I had my preconceptions about Columbus before reading his journal entries, and listening to the lecture videos. The literature and the lecture video made me reflect on how Columbus was presented to me in school. Looking back, my elementary and high school did not talk about Columbus in a negative way. They presented Columbus as a courageous explorer who discovered America. I only started thinking and talking about Columbus in a critical way when I started university. I am annoyed when people refer to Columbus as the one who “discovered America”. To me, this is forgetting the large, developed indigenous populations that already existed in the Americas.

It was interesting to read Columbus’ journal entries because I got to experience different sides of him through literature. It particularly struck me when he said that the people of the island would be more easily converted through kindness rather than through coercion. This remark of his definitely added more depth to my understanding of Columbus. I saw more a humane side of him. While reading his journals, I sensed how focused this voyage was on resource extraction. The colonizers seemed to have no appreciation for the new culture they were interacting with. It was disheartening to read about how the indigenous people were so naïve to weapons and how they cut themselves on the blades when being handed a weapon. This particular phrase really impacted me because it emphasized how naïve the indigenous were to the violence and vices of the colonizers.

In the lecture video, it was interesting to discuss how Columbus used signs, metaphors, and similes to describe what he saw in Latin America. He would write that he could not explain what he says. In many ways, I relate to this feeling when I think about describing Mexican society to people. I am half Mexican and so I have grown up visiting the country a couple of times every year. It is a country with complex social problems, racial tensions, diversity, cultural richness, extreme poverty, and extreme wealth. There are people that only have one image of Mexico, and they fail to understand that there are many “different Mexicos”. There is the Mexico of the upper class, and the Mexico of the lower class. People also tend to forget that Mexico is also a country of immigrants and therefore Mexicans can look very different. I find that I can explain social complexities of the country only to a certain extent and that people must visit different parts of the country in order to truly understand it. For discussion, I would like to ask what image did people have of Columbus growing up? Was he portrayed as a hero or a villain and has your perspective on him changed throughout the years?