Syracuse’s North Side a better home for Columbus statue (Your Letters)

To the Editor:
I read the letter from the Columbus Monument Corp., and am stunned by their lack of cultural and social awareness (“Columbus Monument Corp.: ‘We cannot erase history,’ “ Oct. 18, 2024). Sure, for years Italian Americans (myself included) celebrated Columbus and his voyages of discovery. But then we grew up. We learned about how he brought disease and slavery to the New World. We learned about how he never touched the North American continent. We learned how he was not even the first European to sail to this side of the Atlantic, as the Vikings were in Canada almost 500 years earlier. And we learned that he may not have been Italian at all; a recent documentary claims he may have been a Spanish Sephardic Jew. None of that changes the fact that it was very brave of him to get on a ship the size of the Santa Maria and sail into the unknown.
But it is long past time to move his statue from the center of town. Put it in a park on the North Side in Little Italy. That’s where he belongs. And that’s where the Columbus Monument Corp. can go to worship at its feet, daily if they choose.
Oh, and by the way, when the Interstate 81 viaduct comes down, people heading to downtown Syracuse will go by it almost every day.
Peter Lotto
Fayetteville