Columbus Day vs Indigenous People’s Day: A debate over cultural respect, erasing history

Debra Scocchera’s family settled in Port Chester in 1905—after a long, arduous journey across the Atlantic Ocean in a migration from Italy.

A second-generation Italian immigrant, she’s not only fully cognizant of her family history, but contains the purest pride in that past while recognizing she shares the same story as countless others in the Village. Today, Port Chester is known as an immigration hub, home to a majority Hispanic community. But at the turn of the century, Italians were the newcomers, facing a struggle comparable to the one those from Central and South America confront today.

Scocchera’s family lived in the Bowery—the neighborhood around Grace Church Street and Purdy Avenue where she said copious Italian families made home.

“My father grew up in the Bowery and worked hard his whole life. He’s a true success story. Our family was so poor, they could barely put food on the table. He came from nothing and made something of himself,” Scocchera said. “Columbus Park was right there, and as a little boy he would go there with his family to have picnics. Everyone would. As little as they had, the things they did as a community, it’s amazing.”

Those picnics are a tradition Scocchera has continued with her family. And for as long as she can remember, the Christopher Columbus statue always stood tall nearby, overlooking their gatherings.

October is Italian Heritage Month and Monday, Oct. 12, is Columbus Day—two occasions that are immeasurably meaningful to Scocchera due to her pride, memories and traditions. With the COVID-19 pandemic still looming as a threat, the Columbus Day Parade—one of the largest annual events in Port Chester—will not be strolling down Westchester Avenue on Monday. With the Village encompassing a rich Italian immigrant history, the circumstance, while understandable, is saddening for that population.

Scocchera still plans to celebrate anyway.

As founder of the Port Chester Italian Heritage Club, she’s hoping to have a low-key event with members where they can dress in costume as they normally would for the procession. Soon, they’re planning to start a food drive for a Thanksgiving donation to the Don Bosco Center—another tribute to their heritage as the Dons and the Salesians were crucial to helping their low-income ancestors survive, she said.

“It’s a really important day to me, and October is our heritage month. I try to do special things to honor it; remember our deceased. I make special Italian recipes, hang my Italian flag all month,” she explained. “We have to keep honoring it because if we don’t, it will disappear.”

While Scocchera represents a substantial viewpoint in the Village, it’s one that’s become controversial in recent years. There’s an emerging demographic in Port Chester, typically the younger generations, who join others across the country in finding Columbus Day celebrations deeply problematic.

At an early age, most Americans learned about Christopher Columbus as the heroic Italian adventurer who sailed the seven seas to discover, and ultimately initiate the colonization of, the Americas. However, many yielding swords of self-proclaimed enlightenment challenge the rhetoric—calling it a simplified story that inaccurately represents a horrific history.

Historians agree Christopher Columbus never stepped foot on North American soil but landed in the Caribbean which ultimately opened the gates to European exploration of the New World. In the conquering process, many professionals argue he dehumanized the indigenous people while committing vicious acts of violence against them.

Over the last decade, as this information became mainstream, countless communities across the U.S. started protesting the idea of praising Christopher Columbus with a national holiday. Many ultimately changed the name of the date to Indigenous People’s Day.

And it’s a conversation that inevitably occurs in Port Chester, too.

“I’m totally, avidly, against celebrating it,” said William Street resident Randy Moran. “I think it’s interesting we never learned any of the real history in school, but we’ve become indoctrinated to celebrate someone because they discovered something they didn’t actually discover. It’s interesting that we choose to celebrate another European who has led a movement that destroyed an entire population.”

Moran, a 26-year-old master’s student, thinks celebrating colonization is disturbing—especially because of the way it “whitewashes history,” he said, by misrepresenting what actually happened to silence cultures that didn’t come from European descent.

It’s a central issue to him because it’s impacted his life. Moran’s family is Ecuadorean, but he feels no ties to the culture. And it upsets him. “I just think it’s interesting how easy it is to lose touch with that history and culture while being raised in societies, like our own, that have actively tried to eliminate those groups of people,” he said.

Believing the community needs to progress with a more realistic understanding of history, Moran doesn’t just advocate for changing the name of Columbus Day, but he wants to see the Christopher Columbus statue removed. Calling it “disrespectful” and “riddled with genocide,” he said glorifying it ignores an unpleasant, yet important, truth about America.

