A Statue of Columbus was Replaced in Argentina... and that affects us, how?

Welcome to Lots of Dots and Spots - lots of links in this one....

There was a morning in Salamanca, Spain in May when our group visited its massive cathedral. It was one of the few places I knew about prior to that trip from having heard stories from my friend Matthew, a former Jesuit, who studied there. Taking in the opulence of the sanctuary, seeing the sections for the Haves and the Have Nots, I wasn't prepared for my own sense of dis-ease. I felt sick, anxious... a case of the heebeegeebees, as my dad named it. I finally left the building while the others toured. 

Eight summers before, while in Pricilla Long's (life-changing) writing workshop at the Taos Summer Writer's Workshop*, I met artist and activist Maurus Chino, a native of Acoma, a pueblo 60 miles west of Albuquerque. (Photo from 2015 with him at the Santa Fe Flea Market.) He'd won a scholarship to that conference to work on his treatise on removing statues of the conquistadors in New Mexico. Before that week with Maurus, I saw past a monument of Onate or Pizarro. It just didn’t occur to me that there was something off about memorializing killers. (Duh!) I’m pretty sure that my unconsciousness was in part due to our history books omitting the part that those men, who towns are named for, were the Attilla, the Hitler, or the Bush of their time.  because they brought the Christian word to the people of the Southwest, Mexico and South America.

Replacing a statue of Columbus with one of native Juana Azurduy,  a Bolivian Independence Leader, (which looks just a little like John Travolta,) is no small victory for those who understand the legacy of opression. Knowing Maurus’ work, it was hard won. It’s whatever it took a century later to get (the promise of) reparation for slavery, or decades later returning art stolen by Nazis. It’s not the actual statue, money or art. It’s not the apology. It’s the acknowledgement. 

For me today, seeing this article about the removal of the statue, it's a reminder to wonder, what am I looking past? It’s about the sign I see from the Edens, Never Again is Now. 

p.s. This dining room, where our watercolor group ate breakfast a couple mornings this past May, was Ferdinand's summer palace... where discussions of the new world surely happened and obviously, the riches his armies brought back festooned.

*Now called the UNM Summer Writer's Workshop with this year's move to Santa Fe. If you want to write, if you've been working on a short story or a whole novel, GO! My week in Priscilla's class gave me confidence and structure. And every workshop leader since, each a much published author,  has added practical writing tools to my toolbox. I so recommend this writing experience.