Over at one of the other blogs for which I write occasionally, The CAC Review, you can read a story of how a dealer wrote to me (oddly enough in my capacity as the current, soon to be former, editor of Kacike) advertising various Taino artifacts for sale that were removed from the Dominican Republic, illegally. A collaborator and comrade indicated that this would be just a tiny fragment of what has been seized. Images of the stolen items are shown in that post. It is saddening to see foreign raiders continuing to plunder the Caribbean across the centuries, as if it were something lying in wait to be raped.
On that same blog, see another post for this week, which outlines other attempts at raiding the Caribbean, such as the mega tourist project planned for the Honduran Garifuna’s “wasted” beaches.
Clearly, not all Europeans take pleasure in conquest: a dozen Italian, pro-indigenous, organizations are undoing the “legacy” of Christopher Columbus from the very centre, with a campaign starting in Genoa itself, lobbying the Italian Parliament to make October 11 a day of remembrance of the genocide of indigenous peoples. That day is the day before “Columbus Day.” This should send one signal to some wayward Italo-American ethnic politicians who have invented “Columbus Day” as a statement of Italian pride: it is not, and please stop acting in our names.
ceaseless chatter