October 12, 1492 - NOT "Happy Columbus Day" by any stretch of the imagination!

This was a period when mind boggling genocides prevailed simultaneously in Europe and the new world, later named "America."  Ferdinand and Isabella went haywire in Spain during the "Reconquista" (simply put, the deadly Inquisition of 780 years across Europe in the middle ages at the behest of the Catholic Church) ordering torture and forced conversion or exile of Muslims and Jewish subjects and also supporting and financing Columbus's 1492 voyage that led to the opening of the "new world" followed by decades (if not centuries) of bloodbath.


Columbus's sail ship, Santa Maria - here come the killers!
Source of image above:  ht youth



Image on the right: Christopher Columbus.
Source:  Daily Kos - "Columbus and The Legacy of Genocide."  

This man wasn't a 'navigator' nor an 'explorer.'  He was an accomplished freebooter, a rover.


Quoting below from Facebook's AK Press Timeline

QUOTE -
It seems there are still some people out there who celebrate Columbus Day. If you happen to know any of them, please share this description from Bartolome de las Casas of the sort of "civilized and heroic" behavior Columbus brought to the "new" world: 
 
"And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, 'Boil there, you offspring of the devil!' Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim's neck, saying, "Go now, carry the message," meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them...."
UNQUOTE -

The above is an excerpt from:
Bartoleme de Las Casas, Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies. (1542)


Quoting excerpts as follows from Daily Kos - Columbus and The Legacy of Genocide
 
QUOTE -
October 12th is Columbus day, a day which is increasingly coming under criticism for celebrating a genocidal pirate, murderer, rapist and enslaver who is credited with the "discovery" of the Western Hemisphere.

Genocide expert David Stannard has asserted that, beginning in 1492 with Columbus, Europeans collectively killed between 70 million to 100 million Indigenous People (within 80 years). In his book American Holocaust, Stannard calls this "the largest ongoing holocaust in the history of humanity." The consequences of this Indigenous Holocaust were world-changing: 95% of Indigenous People were killed by European actions, 100% of Indigenous lands were stolen, and European-descent people became the most prosperous people on the planet.

Spain was the perfect place for pirate and slave-trader Christopher Columbus to go as he looked for financial backing for further naval exploitations. In 1492, Spain was an environment hot with the fervor of Holy Wars against Muslims and the expulsions of Jews out of Spain.
UNQUOTE -

If you respect humanity, then do not call it "Happy Columbus Day" .... and just send it around.