|
Cubanow.
Almost everything has been said about Christopher Columbus’s
origins. Rivers of ink have flowed to put forward the most diverse
theories about the nationality of this navigator, possibly the
second best known historical personality after Jesus Christ.
More than five centuries have passed since Columbus claimed
sovereignty over the territories he reached on October 12, 1492 in
favor of Queen Elizabeth of Castile and King Fernando of Aragon. At
that time, he landed on the tiny island of Saint Salvador of Bahamas
and mistook it for the coast of the India that he so much longed to
find.
Research into his life and nationality continues, simply because the
mystery remains. In 1908, Spanish researcher Ángel de Altolaguirre y
Duval concluded that the language used by Columbus “was probably a
Portuguese dialect”, while Ramón Menéndez Pidal, President of the
Spanish Royal Academy of Language from 1925 to 1939 and from 1947 to
1968, also affirmed that “his vocalism tends towards Portuguese”.
One of the most rigorous researchers who follow the course of the
navigator’s life is Portuguese-American doctor and historian Manuel
Luciano da Silva, who published a book entitled Columbus was
Portuguese in 2006. This specialist in genetics does not deny the
existence of a humble Genovese weaver named Cristóforo Columbo, who
settled down in Lisbon in 1476. Lisbon then was the richest and most
flourishing city in Europe due to the Portuguese overseas’ expansion
begun a century before the admiral´s arrival in the place later
called America.
What he does question is that he was the Admiral Christopher
Columbus, who served the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon to carry out
the celebrated voyage in search of the mythical India and actually
ended up on another continent.
The truth is, that the man who got to America while trying to find
India was a Portuguese from the medieval hamlet of Cuba, in the
southern region of Alentejo, stated Luciano da Silva in an interview
with IPS.
It’s a theory supported by historian Augusto Mascarenhas Barreto
(Colombo Português: Provas Documentais (Portuesuese Colombus:
documentary evidence)).
The Admiral had been born in Cuba de
Alentejo, in 1448, as a bastard son of Infante Don Fernando, Duke of
Vise and Beja, and Isabel Zarco.
Mascarenhas Barreto maintains that the name Colombo was the
pseudonym “stolen” from the Genovese weaver, and that he adopted as
a spy in the service of Don João II (King John II of Portugal). His
real name was Salvador Fernandes Zarco, which, on the contrary,
identifies him as an illegitimate grandson, on his mother's side, of
the Lusitanian buccaneer, João Gonçalves Zarco.
Cuba de Alentejo is much older than the Caribbean republic that
adopted this name. There have been references to its existence since
the 13th century and underneath it there are vestiges of Roman
Lusitânia. In order to honor his home town, the Admiral baptized as
Cuba the largest island in the Sea of the Antilles. This theory was
also presented in the book “The Mystery of Columbus Revealed”,
published in October, 2006. American historian Eric J. Steele, one
of the authors, pointed out that “it seems that we are facing a
Portuguese spy who in a masterly fashion led the Spanish towards
their goal and thus cleared the way for the Portuguese to arrive at
the real India.” This was achieved by Admiral Vasco da Gama in 1498,
who established a route hugging the African coasts.
Among all the investigations carried out, Doctor Silva's appears the
most consistent, since it includes genetic tests and has recourse to
philology, analyzing texts in old Castilian that identify him as “a
foreigner in Spain”.
However, it hasn’t been easy for this persistent doctor and
historical researcher to collect data because of the excessive
secrecy about Columbus preserved by Portuguese authorities for more
than five centuries.
When asked by IPS if an opening was likely to occur in the future,
he was emphatic, “unfortunately, everything remains the same up to
January 30, 2008” and reminds us that “in Spain, clerical and
governmental authorities authorized Doctor José Lorente, specialist
in human genetics at the University of Granada, to open the
mausoleums of the Cathedral of Seville.”
The forensic operation carried out in Seville aimed at getting
chromosomes from the skeletons of two close relatives of the
navigator’s buried there: his son Fernando and his brother
Bartolomeu. And to be able to put an end to the vast historic
speculation by providing scientific evidence.
The researcher deplores that like authorities in Portugal “do not
allow the specialists in human genetics at the University of Coimbra
to carry out DNA studies on the skeletons (of supposed Portuguese
relatives of Columbus ) in order to do the comparative analysis of Y
chromosomes already found in Spain”.
The scientific process is based on the fact that humans have 46
chromosomes, arranged in 23 pairs contained in each cell. The 23rd,
the smallest of these pairs, determines the sex: XX feminine and XY
masculine. The Y chromosome of the 23rd pair never changes from
generation to generation in thousands of years, which would make it
possible to determine whether the Portuguese people who are
supposedly Columbus´ relatives are really his descendents.
