|
SHE SAID…
October 11, 2003
The month of October has always been
a month of celebration and fun in my family, culminating
on Halloween night. All my children were born in October,
and my in-laws were too, Libras all. The only thing
I knew about Columbus Day was that it was established
to commemorate the man’s discovery of land on
the other side of the Atlantic. In Canada, the second
Monday in October was celebrated as Thanksgiving Day
…and that meant that everyone would have the day
off for my older son’s birthday. Then I started
working at the Tribune and I became curious, Columbus
Day, “Día de la Raza”, why? Today
I understand a little better.
Last week, I had a most interesting
conversation with Nacho Cadena (see his article on the
subject in this week’s issue) which then went
off on a tangent regarding the various explorers who
came to this continent during those times in our history,
Amerigo Vespucci in particular. He’s the fellow
after whom this new continent was named, North, Central
and South. So I did some research. It turns out that
experts in the matter find it “impossible to determine
the place of Amerigo Vespucci in the history of the
discovery of the New World, in relation to those of
Christopher Columbus, of Sebastian Cabot, and of the
brothers Pinzón. First it is necessary to distinguish
between the geographical, and the social, discovery
of America. The former is due to the Icelanders who
established on the eastern coast of Greenland, a colony
that was maintained from the 10th to the 15th century…
Columbus was the first to reach land to the west - one
of the islands of the Bahamas - on October 12, 1492,
convinced that he had reached one of the islands of
eastern Asia. He was followed by Vespucci, Cabot, and
many others, each proposing to himself to reach the
land of spices, that is, India. We may not enter into
the very intricate question of which, of the three navigators
named, was the first to tread the mainland of the New
World… It is well known today that Vespucci was
in no way responsible for the fact that his name, and
not that of Columbus, was given to the New World, and
therefore, that he certainly does not deserve the charge
of theft that has been made against him by many; among
them the famous American publicist, Emerson, who was
led into error by partisan writers… In 1507, Martin
Waldseemuller gave the name of America to the New World,
arguing that, since the three continents then known,
Europe, Asia and Africa, had names of women, it was
proper to give the newly-discovered continent also the
name of a woman, taking it from the baptismal name of
the discoverer of the new continent, Vespucci. Many
attempts were made to name the New World Columbia, as
justice seemed to demand, but all such efforts failed.”
Now you know as much as I do (probably
more). History has always fascinated me, especially
ancient history, but definitely not some of the more
recent ones I was forced to study in high school (the
ones I failed...) History can be very entertaining,
depending on which point of view one adopts when studying
it, or just reading about it. Like that holiday the
Québecois made legal when they didn’t want
to honor Queen Victoria with her own day. They decided
to call it “La Fête de Dollard des Ormeaux”.
That was fine until someone decided to research the
fellow’s background. It turned out that the man
was a ruffian of sorts and a womanizer of the worst
kind… And then I learned about what we call “revisionist
history”, similar to the type Orwell described
in “1984”, the kind dictated by Stalin to
occult all the wrongdoings of the Soviet Union and all
that was good about the past.
If I take this one more step, to
today, I think that the invention of television and
satellites has reduced the reach of “revisionists”,
but not always and not in all cases. Today, we can witness
events as they happen, so we cannot be lied to quite
as easily. The only problem is our memory. It is extremely
short at times. People forget, and unless there is someone
there to refresh it, we run the risk of committing the
same errors as we did in the past. Here in Vallarta,
this is a common fact. We listen to the authorities
making promises and we hope they will be fulfilled.
But they are not and we forget. Time goes by and the
same promises resurface, made by others, and the majority
believes once again. It forgets that it has already
heard or read those words, not so long ago. And so it
goes, on and on, to the detriment of the people.
In other places, there are TV station
directors who remember. They search the news archives
and pull out the appropriate footage to broadcast for
the people to recall the last few times those same promises
were made, thus reducing the latitude afforded to those
politicians who think they can fool all the people all
the time. That does not happen here. Even the local,
Spanish-language newspaper editors don’t bother.
I have no explanation.
On a slightly different topic, last
year as Hurricane Kenna approached the coastline of
Jalisco and Nayarit, the authorities started issuing
strong warnings three days before she “tickled”
this port with her tail. Most chose to ignore the warnings,
an attitude that caused great material losses around
the Malecon area. At that time, we used to get a local
Weather Channel on cable in PV that has since disappeared.
We saw the scope of that hurricane. It was huge! Terrifying
to say the least. Last Monday, obviously having learned
a lesson from last year’s event, the authorities
began issuing hurricane warnings about “Olaf”.
They went door to door along the Malecon and the hotels,
making sure that everyone would board up, remove expensive
merchandise from the path of the oncoming waves, etc.
etc. They did the same on Tuesday, except that if anyone
had bothered looking at the satellite map, they would
have noticed that “Olaf” was really loafing.
He couldn’t get his act together, he was all over
the place, he couldn’t decide if he wanted to
go north, east or west, (he even backtracked at one
point…) and while in this Hamlet-style indecisiveness,
he fell apart. Yes, better be safe than sorry but honestly?
Call me stupid if you will, I didn’t even close
my windows. And the sky was filled with more stars that
night than I’ve seen in a long, long time.
What I call the “switch date”
is approaching quickly. It usually occurs sometime between
the 15th and the 25th of October. That’s the day
when it appears that someone flips a switch somewhere
and there is no more humidity, the rains stop, the days
are beautifully clear and the nights are cool. It happens
just like that, from one day to the next. On the one
hand, we who live here appreciate it, but on the other
we also miss the wonderful, powerful, cleansing rains
and the spectacular thunderstorms that accompany them.
The mountainsides will remain lush and green throughout
the winter, not to worry, but the dust settling on the
leaves slowly changes their color as the dry season
progresses. By the time April and May come around, everything
is quite dry …and dusty. Tourists love it. We
have the most “guaranteeable” weather in
Mexico. (I don’t know why our infamous Tourism
Board doesn’t publicize it… Jamaica does!)
Thank goodness for all the springtime celebrations and
festivals in Vallarta, at least they help us ignore
the “dry & dusty” and look forward to
the evening rains once again, in June.
I am sorry to say that this will
be my last contribution to the PV Mirror as I am faced
with a conflict of interests. So if any of you want
to continue reading my weekly blather, you'll just have
to pick up a copy of the Tribune, but if you want to
write to me directly, my e-mail address remains the
same.
Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Columbus
Day, Happy Birthday to all the Libras out there …and
remember to take good care of each other, dear readers.
Hasta luego.
pvmomto3@hotmail.com
Archives
by date |
Current
Weather Report
