美国仍然庆祝哥伦布日的真正原因

2023-10-10 12:10

The real reason America is still celebrating Columbus Day

美国仍然庆祝哥伦布日的真正原因

It is quite an accomplishment that many people in the United States and South America still manage to remember a man who was lost at sea thinking he found a route to Asia and died not knowing he arrived at a different continent. If you think about it, Columbus Day isn’t really about celebrating Christopher Columbus; it’s about celebrating what he represents in terms of power and domination of a European empire — economics, politics, society — over a population across the ocean.
在美国和南美洲，许多人仍然记得一个迷失在海上的人，他以为自己发现了通往亚洲的航线，却不知道自己到达了一个不同的大陆而死去。如果你仔细思考一下，哥伦布日并不是在庆祝克里斯托弗·哥伦布本人，而是在庆祝他所代表的欧洲帝国对跨海洋人口的经济、政治和社会的权力和统治。

Why not forget about Columbus once and for all? In France, they do not celebrate the Mexican-French war. Why would the French celebrate the fall of the French Empire? It seems like the recognition of Columbus Day is a desperate need for Americans to feel European. It’s interesting how the lives of an entire population changed for centuries just because one Italian explorer thought himself to be in South Asia.
为什么不彻底忘记哥伦布呢？在法国，他们不庆祝墨西哥-法国战争。为什么法国人要庆祝法兰西帝国的倒台呢？看起来哥伦布日的认可对美国人来说是一种迫切需要，以感受欧洲的氛围。有趣的是，一个意大利探险家自认为到达了南亚，整个人群的生活因此改变了几个世纪。

Latin American history is not as simple as Columbus Day makes it seem. It is much more complicated — you can’t equate the history of the Bahamas to that of Guatemala, Guyana or Uruguay. You cannot compare Buenos Aires with Lima or Caracas. America is much greater, braver and enlightened than one simple Oct. 12, because it had greater glories way before 1492 and built exquisite monuments and cities like the Egyptians and the Chinese did.
拉丁美洲的历史并不像哥伦布日所展示的那样简单。它要复杂得多——你不能把巴哈马的历史等同于危地马拉、圭亚那或乌拉圭的历史。你不能把布宜诺斯艾利斯与利马或加拉加斯相比较。美洲比一个简单的10月12日更伟大、更勇敢、更开明，因为在1492年之前，它就有了更伟大的辉煌，并建造了像埃及和中国一样精美的纪念碑和城市。

Columbus Day has become a political pawn positioned in American countries today to denigrate Indigenous people and to remind them that they are inferior to anything signifying European civilization. The discourse of inferiority began when Native people became “Indians” or “Indigenous.” The word “Indian” did not exist in the Americas until Columbus arrived. It is not only about the use of the word that is at stake here, but also what it signifies and the damage it has caused.
哥伦布日如今已成为美国国家中的政治棋子，用来贬低土著人民，并提醒他们自己是低人一等，不如任何代表欧洲文明的事物。这种低人一等的论调始于土著人民被称为“印第安人”或“土著人”。在哥伦布到来之前，美洲并不存在“印第安人”这个词。这里所涉及的不仅仅是词语的使用，还有它所代表的意义以及造成的伤害。

In Mexico, for instance, it can be used to denigrate Indigenous people and in turn, end up proving that Spanish imperialism remains in the everyday politics and culture of the people who inhabit the Americas. Of course, it is much more complicated than that. But this raises the question: Are Native nations and people in the contemporary American continent “Indian?”
例如，在墨西哥，它可以用来贬低土著人，并进一步证明西班牙帝国主义仍然存在于居住在美洲的人们的日常政治和文化中。当然，事情比这复杂得多。但这引出了一个问题：在当代美洲大陆，土著民族和人民是否被称为“印第安人”？

