Bartolome de las Casas Day
Oct. 14th, 2024 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenAs I have mentioned in previous years, I celebrate the Monday federal holiday in October as Bartolome de las Casas Day, honoring a man who spoke out against Christopher Columbus’s enslavement and brutal abuse of the Indios, and who struggled to get fair treatment for them, inspired by his Catholic faith and belief in universal human dignity. In a sense, de las Casas was one of history’s losers, but (something which a certain politician of today wouldn’t understand), it can be better to struggle for the right, and lose, than to participate in grave wrongdoing.
On a lighter note, I plan to bake chocolate chip cookies, having made the dough yesterday. Whatever miseries and cruelties ensued from Columbus’s voyages, people today, all over the world, can enjoy foods like New World chocolate, Old World wheat, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and Old World soy beans and rice (used to make miso, an ingredient in the cookies). Let us hope that we can also learn to get along with each other, and behave decently, as Bartolome de las Casas would have wanted.
On a lighter note, I plan to bake chocolate chip cookies, having made the dough yesterday. Whatever miseries and cruelties ensued from Columbus’s voyages, people today, all over the world, can enjoy foods like New World chocolate, Old World wheat, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and Old World soy beans and rice (used to make miso, an ingredient in the cookies). Let us hope that we can also learn to get along with each other, and behave decently, as Bartolome de las Casas would have wanted.
