Columbus Day was marked Monday, but some folks in no mood to celebrate explorer Christopher Columbus arrive outside the gates at Mission San Juan Capistrano at 11 this morning for “Orange
County's 10th annual Anti-Columbus Day Protest.”
“Concerned
members of the community,” who include everywhere-agitator Naui
Huitzilopochtli, explain their reasons for the protest after the jump . . .
]
“In the last 500 years since Columbus invaded our lands,” reads the group's announcement, “in addition to the terrorizing of our Anahuac people, the theft of our lands
and the theft of our wealth and natural resources, we have seen: the
enslavement of our people; our life-or-death forced conversion to Christianity;
the destruction of our Anahuac cities; the burning of our libraries; the
execution of our leaders; the theft and/or destruction of our cultural wealth;
the theft of our labor; and the theft of our true Anahuac identity, history,
heritage, and theology.”
While some see the mission as a historical marker of Europeans “civilizing” California, others see it as our Old World version of Dachau.
Here's video from last year's protest:
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.