I didn’t realize that today Columbus Day is being celebrated until I read the newspaper. I thought it would be next Monday when people got time off in honor of this sin vergüenza.  Although he is considered a hero to some, he is a shameless man because in his letter to Luis Santangel, the treasurer of Spain, he embellishes what he sees so he can get more money for more expeditions.  In this same letter he describes how the Indians that “he found” on the island could be enslaved.  Instead of Columbus Day, some Latinos celebrate “Día de la Raza”  which makes waaaay more sense.  Dia de la Raza in Spanish means The Day of the People.

Thinking about Columbus day, has taken me back to forty-four years ago when I was first grade.  We used to celebrate Columbus Day.  “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” lalalalala. My grade school teachers would go on and on about how CC sailed across the Atlantic and he discovered America.  Also, he met some very nice indigenous peoples. Back then, way way before the era of political correctness, the word indian was used instead of indigenous. We kids would get so happy that we were assigned to draw ugly little pictures of the three ships, la Nina, la Pinta, la Santa María.  With a crayon in my fist, I would scrawl the three galeons plus a little figure who was supposed to be Columbus; He would be on the first boat because he was the very brave man who decided to take this trip. Being a first grader who loved school,   it was exciting for me to learn who actually discovered America. It almost made me crazy to find out that in November we would get to learn about the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock and how they had a big big banquet with the Indians. The Pilgrims were responsible for Thanksgiving Day! I had not clue what Thanksgiving Day was about since I came from a Mexican family that didn’t celebrate this holiday. My older brother must have kept this information to himself and didn’t share it with my parents or me. Go figure, maybe he didn’t like turkey and all the trimmings.  Anyway, I was incredibly happy because I would get learn more about the people who “were here first.” In my six year old way of looking at things, people who were first at something had to be some kind of badasses. That is how the Columbus and the Pilgrims were to me.  There was no words spoken about Columbus almost being thrown overboard because his crew was fed up with him nor how the Pilgrims starving to death, just that they just had a very tough winter and the friendly Indians helped them.

Our teachers left out some very important information or maybe they just had no clue, or they were just teaching us the bit that they knew about CC’s landing by mistake on some little islands west of the United States.

I believed this version of history and felt kind of awkward at how I could not make a connection with this.  I thought, ”I am a US citizen, but I don’t fit into this history.  When I learned about how the Spaniards got to Arizona and the rest of the Southwest, this started to make a bit more sense.  I go home and ask my parents if we were  Spanish or Indians and my mom and dad look at each other, then turn to me and say “NO!”  in unison. But you are an Indan because you were born in Arizona.  Then, they would laugh as if it were some private joke between themselves. This just made me believe that I was not part of the family, but I didn’t care because I just loved to see Native Americans on television with head-dresses, wearing clothes made from buckskin, and riding on pinto horses. Little did I know then about misrepresentation of underrepresented groups in Hollywood.  But, I had finally made a connection with US history. This lasted for a year, until a girlfriend who is Quechan informed me that I was not an Indian, but a Mexican. I kept believing , to myself, that I was Native American and would read all the childrens’ books about Native Americans that I could. Little Blue Cornflower which was a story about a little Pueblo girl was my favorite.

Flash forward to 1992. After my divorce, I had gone back to college and enrolled in several courses in Mexican American history.  I was appalled at the one-sided version of history that had been taught to students. I remember being so angry at learning the true history of the colonization of indigenous America. The words colonial, colonies, colonizers, took a whole new violent meaning. I was so pissed off, but my anger wasn’t really directed at anyone because the men and women responsible for the upheaval of the Americas  died a long  time ago.  I felt like I was in first grade again, but this time, I had another version of history with which to deal.

On October 12, 1992 marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus bumping into indigenous America. This would initiate the violent envangelization of the people who were first here and the beginning of the hostile takeover of lands that actually belonged to someone else.  That day, students held a protest at the university I attended.  I joined them and it was exciting to hear speeches and chants. I felt that in a figurative way my anger was justified and the missing piece of my identity was found. This symbolized a circle for me from being a little kid excited because Columbus landed in America to a very angry Chicana protesting CC’s arrival to a world as old as what supposedly was uncivilized according to the European perspective.

 I choose to celebrate this day as Dia de la Raza. It is appropriate in the sense that symbolically this day commemorates the beginning of the blending of Indigenous and European blood and thus, initiating a new race of people.  As a result, several cultures, ethnic groups, registers of Spanish, and rich traditions emerge from this blend and this is very worthy of a celebration. Columbus Day? For us whose ethnicity originates from the union of Native American and Spanish blood, let’s not celebrate this day but remember to celebrate our day, “El Día de la Raza.”