Speaker 1: Hey, dear Latino USA listener. So there's a new series
Speaker 1: by PRX and we wanted to share it with you.
Speaker 1: It's called Monumental, and it's well kind of what you'd
Speaker 1: expect by the title. It's about how monuments reflect the
Speaker 1: story and the realities of America. Quite a topic, huh.
Speaker 1: If there's one figure that's particularly complex and hurtful for
Speaker 1: US Latinos to revisit, and if there's one figure with
Speaker 1: a lot of statues who is particularly complex and yes,
Speaker 1: even hurtful for many Latinos to revisit, that would be
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus, the man who was glorified for centuries as
Speaker 1: elds guridor the America, the man who discovered America. This
Speaker 1: episode of Monumental questions exactly that the myth of Columbus
Speaker 1: as a discoverer, and it highlights the bloody history that
Speaker 1: has often been erased from that very glorifying narrative. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that that myth is present in monuments
Speaker 1: that are still up in places like Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: Here's the episode and enjoy.
Speaker 2: The whole idea of the drama and imposition of the
Speaker 2: monumental landscape is that it is meant to feel natural.
Speaker 2: It is not meant to make you stop and think.
Speaker 2: It is meant to be ambient, and in the case
Speaker 2: of so many monuments, it is meant to dwarf you.
Speaker 2: It is meant to make you feel smaller. It is
Speaker 2: meant to make you look up and worship.
Speaker 3: This is Monumental, a podcast series produced by PRX. I'm
Speaker 3: your host Ashley Seaford. The voice you heard at the
Speaker 3: top is Elizabeth Alexander. She's the president of the Mellon Foundation.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty one, the Mellon Foundation supported an audit
Speaker 3: of every last monument across the US. What they found
Speaker 3: out was that there were a few front runners. Coming
Speaker 3: in at number three, just behind Abraham Lincoln and George
Speaker 3: Washington with one hundred and forty nine monuments across these
Speaker 3: United States, was Christopher Columbus, but that number has been
Speaker 3: falling fast. When I was growing up, Christopher Columbus was
Speaker 3: the reason for Columbus Day. He represented a three day
Speaker 3: weekend and the kickoff for the holiday season. It wasn't
Speaker 3: until I got to college that I started questioning why
Speaker 3: we celebrate him in the first place. I heard first
Speaker 3: hand from other Native American students. While a long weekend
Speaker 3: for me was a source of pain and sadness for them,
Speaker 3: it was a really stark example of how people I
Speaker 3: cared about were forced to see so many of us
Speaker 3: celebrating in our ignorance, And of course it didn't matter
Speaker 3: whether that ignorance was wilful or not. Listening to the
Speaker 3: reporting in this episode, I realized that a lot of
Speaker 3: the experiences I was having were paralleled by what was
Speaker 3: happening nationwide. Nineteen ninety two was the five hundredth anniversary
Speaker 3: of Columbus's arrival in the quote unquote New World, and
Speaker 3: that moment sparked a lot of the reappraisal of Columbus
Speaker 3: that were still very much in the middle of soon
Speaker 3: plenty of other perspectives on the Columbus story, it could
Speaker 3: no longer be ignored. Native and Indigenous community stood up
Speaker 3: on behalf of their own populations that had been decimated
Speaker 3: even eradicated by Western colonization. And while Indigenous People's Day
Speaker 3: was proposed as counter programming starting in the late nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: it wasn't until twenty twenty one that is sitting President
Speaker 3: Joe Biden actually acknowledged it. Over the last few years,
Speaker 3: we've seen the fight over Columbus as a symbol reaching
Speaker 3: a new pitch, with statues being torn down all over
Speaker 3: the place, while statues of Christopher Columbus have been coming
Speaker 3: down in places like Saint Paul, Minnesota, Chicago, and even Columbus, Ohio.
Speaker 3: In this episode, you'll hear the story of the largest
Speaker 3: one in the world, standing tall, very very tall in
Speaker 3: a US territory. We'll look at the legacy of Columbus
Speaker 3: and how it fed into America's own colonialist ambitions, and
Speaker 3: we'll explore how some community are dismantling and reclaiming those narratives. Today.
Speaker 3: Producer Giselli Regaetau, Associate professor of journalism at Barok College
Speaker 3: in New York City, takes the story from here.
Speaker 4: Arecibo is a small beach town in Puerto Rico that
Speaker 4: faces the Atlantic Ocean. The waves are pretty rough, but
Speaker 4: I got in the water anyway. It was warm, pristine
Speaker 4: and clear. On the shore, there are several large rock formations.
