The Convenient Geographical Mistake
By Yenny Delgado
Europeans love geography, some of the most famed explorers that have sailed across the earth come from this relatively small part of the world. Through hard work and serendipity, these intrepid explorers were able to increase their commerce with kingdoms around the world. However, in 1492 something incredible happens, Columbus, an Italian man, sailed the Atlantic Ocean with one goal in mind to find an improved and faster route to India, for the much-coveted trade in spices and other items.
However, as we all know now, the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria never arrived in India. In actual fact, they were lost, hungry, and hopeless when arrived at the cost of Guanahani, in the Bahamas. Columbus and all their crew were received by the people of the island, and they quickly began to take advantage of the hospitality of the islanders. They kidnapped and enslaved people and took them to Europe as a gift for the Queen of Castile who financed Columbus trip.
The good and the bad news always spreads quickly special in small places where people were starving for food and gold. Five hundred years later thousands of Europeans crossed the ocean to the “new land” and at the same intervening time, millions of the native of the land began dying. The American dream started without the Native Americans, that dream was invented from the starving and avaricious Christians from Europe.
America continent in the world map
Named by Europeans in 1507, the America continent started a difficult process of colonization and oppression. Thus, it is important to know that the current descendant of the original inhabitants of America are not “Indians” but are actually Americans. India is a subcontinent in South Asia. 513 year later, for Euro- Americans living in the United States and Europeans, living in the “old continent,” who learn in history classes that the Native Americans are Indians this is a shame. Learning that their ancestor were great explorers but to repeat the same geographical mistake of Columbus five-century later is disturbing.
Today, we know that the earth is not flat, and we have access to the internet, GPS technology, and google maps. To maintain call us “Indias” is based a white supremacy ideology and is important to say it because is part of the dehumanization of Native Americans who resist the invasion and colonization of Europe and 500 years later still are present in their descends.
This foundational myth of discovery is often compounded by a lack of understanding of the (Native) Americans who inhabited the continent.
According to the United States Library of Congress, this is what America was like prior to the arrival of a large number of poor and uneducated Europeans eager to find gold and silver and later free and fertile land:
“Millions of people lived in an area some five times the size of Europe. In strikingly diverse habitats and climates, they developed possibly the most varied and productive agriculture in the world. Their lifestyles and belief systems differed widely, and they spoke hundreds of distinct languages.”
However, over the past 500 years, Europeans and their descendants around the world in several different languages (Spanish, English, Portuguese, German, and French) have continued to pursue a story that does not accurately reflect a past but is used to provide a basis for unnamed cruelties. The arrival of Europeans to America came at a very high price to all the original inhabitants, Americans, and this history is often consigned to the dust bin of history. Under the guise of “discovery” and “civilizing” Europeans stole land, killed our ancestors and then began to tell a story that dehumanized us as animals without a soul.
The time is now to wake up
Now with the land aching from industrialized pillaging and the original people marginalized in the society; the oppression continues. From these lies and revisionist histories that attempt to paint a myth that Americans and their descendants were ignorant and not “civilized”. We have a history of more than 5,000 years of culture, creation and agricultural innovation.
As a first step to dismantle the convenient geographic mistake of Europeans in America it is time to begin writing the real history of our continent, our resistance, our ancestral culture in order to show to the world that our ancestral memory is still alive.
