KPBS On Air
Columbus From a New Perspective
May 1992
by Deanna Martin Mackey
Columbus was lost. And his navigational mistake changed the lives of America's native peoples forever. Yet in the 500 years we've celebrated Columbus's "discovery," his effect on the natives has been overlooked for the most part. Except, that is, by the people who suffered the most from European colonization -- and their descendants, who today are making sure the truth is remembered.
1492 Revisited, a KPBS production airing Monday, May 11, at 8 p.m., offers an alternative perspective on the quincentenary of Columbus's arrival. The program features provocative artwork from the exhibition Counter Colon-Ialisimo held at San Diego's Centro Cultural de la Raza. Among those interviewed are San Diego artists David Avalos and Deborah Small, as well as exhibit co-curator Patricia Chavez.
KPBS Producer Paul Espinosa says he hopes the program makes people think critically about 1492 as well as history in general.
"Whoever writes history gets to tell the story," Espinosa says. "There's a whole rethinking of how history is written in this country today. For example, what really happened at Little Big Horn in 1876 or in Dallas on November 22, 1963? The answers to those questions depends on whom you ask. And there are a lot of informed people now asking questions about 1492 and its importance for 1992."
David Avalos, assistant professor of visual arts at California State University San Marcos whose work is featured in the exhibition, says his work makes a connection between Columbus's colonization goals and the goals of the United States government to maintain super-power status. One of Avalos's pieces in the exhibit, "La Niņa and the Little Boy," is a ship made out of a woman's high-heeled shoe with a replica of the atomic bomb atop it.
"Columbus's flagship was the Santa Maria, which was destroyed here in the Americas. So he returned to Europe aboard La Niņa and he never reached the Orient," Avalos says. "But the little boy, which was the name of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, did reach the Orient.
"So, somehow, the story is interrupted but eventually it proceeds and there's this connection made by showing that the La Niņa and the Little Boy live in the same house. And it's a house that connects the world in terms of imperial power."
According to Avalos, while information about the atrocities Columbus and his men committed has been available since the 1500s, it only began to be disseminated in the 1960s, when the minority voices began to speak out and be heard.
"The thing about the quincentennial is there's no room for us," Avalos says. "There's room for a European male who ran into a continent he didn't mean to find. What you're seeing now is people saying it's time for us to have our voices heard. And we aren't going to be celebrating Columbus. Celebrating 500 years of discovery is making a tribute to the status quo. But the status quo is not capable of satisfying the current population. There are some very desperate people in the body politic who aren't ready to accept the changes in the current population. I think they not only want to celebrate 500 years they want to take us back 500 years."