Dia de la Raza

First time in a while I get to write something about history and culture, so I will take this opportunity to do so, while i have the motivation.

In America, we call it Columbus Day. In other countries, it is known as Dia de la Raza or Day of the Race. Race, in this case being a created one, with the mixtures of European Spanish and indigenous Indian peoples.

Dia de la Raza is celebrated on October 12th and commemorates the founding of the Americas by Columbus. I don’t even want to get into who found what first, as that can of worms can take up a book. What is interesting is the celebration in itself. Talk about a mixture of pride and anger.

When Columbus first arrived in the Americas he sent word to Spain of what he found and the people he encountered. Columbus forcibly took native peoples to serve as interpreters and guides to help him explore the new world he found.

Upon Columbus arrival in the Americas, there were approximately 200 million natives. By the time James Town was settled, between 5 and 8 million Native Americans had survived. Leaders, healers, teachers, warriors had all been decimated in settlements, villages and cities thought the new world. What the American colonists first encountered was the remnants of what was left, after the ravages of different diseases to a greater extent and guns and hard labor to a lesser, on the native peoples .

Growing up in San Antonio, I don’t really remembering celebrating Dia de la Raza, or even hearing much about it. Granted, I believe in terms of San Antonio, there is a filter somewhere around the Alamo. When something of culture, breezes in from the south, it looses its consistency, gets broken down and is further diluted the farther north it travels, until eventually it is merely an echo or even a rumor of an echo.

Looking back on the event, with 21st century eyes, it is almost incredulous that a person would consider “finding” something that already had native peoples, with a culture of it’s own, although, obviously, much weaker militarily and various degrees less advanced technologically.
However what interests me, are the mixed emotions of such a day. On one hand, such great tragedy swept down on so many people. Cultures became extinct, because the cultural bearers, the keepers of traditions, died off and took what they knew with them. This is a story not unlike others in human history. However, it certainly is different in its size and scope.

On the other hand a whole new culture emerged. The Spanish knowingly and unknowingly created all manner of horrors. Native peoples were subjugated and held the lowest rung on the social ladder. Although, it could be said that they had some type of position, compared to their counterparts to in the north. There was disagreement and debate among the Spanish, if they were doing the right thing. They wanted the native peoples to know the word of God, even if they considered the natives as wild children scattered upon the land and needing a firm paternal hand. It certainly helped that the “children” also sat upon priceless amounts of gold and silver.
Are people treated as children better off than those merely slaughtered? Is it better to be killed off by your conquerors, or is it better to be forced into marriage with them? I suppose that moral quandary is best settled in a debate with ones own soul.

Indeed it is perplexing for the celebrants of Dia de la Raza, in many cases to be a mixture of conquered and conquerors, descendants of native and European peoples. As well, in an odd way, it is a time to mourn and celebrate for cultures that died and for cultures that came into existence and that for the lack of the later, many of us would not be here to enjoy or mourn, as the case may be.