The Sword and the Cross of Colonization in the Americas

Every October 12, the peoples of the Americas remember the first arrival of Christopher Columbus to the New World, in 1942, as a date that marks a milestone in the history of genocide, plunder and exploitation. Far from being a day of celebration, it is a day of struggle, of resistance to oblivion.

The Trinidadian historian C.L.R. James summarizes in two lines what happened that morning in 1492, in his book The Black Jacobins: “The first landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World was on the island of San Salvador, and after praising God he urgently inquired about gold”. A few years later, Father Las Casas, the first voice to condemn the cruelty to which the indigenous American communities were subjected to, would say that those first conquerors had arrived “with the cross in their hands and an insatiable thirst for gold in their hearts”.

It is impossible to deny the transcendence of what happened in 1492: the arrival of the values and appetites of the nascent capitalist society, the beginning of the globalization of the world and the conversion of human history into one single history, and even the division of the world as we know it today.

But the peoples of the Americas have never forgotten what Columbus’ arrival on the imposing caravels La Niña, La Pinta and Santa María signified. The colonizers exterminated 90% of the native inhabitants in the first century of the invasion alone, 90 million people. The Europeans wielded “the sword and the cross”, tore the bodies of the natives with swords and gunpowder, and ravaged their culture and identity using God as a pretext.

The Catholic religion was imposed by blood and fire, being a far-reaching instrument of domination, which to this day alienates and subdues. The invasion of America by Europeans -in the words of José Martí- constituted “the interference of a devastating civilization, two words that, being an antagonism, perfectly describe this process of humankind”.

In a joint statement, the Cuban institutions Casa de las Americas, the Office of the Programa Martiano and the World Council of the José Martí Project of International Solidarity did not miss other implications of this date, stating “The colonizers of the various powers also unleashed one of the most atrocious crimes known to mankind: that of the trafficking and enslavement of African peoples who were kidnapped and forced to work in the lucrative business of  plantations. An unknown amount numbering in the tens of millions of human beings were taken from that continent between the 16th and 19th centuries.”

It is not a question at this point of demonizing modernity, nor of spreading hatred about one country or another for its participation in or benefits obtained from domination and dispossession. The demand now must condemn all forms of colonialism, neocolonialism, and exploitation of which may be in different variations but still remains in the present time.

Proof of this are the constant hostilities to which some nations of the world are subjected to, such as Cuba, because the great powers do not tolerate a world order different from the one ruled by Capital. Proof of this is also the brutal genocide to which the Palestinian people are subjected to by Israel, which now threatens the entire region and the world. We must not forget the source of the evils afflicting humanity, the lust for power, inequality, just to mention a few of them.

“We must denounce any attempt to impose a rosy legend or glorify the perpetrators and ideologues of such atrocities. We, the inhabitants of our America, do not deny the past, nor will we renounce the heritage of the best of the so-called Western culture, which also belongs to us. But we vindicate the legacy of the oppressed and the resistance of those who rose up five centuries ago against the oppressors, and all those who, since then, have decided to cast their lot with the poorest on earth,” the joint statement concluded.

Alejandra Garcia is the Havana correspondent for Resumen Latinoamericano in English and an evening news anchor for Telesur in English.

Source: Resumen  Latinoamericano – English