Discovering Columbus

*Columbus “discovered” America the way I got lost and discovered a short-cut to the grocery store. VL

By Hector Luis Alamo, Gozamos (14 minute read)

In July 1892, the president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, issued a proclamation calling on the nation to observe the 400th anniversary of “the discovery of America by Columbus” on October 21. The President was mistaken about the day of Admiral Colón’s landing, which occurred in the Bahamas on October 12. But that wasn’t the only thing Harrison got wrong. “Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment,” his official statement read. Chicago would host the World’s Columbian Exposition a year later; a global toast to the “discoverer” of the “New World.”

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Since then people have discovered more about their favorite non-discover, convincing many that Colón’s name should be dropped from the holiday and instead replaced it with a nod to the historic victims of 1492, the approximately 50 million indigenous peoples who were already civilizing the Americas the year Colón got lost. In 1992, 100 years after Harrison’s proclamation, and five centuries after Colón’s first voyage, a group of activists in California pushed the City of Berkeley to declare October 12 “Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People,” along with designating 1992 the “Year of Indigenous People.” (South Dakota had already been celebrating “Native American Day” on October 12 for two years when Berkeley made its switch. READ MORE