Speaker 4: The beach is filled with palm trees. Some of the
Speaker 4: houses are partially destroyed, their walls falling apart, but the
Speaker 4: general filling is still idyllic and lugar sagro. We are
Speaker 4: located in a sacred place, says Pluma Barbara Moreno. She's
Speaker 4: an indigenous activist who lives in this area. Moreno is
Speaker 4: forty nine years old. She has brown skin and very long,
Speaker 4: dark straight hair that moves all over her face with
Speaker 4: the strong wind. She's wearing this colorful necklace and earrings
Speaker 4: that are made of wood and feathers. From where we're
Speaker 4: standing in Punta Caracoli's beach, she points out a giant
Speaker 4: statue that's located more than two miles away, Siga Mina
Speaker 4: Jumbogo behelpico. If you walk a little bit, you see
Speaker 4: it speak. She says. I was running earlier today and
Speaker 4: I actually stopped when I saw the statue far away
Speaker 4: on the shore. It's way taller than the palm trees around.
Speaker 5: It was a little bit.
Speaker 4: I'm going to tell you the truth, she says. I
Speaker 4: pass in front of it. It's on a roof that's
Speaker 4: used by the community. But I don't even like looking
Speaker 4: at it because every time I look at it, I
Speaker 4: remember an unpunished crime. Moreno is talking about the birth
Speaker 4: of the New world. That's a monument of Christopher Columbus
Speaker 4: that is larger than the Statue of Liberty. It was
Speaker 4: inaugurated in Arecibo in twenty sixteen. I was surprised by
Speaker 4: how recently the statue was installed here. By then, many
Speaker 4: Columbus statues had been vandalized and a few taken down
Speaker 4: all over the world. Moreno and other indigenous groups have
Speaker 4: protested against this monument for years. So monumento di ferrari
Speaker 4: historico purque this is a monument of historical fraud. Why
Speaker 4: because first we have to talk about the fact that
Speaker 4: here there were no conquests. People talk about the conquerors.
Speaker 4: Here there are no conquerors. There are invaders, she says.
Speaker 4: Moreno says she and other groups will continue to fight.
Speaker 4: Right now. They are asking that statues and names of
Speaker 4: the so called conquerors be removed from everywhere in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 4: It's a tad one representa el polo criminal. This statue
Speaker 4: represents the worst of crimes. If they're going to take
Speaker 4: it down right now or not, I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 4: it won't be right now, but it will happen. Because
Speaker 4: we believe in justice, the justice we can perpetuate ourselves.
Speaker 4: We tirelessly will continue to fight, she says. On my draft.
Speaker 4: To get closer to the statue, I stopped to get
Speaker 4: coffee at a food truck. It's parked in front of
Speaker 4: a hardware store called Ferreteria Caracolis. Felix Mielis is the
Speaker 4: owner of the store. You can see the statue from here,
Speaker 4: he tells me proudly. His store is about half a
Speaker 4: mile from the monument. Mielis sees the statue in a
Speaker 4: very different way than Pluma Moreno, the indigenous activist into
Speaker 4: Lando Mueno. Touristically speaking, it's very good, he says. Mielis
Speaker 4: was born and raised in Arecibo. He's seen lots of
Speaker 4: changes since the statue got here. On weekends, there's a
Speaker 4: men's traffic. It's been very favorable for all the businesses
Speaker 4: for the town of Arecibo. Many people have been motivated
Speaker 4: to set up shops in the area. Basically, Arecibo was
Speaker 4: not on the map before, he says. Mieli says he
Speaker 4: knows that other Columbus statues have been removed, but he
Speaker 4: thinks the Birth of the New World belongs right here.
Speaker 6: Part the lictorial entrobais para Obarama.
Speaker 4: It is part of our country's history, for the good
Speaker 4: or the bad, he says. I'm now rid in front
Speaker 4: of the Birth of the New World on a narrow
Speaker 4: coastal road in Arecibo. Seeing this massive bronze monument up
Speaker 4: close hits me even harder than I expected. The gigantic
Speaker 4: Columbus is on top of a hill facing the beach.
Speaker 4: Picture a twenty story building. It's taller than that. I'm
Speaker 4: here with a Puerto Rican historian.
Speaker 7: My name is Aura Hiraja Royo, and I am an
Speaker 7: assistant professor of history at Eastern Illinois University, and I'm
Speaker 7: originally from Bajamont, Puerto Rico, which is twenty minutes west
Speaker 7: of San Juan.
Speaker 4: auDA hiral studies activism in Puerto Rico. She's wearing two
Speaker 4: long silver earrings that say in one critica or critic
Speaker 4: and on the other luchadorra or fighter. I asked her
Speaker 4: to meet me here, and it's her first time seeing
Speaker 4: the statue up close.
Speaker 7: I just find its esthetically and not pleasing because it
Speaker 7: dimensions are so messed up, like the boat is so
Speaker 7: small and the Columbus looks so big. Oh, I'm just
Speaker 7: very stunned.
