Historian Challenges Official Story:
Christopher Columbus Never Crashed Off Haiti’s Coast
by Kim Ives
Christopher Columbus, the first European explorer to land on the island the indigenous Arawak people called Ayiti, claimed in his diaries that his flagship, the Santa Maria, hit a reef off the coast near what is now the town of Caracol on Christmas eve 1492. He then supposedly used the ship’s wreckage to build a fort called the “Navidad,” no trace of which has ever been found despite many attempts.This official story is all a lie, asserts award-winning Portuguese- American historian Manuel Rosa, who has spent the past 24 years researching the life of Columbus and his historic voyage.
In fact, Columbus beached the Santa Maria on the shore at Caracol and possibly built a moat around it, turning the ship itself into the Navidad, Mr. Rosa says.
When Columbus left Ayiti (which he renamed Hispaniola) to return to Spain with the Nina and the Pinta, he purposely fired a cannon ball through the Santa Maria’s hull to make it impossible for the 39 men he left behind to flee the island. Three of them were envoys of the Spanish royal court who could have revealed the truth.
On June 9 and 10, Mr. Rosa will visit Caracol with a television crew from the Travel Channel’s show “Expedition Unknown” to
search for evidence of his theory, which he has presented in two books: “The Columbus Mystery Revealed” (2006) and “Columbus: The Untold Story” (2009). The books have been published to great acclaim in Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Lithuanian. (Mr. Rosa is currently looking for a publisher for the English version of the latter book, for which he has a finished manuscript.)
Mr. Rosa is asking any Haitians round Caracol who may (Continue Reading at Haiti Liberté's website, see on page 9).....
