More protest parade than march

The Colorado branch of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and its allies took to the streets here on Oct. 6 for the annual Four Directions march. The march has four starting points, one from each direction, and proceeds to a central point.

Groups in town for Four Directions march stayed to protest Columbus Day parade. Photo: Richard Myers

The four directions symbolize all the peoples of the Earth and where everything comes from.

This year’s Four Directions march was again strong, with hundreds participating. The difference this year was that the Transform Columbus Day Alliance (TCDA) was calling for people to spend the night in a park across from the Colorado State Capitol.

The Transform Columbus Day Alliance has been protesting the Columbus Day holiday since 1989. Its website says that, “The Transform Columbus Day Alliance is an international coalition of over 80 social justice organizations who are committed to challenging traditional ethnocentric views of Columbus as pioneer and sole discoverer of the Americas, and that he, as well as colonial powers, should be celebrated for 512 years of invasion, cruelty, oppression, and cultural imperialism.”

The alliance set up a camp called Camp Colorow, named for a chief of the White River Ute. Chief Colorow led the resistance of the Ute against white settlers.

Colorado AIM got permission from the original Indigenous inhabitants of the area to stay overnight so there could be teach-ins and an inclusive environment for people to learn, and so that the next morning the TCDA and other groups could protest the Columbus Day parade.

The parade is nothing more than a celebration of colonialism and imperialism. To challenge it is to challenge not only the colonizers’ version of history but current and future imperialist endeavors.

The challenge to the racist Columbus Day parade was a success. More people protested the holiday than participated in the parade. It was so sparsely attended that organizers had to fill it out with an endless procession of SUVs, limousines, Humvees and even a petroleum tanker truck.

If there was any doubt as to who the organizers are who hold on to celebrating a slave trader and mass murderer, this year’s parade made it very clear. The parade ended with billboards denouncing gay marriage and abortion rights. The petroleum truck was at the end of the parade as well.

The Catholic priest Bartolomé de Las Casas, who in 1508 visited the Caribbean island the Spanish called Hispaniola, where the Taíno people had flourished before Columbus, wrote in his multivolume “History of the Indies”: “There were 60,000 people living on this island [when I arrived], including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over 3 million people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this?”

Children are fed lies about Columbus. Many children at the parade had puzzled looks on their faces. Perhaps they were wondering, “If Columbus was a hero, why do so many protest him?” They may grow up to detest the man and the holiday.

The most vile, racist, right-wing conservatives tout Columbus as a hero. They have no issue with colonialism or imperialism but are champions of capitalist production and all the ills that come with it. Columbus—Cristóbal Colón—was interested in riches. The current robber barons are interested in profits above human life, above all else.

The celebration has nothing to do with Italian pride. In this period of increased imperialist war and plunder and neoliberal economic policies, the fight to abolish Columbus (Colonizer) Day is gaining more importance.