Speaker 4: The dimensions are a mishmash. Columbus is standing on a
Speaker 4: small boat behind the ship's helm. He's wearing a hat
Speaker 4: and a robe, and his right hand is raised awkwardly
Speaker 4: palm facing up. Behind him. There are three sails. They
Speaker 4: represent the ships from his journey across the Atlantic in
Speaker 4: fourteen ninety two. The statue sits on private land and
Speaker 4: you can't get close to it. It's fenced off. I'm
Speaker 4: going to tell you why in a minute. I visited
Speaker 4: the statue several times over a holiday weekend. A lot
Speaker 4: of people didn't even look at it at all. Just
Speaker 4: a few stop their cars, should take pictures from the road.
Speaker 4: Drasa Melandez is one of them.
Speaker 8: Joeywan Pennsylvania, Cata, Pennsylvania, she tells me.
Speaker 4: She lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and is a pre school teacher.
Speaker 4: She's of Puerto Rican descent and stops by the statue
Speaker 4: every time she's in this area. I don't know much
Speaker 4: about the history. There are people for and against it,
Speaker 4: but I just keep myself neutral and just enjoy the statue,
Speaker 4: she says. Historian Ala Hiral says she's never wanted to
Speaker 4: visit the statue because she believes Columbus is a problematic
Speaker 4: historical figure.
Speaker 7: And Porto Rico specifically, we have a huge problem glorifying
Speaker 7: great man. Christopher Columbus is the first one we learned
Speaker 7: to glorify in school. I don't know if you've heard
Speaker 7: about this, the Columbus song. It's like India, like in
Speaker 7: a little town in Italy. Naso Cristo Cologne. Cristopher Columbus
Speaker 7: was born yeah Lard and a Vegas. He enjoyed looking
Speaker 7: at shifts and speaking about sailing.
Speaker 4: In Hira's opinion, the European colonizer's impact here was devastating.
Speaker 7: The violence of people like Columbus and his cronies in
Speaker 7: the early stages of Conquisa was such that our native
Speaker 7: people got killed like on mass So it's so bizarre
Speaker 7: to see someone like him be praised as this intelligent person,
Speaker 7: this innovative person.
Speaker 4: It might seem bizarre now, but that is how the
Speaker 4: artists who created Birth of the New World saw Columbus
Speaker 4: when he built the statue. His name is Zurabi. He
Speaker 4: grew up in Georgia when it was part of the
Speaker 4: Soviet Union.
Speaker 8: If you take early nineties eighties, it's a fascination with
Speaker 8: a person who discs over the world.
Speaker 4: This is what upse Telly's grandson, Vasili. He's often his
Speaker 4: spokesperson because his grandfather lives in Moscow and doesn't speak English.
Speaker 8: It's higher than Statue of Liberty because in the idea
Speaker 8: of my grandfather, first then land was discovered on which
Speaker 8: the freedom was built.
Speaker 4: I met Vasili at his lawyer's office in Midtown Manhattan.
Speaker 4: He greeted me warmly and even gave me two books
Speaker 4: about his grandfather. We come.
Speaker 1: I just landed yesterday.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, for you, the books. Oh thank you.
Speaker 4: Vasili says his grandfather created the statue in the early
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties to celebrate the five hundredth anniversary of columbus
Speaker 4: arrival to the Americas. He says it was his hardest project.
Speaker 8: To Columbus was a difficult monument. It's a very difficult
Speaker 8: monument to create and to place it.
Speaker 4: I ask, Vasili said it Telly. If he thinks his
Speaker 4: grandfather would have built the monument today, probably not.
Speaker 8: It's a different world. At that time, it was five
Speaker 8: hundred anniversary to celebrate the United States. Whole United States
Speaker 8: was celebrating, and you have to understand also from where
Speaker 8: we are coming from. It's an artist Georgian creating a
Speaker 8: monument in Soviet Union where you could not envision of
Speaker 8: traveling anywhere. So Columbus, for many of people who were
Speaker 8: deprived of traveling, deprived of thinking of new ideas, and
Speaker 8: everything was a symbol of something new.
