Why The Left Tells Lies About Christopher Columbus by Armando Simón for Issues and Insights
GNN Note – Thank you to my friend Dan, from DK Analytics, for bringing this to my attention. /END
or over a decade, Columbus has been painted as a mass murderer, committing all sorts of crimes in the New World, including genocide.
So far, though, he has not–at least, not yet–been accused of not providing transgender bathrooms in his ships.
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Those accusations are complete fabrications, unsupported by even one shred of historical evidence. Let me repeat that because it is very important: there is no historical basis, no contemporary documents, nothing, that indicates that he engaged in all of the “crimes” that present-day activists have promulgated. None! Zip! Nada!
The “accusations” (which often sound more like insults than rational accusations) range from the gruesome (claiming he chopped off Indians’ hands for not bringing gold or carrying out genocide—total fabrications) to the infantile (ridiculing the fact that one of his ships sunk—he was not the captain of that particular ship and they were sailing in uncharted seas abounding in hidden reefs), to the stupid (Democrat politicians and Native Americans claiming that Columbus carried out genocide in North America, where he never set foot nor sail).
Nonetheless, we can expect the usual posturing and sloganeering on Columbus Day by historically illiterate leftists and “indigenous people,” some of the latter being about as Native American as Elizabeth Warren.
One should consult primary sources (preferably in the original Spanish and not in translations): his logbook, the “Capitulations” (legal documents, also known as the “Book of Privileges”), the contemporary biographies, and especially “Los Cuatro Viajes del Almirante y su Testamento,” and, “Brevísima Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias,” both written by Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, who as every schoolchild in Spain and the Caribbean knows, was the Apostle of the Indians for working indefatigably to protect the Indians from his fellow Spaniards.
De las Casas never mentions Columbus committing any crimes, and De las Casas did not shrink from accusing anyone. On the contrary, he mentions Columbus as constantly protecting the natives from his crew and the settlers. The explorer often had trouble controlling the men under him because he was a foreigner and the Spaniards resented any foreigner ordering them; in fact, because he was a foreigner, some contemporary Spaniards even downplayed his discovery. On top of that, the natives were helpless, had gold nuggets, and the women and men were completely naked. Picture the problem.
Sometimes, the accusations/insults hurled at him are of events that occurred decades after he was dead, carried out by the Spaniards, who worked the natives to death after he was gone, to the point that, unlike the North and South American continents, no natives were left alive in any of the Caribbean islands. When he is not directly accused of committing those acts, he is accused of being responsible for them because of his discovery of the New World, which is like arguing that Henry Ford was responsible for all of the traffic accidents and the deaths from tank battles, almost a century after Ford’s death.
Furthermore, Spain was in a race with Portugal for finding a route to Asia to establish trade. Columbus’ expedition was seen as a commercial voyage, which at the very least would hopefully pay for itself, if not actually be lucrative. The discovered islands were henceforth seen as trading posts and as stepping stones to Asia. His first voyage cost relatively little compared to the massive expenditures of subsequent voyages (huge supplies had to be sent because the climate and the land were not conducive to raising European crops; additionally, hundreds died from yellow fever; Columbus himself was stricken). This explains the preoccupation with finding gold. Fortunately for Spain, Cuba and Hispaniola had gold.
