Happy Dia de la Raza

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

I know I’m a day late, but I prefer Latin America’s Dia de la Raza to the U.S.’s Columbus Day.  So I did my celebrating yesterday.

From my point of view, nothing good comes from Columbus Day. It’s a symbol of a Eurocentric point of view, from where Christopher Columbus was a heroic discoverer who made the world better. Because of his “discovery” other Europeans had the opportunity to better the planet by ennobling the newly discovered savages, decimating the native culture, erasing their religion and replacing it with a crusading belief that their ways were the better ways and their faith was the true faith.

Columbus Day celebrates the beginning of an era of imposition, when we’ve come to debate ridiculous things that pass as normal newsworthy issues: immigrants are believed to be carriers of deadly diseases, our elected leaders ignore us based on our ethnicity, borders are safeguarded for fear of … what? 500 years later those ideas remain. The “other” is tolerated, accommodated but not included.

Dia de la Raza, though, is radically different. 

It isn’t about a discovery. Rather, Dia de la Raza is about an encounter of two distinct worlds – a tragic, violent, crushing encounter that resulted in the destruction of a native way of life but that also gave birth to a new people, and a new possibility. Dia de la Raza is a synthesis, a blending of opposites; a new creation that is each of the opposite parts, and both at the same time.

We’ve been involved in a ridiculous debate in this country – whether we should call ourselves Latino, or Hispanic, or some other of the many different ways that individuals in our community chose to self-identify. Ironically, that debate would be unnecessary if not for Columbus Day, because from a Dia de la Raza perspective we are all people, we’re all the same, blending and offering and absorbing the best that we have to offer.

Historical wisdom holds that the native cultures of America were wiped-out by conquering marauder/saviors. But the 21st century reality is that those cultures live-on, and thrive. I see it when I look in a mirror, I hear it in my speech when I move with ease from Spanish to English, to a blending of both and back again. I am a product of Dia de la Raza, a child of the borderlands where invented limits disappear. I was reared in a place where international divisions were an inconvenience and the differences between one side and the other were nuanced, not political.

Columbus Day is about oppression, and distinction, and division of people. Dia de la Raza is facing adversity with inventiveness, strength, resourcefulness and a sense of humor … always a sense of humor.

So forgive me if I’m not thrilled by this Columbus Day celebration that changes every year to the most convenient Monday, so federal employees can have a day off. Dia de la Raza is October 12th, always, regardless of the day. And I choose that perspective – some folks call it a cosmic point of view, that is inclusive of all of humanity, with all of its differences, in which there are no superior people or inferior people, where all are the same, dignified and whole.

Columbus Day has done enough damage. I choose to let it go.

[Photo by Michael Green/Flickr]

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