Speaker 4: After he created the statue Zurapse, Telli needed a home
Speaker 4: for it, and that turned out to be much harder
Speaker 4: than he anticipated. He envisioned this statue in Roosevelt Island
Speaker 4: in New York City, but there wasn't enough local support
Speaker 4: to make that happen. Other cities weren't interested either, including Columbus, Ohio, Myami,
Speaker 4: and Boston. The governor of Puerto Rico accepted the statue
Speaker 4: as a gift in nineteen ninety eight. They spent more
Speaker 4: than two million dollars in public funds to bring it
Speaker 4: to the island. They hoped it would attract tourists. It
Speaker 4: was supposed to go to a suburb of the capital
Speaker 4: of San Juan, but local people protested and a new
Speaker 4: mayor came in, so the gigantic bronze pieces went into
Speaker 4: storage for sixteen years. In twenty fourteen, Jose Gonzales, fred
Speaker 4: who's a local businessman, decided to install the statue on
Speaker 4: his private land in Arecibo. His plan was to develop
Speaker 4: a park and other attractions around it. Serratelli says Gonzales
Speaker 4: and his grandfather financed the installation together. They spent almost
Speaker 4: twenty million dollars, and in twenty sixteen, Birth of the
Speaker 4: New World was inaugurated. Ingrid Rivera was the head of
Speaker 4: the government aid agency in charge of tourism in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 4: Then we're talking about the tallest structure in the Americas,
Speaker 4: and that will make people want to visit it, she says.
Speaker 4: Even after the statue finally went up, the turmoil around
Speaker 4: it continued. In twenty nineteen, set Telis sued the owner
Speaker 4: of the land. He said people were climbing on top
Speaker 4: of the statue. The party is eventually settled, and that's
Speaker 4: when the fence was built around it. The park and
Speaker 4: other attractions still haven't been built. This is not the
Speaker 4: first time that Zuran s Telli's work has been tangled
Speaker 4: in controversy. His massive statue of the Russians are Peter
Speaker 4: the Great in downtown Moscow is overwhelmingly disliked says Alex Rodriguez.
Speaker 4: Rodriguez was the Russian correspondent of the Chicago Tribune and
Speaker 4: is now on its editorial board. He got a rare
Speaker 4: increase in interview with Sir Robsa. Tella in two thousand
Speaker 4: and five. Rodriguez asked him directly to respond to his critics.
Speaker 9: The way they refer to it was he had a
Speaker 9: conveyor belt approach to art, just churning it out rather
Speaker 9: than focusing on meaning, on something to say on quality.
Speaker 9: His answer was something akin to Goya or Donna, Tello
Speaker 9: or Michaelangelo. Would you ask the same question to them?
Speaker 9: So he was equating himself with some of the great
Speaker 9: artists in history.
Speaker 4: Still, his sculptures are displayed in places like the United
Speaker 4: Nations in New York City and also in London, Rome
Speaker 4: and Tokyo. Rodriguez says that's because of his wealth and connections.
Speaker 9: He early on was able to find friends in high places,
Speaker 9: in powerful places, and that's how he rose up the ranks.
Speaker 9: So if people with a lot of power and money
Speaker 9: like the art that you create, regardless of what the
Speaker 9: masses think, you're going to go places and your art's
Speaker 9: going to be paid for and commonly displayed.
Speaker 4: In the case of Birth of the New World. Arecibo
Speaker 4: is not exactly a prominent location, but Julian Go isn't
Speaker 4: surprised to find a Columbus statue in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 10: Everywhere across the colonial world, monuments go up to the colonizers.
Speaker 4: He's a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago
Speaker 4: who studies empires and colonialism. He says, it's unfortunate to
Speaker 4: have this symbol of imperialism here. Let's consider Puerto Rico's
Speaker 4: status as an American territory and the history that led
Speaker 4: up to this. Columbus opened the door. Then, for over
Speaker 4: four hundred years, Puerto Rico was a colony of Spain,
Speaker 4: like most of Latin America, but while other countries in
Speaker 4: the region became independent, Puerto Rico didn't. When the Spanish
Speaker 4: American War ended in eighteen ninety eight, the US took it,
Speaker 4: along with Spain's other possessions, the Philippines and wamp Go
Speaker 4: says when the US first took over, it promised to
Speaker 4: shape its new colonies in America's image.
Speaker 10: There was a sort of pretext of helping Puerto Ricans
Speaker 10: and Filipinos learn how to become one day self governing,
Speaker 10: and so they let them have elections, they let them
Speaker 10: whole political office. But again the Americans controlled and made
Speaker 10: all final decisions.
Speaker 4: Today, Puerto Rico is a US territory, but Go says
Speaker 4: that term is misleading.
Speaker 10: I do think Puerto Rico has the status of a
Speaker 10: colony or a quasi colony. There are a whole series
Speaker 10: of privileges and rights that Puerto Ricans are denied. I mean, officially,
Speaker 10: if you are a Puerto Rican resident, you can't vote for
Speaker 10: the president. For the president can send you to war.
Speaker 4: Puerto Rico is neither an American state nor an independent country.
