serve to commemorate and praise at the same time. It implies that the person was a “positive model” in some sense and to some degree. There are statues of famous entertainers, musicians, or sportsmen/athletes too, but these were also seen as “positive” influences culturally somehow.
The final statues of Spanish dictator Franco have now mostly been removed all over Spain, even from Franco’s birthplace El Ferrol (Galicia). The same happened with any remaining public statues of Benito Mussolini in Italy. A public statue of Hitler in Germany or elsewhere is simply unthinkable.
Other statues of dictators, especially the more ruthless, oppressive ones, tend to be removed as much as possible too in several countries, with the arrival of democracy in societies.
This is so because a statue – as said – represent by its nature a “positive model”, or even a “hero”. It is not a book with information about the history , or a neutral documentary or description: statues imply honouring and veneration: immortalizing historical figures for the future with a sculpture. To differing degrees, of course. In birthplaces of famous people a statue of them can often be found, even if only active in the arts, or being wealthy or a powerful politician. They might have achieved something, but not necessarily something that made our world better, more equal, or only partly.. they just had a lot of power and influence in a certain epoch or location.
By all means, these historical periods and people (good and bad) should be studied scholarly and otherwise, and can even be an interesting theme in a neutral, balanced museum exhibition about local history.
A statue is something else, though. Due to his personal history and overall negative historical influence, Christopher Columbus should not be honoured, venerated, or heralded. Not in the least bit. He deserves it no more than people like Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, or Mussolini, or other dictators like Pol Pot, Salazar, Pinochet, Idi Amin, and Franco, or even big-time criminals like Al Capone or Pablo Escobar.
Many sensible people in the world understand very well, and would agree that such people deserve no statue and were no positive, heroic models for humanity.
For some reasons, this consciousness about Columbus - and for instance the large statue of Columbus in Barcelona - is lacking. One of the reasons might be that colonialism is further back in the past, and another reason is that European people do not like to see their country’s history – and their foreparents - in a bad light, connected as they are to that country and history. All-too-human, but therefore not justifiable.
European countries are beautiful and varied in their own way, like all countries, Spain has a varied, rich history, culture, and natural landscape, being at a Mediterranean crossroads. Other countries, like Britain, France, and the Netherlands have equally interesting, unique aspects, developed over time in their own way.
COLONIAL HISTORY
Denying, the “dark pages” or a bloody colonial history, including slavery, only makes that “blood money” more decisive in the sensed national identity than it needs to be. That period was about money, racism, and exploitation, “ruling the world”, but let’s hope that there is more to a nation’s people, and a country’s culture than that. From interesting ways to shape a country, cultural peculiarities, food habits, and organized societies, to nice folkore: the castanets of Spain, the Dutch clogs (wooden shoes), to name something.. not even always based on things copied from elsewhere (like the Pasta in Italy, based on Chinese mie taken by proto-colonizer Marco Polo), but at least an equal sharing among cultures. Columbus was on the other hand about domination and exploitation, taking and capturing, not sharing.
DENIAL
In addition, I think the still heralding of colonial “heroes” where it is present, but also the structural denying of colonial misdeeds keeps people separated. This structural denial is found in Spain and Portugal, but also in Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, where a seemingly more open and democratic atmosphere allowed more anticolonial critique as well as more neutral and balanced scholarly studies about the misdeeds. This anticolonial view has luckily increased recently also in Spain’s academic circles.
This anticolonial critique – both by migrants from former colonies, and local progressive intellectuals - was however only influential to a degree, and met its limits among a part of national elites and population, having still links with this colonial past. Former PM of Britain, David Cameron, had slaveowners in the Caribbean among his forefathers, Royal houses in the Netherlands, Britain, and Spain profited from colonial wealth.
Some cities or parts of them even were built with this “blood money” (colonial and slavery-derived income), Liverpool, Bristol, and Nantes being known examples, but also parts of Amsterdam, Seville, Barcelona (where many Catalan slaveowners in Cuba for instance invested money), Madrid, London, Bordeaux, and Paris, and to a lesser degree also other places and cities throughout Europe and the Western world. In that sense, the colonial history influenced not just economy but also culture, like all historical episodes (good or bad) do, of course. It also filled some museums, like the British Museum.
I argue therefore, that recognizing this colonial history openly for its misdeeds, even if of ancestors, is a mature and intelligent way of learning from the past, and keeping an open mind to the rest of the world. Ideally, we can learn from each other’s history and culture. In other places, slavery and exploitation, religious wars and such were known historically, just like in Europe.
Man kind never learns: from e.g. the unequal Indian caste system, common slavery in parts of Asia, Africa, and in the Islamic world, the dehumanized, lesser status of women in several societies worldwide, inhumane treatments of “outsiders” (or minorities) in societies, exploitation of poorer ones, religious fanaticism, and violence. Also, ethnic and religious conflicts, people feeling better than – and threatened by - other groups in the same societies and subjugating them, can be found on all continents historically.
All this is of course not just the domain of Europeans, and injustice and evil are found historically and presently among all humans, especially since we lost touch with nature. Some of these injustices, though, are certainly influenced by European colonialism and global inequalities.
REMOVE THE STATUE
All the more reasons why Columbus should not be honoured with a statue, in Barcelona, or anywhere.
The Columbus statue in Barcelona was made by well-known Catalan artists, and though it was entire Spain (and not just Catalonia) that obtained all these colonies, as made by a local Catalan, the statue connected to a regional pride within Catalonia, where many object to excessive centralist Spanish (Madrid or Castilian) influence on Catalan affairs.
I do consider such considerations however mundane, certainly in relation to the negative role of Christopher Columbus in history.
Removing that statue would be merely symbolic, I know, but it certainly would be an important and promising symbol..
