The Great Opening
The greatest thing since the creation of the world, except for the incarnation
and death of Him who created it, is the discovery of the Indies.
—FRANCISCO LOPEZ DE GOMARA, History of the IndiesThere is one historical event which everybody knows. Even those whose
predilections do not turn toward history know that Christopher Columbus
discovered America. This general knowledge of one fact indicates how that
singular achievement, the discovery of a New World, has captivated the sen
timent of all Europe and all America as the most notable event in secular his
tory.
—F. A. KIRKPATRICK, The Spanish Conquistadores"You're a lost civilization!" crowed the anthropologist to the Indian chief.
"We don't mind being lost," answered the chief. "It's being found that scares
us."N
ot long ago the world was getting ready to celebrate the five
hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America. One
group after another competed to honor the man and the achievement.
In the United States, which some would have named Columbia, where
some seventy cities and towns and a large number of fair and fraternal
institutions bear the discoverer's name, where people of Italian de
scent have vied with Hispanics to draw merit and honor from their
countryman (whether by descent or adoption), one could reasonably
expect a repetition en grand of the quadricentennial of 1892: a world's
fair (the Columbian Exposition); mementos galore; and the following
year, richly colored issues of commemorative stamps.
People felt good about Columbus in those days, and the expectation
was that 1992 would be bigger and better (500 beats 400); but then
something, everything, went wrong. Columbus, symbol of historical
achievement, midwife of a new world, turned out to be a political em
barrassment. It emerged—but there had been rumblings of dissent for
years—that many people did not see the Admiral of the Ocean Sea as
a hero, the European arrival in the New World as a discovery, the an
niversary of this event as occasion for celebration.^1