Speaker 4: Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but they don't have representation
Speaker 4: in Congress. Essentially, it's still under imperial control. According to Go,
Speaker 4: Congress is once again discussing a new bill to the
Speaker 4: side Puerto Rico's status, with the debate between statehood and
Speaker 4: independent swirling. Historian Aura Hirau says Puerto Ricans are seeing
Speaker 4: their history and people like Columbus in a much more
Speaker 4: critical way.
Speaker 7: People are beginning to like say, like, oh, Christopher Columbus
Speaker 7: was not a good person. He helped exterminate our indigenous people.
Speaker 7: So it's very ironic that right when that conversation is shifting,
Speaker 7: they bring that monument here.
Speaker 4: And so a monument to imperialism stands in a small
Speaker 4: town in Puerto Rico, looming over a de facto American colony.
Speaker 3: When we come back, Giselli Reggaetau continues her story on
Speaker 3: the myth of Columbus.
Speaker 5: Columbus could almost be seen as a kind of ancestor
Speaker 5: figure justifying the American colonization of Puerto Rico in the
Speaker 5: eighteen nineties, sort of like the story of colonization coming
Speaker 5: around full circle.
Speaker 3: That's next on Monumental from PRX back in a moment.
Speaker 4: Columbus landed in Puerto Rico on his second trip in
Speaker 4: fourteen ninety three, but he never set foot on the mainland.
Speaker 4: So why has he been portrayed in so many statues
Speaker 4: throughout the country and why are there about five thousand streets, buildings,
Speaker 4: and schools named after Columbus, including the country's capital, the
Speaker 4: District of Columbia.
Speaker 5: I think Columbus was chosen simply because he was seen
Speaker 5: as the.
Speaker 4: First That's Kirk Savage, a professor of history of art,
Speaker 4: and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
Speaker 5: That idea that Columbus was the discoverer, I think is
Speaker 5: what made him the key figure, because the doctrine of
Speaker 5: discovery was so important both legally and ideologically that it
Speaker 5: was enshrined in a Supreme Court decision in eighteen twenty three.
Speaker 4: That was the Supreme Court ruling determining that Native Americans
Speaker 4: do not own land.
Speaker 5: The doctrine of discovery gave the discoverer the ownership rights,
Speaker 5: and that the Native peoples who lived there only occupied
Speaker 5: the land, they didn't own it. You know, the United
Speaker 5: States saw itself as the inheritor of that right of
Speaker 5: conquest through discovery, through Columbus's discovery.
Speaker 4: Savage says. The first Columbus statue was installed in eighteen
Speaker 4: forty four. He was commissioned by the US Congress. It
Speaker 4: featured Columbus with a semi nude woman below him. She
Speaker 4: represented Native Americans.
Speaker 5: Very racist, very problematic, overtly racist statue that depicted Columbus
Speaker 5: as the kind of white man, you know, striding forward
Speaker 5: to the globe in his hand, while this representation of
Speaker 5: the Native people's just cowers below him without any agency.
Speaker 5: That was on the Capitol steps for over a century.
Speaker 4: The statue was in a place of high visibility for
Speaker 4: more than one hundred years. It was the backdrop for
Speaker 4: Presidentcinagro addresses. Then one day it was gone.
Speaker 5: As far as I know, that was the first up
Speaker 5: in the first down. It was removed in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 5: ostensibly because they were renovating the Capitol steps. They never
Speaker 5: put this one back because there had been many complaints
Speaker 5: about it from the National Congress of American Indians. They
Speaker 5: complained about it enough that eventually in fifty eight they
Speaker 5: just decided it wasn't worth putting back up, and it's
Speaker 5: been in storage ever since. It's literally never been seen
Speaker 5: publicly since that time.
Speaker 4: In nineteen ninety two, as the US celebrated five hundred
Speaker 4: years of Columbus's arrival on the continent, indigenous groups protested
Speaker 4: against those celebrations and against Columbus statues. But Catherine Dignisio
Speaker 4: points out the opposition to Columbus started way before that.
Speaker 11: He has been challenged since the very beginning, and in
Speaker 11: fact even by people on his own boat. Though Bartolome
Speaker 11: de las Casas is a religious figure who's traveling with Columbus,
Speaker 11: who ended up detailing his accounts of Columbus's barbarism, and
Speaker 11: that's how we know about the violence that was actually perpetrated.
Speaker 11: So even his own people did not revere Columbus and
Speaker 11: did not universally think he was such a great, awesome
Speaker 11: founder of anything.
Speaker 4: Dignizio is an associate professor of Urban Science and Planning
Speaker 4: at MIT. She also directs their Data plus Feminism Lab.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty one, the lab created a zine challenging
Speaker 4: the greatness of Columbus. It's called we Never Wanted Him Here.
Speaker 4: But her questioning of the Columbus mystique is personal as well.
