in his own words

“Here the fish are so different from ours...some like roosters, of the finest colors in the world—blues, yellows, reds, and every color—and others patterned in a thousand ways...that no man could look upon them without wonder and delight.”

16-17 October, 1492
Adaptación al español actual por la autora.

LESSONS I LEARNED

Columbus did not know what he was looking at. He reached for the nearest familiar thing — pig, tuna — and came up short. The fish refused his categories. The reef did not arrange itself for his arrival. The creatures already had names, already had relationships, already had histories with the people who lived alongside them. His not knowing was not a neutral fact. It was the beginning of a long project of erasure dressed as discovery.