Last Call: Christopher Columbus, P.C.
Vinciguerra, Thomas
LAST CALL by Thomas Vinciguerra Christopher Columbus, P.C. Honduran Indians marked Columbus Day today by destroying a statue of Christopher Columbus. "We are condemning the Spanish conquest,"...
...A mercenary shoots him with a Glock-7...
...COLUMBUS: Your majesties, have you considered my proposal for funds to seek a western route to the—Orient...
...COLUMBUS: To atone for what I have wrought, I will biodegrade in what I will refrain from calling Mother Earth, and supply essential nutrients to all living things regardless of phylum...
...Columbus is by now a wizened old sinner...
...Reunite Pangaea...
...SECOND MERCENARY: Let us spread the smallpox first...
...Displays a gold doubloon which she makes disappear, and then produces from behind Ferdinand's ear...
...Our motives are purely capitalistic...
...Enter Fidel Castro...
...INDIGENOUS PERSON #2: Our warmth stems not from myths of the "noble savage," but from our status as sun people...
...Their codpieces, including Isabella's, figure prominently...
...He mugs to the audience, twirling the end of his wax-tipped mustache...
...ADVISOR: Your majesties, this voyage is impossible because of the shape of the earth...
...CHORUS OF CULTURAL ELITE: Boo...
...Ferdinand ogles Isabella but feels badly afterward and so enlists in sensitivity training...
...To the audience) I am not a stereotypical flat-earther who believes that those who sail too far will fall off the edge to be devoured by non-carbon-based life forms...
...I thus reveal my contempt for human life, an attitude typical of this so-called Age of Discovery...
...Also, I apologize for element #41, now known as niobium, ever being called columbium...
...INDIGENOUS PERSON #1: Welcome, to Turtle Island...
...ADVISOR: Rather, we disagree on circumference...
...VESPUCCI: There is no evidence that I discovered the continents named for me...
...He indicates a tesseract, to which he gives a thumbs-up...
...Enter a citizen of the world...
...Reuters, October u,1997 ACT I (Curtain opens on the court of KingFerdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain...
...Pollution, racism, and cardiovascular disease are much in evidence...
...94 November 1998 • The American Spectator...
...Exit Columbus...
...For the record, I feel guilty as hell...
...Up Laurasia...
...FERDINAND: And forget not that our approval of grants for the practical and fine arts is governed by political caprice, rather than the pure aestheticism that should be the only standard...
...All the players are incredibly melanin-impoverished...
...ACT III (The present...
...COLUMBUS: Speaking as one of the ice people, I must tell you that at ten we'll have subjugation, followed by slave labor at eleven-thirty, and forced conversion to the Christian faith at two...
...The decision to use my moniker was made by a German mapmaker named Waldseemuller...
...INDIGENOUS PERSON #3: Sounds like an inequitable distribution of wealth...
...COLUMBUS (also to audience): That the earth is a sphere was known to the ancient Greeks, who stole the idea from somewhere else...
...Good luck, Columbus...
...Exits...
...We are condemning the Spanish conquest," said a protest leader, Candido Martinez...
...ACT II (Columbus wades ashore in the New World with several mercenaries who are eating red meat...
...Enter Amerigo Vespucci...
...Long live the revolution...
...COLUMBUS: In that case, we wish to give you some glass beads in exchange for all the gold we can lay our hands on...
...VOICE OF ANOTHER INDIGENOUS PERSON: Golf...
...The potential for untrammeled gain far outweighs any capital loss I would incur if my ships never returned...
...He indicates a nonborealocentric globe, one with Antarctica on the top, to which he gives a thumbs-up...
...CHORUS OF CULTURAL ELITE: Boo...
...COLUMBUS: I hereby claim this land in the name of the Dow Jones Industrial Average...
...Immense peals of laughter, silenced by gunfire...
...ISABELLA: Columbus, we will fund your expedition, though we have little interest in the advancement of knowledge...
...Hiss...
...Enter three Indigenous Persons, wearing sensible natural fibers...
...Dies, not making sign of the cross...
...offshore, an oil slick begins to spread...
...CITIZEN OF THE WORLD: Territories are political constructs...
...He plants the Stars and Stripes on the pristine beach...
...FERDINAND: Enough...
...ISABELLA: Indeed we have, Columbus—having first forced you to grovel before the fascistic divine right of kings...
...VOICE OF INDIGENOUS PERSON (offstage): Hey, what's a WASP's idea of a really hot time...
...FIRST MERCENARY: Methinks we had best start looking for a locale from which we can begin fouling the air with hydrocarbons...
...Since we are working in only three dimensions, without accounting for alternate planes of existence, I wouldn't be surprised if we were both wrong...
...Genocide will take longer...
...But we will fluoridate your water and introduce the coffee break...
...Hiss...
...Those Indigenous Persons who do not begin dropping like flies are carted off) Well, it's all over now but the naming...
...Up Gondwanaland...
...CASTRO: Historical evidence now suggests that the invaders first arrived not at Hispaniola—haven of such despotical reactionaries as Trujillo and the Duvaliers— but rather at Cuba, the workers' paradise...
Vol. 31 • November 1998 • No. 11
