Guanahani, a Species Endangered

Columbus renamed Guanahani as San Salvador — “Christ the Saviour.” The indigenous name became invisible overnight. Bahamian poet Marion Bethel calls Guanahani “a species endangered.”

Taxonomical erasure as cultural extinction. Colonial names were intended to be “rock: solid, stubborn, and inflexible.” But remembrance reveals “the rocks were once clay.”

The distinction that cuts: Adam’s naming supposedly gave animals “true identity and the freedom to be.” Colonial naming was “rooted in a kind of nomination that expresses its destructive and oppressive abilities.” Same act, opposite architecture.