Celebrating Columbus Day

Dear readers and fellow bloggers:

Good morning. Today we celebrate Columbus Day in the USA, a holiday remembering the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the New World on October 12, 1492, in a spot supposedly in Bahamas. During our childhood in Uruguay, we celebrated this holiday too in our schools and workplaces. Moreover, as proud Italian-Americans, we rejoiced in the fact that “one of own” got that distinction.

In the picture above, Gian Luca is posing in front of the most beautiful Bay of Naples…Nápule!!!!

We know that during the past few decades there has been a strong revisionist movement to erase this holiday from the calendar due to the terrible exploitation and even extermination of the various groups of Native Americans by the conquering Europeans. Eduardo Galeano, the late Uruguayan writer, wrote one of the best accounts of that genocide in Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina.

In an October 10, 2021 article in the Retropolis section of The Washington Post, Ronald G. Shafer wrote: “The first national Columbus Day was proclaimed in 1892 by Republican President Benjamin Harrison to celebrate the 4000th anniversary of Italian-born explorer Christopher Columbus supposed discovery of America…But for Harrison, it served another purpose: to help resolve a diplomatic crisis with Italy – and gain support among Italian-American voters – after rioters in New Orleans lynched 11 Italian immigrants the year before.” Clouded by the acerbic political discourse of our divided citizenry, the issue of whether to keep this holiday or not has taken inflammatory tones. At present there are several Italian- American organizations that demand a more nuanced approach.

Let us be crystal clear on this subject. We feel extremely proud of not only being Italian- Americans, but also being fluent speakers and readers of the marvelous language of Dante Alighieri, practicing the cultural parameters of the peninsula and even holding Italian passports, as the citizenship via Jus Sanguinis was bestowed upon us by our grandfather Morizio and our grandmother Yolanda.