Día de la Resistencia Indígena

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Current state (June 6, 2006) of the Columbus Walk in Caracas. The statue was knocked down by activists after a "public judgment" during the celebrations of the Day of the Indigenous Resistance (12 of October) in 2004^[1]^[2]

Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Spanish for "Day of Indigenous Resistance") is the name for an October 12 national holiday in Venezuela. The holiday on this date was known as Día de la Raza (Day of the People) prior to 2002, a name that is used together with Columbus Day in other countries across the Americas.

The festival originally commemorated the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, and was made a holiday in 1921 under President Juan Vicente Gómez. The new Day of the Indigenous Resistance commemorates thus the resistance of the indigenous peoples against the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

On the 2004 Day of Indigenous Resistance, a statue of Columbus was toppled in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. The pro-Chavez, left-wing website Aporrea wrote: "Just like the statue of Saddam in Baghdad, that of Columbus the tyrant also fell this October 12, 2004 in Caracas"^[3]. The famous toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue had occurred the previous year.

All this revival of the Indian resentment against the white Spanish conquerors (and Columbus) is supported and promoted by Venezuela's current President, the Bolivarianist Hugo Chávez, himself a mestizo of mixed Amerindian, Afro-Venezuelan, and Spanish descent^{[citation needed]}.