Almanac for October 12th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for October 12th: https://ko-fi.com/post/October-12-Indigenous-Peoples-Day-I3I814B4PD

Today's Observance: Indigenous Peoples Day

Bummer October 12th

I've posted my Columbus Day spiel on this blog before, but it bears repeating during Trump 2.0, when white supremacists are out, about, and showing their asses every day in this damned country.

October 12: Indigenous Peoples Day. According to Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen:

• "When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, spun cotton--whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose."

• Quoting a biography written by Columbus' son Ferdinand on the quashing of a rebellion against the Spanish by the Arawak people: "The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike..."

• "Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food." 

• "Haiti under the Spanish is one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history."

• "Columbus not only sent the first [American Indian] slaves across Atlantic, he probably send more slaves--about five thousand--than any other individual." When large numbers of American Indian slaves died of starvation, overwork, suicide and disease, the Spanish simply looked to African slaves to replace them. 

• "A particularly repellent aspect of the slave trade was sexual. As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, 'A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.'"

There you have it, in Columbus's own words even. He literally believed that he had the right to do whatever he pleased to people who were non-Catholic. Their refusal to accept the Spaniards' "faith" justified everything, according to the cultural ethos of the time. The sex trafficking of 9- and 10-year-old children didn't bother Columbus. Dismemberment didn't bother him. Murder didn't bother him. Genocide didn't bother him. 

So, fuck Christopher Columbus.

October 12, 1943: Poet Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV, best known as Robert Lowell or Robert Lowell, Jr., is sentenced to a year in prison for draft evasion for being a conscientious objector to service in World War II.

October 12, 1971: Early rock ‘n roll musician Gene Vincent dies at the age of 36 from seizures and a ruptured stomach ulcer brought about by Vincent’s heavy use of alcohol. 

October 12, 1997: American singer John Denver dies when his self-piloted experimental aircraft crashes.

October 12, 2002: While attempting to set a new freediving record, 28-year-old French diver Audrey Mestre drowns in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Dominican Republic. She dives to a then-record depth of 171 meters. Her lift bag, once inflated, should have brought her back to the surface in less than three minutes. It malfunctions and more than eight minutes pass before Mestre’s dive team brings her body to the surface. She is pronounced dead at the hospital.

October 12, 2012: Myriam Ducre-Lemay, age 20, kisses her new boyfriend as they get ready for bed after a party. He has eaten a peanut butter sandwich for a late-night snack and, since they are still a fairly new couple, isn’t aware that Ducre-Lemay has a severe peanut allergy. She asks him to call for paramedics, which he does, but by the time they arrive, her throat has constricted so severely that paramedics are unable to insert a breathing tube. She dies of anaphylaxis that evening when her family removes life support.