"The discovey of America" or "The genocide of America"

By Fiorella Bafundo

On October, 12th in commemoration of the 516 years of "The Discovery of America" the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, gave a speech in his country where he said "we must call things by their name: what we had in America was a genocide here or there was no discovery, no civilization, no evangelism, or encounter, here there was the greatest genocide that has known history. " As it is said that during European colonization more people died than in the Holocaust, he said that this date should not make people think about Columbus, and criticized the press that still call that episode as "The discovery of America".
As him, a lot of people believe that the arrival of European colonists changed all Americans' culture and history, with the extermination of most of the American aborigines and the exploit of their natural resources which caused them years and years of dependence, and even for a lot of people, it determined the differences between developed countries and undeveloped ones.
By the end, Hugo Chavez pointed out that "Today is a day to encounter ourselves, is a day to remember our roots and is a day to say the American Indian and alive is a day of battle, of dignity, a day of truth, a day of fighting, one day symbolic. On Oct. 12 were five centuries of struggle, they were 500 years was not a day. "