To the Lighthouse

Lunch at one of the restaurants lining the Plaza de Espana, on the banks of the functional Ozama river.

To the left, the 16th century Alcazar de Colón, the home of one of the first governors of Hispaniola.

Very good! You’re right. Spanish speakers do know Christopher Columbus as Christobel Colón. But not so fast. The governor was Diego, Christopher’s son. He lived here with his wife, Maria del Toledo. And sometimes Chris himself popped into stay in one of the spare rooms.

Things didn’t end well for the big man though. Various intrigues caught up with him and he ended up dying penniless in Spain in 1506.

Columbus is buried in a grandiose tomb in the massive, crazily grandiose cathedral in Seville. But is that true? Not the mad cathedral bit – I’ve been there and it’s insane. No, the other bit.

In 1877 they found a box in Santo Domingo’s Catedral with some bones in it and Columbus’ name on it. To this day Dominicans are convinced they have the real thing. So much so, that they decided to build a new mausoleum for the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s voyages in 1992.

Now go back to the photo. Look at the second palm tree to the left of the sunshade. (Sorry about “palm tree” and “sunshade” by the way).

Can you see the building behind it?

That’s the mausoleum. The Faro a Colón.

I went there yesterday.

It’s 680 feet long, too long to fit in my field of vision from where I took the photo. Two side corridors run alongside a loooong central atrium that’s open to the skies. It’s not a real lighthouse, but a series of projectors beam spectacular light displays on special days. Those aren’t windows by the way.

You enter to the right, and near the entrance, at the apex of the cross that the building forms, is that box.

To the side, a little exhibit about the voyages, including the anchor from Columbus’s flagship the Santa Maria.

Now that is something.

The corridors? Various countries contributed to the 70million USD it cost to build the thing, and they all have a room or two of wood-panelled recesses along the corridors to show what they think of things – in China’s case to plug an Olympic bid, Russia to show off some Russian dolls. Britain? Amongst other bits and pieces we sent along the ugliest portrait of the Queen you could imagine. Sorry Ma’am.

And as you can imagine the representatives from the Americas take the whole thing more seriously, with more focus on their own indigenous heritage – artwork, dress, musical instruments, and in Venezuela’s case, ideological screed, line the wood-panelled crosses on the walls. Even the USA present some sober and dignified photographs of Native Americans. God knows what Trump would have come up with.

Ornamental crosses everywhere? Building shaped like a cross? John Paul II coming here no less than three times during his papacy? (Well done again!) You see what’s going on here. This is not about Columbus, the enabler of Western modernity and progress. We are here to venerate Columbus, the man who brought a whole new continent to the loving grace of the Roman Catholic Church.

The traditionalists would be pleased. The Columbian era delivered the people of the Americas from the godless dark of illiteracy and human sacrifice into the light of God’s grace and civilisation. It’s a fitting mausoleum to a man whose express wish was to be buried in his beloved Hispaniola. Columbus deserved to have it this way.

The progressives, on the other hand…

Imagine you’re an architect in the Soviet Union of the 1930’s, and Stalin has asked you to build him his future mausoleum. You don’t know exactly what he wants, but you know all about the gulags. So you decide to do, not just Stalinist architecture, but the crudest, the most over-the-top version of brutalist Stalinism you can imagine. Just to be ab-so-lute-ly sure, you understand. And a decade later you have a quick chat with George Orwell as well.

A progressive would say this is the sort of triumphalist monstrosity you’d come up with. Considering what happened to the indigenous peoples of the Americas as a result of the conquest, and how it compares to Stalin’s crimes, the anticolonialist would agree; Columbus deserved to have it this way.

I wonder what you think. Me? Ah…I see that the heavy shower that came over as I was writing this, is over, and the tropical air has that lovely fresh, flowerly feel that comes after rain. Time to settle the bill, and enjoy the afternoon!