Columbus—No Hero
to America! (2001)
Native American Charged with Hate Crime for
Destroying Statue of Columbus
From: "Guarionex Delgado"gdelgado@earth-justice.org
A local activist (Santa Cruz, CA) is being
charged with a hate
crime for destroying a statue of Christopher Columbus
at San Jose city hall. Please
take a few minutes to read the rest of this email and then let
the Santa Clara District Attorney know what you think and how
you feel. Please excuse
the length and formatting. Your Brother in the struggle, Guarionex.
DA's office web page, http://www.santaclara-da.org/portal/site/da/
Email DA, Robert Baker at rbaker@da.co.scl.ca.us tell him about
Columbus.
District Attorney, Santa Clara County, California
Mayor
of San Jose CA. Mayor Ron Gonzales of the City of San José.
Please email this Mayor, he wants to rebuild the statue! Send email
to mayor. email@ci.sj.ca.us
Tell them the city should Not rebuild it.
They would not have a statue
of HITLER in the city.
Native American Activist Smashes San Jose
City Hall Statue of Christopher Columbus Revered Mass Murderer
San Jose, Ca. (article from, San
Jose Mercury News)
Wielding a sledgehammer, justice activist James
Cosner smashed a life-size statue of Christopher Columbus in
front of
dozens of witnesses at City Hall in San Jose, California on
Thursday, March
8th. As the seven-types of marble chips flew from the blows,
Cosner shouted "Genocide!" "This
man rode our backs!" "This man murdered us!"
Most Americans do not know the murderous history of Christopher
Columbus. Examining primary historical sources by Bartolome
de las Casas, the biographer
of Columbus son, Columbus made four voyages to the New World.
He encountered the Arawaks, who occupied Haiti. An early
census of the Arawak was 1.1
million, not counting children. According to a conservative
estimate over 3 million Arawak lived on Haiti in pre-Columbian
times. Columbus
kidnapped , enslaved, and murdered the Arawak people. He
ruled with severe discipline ordering the cutting off of ears
or
nose as punishment for
minor crimes.
When the Arawaks fought back, Columbus used the excuse to
wage war. On March 24th, 1495 Columbus set out to conquer
the Arawaks.
With
20 hunting
dogs, horses, and guns Columbus set upon the Arawaks, tearing
them up with dogs and mowing them down with volleys of
bullets, and
running them
over with horses. Reporting back to Queen Isabel of Spain,
Columbus boasted "In
the name of the holy trinity, we can send from here all the slaves that
Brazil will hold." The Spaniards hunted Indians for sport
and murdered them for dog food.
Seeking gold, he enslaved the remaining Arawaks to work
the mines. Those who refused had their hands
cut off.
Conditions for the Arawak become
so intolerable that as many as 100 at a time would commit
suicide. Women were known to kill their newborn babies,
rather
than
have them raised
in such hideous circumstances. Columbus would reward his officers with women to rape. Girls 10 to 12 were especially
desired
for rape.
When Columbus son took over in 1505, he continued the
slaughter. Only some 12,000 remained by 1516. By 1555
not a single
Arawak remained. Haiti
remains one of the primary instances of genocide in human
history to be followed by more instances of genocide
in Puerto Rico
and Cuba. The
presence of the statue prominently placed in City Hall
in San Jose has been reviled by native Americans as a
sick reminder
of the ruthless slaughter and conquest of indigenous people in the New World.
Having smuggled the sledgehammer into City Hall, Cosner
struck the marble statue breaking off the arm, both
legs, and cracking
pits into the face.
He cracked off the top of the scroll held by Columbus,
so that the torso only remained standing by the flowing
waves
of the
marble cape, which
was still connected to the pedestal.
One passerby, Jaime Nava approached Cosner and tried
to talk him into stopping. As Nava tried to calm
Cosner, plainclothes
officer Chris Galios,
Mayor Ron Gonzales' bodyguard, arrived and tried
to persuade Cosner to stop. But it was only when
three uniformed
officers came through the
front door with their guns drawn that Cosner ceased.
Nava used his body to shield Cosner, who had backed
against a wall. Officers then handcuffed Cosner,
who told them:
``I'm not fighting. I'm very calm.
I'm very calm.'' San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzalez vowed
to restore the statue, which will then be moved
in front
of the new
City Hall when it opens
downtown.
Cosner, a native American who has been active in
protests against the injustice committed against
the homeless
in Santa Cruz
under the Sleeping
Ban, in the struggle to free Mumia Abu Jamal,
and against the bombing in Yugoslavia. In 1996, he
was one of six
people who
locked down at City
Hall to protest the anti-homeless Sleeping
Ban in Santa Cruz. In 1999 he was arrested in Rep.
Sam Farr
s office
to protest
the civilian bombing
of Yugoslavia.
He was arrested at another protest on May
22nd in front of the McPherson Center where a
Democratic Party fundraiser
was held,
supporting ex-President
Clinton s "Bomb Belgrade" campaign.
He, along with Steve Argue, became one of
the Santa
Cruz 5, arrested
for resisting
a
police disruption
of a legitimate political protest. Later
in 1999, he attended the protests in Seattle
against the
WTO. Cosner
remains in the
Santa
Clara County
Jail, booked on suspicion of vandalism, making
terrorist threats and destruction of a civic
monument. His bail,
originally set
at $4,000 has been
raised to $50,000.
As of Monday 3:30 PM, a female deputy at
the jail who identified herself only as
#132 refused
to
answer why
the bail cost
was raised, what the
current bail was, and what the current
charges were. She did state that Cosner was being
arraigned and
that his
files would
return by 2 a.m.
Tuesday. She acknowledged that she did
have current information on the computer, but
declined to release
that information.
Informed sources
confirmed later that Cosner was taken to
court on Monday afternoon, not charged,
and scheduled
for
arraignment
on Thursday afternoon
(1-5 PM).
Sources for historical information
on Columbus's genocidal policies: History of
the Indies by Bartolome
de las Casas
translated by Andree
M. Collard (1971). Select Letters
of Christopher Columbus translated
and edited by R. H. Major (1847). A
People s History of the
United States by Howard Zinn (1980). The
Log of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage
to America in the Year 1492,
as copied out in brief by las Casas (1989).
Lies
My Teacher Told
Me: Everything
Your American History Textbook
Got Wrong by James W. Loewen (1995).
Sources for the Cosner information: San
Jose Mercury News 3-9-01 & 3-10-01.
Story by Becky Johnson