Speaker 11: I am of Italian American descent. My grandfather was Italian,
Speaker 11: and so Columbus is a figure I've always had mixed
Speaker 11: feelings about.
Speaker 4: Kirk Savage from the University of Pittsburgh says in the
Speaker 4: nineteen hundreds, Italian Americans and organizations like the Knights of
Speaker 4: Columbus played a key role in making statues of Columbus
Speaker 4: even more popular.
Speaker 5: The fact that there are hundreds around the world is
Speaker 5: almost completely owing to the fact that Italian immigrants took
Speaker 5: over this symbol and pushed it as a symbol of
Speaker 5: their own heritage. What I think is important to stress, though,
Speaker 5: is that they adopted Columbus because he was already an
Speaker 5: important figure in White American mythology.
Speaker 4: In nineteen thirty seven, the Knights of Columbus successfully lobbied
Speaker 4: President Franklin Roosevelt to make Columbus Day a national holiday.
Speaker 4: Here he's celebrating the day in one of his radio addresses.
Speaker 4: During World War Two.
Speaker 11: Christopher Columbus oo the aid of Spain.
Speaker 6: Opened up a new world.
Speaker 11: We have freedom, tolerance, and respect for human rights, and
Speaker 11: dignity provided in asylum for the oppressed.
Speaker 7: Of the old world.
Speaker 4: Dignesia says, when she was growing up, her grandfather was
Speaker 4: very proud of Columbus, and she understands the importance of
Speaker 4: that symbol.
Speaker 11: He was very proud of the fact that Italian Americans
Speaker 11: had some representation in the US kind of canonical history.
Speaker 4: When Columbus Day became a national holiday, Italians had become
Speaker 4: the largest immigrant group in the country with political poll
Speaker 4: but it had been a hard road to get there.
Speaker 11: Italian immigrants were very discriminated against. My own grandfather has
Speaker 11: his own stories that he would tell us of the
Speaker 11: times and as such, he wanted to be assimilating into
Speaker 11: white culture.
Speaker 4: And she says that's what the Italian American allyship with
Speaker 4: Columbus tries to do.
Speaker 11: That tries to ally Italian Americans with the dominant white
Speaker 11: culture with this sort of founder's culture, with a nation
Speaker 11: building quote unqung discovery oriented culture. And so you know
Speaker 11: what's the cost of that pride, right, And the cost
Speaker 11: of that is that we're overlooking both Columbus as the
Speaker 11: man himself and the horrible genocidal, violent, sexual assault and
Speaker 11: other incredible violence that he perpetrated as a person. But
Speaker 11: then we're also overlooking the harm of this myth of
Speaker 11: discovery and kind of who is erased by that myth
Speaker 11: as well.
Speaker 4: Kirk Savage understands why earlier generations of Italian American immigrants
Speaker 4: rallied around Columbus, but seeing the harm to indigenous people,
Speaker 4: he himself has picked one side.
Speaker 5: What I guess tilts the debate for me in the
Speaker 5: direction of removal is that this is just really terrible history.
Speaker 5: You know, the Columbus cult is just wrong in so
Speaker 5: many ways and reinforces so many myths about our country
Speaker 5: that need to be changed, and reinforces white supremacy and
Speaker 5: he just needs to go.
Speaker 4: After the killing of Black American George Floyd by police
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty, massive protests led to the removal of
Speaker 4: dozens of statues. Columbus became one of the biggest targets
Speaker 4: moral will him say, We are still here, but he's gone.
Speaker 4: About forty of his statues have been taken down all
Speaker 4: over the country, Around one hundred and thirty still remain.
Speaker 4: As statues of Columbus are coming down, new monuments are
Speaker 4: coming up. Some of them celebrate those who have been
Speaker 4: erased and reject old white supremacists myths. Now immigrants are
Speaker 4: putting themselves at the center of the story. Immigrants from
Speaker 4: all over Living Queens, New York. It's known as one
Speaker 4: of the most diverse urban areas in the world, and
Speaker 4: the neighborhood of Woodside is home to a lot of Filipinos.
Speaker 6: We are on the corner of sixty ninth Street and
Speaker 6: Roosevelt Avenue.
Speaker 4: Jacqueline Reyes is a cultural organizer with a group called
Speaker 4: Little Manila Queens by a Nihon Arts, They create art
Speaker 4: about the Filipino community in New York, like the mural
Speaker 4: they painted on this corner. On it. The word Mabuhai
Speaker 4: is written in yellow and orange letters over a blue background.
Speaker 4: Around it, there are white jasmine flowers and green leaves.
Speaker 4: Reyes says the word means different things in Filipino.
Speaker 6: It has a lot of meanings that doesn't translate an
Speaker 6: in very cleanly, but it means like welcome, may you live.
