Columbus Day- From The Island Where He First Landed

So, a lot has happened since I last posted about a year and a half ago. One big change is that I got married in May. My husband and I moved to Santo Domingo so he can finish his undergraduate degree in law (it is an undergraduate degree here). While we are here we planning on seeing as much of the island as possible and have already been on a few trips to other cities.

We have been in Santo Domingo for a little more than three weeks now and it has been interesting to learn what the major tourist traps and attractions are in the capitol and on the island. Across the island as a whole, the most popular tourist activity is undoubtedly all-inclusive beach tourism. You know, the type you see on Groupon's travel section and the trips includes airfare and all the booze you can drink? This is not surprising to people. While interestingly enough, Santo Domingo has more of a historic touristic approach. Those historic site include; the oldest catholic church in the New World, the original fort built when Santo Domingo was colonized, and many things related to Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón in Spanish).

I don't know if many people know the when Columbus “Discovered America,” it was really the Bahamas and the Northern part of Hispaniola (the island that the Dominican Republic and Haiti now inhabit). At that time a native population called the Tainos inhabited the land. Once Columbus had landed here, he left around 30 men on the island while he went back to Spain to tell of all the wealth and opportunity (aka, making Tainos work to find him gold). Fast forward a little more than ten years, Columbus dies, the Taino population is dying off thanks to European diseases/battles with the Spaniards, and now African slaves are being imported to the island when the Taino population runs too low to have sufficient forced workers.

It has bothered me a lot in the past that we celebrate Columbus Day and the more I have learned about Columbus, the less I like him and the stories and songs about “how courageous and smart he was to have found this already existing land that was already occupied.” a lot of Dominicans believe that the Virgin Mary led Columbus to this land to inhabit it and make it Spain's. This idealism fairly bothers me because some histories claim, coming from his diaries, that he had 10 year-old Taino mistresses, that he had killed and enslaved thousands of people, and more or less started colonialism in the West. Many Dominicans still look at Columbus as a hero and look at Spain as their roots, and according to a documentary I recently saw 70% of Dominicans have African genetics. Dominicans are proud of all things columbus, even boasting that they have his remains here.

This is where history gets tricky. Where was Columbus buried? Three countries claim to have him. Sevilla, Spain (where he had died), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (where they had sent his remains back to be buried in a cathedral here), and Havana, and Cuba (one of the stops on the way back to Spain from the DR upon deciding they didn't want his remains to be in a country ruled by anyone other than Spain.)

Faro Colón is the site in Santo Domingo where Columbus is supposed to be buried. Faro in Spanish means lighthouse, but Faro Colon doesn't look like a lighthouse to me at all and it isn't next to the ocean. It does however spotlight a huge cross into the clouds at night, which I guess makes it a lighthouse. Inside this huge structure is a small monument that contains a small black box that is supposed to have Columbus' remains and has “1492” and “Colón” engraved on it in many places.

This huge lighthouse cost $70 million dollars to build back in 1986, and was finished in 1992 for the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to the West. It is shaped as a huge cross. As the monument for Columbus only takes up a small space, a majority of the building is a museum that displays exhibits of the countries that donated money or supported the project. Surprisingly countries like China and Israel were among these countries (surprising only because of the religious histories of these countries).

Being a lighthouse, it uses huge amounts of electricity in a side of the city that does not always have constant electricity or generators (we had the lights out for a good 12 hours straight a few days ago, and having one or two outages a day is normal.) It's just interesting to see what our priorities are as humans :).

View of Faro Colon From The Front