Dia de la Hispanidad, Columbus Day and Indigenous Resistance Day: The cultural battle over October 12th in Latin America

Source: https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/junior-report/20181008/452177539852/12-octubre-dia-hispanidad-fiesta-nacional-espana.html

By: Mathilde Aupetit

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the KCL Latin American Society or El Cortao.

“In Spain, October 12th is called the discovery of America. In Mexico, we call it the bleeding of America” (Chiapas Support Committee, 2019). October 12th is the day that Christopher Columbus’ caravels sighted American land in 1492. However, it was not until the middle of the 20th century that this date began to stand out on the calendar. What many in Spain called ‘Dia de la Hispanidad’, or ‘Dia de la Raza’ has been questioned for years in Latin America, where the day is about seeking a new meaning that highlights the struggle of the indigenous peoples who survived the conquest, and who form a significant part of Latin America’s population and history. 

In this respect, an important number of Latin American countries changed the name of ‘Dia de la Raza’ by denominations in favor of cultural diversity (Vincent, 2018). A former mayor of Madrid made the decision to celebrate October 12th in Spain, and this day was turned into a national day both for Spain and Latin America by the president of the Ibero-American Union, Faustino Rodríguez San Pedro. He christened it ‘Columbus Day’ in an attempt ‘externalize the spiritual bond existing between the discovering and civilizing Nation and those formed on American soil’ (“Fiesta de la Raza | Día de la Raza,” n.d.). 

The origin of the controversy

In recent decades, there has been a stirring controversy surrounding this celebration. On the one hand, the concept of ‘discovery of America’ has been questioned, since, in the opinion of its detractors, it can be considered that America was discovered at the time when its first settlers, that is to say, indigenous people (Josephy and Hoxie, 1993) or Africans (Van Sertima, 1976), arrived on the continent, approximately 14,000 years ago, much earlier than Columbus himself. 

On the other hand, although the arrival of Europeans in America is frequently seen as a moment of cultural knowledge and exchange, it also means the beginning of the colonization of the continent, of a war against the original indigenous people from the region, of the imposition of the Christian religion on the autochthonous ones and, to a great extent, a subjugation of the identity traits of the original inhabitants compared to those imported from Europe (Bigelow and Peterson, 1998; Stevenson, 1992). The detractors of the celebration of this day even point out that it was the arrival of Europeans to America that caused the demographic collapse that occurred among indigenous people and that wiped out around 90% of the population, as authors such as Crosby, Dobyns, Larsen and Merbs (Crosby, 1976; Dobyns, 1993; Larsen, 1994; Merbs, 1992) have written. Among the causes of this humanitarian disaster would be the epidemics carried by the conquerors, against which the indigenous peoples had not developed biological defences, as well as massacres led by the settlers against indigenous people (Ibidem). This is why several American countries have been replacing this festival with others more in line with their indigenous cultural identity. 

Historical perspective

After some attempts in the Second Spanish Republic, it was not until almost the sixties when the dictatorship changed its name to ‘Día de la Hispanidad’. “It is the traditional desire of the Spanish people to see the anniversary of the discovery of America annually and solemnly commemorated. No other feat reaches such greatness”, reads the decree of the Franco regime dated January 10th 1958 (García Sebastiani and Marcilhacy, 2017). In 1981, the Government of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo approved the name ‘Dia de la Raza’. Still, in 1987, during the government of Felipe González, a law established October 12th as the Day of the National Holiday of Spain (Ibidem). In Latin America, however, ‘Columbus Day’ was maintained until the next century. In the wave of leftist governments, with the rise of Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, the questioning over the power and Western-centrism associated with the name of this celebration started to grow.

Thus, for some communities and political parties, October 12th was turned into a celebration in favour of those who survived the conquest that began that day. As a result, some Latin American countries began to change the name of this celebration, in order to decolonize its meaning, and a decolonization of the language was employed to characterize October 12th and turn it into their day, instead of remaining a celebration which was imposed on them. 

From Argentina to Nicaragua: several meanings for plural postcolonial realities

In Argentina, former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner changed the ‘Day of the Race’ to the ‘Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity’. Former president Rafael Correa decreed that in Ecuador, the day would be renamed ‘Day of Interculturality and Plurinationality’. The governments of Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela called it ‘Day of Indigenous Resistance’, and Morales in Bolivia renamed it ‘Day of Decolonisation’. In Peru, they celebrate the ‘Day of Indigenous Peoples and Intercultural Dialogue’. In 1994, Costa Rica had already begun to commemorate October 12th as ‘Day of Cultures’, “alluding to its multi-ethnic social and cultural composition” of the country, explains Contreras. In Chile, a law passed in the year 2000 modified the name to ‘Day of Meeting of Two Worlds’. These different names emphasize the lead taken by Latin American nations and indigenous people from Latin America to bring their own colonial heritage back into their hands, and cut their colonial ties from Spain, still without forgetting about their colonial past. This reappropriation, from a language to a cultural appropriation, clearly places Latin America on the path to become a postcolonial nation and to detach itself from dependency from European colonization. 

