My First True History Lesson
It's Monday night while I write this. I am, with great reverence, but also in the quiet safety of my home in San Francisco, holding indigenous people across the globe in my heart, spirit and mind. I'm also still reeling from the complete horror that was the second presidential debate last night. The greedy, white supremacist, imperialist and patriarchal chickens have come home to roost in America.
As someone who comes from a peoples that were colonized by Europeans, amongst many other groups, I'm glad to see the shift in discourse about Christopher Columbus over time in America. Growing up, on TVs and in classrooms, I was told the tall tale of Columbus. As a kid, the curriculum, the teachers, the textbooks all spread the farce of a "great" Conquistador who "discovered" America. It wasn't until my teenage years, and outside of formal education systems, that I got a dose of reality; that I became horrified to know that an alleged hero really just got lost and then proceeded to commit genocide against groups of people that were open and generous to him and his lost crew.
In an earlier Tunesdays post, I wrote about some of the challenges and blessings of holding multiple identities, multiple cultures. One major blessing is perspective. Said perspective was most salient one fateful family dinner during middle school.
In middle school, I remember having a full year of American history and a full year of world history. I remember that, even then, I thought it was absurd to study my nation's history for a full year and everyone else's for that same amount of time. I remember feeling sad, small and left out when the history of the Philippines was relegated to a few-page chapter in a text book that was mostly centered around about Magellan "discovering" us and the United States "saving" us from Spain. I remember feelings of admiration and wonder when it came to the Conquistadors. In hindsight, that makes me ill to my core but, at the time, I was taught that they were great, brave explorers discovering the globe. In text books and curricula, the Conquistadors were made to sound like idols, like saviors, to the world beyond Europe. Had it not been for my parents and their very strong feelings about thinking critically, I might have gone several years more before I came to know the truth.
So there I am, a middle school student, probably still in my practice clothes from whatever sport was in-season at the time. The usual family dinner questions are being asked. How was school? How was practice? What did you learn in school today?
I ask myself: What did I learn in school today?
I respond: Ooh, I learned about the Conquistadors!
Parents: Oh yeah? What did you learn about them?
Me: I learned about how they traveled the world discovering new lands!
Parents: That's what they told you, huh?
Me: Yup!
Parents: Did they teach you what happened to Magellan?
Me: Uhhh. Um. I think he died? While he was exploring?
Parents: He died in the Philippines.
Me: Yeah, yeah. That's right. That was in our textbook.
Parents: Did your textbook say how he died?
Me: Um. I don't remember.
Parents: We killed him.
Me: What?! OMG. Why! Why would we do that?
Parents: Well, because he was stealing from us. Him and his crew killed men, women and children. They did terrible things to the Pilipino people.
I sat in stunned silence. The kind of silence that befalls you when you've been woken up abruptly, yet importantly, from a deep sleep. I was awake. I was alarmed. I was processing.
It took me a minute to really sort my thoughts and feeling but, in the end (and after my stomach was done turning from valorizing imperialists, colonizers and thieves that habitually stole from indigenous people), I came to understand the importance of how history is told, who gets to tell it and how that can shape our understanding of current affairs; how is shapes our understanding of ourselves.
This was my very first, the first of many, true history lessons courtesy of Mama and Papa Samala.
Below is a remixed song of Luzmila Carpio's. She's a Bolivian singer who performs in Spanish and Quechua. She was also Bolivia's ambassador to France from 2006 to 2010.
