Reports about CERLAC's Resource Centre

^{On 12 October 1492, Italian maritime explorer Christopher Columbus landed in what would be called America. He stumbled on this "New World" on a quest for gold, glory, and God, and would use all means to achieve these goals. In fact, the "discovery" began a legacy of systematic oppression and colonial exploitation that has continued for more than 500 years. To grasp just how Columbus affected the Indigenous peoples of America, one must hear their perspectives, and that is what the Indigenous Section of the CERLAC Resource Centre does. It provides unique information that covers historical and contemporary issues.}

^{During the Winter Semester of 2025, as a fourth year Public History program student, it was my responsibility to reorganize and annotate that Section. In the course of that work, I became particularly fascinated by three sets of documents: the 500 Years After Columbus Celebrations and Protests, Mexico's recent Zapatista movement, and the establishment of the Abya Yala Editorial House in Quito, Ecuador.}

^{The Fifth Centennial (1992) of Columbus' arrival was initially conceived to aid Spain's standing in the world stage and improve her leverage in international trade. However, many indigenous nationalities and organizations had a major problem with these plans. They remembered the arrival of Columbus as the beginning of a conquest that stripped sovereignty from millions of people and exposed them to steadily worsening racial oppression. Instead, in 1989, they proposed a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP). Adopted by the UN in 2007, the Parliament of Canada finally signed it in 2021 as part of the Reconciliation process.}

^{Below, I focus on two additional sets of documents: Mexico's Zapatista rebellion and the research and publications promoted by Juan Bottasso regarding the Shuar People of the Ecuadorean Amazon.}

^{The CERLAC Resource Center houses a variety of works about the Zapatistas (EZLN), ranging from academic articles to newspaper clippings, and it covers the events of the rebellion in English, Spanish, and Italian. The fact that the collection houses sources from Italy means that it offers perspective apart from the traditional pan-American media. The conflict began on New Year's Eve 1993, when the Zapatista guerilla army, mostly teenagers and young adults from the Indigenous Maya of southern Mexico, seized the Mexican state of Chiapas. Agrarian and deeply poor compared to the rest of Mexico, Columbus’ legacy there had left a world divided by racism and by rich versus poor. A 1993 EZLA statement called the rebels the “descendants of those who truly built this nation” and called others to “join our crusade, the only option to avoid dying of starvation!” Today, parts of Chiapas exist as an autonomous region of Mexico with the capacity to self-govern and distribute agricultural land according to Indigenous values.}

^{Another unique collection that housed at the Resource Centre and found nowhere else in Canada are the Mundo Shuar publications. Inspired by Italian missionary, writer, and philosopher Juan Bottasso, these publications documented the history and society of the Shuar peoples of the Amazonian region of Ecuador. In 1971, Bottasso was appointed professor of theology at the Catholic University of Quito, and it was in that capacity that he began shifting his focus towards anthropology. Founding the Editorial Abya Yala in 1983, named for a term used by the Kuna Indigenous people of Panama to refer to “this whole land”, the Editorial specialized in disseminating knowledge about the Shuar to the broader public. Bottasso critiqued traditional missionary approaches that focused on assimilation, a tactic employed since the days of Columbus’ first landing. He used his platform to argue instead for the preservation of Indigenous cultural traditions, language, and customs, dedicating a special series of publications to the Mundo Shuar (Shuar World) inside the Abya Yala umbrella.}

^{As a Public History student, I feel enriched by my work in the CERLAC Resource Centre. I have highlighted three sets of documents that demonstrate the breadth of research that can be conducted here. However, the Indigenous Section contains much, much more, and it is a fascinating resource for advancing knowledge.}