The Post-Columbus Syndrome

The islands of the Caribbean demonstrated a complex and heterogeneous response the 500th anniversary of the Discovery of the New World". Feeling threatened by new forms of exploitation at the time, they responded by narrating their heritage and commemorating their hybrid identity in scenarios meant to protect a sense of national belonging. Columbus, as a hero of both Spanish and colonial history, became a reservoir of metaphors with which confront anxieties of the present with myths of the past. Commissions to debate the meaning of Columbus's arrival in the region were launched nationally on some islands, with different and uneven consequences in the commemorative public sphere in the Hispanic, English and French Caribbean. Jamaica condemned Columbus as a pirate; the Dominican Republic commemorated him as a Hispanic godfather, but Haiti toppled his statue. In Cuba and in Puerto Rico, the Taâino heritage was at the forefront of the commemorations, while in Guadeloupe and Martinique, Columbus was publically trialled"--