Christopher Quotes
In a House debate in 1923 on the Nordic or Latin discovery of America, Congressman Summers of Washington asked Italian-American Congressman La Guardia to yield to ask whether or not Christopher Columbus had come from "your country."
Genocide generally means the intentional destruction and elimination of a people. In the case of Columbus and the Spanish Conquistadors, they thought little of the lives of the indigenous people of the New World, but they wanted them for slaves to extract the gold and silver. They wiped out several peoples, mostly as a result of the communicable diseases (mainly smallpox) they brought from Europe for which the South Americans had little or no immunity. Also the size of the invasion forces (the Spanish) was relatively small. The size in land and number of people who they invaded was huge. The Spanish were the worst of the European empires from the point of view of the native colonized people. And Columbus was the trigger. So Chavez has a point in castigating Columbus and the Spanish but, typically, and like many politicians, his oratory lacked the precision of total accuracy.
This quotation gives a very good example of “street wisdom” which is believed by large proportions of the Arab societies but which has no iota of truth. In America we have Urban legends—just as absurd—but believed by many street people anyway.
