Recently, President Donald Trump said That he “brings back columbus day of the ashes”. He hopes to compensate for the Deletion of commemorative statues Important for “Italians who love it so much”.
But the day of Columbus had not been put to the rebuilding or reduced to ashes. Although President Joe Biden A proclamation for the day of indigenous peoples In October 2024, the same day He also declared a vacation in honor of Christopher Columbus.
Nevertheless, Trump Posted in April 2025“Christopher will make a major return.” Using the name of Columbus, which means “Christ-Percours”, a president who covers the praise of the leaders of the faith shot the explorer at His campaign promise: “For those who have been injured and betrayed, I am your punishment.”
By reaffirming the importance of Columbus, the president took A stand against reversal And Vandalism of Columbus statues. In this case, his act of remuneration for his supporters focused on the holidays, which he could more easily declare than the return of the icons of a man who fell to empty pedestals.
Trump’s statement invoked Grievance policy – a feeling of resentment or injustice fueled by perceived discrimination – which have characterized its actions for years.
The list of targets for its punishment, which included Harvard University,, Elite law firms And former allies that he believes to have betrayednow exceeds 100, According to an NPR review.
Inasmuch as Historian at the beginning of AmericaI know how the grievances have marked the colonial era. Throughout this period, the grievances fueled rage and violence.
European grievance in America
Europeans who arrived in the Americas after the journey of Columbus 1492 claimed the territories of the Western hemisphere through An obsolete legal theory known as “Doctrine of discovery. “”
The Spanish, English, French, Dutch and Portuguese leaders, according to this notion, had parts of the Americas, whatever the demands of Aboriginal peoples. This presumption of property justified, in their minds, the use of violence against those who resisted them.
In 1598, for example, Spanish soldiers patrolling the ACOMA PUEBLO In New Mexico, asked for food from local residents, which the colonizers considered their subordinates. The inhabitants of the city, believing in excessive demand, have rather fought, Kill 11 Spaniards.
In response, the governor of New Mexico, an almost entirely populated territory of indigenous peoples, ordered the systematic amputations of the hands or feet of residents that soldiers thought they had participated in the attack. They also enslaved hundreds in the city. Roughly 1,500 Acoma residents died In the conflict, according to the National Park Service, an answer apparently more motivated by the grievance than on the strategy.
The English colonizers turned out to be just as close to deploying extraordinary violence if they believed that the Amerindians had deprived them of what they thought to be theirs.
In March 1622, soldiers of The Powhatan Confederation – composed of Algonquian tribes of Virginia current – launched a surprise attack to protest against encroachments on their land, Kill 347 settlers.
English qualified the event “barbaric massacre», Use of the language that dehumanized the Powhatans and threw them like bad looters. An English pamphleteer named Edward Waterhouse castigated these natives Like “naked naked wyld”, “pagan infidels” and “treacherous and inhuman”.
Mikroman6 / Getty images
War started almost immediately. The colonial soldiers adopted a burned land strategy, burning houses and harvests when they could not locate their enemies. On May 22, 1623, a group sailed in Pamunkey territory To save the captives.
Under a cunning of peaceful negotiation, they Poison distributed to some 200 native residents. In doing so, the colonial soldiers, Grief led by the grievance more than the law, ignored their own rules of warwho prohibited the use of poison in war.
Grievances have led colonists against each other
Even among the settlers, the grievances have favored violence.
In 1692, residents of Salem, Massachusetts, believed that their misfortunes were the work of the devil. Their anxieties and their anger led them to accuse others of witchcraft.
As Historians who studied the witches of Salem argued that many accusers of the agricultural village of Salem – Modern Danvers – have resentments against neighbors who had narrower ties with the neighboring city of Salem, which was more commercial.
The Lééé found a spokesperson for the Reverend Samuel Parris, whose priority before in business had led him to seek a new path as minister. The anger of Parris about his previous disappointments fueled his indignation on what he saw as Inadequate economic support for local authorities.
In a sermon, he highlighted his financial irritation by stressing The betrayal of Jesus Judas for “a poor and nasty price“, As if it was the amount that counted. Residents of resentment and their bitter minister have fueled the greatest witches in American history, which left at least 20 of the accused dead.
Tompkins Harrison Matteson / Library of Congress via AP
The most obvious precursor of the policy fueled by the grievances of today was a Rebellion in spring and summer 1676 By colonists in the hinterland in Virginia which fought against their colonial government based in Jamestown. They were led by Nathaniel BaconA tobacco farmer who thought that provincial officials were not doing enough to protect peripheral farms against Susquehannocks attacks and other Aboriginal residents.
Bacon and his disciples, consumed by their “Grievance“, Petitioned the local government to get help. When they did not get the result they wanted, they walked against Jamestown. They. Set the capital and chased Governor William Berkeley.
Bacon succumbed to dysentery in October and the movement collapsed without its charismatic leader. Berkeley survived but lost his position.
The rebellion has become engraved in history as a violent attack on the government authorities who prefigured the 2021 Assaut on the American Capitol.
When President Trump invokes presumed insults to a community to satisfy the aspirations of his supportersHe and his allies run the risk of marking the passions of.
The acts of grievance present themselves in different forms, depending on the historical and political circumstances. But the desire to recover what someone thinks should be theirs can lead to deadly violence, as the previous Americans have discovered it several times.