Goodbye Columbus! It’s time to remove Trenton statue
Pitched against a powder blue sky and puffed white clouds that drifted from his right to left shoulder, Christopher Columbus’ statue towered above celebration preparations underway in the park named after him.
On this day in September, local residents with familial connections to Costa Rica, a country Columbus did visit during explorations launched from Spain, finished set up for an Independence Day event named “Night of the Lanterns.”
Interestingly, this celebration tethers Spain’s declaration of freedom in 1821 for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Spain had ruled these countries for almost three centuries before relinquishing lands Columbus had charted although by no means had the Italian explorer discovered these areas.
Untruths, misrepresentations and a litany of historical fiction frequently delivered a sanitized version of Columbus as elementary students chorused “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
The back stories about murder, genocide, disease transmission, slavery and rape rarely were discussed although current movements note these atrocities and push for an end of Columbus Day celebrations.
Trenton should remove the Columbus statue from the city’s park on Hamilton Ave. as a way to recognize that his image looms as an inappropriate figure for the thousands of Central American residents who live on streets and in communities once held by Italians.
Columbus may have worked for proud Italians who lived in the city’s Chambersburg area but his statue represents pain and suffering for Hispanics and others.
“I’d hate to see the statue moved. I don’t where else we could move it to,” Dr. Gilda Rorro Baldassari, a former Italian Honorary Vice Consul in Trenton and noted historian, said.
“Rather than removing statues and beheading statues, I would prefer an open dialogue about this issue. I understand that Columbus has come under siege. No, he wasn’t a perfect man but then again, there hasn’t been many people in our history who achieved perfection.”
“Columbus did change the course of history, did change the course of our lives. Conquerors do things that are not always pleasant.”
Rorro Baldassari delivered the point that forges requests for the obliteration of Columbus Day in exchange for a more acceptable Indigenous Peoples Day aka Native Americans Day.
“The statue stands as a symbol of Italian heritage and the contributions Italians made to Trenton. We still celebrate mass spoken in Italian at the Parish of Our Lady of Angels. The Liturgy, teachings and hymns, all in Italian,” Rorro Baldassari noted.
“True, we don’t have a large population in Trenton anymore but there are still vestiges of Italian culture that remain important, that people can learn from.”
A 2013 column noted that “in a confluence of time, change and extraordinary circumstances, the statue of Columbus serves as a backdrop for people with lineage to those lands where the explorer delivered unimaginable atrocities.”
“The Columbus image serves as a reminder of hurt, harm, even slavery. Certainly, the great explorer’s adventures eventually paved the way for international use of the conquered as social pawns.”
These realizations and desires for change find origination in respect, an understanding that no people should live in the shadows of their abusers, no blacks, no Jews and no Central Americans.
Most Italians have moved out of Chambersburg as they have understandably closed restaurants, uprooted families, and extricated those items that once associated their heritage in this capital city.
Those departures exist as expected residue of change as a new wave of immigrants buy invest in our great American dream.
Chambersburg exists as a landing area for people from Ecuador, Costa Rica, Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico, Puerto Rico, etc.
Forcing these people to live in the shadow of Christopher Columbus represents an injustice which can be rectified by an immediate removal.