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Robert G. Mead, Jr.
University of Connecticut, Emeritus Columbus and the Discovery of the New
World
It is not only inevitable but also quite appropriate that America should be an ambiguous word. Columbus didn't know he had discovery a New World, thinking all the time that the islands and coasts he saw in his four voyages were part of what we have come to call the Orient or Far East. Early New World maps, incorrect, distorted and speculative, display an ambiguous geography. And the word America itself, spelled América inmost New World countries, has very different meanings depending on whether it is spoken by a North American, a Spanish American, or a Brazilian. The United States, contrary to much of that country's popular opinion, has no more right to the word American than do its neighbors south of its border. In reality it was a European invention, derived from the name of the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci, and used to designate an inhabitant of any region of the New World. As such, it truly belongs equally to all New World inhabitants. There are further ambiguities to be found in such words as American and americano, and in some of the terms derived from them. In North America the words South America and South American are frequently used to refer to all the land below the southern border of the United States and to those who five upon it. The latter quite often speak and write of Norteamérica and the norteamericanos, meaning the United States and its inhabitants, and disregarding other dwellers in the northern latitudes such as Canadians, Inuits, native Americans, etc. And as for such widely used words as Latin American, Spanish or Hispanic American, hispano or latino, one only need remember that there are still millions of people south of the United States who speak little or no Spanish, and almost none who are fluent in Latin. Even October 12 itself has different names in Spanish and English. In most of Spanish America it is called «El Día de la Raza» while in English it is known as «Columbus Day.» The truth is that our New World is such a vast mixture of languages and cultures, possessed of such varied geography, and inhabited by diverse ethnic groups or races with differing histories, that to find a set of unambiguous terms capable of expressing the reality of the Americas is to seek the impossible. What Columbus set in motion -the historical development of the New World- is clearly an ambiguous and as yet incomplete process whose nature we cannot fully comprehend and whose out come we cannot know. We do know, however, that the European penetration of this hemisphere was violent, cruel, and destructive. Millions died, cities and empires were plundered and destroyed, the blight of human slavery crossed the Atlantic and, finally, the long and as yet unfinished struggle to ward freedom was begun in many lands. All this, of course, is not to gainsay or belittle the valor, determination, and enterprise of Columbus himself or the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, explorers and colonists, nor the religious zeal and, often, kindness and compassion of the missionaries and clerics who accompanied them. What we need to keep in mind, then, when we think of Columbus and the muddled, ambiguous nature of his «discovery» is that it was nonetheless an important event in history. The discovery was the catalyst which set in motion a much larger process than any the «Admiral of the Ocean Sea» ever dreamed of. As the New World became better known Europeans began to dream of «America» as a «New Found Land», better, cleaner, purer, and freer than the Old World, a sort of Utopia on earth. Today we know better, but the dream has not died completely, and millions in our New World have not abandoned all hope in a better future. So on Columbus Day in 1992 let us remember the 500th anniversary of his discovery without the traditional overblown rhetoric and the routine holiday «celebration.» Instead, let us look as objectively as we can at the historical significance of the event and observe Columbus Day on its Quincentennial and thereafter as an opportunity to appreciate our cultural diversity and renew our dedication to making the Americas a symbol of hope for a better world. 
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