Take it from a Mixtec nobleman who asked a Spanish conqueror the name of his king and the Spaniard said: “Don Felipe de Austria.” The Mixtec nobleman replied: “Then, that is the name I will take for myself.” Mixtec noblemen and noblewomen in colonial Oaxaca refused to be inferior to the Spanish and claimed their dynasties through marriage allegiances well into the independence of Mexico. They refused to be the “Indians” Columbus claimed to have discovered. They spoke Mixtec and Spanish fluently alongside Latin, dressed in Spanish fashions, constructed palaces and kept Mixtec hieroglyphs as proof of their nobility. But people do not teach that in school today.
听一个米斯特克贵族的故事，他问一个西班牙征服者他国王的名字，西班牙人回答：“费利佩·德·奥地利。”米斯特克贵族回答：“那么，那就是我要用的名字。”在墨西哥独立时期，殖民时期的瓦哈卡的米斯特克贵族和贵族女性拒绝低人一等于西班牙人，并通过婚姻联姻来宣称他们的王朝。他们拒绝成为哥伦布所宣称的“印第安人”。他们能流利地说米斯特克语和西班牙语，还会说拉丁语，穿着西班牙时尚，建造宫殿，并保留米斯特克象形文字作为他们贵族身份的证明。但今天学校里并没有教授这些内容。

Celebrating Columbus Day takes us a few decades back and not forward into the future. I dare to say that most of modern Latin America in the 21st century is over Columbus. I once jokingly asked an Ecuadorean man why Latin America has corrupt governments and he replied: “Corruption came from Spain. The Europeans brought it.”
庆祝哥伦布日让我们回到了几十年前，而不是向未来迈进。我敢说，在21世纪的现代拉丁美洲，大多数人已经超越了哥伦布。我曾经开玩笑地问一个厄瓜多尔人为什么拉丁美洲有腐败的政府，他回答说：“腐败来自西班牙。欧洲人带来了它。”

So, at what cost do we celebrate a man whose lost voyage caused centuries of exploitation of mineral resources, conquest and slavery — let’s not forget that European expansion in America also influenced the transatlantic slave trade. Why not forget about this man once and for all?
那么，我们庆祝一个失去航行的人的代价是什么呢？这个失去航行导致了几个世纪的矿产资源开发、征服和奴隶制度的剥削，我们不要忘记欧洲在美洲的扩张也影响了跨大西洋的奴隶贸易。为什么不彻底忘记这个人呢？

If we think about it in terms of science and exploration, the Mayans were exploring the universe with their own observatories long before Columbus arrived. Columbus was looking for India, yet the Mayans were looking for the planet Venus. They modeled their architecture and reinforced their government emulating the cosmos. So why not celebrate the Mayan astronomers who found Venus? Why not celebrate the Mayan kings who used astronomy and engineering to shape politics in their kingdoms?
如果我们从科学和探索的角度来思考，玛雅人在哥伦布到来之前就用他们自己的天文台探索宇宙了。哥伦布是在寻找印度，而玛雅人则是在寻找金星。他们以宇宙为模板建造建筑，并通过天文学和工程学塑造王国的政治。那么为什么不庆祝发现金星的玛雅天文学家呢？为什么不庆祝利用天文学和工程学塑造王国政治的玛雅国王呢？

Columbus Day has become the residue of white supremacy. It is the justification of genocide. It is the justification of imperialism. It is the justification of slavery and the justification of Indigenous people’s so-called inferiority to Europeans.
哥伦布日已经成为白人至上主义的残余。它是种族灭绝的辩护。它是帝国主义的辩护。它是奴隶制度的辩护，也是对土著人民被认为比欧洲人低劣的辩护。

Honestly, such justification is quite outdated and relentlessly tiring to even bring up over the dinner table. It does not spark an interesting, cultured conversation anymore. Perhaps try something else — I suggest the current state of Latin American economies or the current president of El Salvador.
老实说，这样的辩解已经过时了，甚至在餐桌上提起也让人感到厌倦。它已经无法引发有趣、有文化的对话了。也许可以尝试其他话题——我建议讨论一下拉美经济的现状或者萨尔瓦多的现任总统。

Now, those topics are really about the future.
现在，这些话题确实是关于未来的。