Speaker 4: The mirror was painted in twenty twenty early COVID times.
Speaker 4: She says, the mirror was meant to lift the spirits
Speaker 4: of the people in the neighborhood.
Speaker 6: When Queens was the epicenter of the epicenter. At the time,
Speaker 6: we knew that Filipinos were going to be more impacted
Speaker 6: by the healthcare crisis because a lot of Filipinos are
Speaker 6: healthcare workers or work in the healthcare sector.
Speaker 4: There's a reason so many Filipino immigrants are in healthcare.
Speaker 4: After the Philippines became a US colony, Americans created nursing
Speaker 4: programs in that country. According to Julian Go, the sociologist
Speaker 4: from the University of Chicago, that was strategic.
Speaker 10: Colonial powers have all kinds of interests, economic and political interests.
Speaker 10: And one of the things besides raw materials that they
Speaker 10: can get from colonies is labor right, cheap labor.
Speaker 4: In the nineteen sixties, the US started allowing foreign professionals
Speaker 4: to come here. The medical field needed workers, and Filipino
Speaker 4: nurses helped meet that need. Jacqueline Rayes says, the mural
Speaker 4: celebrates those nurses, and.
Speaker 6: It was also just to kind of show us solidarity
Speaker 6: to the people living in Queens also to the people
Speaker 6: who came from outside New York City, like welcoming them.
Speaker 4: The mural clearly resonates with a passerby who can't help
Speaker 4: interrupting our interview.
Speaker 7: Iman, who made this one?
Speaker 5: This is so beautiful?
Speaker 10: Oh, you represent the country.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what I tried to do.
Speaker 4: How do you think represent the country?
Speaker 10: Yeah, because that word represents the Filipino Yeah.
Speaker 7: So it says long lived.
Speaker 6: That's the meaning of it. Yeah.
Speaker 11: So when you say I'm abuhai to any person, it
Speaker 11: seems that just go on, go on to your life.
Speaker 6: Keep on.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But also Rayes tends to draw people in.
Speaker 6: Or what's your name again? Richard Richard Jack.
Speaker 4: She's thirty six years old. She has straight brown hair
Speaker 4: with a blonde highlight streak. She seems at home here,
Speaker 4: but she actually grew up in Los Angeles. Her parents
Speaker 4: are Filipino immigrants. She says, when she moved to New
Speaker 4: York City in twenty ten, she would often come to Woodside.
Speaker 6: If I needed to get Filipino groceries. If I wanted
Speaker 6: to be around Filipinos, I would come here.
Speaker 4: The mirror was the first project of what Reyes calls
Speaker 4: creative place keeping. As part of that effort, in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty two, they were able to officially co name one
Speaker 4: street here Little Manila Avenue es on box.
Speaker 7: My Boy, I'm Done, by Ann really Pino, by a Veino,
Speaker 7: by on.
Speaker 10: My wohy migrding Bino.
Speaker 6: We saw that the streets getting installed as an important
Speaker 6: part of monument making, because it's like, let's get used
Speaker 6: to like us taking up space publicly.
Speaker 4: The next step will be the creation of a monument
Speaker 4: about a Filipino woman known as tan Dang Sora.
Speaker 6: Tondang Sora is this She's like this revolutionary figure in
Speaker 6: Philippine history.
Speaker 4: Tan Dang Sora is like the anti Columbus. She was
Speaker 4: in her eighties when she provided support for the revolutionaries
Speaker 4: fighting Spain in the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 6: She was there like part of the Philippine Revolution, but
Speaker 6: she was taking care of people, and so we want
Speaker 6: to highlight that care labor is just as heroic as
Speaker 6: any other narrative out there. And we thought that this
Speaker 6: monument to Tandang Sora would help, I guess, elevate that
Speaker 6: to increase the visibility of women doing that work.
Speaker 4: Ray says, revolutionaries in the Philippines and Puerto Rico were
Speaker 4: exchanging ideas about how to fight Spain.
Speaker 6: If you look at the Puerto Rican flag and the
Speaker 6: Filipino flag with that triangle, it's because of the solidarity
Speaker 6: between those different communities. So our struggles are intertwined.
Speaker 4: Actually, And like Puerto Rico, the Philippines was ruled by Americans.
Speaker 4: The US controlled the country for almost fifty years until
Speaker 4: nineteen forty six. Rai says with her work, she's highlighting
Speaker 4: voices that were erased by that history.
Speaker 6: Maybe a form of decolonizing is just like amplifying women's
Speaker 6: stories first and just balancing it out the history a
Speaker 6: bit more. And I think that women would approach monuments
Speaker 6: differently because I don't think that women would want to
Speaker 6: impose like huge figures of themselves, right, That's why I like,
Speaker 6: I'm resistant to like just putting another statue up because
Speaker 6: I don't think that our freedom should be imitating our oppression.