Over the summer, in the wake of nationwide racial unrest provoked by police brutality, there was a movement across the U.S. where communities saw demonstrators forcibly taking down or destroying controversial statues depicting beloved figures with skeletons in their closets. A 22-year-old Port Chester man was even arrested in Waterbury, Conn., for allegedly beheading a Christopher Columbus monument there in July.

At the time, Port Chester Trustee Joan Grangenois-Thomas—who is known for her promotion of social justice advocacy—felt empathetic towards both sides of the matter while relating it to the local monument and park. While understanding the problematic nature of Christopher Columbus, she said it’s important to be considerate of the rich Italian culture in the Village.

While she wasn’t prepared to initiate it herself, she’s open to a conversation about changes should the topic come up. And now, it might.

As co-founder of The New Guard advocacy group, Moran said in light of the upcoming holiday, he and his peers have found themselves in deep contemplation over whether they should speak out against the statue. Currently, they have been committed to educating their peers about the history behind Christopher Columbus but may seek future attention from the Board of Trustees.

If the changes they desire were brought to fruition, Scocchera said it would pain her community. To her, Christopher Columbus is a symbol of Italian heritage—a proud figure that made America possible—and an attack on him is an attack on their culture.

“The history being taught has been changing. He’s become a villain in a lot of people’s eyes,” she said. “I was taught that he was a great explorer, a great explorer who discovered many things. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be where we are. We should honor him, and Italians do honor him because we were taught to. I hate the fact that he’s become this villain. That other groups are taught he wasn’t a good person.”

The root of the controversy, on both sides, is about whether either scenario is effectively erasing history.

Scocchera wholeheartedly believes trying to rid society of Columbus Day and Port Chester’s statue is, whether intentionally or not, an attempt at erasing history—a direct challenge to her personal goals, as the entire reason she founded the Italian Heritage Club in 2017 was to preserve it. It’s not even a privileged past to keep alive, she said, because Italians faced the brute force of discrimination when they arrived.

“We felt our heritage was disappearing in Port Chester, and quite honestly, our ancestors helped build a lot of Port Chester,” she said. “Port Chester looks very different today than it did 30 years ago. And the way the Village changed is beautiful, but we have so many newcomers who come in and don’t know our history. We started the club to teach our children and honor our history. And these are reasons why the Columbus statue is so important. It’s our history. We suddenly decided to change the way we view history to not offend people.”

Conversely, Moran claims it’s just the opposite. The way Christopher Columbus has been idolized for centuries was a successful expunging of history, he said. The people trying to bring the full context to light now are just trying to undo the damage done.

“If anything, we need more history. We should be learning about him, but not glorify him. Saying what he did was a good thing when in fact in never was,” he said. “Monuments don’t teach history; textbooks teach history. Monuments are for glorification. Is this something we really want to glorify?”

Both Scocchera and Moran come from a similar place of heart: both of their heritages have histories of facing persecution; both want to see mutual respect for culture differences across the community.

They just don’t see eye to eye on the significance of Christopher Columbus.

“Port Chester is a melting pot, and we should honor each other’s heritage and religion. I grew up here, and we never mocked anyone’s heritage. We didn’t have bigotry,” she said, and later continued: “Everyone has the right to their history. Some people have been treated unfairly and we should never go back to that; it hasn’t been easy for a lot of groups. Every group has had wrongdoing. But we have to make it better and respect all of our heritages now.”

“When did it all get so mean?” she continued. “If we keep attacking each other’s cultures like this, we’ll have a world full of hate.”

Ultimately, Moran wants to open a dialogue between the generations and come to an agreement with the Italian community—whom he has enormous respect for. Their storied struggle is relevant, he said, because they faced the same treatment that Hispanic immigrants do today.

Because he thinks the Christopher Columbus statue is offensive to the minority community, he wants to see it dismantled. But in doing so, he said they should be mindful of Italian pride. In an ideal world, they should compromise and replace it with a monument to a different Italian figure.

“I think it’s important to work with them, but some of them are so stuck on this. It’s stagnancy,” he said. “They think we’re trying to erase their history and ignore them. We feel our issues are being ignored and we want to bring them to light.”