Would “Vespucci Day” be better than “Columbus Day”?

Today is Columbus Day, a holiday throughout most of the Americas and generally commemorated as a day of Italian pride and heritage. Though Columbus was certainly one of the most important European explorers to land in the western hemisphere, his legacy has had a dark side based on his exploitation of indigenous peoples and passiveness towards genocide of the natives. Mary Annette Pember- a Native American journalist- notes how celebrations of Columbus Day in the U.S. “cunningly twist the facts” in an attitude that dismisses Native American “grievances as political correctness gone awry.” Jamaica Observer columnist Franklin Knight takes a more tempered view though he acknowledges that Columbus was “an arrogant and persistent dreamer” who “was neither singularly bold nor uniquely adventurous for his day and age.” Maegan at Vivirlatino cites an organization called “Transform Columbus Day” that “rejects the celebration of Christopher Columbus and his legacy of domination, oppression, and colonialism.”

The reality is that it is very difficult to extricate the positive myths surrounding Christopher Columbus from the American psyche. To replace Columbus Day with a holiday celebrating indigenous peoples would be “akin to asking for a sea of change in the national psychology,” as Pember noted. Nonetheless, I propose renaming Columbus Day in favor of Italian explorers whose contributions were not as tainted as Christopher Columbus (who may not have been Italian by birthright). A case could be made for cartographer and explorer Amerigo Vespucci, whose name gave birth to calling the western hemisphere “America.” Why not Antonio Pigafetta who was one of a handful of survivors from Ferdinand Magellan’s famed voyage around the world between 1519 and 1522 or Giovanni da Verrazano- the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America. Surely a strong case could be made for Giovanni Caboto (more commonly known as John Cabot) who was Genoa-born and lays claim to being the first European explorer to set foot on the North American mainland since the Vikings. These gentlemen are not only sources of Italian pride but also beacons of discovery and exploration whose legacies carry far less of a stigma than Christopher Columbus.

Links- Wikipedia, BBA Communications, Thinkquest, Order Sons of Italy in America, Transform Columbus Day, Salt Lake Tribune, Jamaica Observer, Vivirlatino

Image- colindavies.net (Statue of Christopher Columbus in Pontevedra, Portugal)

Tags- Italy, Latin America, Amerindians, history