October 12th from Our America: We vindicate the legacy of the oppressed and celebrate the Day of Indigenous Resistance

From Cuba, Casa de las Americas, the Office of the Martiano Program and the World Council of the José Martí Project of International Solidarity vindicated the legacy of the oppressed in memory of the cultural clash of October 12, 1492.

Casa de las Americas, the Office of the Martiano Program and the World Council of the José Martí Project of International Solidarity declared this Saturday in Havana the vindication of the legacy of the oppressed in memory of the cultural clash of October 12, 1492 and the emancipatory process that followed.

Through a statement, Cuba's cultural institutions condemn “all forms of colonialism, neocolonialism and exploitation -- past and present -- and denounce any attempt to impose a pink legend or glorify perpetrators and ideologues of such outrages.”

With the hashtag #NadaQueCelebrar -- Nothing to Celebrate -- which qualifies “one of the darkest chapters of history,” produced in the so-called “discovery” of the American continent, the text alludes to the “extermination, the encomienda, the mita, the imported diseases and the cultural shock that [Europeans] produced in the first century and a half of colonization.”.

The cultural institution Casa de las Americas, the Office of the Martiano Program and the World Council of the José Martí Project of International Solidarity vindicate the resistance embodied by “those who rose up five centuries ago against the oppressors and all those who, on this side of the world, since then, have decided to cast their lot with the poor of the earth.”

“The invasion of America by Europeans - in the words of José Martí - constituted the interference of a devastating civilization, two words that, being an antagonism, constitute a process,” contains the text, which was posted on the Facebook profile of Casa de las Americas in Havana.

"Nothing to celebrate.  The conquest and colonization of the Americas turned the initial encounter of two cultures into a sequence of plundering and underdeveloping plundering to which a greater infamy would be added: the slave trade."

For his part, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez stated on his X account that “the conquest and colonization of America would add a greater infamy: the slave trade.”