Remembering anachronisms

My historical education in many of the Latin American countries where I've lived focused on pre-Columbian Latin America and its colonization until I attended the sixth grade world culture class in Bogota, Colombia.  In primary school in El Salvador, I painted pictures (and stuck cotton balls to the sails) of La Niña, La Pinta and La Santa María, the caravels that Christopher Columbus used to sail to America and discover the Ghanaian Island. In elementary school, we learned of the major pre-Columbian American tribes, the Mayan calendars, the Incan plantation and the Aztec conflicts. As I became older, my knowledge of the course of history got deeper but not particularly critical. My history and heritage were defined and shaped by colonialism, as it was the European in me that had given me significance. During my youth in Latin America, Columbus Day, or the Day of Race (Día de la Raza) as it is called in most countries, was understood as a day to celebrate the commencement of a long period of cultural fusion.

To an extent, the large holes in my education and understanding of colonialism were due to a generational gap. In both the United States and Latin America (and at Tufts, to the dismay of those who have Monday seminars), Columbus Day is understood more as a day of remembrance and not celebration. Likewise, in both the United States and Latin America, dressing up as pilgrims and Native Indians with colored paper cutouts no longer seems very appropriate. I am unsure of why we did this in my kindergarten as I would never describe the Spanish colonizers as “pilgrims” (neither did they wear bonnets), but that is beside the point. Even the gluing of cotton balls on crayon-painted caravels may be pushing it too.

In 1994, the United Nations renewed its policy and declared Aug. 9 to be the International Day of Indigenous People. Since then many countries in Latin America, like recent movements in the United States, have followed suit. In 2002, Venezuela changed the name of the holiday to Day of Indigenous Resistance (Día de la Resistencia Indigena), Chile recognizes it as Day of the Discovery of Two Worlds (Día del Descubrimiento de Dos Mundos) and perhaps more problematically Argentina celebrates the Day of Respect of Cultural Diversity (Día del Respeto a la Diversidada Cultural). Still, the 500 years of erasure of the realities of colonialism are hard to take back with a day of commemoration.

While symbolic advances are being made and the public perception is shifting, problems remain. Many South American countries, Argentina for instance, experienced colonialism in a similar way to the United States, through the replacement of the natives. Most countries, and even significant portions of Argentina outside of the capital Buenos Aires, experienced colonialism through cultural and intellectual erasure.

Like my education on indigeneity, natives in Latin America remain a relic of the past. Indigenous populations are isolated as anachronisms, attached to a culture and a “way of life” that is incompatible with the rest of the European-influenced Latin American lifestyle. The heritage of a majority of Latin Americans as mestizos is negated.