Cinfici Is Quoted in a Reading Eagle Article on Reading’s Columbus Monument

           I was quoted as a historian in yesterday’s article in the Reading Eagle on a proposal to remove the Christopher Columbus monument from Reading’s City Park: https://www.readingeagle.com/news/local/reading-resident-wants-christopher-columbus-statue-removed-from-city-park/article_40f5818a-b724-11ea-94fb-af2e95792b60.html.

            I noted Columbus’ accomplishment of joining two worlds together and its significance of exchanging goods, ideas and knowledge and providing the opportunity for friendship and that the monument was intended to affirm the equality of immigrants who have faced prejudice, not for events that took place later for which the discovery is blamed.  Indeed, the article notes how xenophobic nativists protested the monument when it was placed in 1925, paid for by local Italian-Americans and sculpted by an Italian artist.  The upkeep up the statue has been performed by the Columbus Day Committee, which is made up of Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Parish (an Italian national church), whose Pastor founded it in 1956, and other Italian organizations.

            As I have noted in posts every year on Columbus Day, but was only implicit in the article because of space limitations, Columbus truly did discover the Western Hemisphere, as one need not be the first to uncover something to be credited with its discovery, which thus does not slight the Native Americans who first crossed the land bridge with Asia during the Ice Age.  His observations that led him to theorize that an inhabited landmass inhabited by Asiatic people were nearer to Europe than known.  Although Columbus was incorrect that it meant the world was smaller and that Asia was closer, his primary scientific theory was correct that there was an inhabited landmass inhabited by Asiatic people closer to the Eastern Hemisphere, which he accomplished with only a clock and a compass.  He is also credited with the scientific discoveries that the Northern and north magnetic poles are not in the same location and that the Earth is not perfectly spherical.  Columbus’ outstanding skills as a navigator allowed him not only to reach the New World, but to bridge the two hemispheres permanently, as no one had previously done, as he was able to sail back to his home port and return to the New World. 

            Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain financed Columbus’ expedition with the goal of trade and spreading the Faith, which was Spanish national policy.  Columbus was also motivated by commerce and regarded spreading Christianity as his mission.  When he made contact with the Native Americans, the aboriginal peoples of the Western Hemisphere reacted either peacefully, or by running away or in a hostile manner, to which Columbus and his Spanish crew did not react.  He ordered his crew not to harm the friendly Natives or to exploit sexually their women, who did not wear clothing.  Columbus founded a colony on the island of Hispaniola, but when he returned on his second voyage, he found its inhabitants had all been slaughtered.  His critics judge him harshly by present standards and blame his discovery for all of the diseases that were exchanged, as happens whenever there is contact between two peoples when one of them does not have immunity, and for cruelties inflicted by the Spanish, which were against the wishes of Isabella.  Columbus’ critics credulously believe all of the allegations that his Spanish rivals in the New World later made against him, without any appreciation of the arrival of Western Civilization and Christianity to the Western Hemisphere and the ideals that developed more fully from them of equality and liberty, among the many benefits of the reuniting of the two worlds, in contradiction of the critics’ claim of tolerance of cultures and blaming of the discovery for the diminishment of Native American culture in some places.  It is typical when two cultures come into contact that the more technologically advanced culture dominates, as the less advanced culture adopts much or all of the more advanced culture while anything regarded as worthy of conservation is retained and perhaps even picked up by the more advanced culture.  In accusing Columbus of “genocide” because of disease and because some of the Native tribes lost military conflicts with the Spanish and because of the cruelties, these critics also ignore how the European migrants to America rescued certain Native tribes from genocide by other tribes from cannibalism or human sacrifice.  As I have posted before, commemorating Columbus does not denigrate Native Americans, who are properly honored by the United States at Thanksgiving for their friendship with the English settlers at Plymouth.  The accomplishments of Native American culture and the contributions of the many millions of Native Americans throughout the Western Hemisphere ought to be appreciated throughout the Americas.

           As I have noted in previous posts, the effort to commemorate Columbus Day as a federal holiday was led by an Irish-American Priest who had founded the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, to refute the advancement of the Leif Erikson legend to minimize Columbus’ accomplishments, by the Ku Klux Klan and other Nativists who are prejudiced against Catholics and Southern and Eastern Europeans.  The minimization of Columbus’ accomplishments is based upon negative stereotypes about such people and Italians particularly and furthers those stereotypes.  For example, the claims that Columbus’ discovery was accidental or that he was “lost” invoke the stereotype of Italians as less intelligent than Northern Europeans.  The point that America would not have come to its present existence but for its discovery by Southern European Catholics was intended to acknowledge the contributions of all immigrants and to welcome them, based on the American Creed, the foundational belief of America which holds that because all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, they are equally free and independent.