In 2005, after professor Lorente’s conclusions, 447 alleged
descendents of Columbus appeared. They came from Spain, Italy, and
France, but none of them showed any consistency. In Portugal, “no
politician should obstruct scientific progress”, says the doctor and
historian, who has realized that, unfortunately, the current
government seems to have no intentions of reconsidering its
attitude.
However, he perceives other difficulties in the search for DNA in
bones found in Portuguese mausoleums, “encouraged by amateur
historians, because the so called professional historians at the
universities in Portugal don’t want to know about this research,
since they understand nothing about the science of human genetics”.
Notwithstanding the difficulties in continuing the research, in Da
Silva´s view “there is no room for the least doubt that Cristovão
Cólon (as he insists is the correct spelling of his full name, with
an accent on the first o), was Portuguese”.
He quotes “the two papal bulls of 1493 about the discovery of
America, written in Latin, showing his name in Portuguese. It is not
written Christopher Columbus in Latin, or Cristophoro Colombo in
Italian, or Cristóbal Colón in Castillian; it is in Portuguese.”
In the second bull, his name is spelled "Cristofõm", ending in " õm
" like in old Portuguese, which would in turn become the current
"ão", found only in this language. In the historical context
Columbus lived in, it’s unthinkable that a Genovese wool carder
would master Greek, Latin, Castilian, Portuguese, and Hebrew, as
well as having a vast knowledge about cartography, philosophy, and
navigation. So affirms Pedro Laranjeira, publishing director of the
Lisboan weekly "Prespectiva", in a comprehensive study published
this month.
If you have some minimal knowledge about 15th century society, it’s
easy to figure out that a poor immigrant would have never been able
to marry Madame Filipa de Perestrelo, daughter of nobleman
Bartolomeu de Perestrelo, Captain General of Porto Santo, in the
Atlantic archipelago of Madeira, Laranjeira maintains.
Then why did Columbus, whether Cristóvam, or Cristovão, or
Cristopharo, or Cristóforo, or Cristóbal, hide his origin?
The most reasonable theory is that Don João II convinced him to
appear in the court of Burgos to divert Spain from its appetite for
the coveted trade with Asia. In this epoch, Europe's interests were
focused on the riches of the East, but the Ottoman Empire would not
allow Christian nations to pass through Islamic territories.
Portugal, then, devoted herself to finding the way to travel by sea,
and Columbus assured the Spanish monarchy this was possible if they
sailed towards the west.
A considerable number of historical schools in many countries
consider that Portugal had already anchored in the Terras de Santa
Cruz (today Brazil) long before Columbus´ voyage, and the arrival of
Admiral Pedro Álvares Cabral in Porto Seguro in 1500, is a date that
only marks the “official discovery” of this South American
territory. As proof of this, the historic archives in Paris and
Lisbon conserve a letter from the Frenchman Jean be Léry, dated in
1480, and another from Estêvão de Fríos, in 1493, where the
existence of the Terras de Vera Cruz, later called Santa Cruz, is
clearly mentioned.
According to Laranjeira, Portugal patiently waited for Columbus to
return in order to sign the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, splitting
the world in two halves, one for Spain, who thought India would
belong to it, and the other, where on the contrary, the real India
was, for Portugal. In other words, Don João II had asked the
Portuguese Cristovãm Cólon to convince the Spanish monarchs that
they had discovered the sea route to India.
After the Portuguese Vasco de Gama’s arrival in the real India in
1498, Columbus starts to live a nightmare in Spain, where it was
difficult for him to insist that he had reached Asia, when, in fact
he hadn’t gone beyond the Antilles. Besides his assumed role as
secret agent in the service of the Lusitanian court, the most
obvious reasons for him to be discrete was his probable Jewish
origin, in a time when the Holy Inquisition of the Catholic Church
had established itself in Spain in 1478, and in Portugal in 1497.
Unlike in Spain, many so-called illegitimate children of the
nobility in Portugal occupied important positions at court.
Likewise, the majority of the cartographers, considered to be the
most precise of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, were Jews from
the region of Covilhã and Belmonte, in the center of the country.
Columbus
was Genovese for the Italians, Castilian for the Spanish, and is now
Lusitanian for the Portuguese.
But at the end of his conversation with IPS, Da Silva pointed out
that “his book was published in May, 2006 and no historian has
questioned it yet, because there is no doubt that he was
Portuguese”.
(IPS)
* Translated by
* Revised by Katharine Beeman |