The city of Los Angeles after a year-long protests by indigenous people is a Statue of the Explorer Christopher Columbus, to remove. The result: Spain’s genocide in Latin America, heated, back to the minds.
The idea that you can supposedly look at the heroic events of the story from a different perspective – not from that of the Inferior. Just to Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of America, divorced for many years, the spirits, particularly in the Spanish-speaking world on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the United States. The trigger for the latest excitement is the decision of the city Council of Los Angeles to remove a Statue of the Navigator from a Park. About 100 onlookers and descendants of natives cheered the Abräumaktion and document it with their smart phones. Columbus was so closely associated with slavery and brutality, and to honor him with a monument, so the city Council.
Violent reactions were not long in waiting and on hold days later. On Tuesday, Bolivian President Evo tweeted Morales congratulations to the Los Angeles city Council: “I agree with him that the so-called discovery was a genocide and exploitation of the natural resources.”
Teachings from Madrid
Spain countered, as expected in a Huff to the dismantling of one of its greatest national heroes. In the daily newspaper El País brought a lead article with the historical teachings. The founding of the city of Los Angeles, and her Name had a Spanish origin. The city was founded in 1781 by a Andalusians, all the 275 years after the death of the discoverer. In the result of El País runs an Armada of Professor opinions mainly from Spain, to relativize the picture of a genocidal and brutal Columbus.
Navigator Christopher Columbus in America in the criticism, in Spain a national hero
In the framework of the festivities around the 12. October, the day of the discovery of America in 1492, in Spain, suffragan of Valladolid, Luis Javier Argüello. This event had nothing to do with a subordinate of genocide. For Argüello rather, it was “a mutual understanding” and “a coming together of the cultures meet”. The customer of this journey of discovery, the Spanish Queen Isabella, have, without exception, had integrity, and charitable motives in mind when they sent Columbus to the East.
In large Parts of Latin America, not so. Even in Spain, opinions such as these were some of the eyebrow wrinkles. But the Spanish clergy tried for over 60 years in the Vatican of the canonization of Queen Isabella, surnamed “the Catholic”. The appointment of a genocide is not as good on a resume.
Statues as instruments of the sovereignty of interpretation
“Wherever there are statues placed, or national holidays will be determined, it is a matter of the sovereignty of interpretation over the Interpretation of the facts to exercise,” says Eleonora Rohland, who teaches at the University of Bielefeld, history of the DW.
Hernán Cortés conquered the acts kenreich. In Spain, they put him a controversial monument his left foot rests on the head of an Aztec
A good example of this is the handling with the Conquistador Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of the Aztec Empire. In Mexico, he is, although he has laid the foundations for modern Mexico, highly controversial. In his birthplace, in the Village of Medellín in the South of Spain, on the other hand, is a pompous Statue of Cortés. His left foot resting on the severed head of an Aztec. 2010-smeared activists of the Statue with red paint, as an expression of the blood bath, the Cortés has done among the indigenous people of Mexico.
University Professor Eleonora Rohland rating of the current critical debate about the national role models are more likely to be positive, because many social groups were now possibilities, their political, social, cultural and economic exclusion, to denounce. “We should not be surprised, if you say: ‘wait a minute, this is your Version of the story, but not ours’,” says the historian.