Speaker 6: Does that make sense?
Speaker 4: The placing of Birth of the New World in Arecibo
Speaker 4: was quite the saga for cultural organizers like Rais. Building
Speaker 4: a monument is not a simple process either, but for
Speaker 4: very different reasons. Her group has been talking to the
Speaker 4: community and is considering several ideas building a resting place,
Speaker 4: putting art on the bridge that connects Little Manila to
Speaker 4: a central plaza, or designing a statue.
Speaker 6: It takes a long time to really conceptualize something that
Speaker 6: could have the resonance that it should have, the hopes
Speaker 6: and aspirations we want for this message or this figure
Speaker 6: or all of these women that were trying to speak
Speaker 6: for we wanted to do it right.
Speaker 4: They will present different ideas to the community to get
Speaker 4: their feedback, and even though they've got a brand from
Speaker 4: the Melon Foundation, they will probably have to raise more
Speaker 4: money to build something permanent.
Speaker 6: Building a monument is also building consensus around it, building
Speaker 6: the desire, building the consciousness around it. Even if we
Speaker 6: had the money, if we were to just put a
Speaker 6: statue there with no context, it wouldn't mean anything. So
Speaker 6: it's a slow. To change minds, to change our understanding
Speaker 6: of history takes a long time.
Speaker 4: You know, the process that rey Is and her team
Speaker 4: are going through is much more inclusive than how monuments
Speaker 4: have been built in the past. Kirk Savage, the professor
Speaker 4: from the University of Pittsburgh, says that historically, monuments have
Speaker 4: said a lot about who we are as people.
Speaker 5: The process of building and erecting a monument is a
Speaker 5: microcosm of all of the social forces and conflicts that
Speaker 5: go into any kind of political activity and decision making.
Speaker 5: So that's on the one hand. On the other hand,
Speaker 5: you know, the finished monument, once it's erected, becomes, as
Speaker 5: I say, a kind of microcosm of the world that
Speaker 5: is imagined by those people who have the power and
Speaker 5: privilege to imagine that world.
Speaker 4: Unless they are being built with input from the community,
Speaker 4: like Rayes is doing in Queens. Savage says, monuments can
Speaker 4: do more harm than good.
Speaker 5: I would say that after you know lifetime studying traditional
Speaker 5: monuments and say we probably could use a lot less
Speaker 5: of them, I'm not willing to say that we shouldn't
Speaker 5: ever erect anymore, because I think that they still have
Speaker 5: the power to do good. And to change the narrative
Speaker 5: in ways that are healthy and constructive and good for
Speaker 5: us all but most of the time they don't. And
Speaker 5: I think the more we turn the commmditive landscape into
Speaker 5: a more living landscape right in which people are engaging
Speaker 5: with it from different perspectives, in different points of view,
Speaker 5: you know, that's democracy.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to imagine what this living landscape would look like.
Speaker 4: I hope that people of Farcibo in Puerto Rico get
Speaker 4: to create their own.
Speaker 3: This episode of Monumental was written and produced by Giselle
Speaker 3: Reguetau Special thanks to Wendy Smith and Qike Cubero Garcia.
Speaker 3: The senior editor from Monumental is Roslyn Tordecilias, and our
Speaker 3: senior producer is Nancy Rosenbau. Jamie Yorke is our writer
Speaker 3: and our associate producer is Lauren Francis. The show is
Speaker 3: recorded by Bryce Bowman and Ben Ericsson at earshot audio
Speaker 3: posts and mixed by Tommy Bazarian, with support from Emmanuel Disarme, Pedro,
Speaker 3: Rafael Rossado, Morgan Flannery and Sandra Lopez Mansalve. Fact checking
Speaker 3: by Christina Ribello. Our theme was composed and produced by
Speaker 3: Jolani Bowman with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. Edwin Achoa
Speaker 3: is our project manager and our executive producer is Jocelyn Gonzalez.
Speaker 3: Monumental is produced by PRX Productions and made possible by
Speaker 3: a grant from the Melon Foundation. For more on the show,
Speaker 3: visit us at PRX dot org. Backslash Monumental. Coming up
Speaker 3: on the next episode of Monumental, how a civil war
Speaker 3: obelisk has become a flashpoint for a four hundred year
Speaker 3: old identity crisis in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a place
Speaker 3: that's still struggling with the legacy of slavery, colonialism, and belonging.
Speaker 9: Do I look like a savage?
Speaker 4: Does my children look like savages? We don't.
Speaker 2: Words savage and that obelisk are one of the same
Speaker 2: to me and my family and to the indigenous community.
Speaker 3: I'm Ashley c Ford. Thanks for listening.