The public schools of New York decided to eliminate the traditional Columbus Day holiday from the school calendar, a movement that has generated a strong controversy in the city and that has led to a kind of commitment that will replace the celebration with an Indigenous Peoples Day / Italian Heritage Day.
Columbus Day, a federal holiday in the United States that is celebrated around October 12, has been renamed in recent years in several states and cities as a result of pressure from activists who They denounce the alleged mistreatment of the discoverer and his forces against the American Indians.
In most cases, the celebration has been replaced by an Indigenous Peoples Day, which is what New York schools had also decided in the first instance, according to the calendar for the next course that they made public this Tuesday.
The decision, however, generated immediate condemnations, especially by leaders of the Italian-American community, in which Many see this date as a tribute not only to the navigator of Genoese origin, but to the heritage of immigrants from Italy and their descendants, very numerous in the Big Apple.
Finally, after last minute negotiations, the school calendar will include a holiday on October 11 under the name Indigenous Peoples Day / Italian Heritage Day to replace Columbus Day.
The mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, of Italian descent, said on Wednesday that the initial decision had been made without consulting him or the municipal responsible for Education, Meisha Ross Porter.
“I think this process was not managed well,” De Blasio said at a press conference, in which he considered that the day It should not have been changed “arbitrarily”.
“We have to honor that day as a day to recognize the contributions of all Italian Americans,” stressed the councilor, who defended the final commitment given the importance of also recognizing indigenous peoples, as has been done in other locations in the country.
“The process was not adequate, but the end result is going to be a day to honor Italian-Americans and indigenous peoples. I think it is a good way to go,” he said.
The arrangement, however, was not long in coming under fire from another illustrious Italian-American, State Governor Andrew Cuomo, de Blasio’s party partner but a longstanding political enemy of the mayor.
“Why do you need to lower the Italian-American contribution to recognize the contribution of indigenous peoples?”, Cuomo wondered at a press conference.
The governor described the decision to unite the two commemorations as “destructive” and defended that you can have an Indigenous Peoples Day without “meddling in Columbus Day”, which guaranteed that it will continue to be a statewide holiday.
In recent years and in the face of calls to remove the famous Columbus statue that stands in the central rotunda of Columbus Circle, local politicians had already defended its maintenance as a symbol of the legacy of the Italian-American community, which was the one who gave it to the city in 1892.
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