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[escepticos] Heyerdahl en Cuba
Para solaz de algún que otro colistero, adjunto el discurso pronunciado por Thor
Heyerdahl en la Habana en 1991, en presencia de las principales autoridades de la
isla.
Estoy seguro de que sabrán apreciarlo y disfrutar como locos.
Saludos
JM
PS: A los normales: saltáoslo. Yo tampoco me lo he leido.
---------------------------
Speech by Thor Heyerdahl
AT THE CEREMONY WELCOMING THE VIKING SHIP GAIA TO CUBA
PRESENT AT THE CEREMONY WERE CUBAN PRESIDENT FIDEL CASTRO, PRESIDENT OF
THE CUBAN
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ROSA ELENA SIMEON, WHO ALSO HEADS THE ACADEMY'S
COMMISSION ON
ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES, OTHER GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS,
DIPLOMATS AND
ORGANIZERS OF THE GAIA TRIP
Mr. President, Ms. Ambassador of Sweden, Captain Ragnar Thorseth and
crew members, Ladies and Gentlemen,
As a Norwegian, it is a very special pleasure for me to welcome the arrival
in Cuba of a true copy of a Viking ship.
Although I haven't participated in any part of its voyage, this is the
second time I have the pleasure of being present at
the arrival of this ship in a port of the New World. The first time was in
Washington, and the second time here in
Havana. When I saw you enter Washington Harbor on October 9, you had very
successfully repeated the feat of our
ancestors, the Vikings, traveling from Norway to Iceland, Greenland and New
Foundland in Canada. There you were also
able to visit the archaeological sites at L'Anse aux Meadows with its ruins
left by the Viking Leif Erikson and his crew in
the year 1000.
You entered the port of Washington on a very appropriate day, October 9,
which had been proclaimed by the President of
the United States as the day to commemorate Leif Erikson and the Vikings
who crossed the Atlantic Ocean almost 500
years before Christopher Columbus. I expressed my admiration for your
carrying out the difficult and dangerous journey
you made among icebergs in the arctic part of the Atlantic. Now I give you
a warm welcome after your voyage through a
temporary cold front in the Florida Straits that separate the two charming
peoples living on each side of it.
Your crossing of the North Atlantic is a sporting triumph and it also has a
scientific value, as it shows the modern world
how our ancestors were able to colonize such distant islands as Iceland and
Greenland and explore continental coasts like
that of Canada 1000 years ago. But, personally, I think your friendly
voyage from Washington - where I saw you last - to
Havana - where we meet today - is the most significant leg of your journey,
more important in today's world than sports
and science. The Vikings were known as men who brought swords and violence
to all coasts of Europe, Northern Africa
and Minor Asia. You come to the Americas in the same kind of vessel, but
with a message of peace and with the only
wish of helping all those human forces willing to create a world of
tomorrow that is safe for the children of today - the
men and women of the future.
In the five thousand years of human history that we have knowledge of,
families, tribes and nations have tried to improve
their lives weapon in hand. Alliances of increasing size have been created
between men united as soldiers, with
increasingly more effective and ear and the arrow to intercontinental
missiles and nuclear bombs. Five thousand years of
experience in the Middle East and Western Asia, and a little less in Europe
and the Americas. Without exception, the
result has been that, one after the other, civilizations have been
destroyed with weapons created by Man himself,
reducing them to ruins which then have fallen into oblivion.
All great nations of today have suffered losses in the two world wars of
this century. Millions of those of us who survived
the battles of World War II remember with shame and sadness the great
number of friends and other millions of poor
souls who lost their young lives fighting for peace and justice. We know
the great value of safeguarding peace through
dialogue and constructive cooperation between all human beings, with one
single aim - to wage a "world war" against
poverty and injustice.
You on board this fragile Viking vessel have fought the superior forces of
the elements. I wish you great success in all of
the planned voyage from Canada and the United States in North America, to
Cuba, Mexico and the other
Latin-American republics still to be visited on your way to Rio de Janeiro,
where you plan to arrive for the world
conference on environment in 1992.