However, not all of Latin America has joined in this change. Colombia, Panama and El Salvador maintain the name ‘Race Day’. However, dozens of states and cities are eliminating this celebration and replacing it with names that honor the native peoples. For its part, Brazil does celebrate its national holiday on October 12th, but under the name Day of Our Lady Aparecida, patron saint of the country, or Children’s Day. It is the only country in Latin America that celebrates a religious festival on this date, which has nothing to do with the arrival of Columbus. Indeed, the colonization left significant wounds in the indigenous population, who, if they did not convert to their religion, would be killed by the Portuguese (del Carmen Alanís Figueroa et al., 2020; Iglesias, 2012).

Language as a powerful tool for modern colonialism?

Colonization, says Mignolo, persists in language, in social relations, in the hierarchies and subordinations that control the continent and that are governed by a certain ‘pigmentocracy’, that is a social stratification based on skin colour, by Eurocentrism (Mignolo, 1992). Even if language seems to be an abstraction, it does influence perception. It contributes to diffuse Eurocentric knowledge and ideas and also have the power to invisible other ‘subaltern’ realities through censorship. In this sense, the October 12th celebration lends itself to the same rhetoric of winning a war and perpetuating, as Spain does, by calling it Hispanic Day, this model of pride denying reality. 

In this respect, the example of the ‘Dia de la Raza’ or ‘Dia de la Hispanidad’ is an illustration of how the use of language contributes to conveying and perpetuating an idea of domination, even though colonization in the meaning it had in the 15th century, when Christopher Colombus discovered the Americas, is no longer the same. Changing the purpose of this day enabled Latin America to in a sense ‘reconquer’ its own identity and end this ‘cultural’ battle, which is actually way more than just cultural. 

This process of colonization and decolonization through language is exemplified in Quijano’s work about ‘Colonial power’ (Quijano, 2000) which illustrates the link between linguistic practices and the use of a specific colonial vocabulary, such as race, or ethnicity, to convey a colonial and racialized vision of native Latin American peoples. Quijano emphasizes the dehumanization of indigenous people, as well as their alienation behind the word ‘race’ and through the adoption of Spanish as part of a shared colonial language. The ‘Dia de la Raza’ is an illustration of this language coloniality as it blurs each indigenous massacred and indigenous individualities in a single term ‘race’, and invisibilized one side of the colonization by showing only the Spanish side of it. 

Therefore, as we can see from this analysis, it was time for a reappraisal of the ‘Dia de la Raza’. This reappraisal is now what should be celebrated, in the sense that it also celebrates creativity and use of the Spanish language against its initial colonial aim. Indeed, native Latin American peoples have achieved a paradigm shift from the ethnocentric celebration of October 12th by using the Spanish language as a ‘decolonization’ tool against the still colonial Spanish institution. The defenders of this paradigm shift maintain that, in this way, a celebration that many might consider offensive and Eurocentric can be replaced by another that is inclusive and that also addresses the vision of the ethnic groups and cultures that suffered so many abuses as a result of the remembered event.

Originally from France, Mathilde is currently a MPhil Student in Latin American Studies at Cambridge University. Before her MPhil, she completed a BA in International Relations at King’s College London, with a focus in Latin America, which sharpened her interest in the region. She is especially interested in Latin American identity politics and minorities integration.

Bibliography 
Bigelow, B., Peterson, B., 1998. Rethinking Columbus: the next 500 years. Rethinking Schools.

Chiapas Support Committee, C.S., 2019. In Spain they call October 12th the discovery of America; in Mexico we call it the bleeding of America. Chiapas Support Comm. URL https://chiapas-support.org/2019/10/18/in-spain-they-call-october-12-the-discovery-of-america-in-mexico-we-call-it-the-bleeding-of-america/ (accessed 11.6.20).

Crosby, A.W., 1976. Virgin soil epidemics as a factor in the aboriginal depopulation in America. William Mary Q. Mag. Early Am. Hist. 289–299.

Dobyns, H.F., 1993. Disease transfer at contact. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 22, 273–291.

Fiesta de la Raza | Día de la Raza [WWW Document], n.d. URL http://www.filosofia.org/ave/001/a220.htm (accessed 11.6.20).

García Sebastiani, M., Marcilhacy, D., 2017. Celebrating the Nation: October 12th, from ‘Day of the Race’to Spanish National Day. J. Contemp. Hist. 52, 731–763.

Josephy, A.M., Hoxie, F.E., 1993. America in 1492: The world of the Indian peoples before the arrival of Columbus. Vintage.

Larsen, C.S., 1994. In the wake of Columbus: Native population biology in the postcontact Americas. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 37, 109–154.

Merbs, C.F., 1992. A new world of infectious disease. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 35, 3–42.

Mignolo, W., 1992. La colonización del lenguaje y de la memoria: complicidades de la letra, el libro y la historia. Discursos Sobre Inven. América 183–220.

Quijano, A., 2000. Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. Int. Sociol. 15, 215–232.

Stevenson, M., 1992. Columbus and the war on indigenous peoples. Race Cl. 33, 27–45.

Van Sertima, I., 1976. They came before Columbus: The African presence in ancient America. African classicals.

Vincent, J., 2018. Decolonizing Columbus Day in the Americas [WWW Document]. Cult. Trip. URL https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/articles/decolonizing-columbus-day-in-the-americas/ (accessed 11.6.20).