We know that the message you bring from port to port -- from the Old World
to the New one, from the arctic world to
the tropics, down to Brazil -- is a non-political, or rather pan-political
call for the protection of the natural
environment and peace for the future generations of the whole world. In a
vessel designed in ancient times with elegant
lines that could harmonize and cooperate with the oceans waves, you
symbolically want to take a leap in time and leave
behind a whole millennium of barbarism and wars, building a bridge to a
21st century of harmony and cooperation among
young people with sound minds in sound bodies, in a sound environment, as
in the era when homo sapiens started out to
conquer the sea.
We know that destruction of nature had already begun five thousand years
ago in the Middle East and spread all over
Europe in the Middle Ages. We moreover know that the indigenous inhabitants
of the Americas -- hunters, fishermen
and also settlers in villages and large cities -- lived in harmony with the
forests, rivers and mountains, and worshiped
them. They had lived off the riches of the land and the waters for
thousands and thousands of years when the first
Vikings arrived, until the arrival of the conquistadors' caravels.
As Norwegians, we feel great respect for the courage and determination of
Christopher Columbus, who was a great
organizer, explorer and scholar of his times. His first voyage, which had
as a result a permanent and close contact
between the Americas and the Old World marked a new epoch in human history
and had influence on the life of nations
all over the world, more than the influence of any other persons since the
founding of the great religions. But we are also
aware of the other side of the coin. The arrival in the Americas of the
European conquistadors and colonizers did not
bring fortune and prosperity to the indigenous inhabitants of the conquered
American nations. However, it would be
unjust to condemn Columbus and blame him for all the violence and brutality
of explorers who came after him.
The voyage of this Viking ship, following the route of the old Vikings from
Norway to Canada, which will end in Rio in
the year of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage, has not been
planned to tion of Columbus. He was
sufficiently great to be able to share this homage with the simple Viking
sailors who crossed the Atlantic almost 500
years before he did.
Today, five centuries after that triumphant arrival in Cuba, it is time to
correct an unjust error which, throughout these
centuries has lived on in the public image of what the Europeans have
called the "discovery" of America. How could
either Columbus or the Vikings claim the honor of having discovered
America, when we know that this continent was
the home of thousands of tribes and dozens of real civilizations, millennia
before any European arrived?
In Mexico the Aztec and Maya empires had been preceded by the Toltec,
Mixtec and Olmec civilizations, which had a
highly developed culture with hieroglyphics in use long before any
knowledge of writing had reached Europe from the
ancient civilizations in the Middle East. And in South America, the
pre-Incan civilizations which we have called
Mochica, Chavin and Tiahuanaco, had attained cultural and political
dominance over empires which in pre-Columbian
times included today's sovereign nations of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and
great part of Brazil, Argentina and Chile.
No European discovered America. Leif Erikson and his comrades on board the
Viking ship arrived as the first European
visitors. According to Norse chronicles preserved in Iceland dating from
two or three centuries before Columbus'
journeys, the Vikings that had settled in Greenland crossed the Davis
Strait to the coast of what is known today as
Canada with their families and also cattle. But these emigrants without
guns were repelled by the much superior forces of
the North American Indians and had to retreat to their settlements in
Greenland. Five centuries later, Columbus and his
followers from Medieval Spain arrived with the first firearms and --
although not discoverers -- they were the first
European conquistadors to successfully settle on the mainland among the
peoples they mistakenly called Indians.
We must correct another erroneous idea about the first European visitors to
what they called the New World, or America
in honor of the person who realized that Columbus was wrong when he thought
he had found a shortcut to India. Most
people think the Vikings came to North America as savage barbarians with
swords and horns on their helmets, that they
worshiped pagan gods, whereas Columbus was a devoted Christian who came
with the Cross to save the souls of the
indigenous peoples. This is wrong. When the Viking ships crossed the North
Atlantic in the first decade of the 11th
century, Norway was a rigidly Catholic nation, while Spain was under the
influence of the Moslem faith imposed by Arab
rule. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Norwegian Viking ships fought for
the Roman Catholic and Constantinople
Church to restore Christianity in Spain and Portugal. Leif Erikson was
actually no fierce Viking but a modest young man
from the countryside who accidentally observed the coast of Canada when
deviating from his route on a return voyage
from Norway to Greenland. King Olav of Norway had sent a Catholic priest
with him on his Viking ship and some
religious teachers, to introduce Christianity in the pagan colony of
Greenland. Erikson's father, Erik the Red, refused to
be baptized, but his mother embraced the Catholic faith and built the first
Christian church in Greenland, whose ruins
are still there.
When Columbus crossed the Atlantic five centuries later, both nations but
Columbus did not bring any priest on his first
voyage. That he didn't do until on the second trip, when returning with
armed soldiers to take slaves. It is a historic fact
that the Norwegian King in the 11th century, Olav the Saint, was canonized
by the Vatican -- an honor which neither
King Ferdinand nor Queen Isabella were given.
The Viking ship that arrived in Cuba today did not bring any priest on
board, nor religious or political doctrines. It only
brings the message that, as the 20th century draws to an end, it is high
time that all nations understand that we are all
members of one sole human family, a great family that travels together
through the universe on board the same small
planet. We all depend on each other to coexist in peace, on islands and
continents that are not separated but united by the
oceans. No group of people has priority over any other, and none of us has
the right to destroy the forests, the seas and the
atmosphere, which are our joint heritage.
Let us celebrate the year 1992 as the year of human unity. But when
remembering Columbus and the Vikings, let's not
forget those who arrived in America long before they did, and who lived on
every inhabitable piece of land, from Alaska
down to Tierra del Fuego, thousands of years before any European even set
sails.
Cuba will be a center of world attention this year when we are celebrating
the European discoveries. It was in Cuba that
Christopher Columbus found the first human settlements in the New World
after his first crossing in 1492. In his own
log book he used the most emphatic words he could find to describe the
beauty of the Cuban landscape and the kindness,
hospitality and high moral standards of the Taino people that received him
on this island.
But who was in Cuba to receive Columbus? Who had discovered this island in
the ocean before Columbus? It is time we
realize that human beings set sail from other ports outside Europe before
the era of the Vikings and Columbus.
Today, researchers in Cuba are exploring and excavating the land to give us
the answer to the questions the first
Europeans never asked themselves. The Tainos could have given them at least
part of the answer. Their forefathers had
arrived in Cuba from the American continent at a time when Europe was still
in the Stone Age. And the Cuban
pre-Columbian inhabitants never totally cut off their contacts with the
main land. Personally, I'm here in Cuba today to
cooperate with the Cuban archaeologists in the preparation of an abundantly
illustrated book on pre-Columbian art in
Cuba and the history of the first European influence. The ample material on
art, pottery and beautiful sculptures, mostly
in conches and stone but in some cases also in gold, show that in
pre-Columbian times Cuba had maritime contact with
what is today the United States, Mexico, Central America, Colombia and
Venezuela. This means that the ancient Cubans
navigated on the open ocean with their families, bringing along objects of
art, two kinds of dogs, and several kinds of
cultivated plants, such as sweet potatoes, pumpkins and cotton.
It is especially interesting that archaeology reveals that there was a
particularly close contact over the Florida Straits in
the centuries immediately before and after the arrival of the first
Europeans. Straits in a Viking ship, must know that it
takes courage and navigational skills to cross that space of water in an
open vessel. Let's all hope that the peaceful traffic
that started in this channel before the arrival of the Europeans, and was
continued today by this Viking vessel carrying a
clear message of peace, will soon be re- established for the benefit of
all.
Thor Heyerdahl Havana, August 23, 1991