Columbus doesn't discover L.A.; celebration for explorer will again sail past the city.

Columbus doesn't discover L.A.

Celebration for explorer will again sail past the city

Christopher Columbus never set eyes on the Pacific Ocean. The closet he came to Los Angeles was roughly 2,500 miles.

This time around, replicas of his ships, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, will come a lot closer, anchoring twice in Long Beach, but they will steer clear of the Port of Los Angeles as if it were smack in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, which Columbus in all probability traversed with no known ill effects.

The snub has left the City of Los Angeles, the last city in the New World chartered by the King of Spain, in a tizzy. It's bad enough to lose out to San Francisco, which will host the ships on Columbus Day, but to be bypassed for Long Beach rubs salt into a wound, rekindles local animosities and carries the humiliation of being outshined by a city's equivalent of a kid brother.

In a huff, Los Angeles has withdrawn any support of the quincentennial celebration.

Why all the fuss, you might wonder.

The answer can be summarized in one word: Money.

Just as Columbus was able to ply royal patronage from Queen Isabella with the promise of opening up a new route to lucrative East Indian trade, millions upon millions of tourist dollars hang in the balance of where the ships berth in two years.

The resulting behind-the-scenes machinations of the city and county, at cross purposes in wooing the all-powerful-President-Reagan-appointed National Quincentennial Jubilee Commission, would be something easily understood by Columbus himself, whose political adeptness was only surpassed by his seafaring skills.

The story is one of intrigue and deceit, uneasy truces and unlikely alliances.

Los Angeles, with its roots in the Spanish Empire and its large Hispanic population, craftily got a head start in quincentenary planning. Mayor Tom Bradley formed a committee back in 1988, with every councilman's district and virtually every ethnic group, including Native Americans, represented, according to Bea Lavery, chief of protocol for the city.

After the committee met once with the jubilee commission, it faded from sight, if a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based commission, Jana Joustra, is to be believed.

"Members of the committee told us that they never met, and they all unanimously confirm the committee never did anything," Joustra huffed.

The jubilee commission tried unsuccessfully to prod the city committee to take action, Joustra claimed. "I have a thick file which documents the attempts by Lee Collins, a member of our commission, to get the city engaged and get things rolling," she added.

Frustrated, the jubilee commission was receptive to advances from the county late last year. When her commission tried to involve the city in those plans, the city stonewalled, choosing to withdraw instead of "work together and cooperate," Joustra said.

City officials tell a different tale. According to Lavery, the jubilee commission asked the city to prepare a bid, and then it was the commission, not the mayor's committee, which disappeared from view. Lavery denies the jubilee commission ever tried to correspond with it, labeling Joustra's assertions "ludicrous."

The city drew up plans to pattern its involvement on the 1984 Olympics, which many herald as a high-water mark among public events.

After submitting those plans to the jubilee commission, the next the city heard from it was about the selection of San Francisco and Long Beach, Lavery asserted.

"We were never told that the county was negotiating with the jubilee commission until after an agreement between the county and the commission was made in January 1990," Lavery said.

"It was a complete shock to us, because we never knew we were in competition with the other port," Lavery added. The county did not even have a committee until a few weeks ago, well after the county had snatched the coveted caravel away from the city, the protocol chief indicated.

If the city's committee was something of a rainbow coalition, the county's is more monochromatic, namely blue, as in blood. Members include John Kilroy, founder of Kilroy Industries; attorney John Argue; and socialite-fundraiser Nancy Olsen Livingston. Of course, Mayor Bradley is a Democrat and President Reagan is a Republican.

Lavery professes no ill will toward the Republican-dominated Board of Supervisors, although she is perplexed by its "doing an end run around us." She reserves most of her scorn for the jubilee commission.

Thus, the city's withdrawal from the planning process. It's a dramatic reversal considering the city had once thought it had the inside track. After all, Bradley had struck up a "close personal friendship" with the Spanish monarch, Juan Carlos, last November during a European tour, Lavery mentioned.

The city's withdrawal has some city officials throwing their arms up in the air with disbelief. "It is clearly a very significant event and shouldn't break down into petty wrangles between the city and county," said Councilman Michael Woo.

Even without the city's participation, there will be no shortage of Columbian festivities here. UCLA, a center for Columbian scholarship, plans a whole series of programs. The centerpiece will be the publication of a 12-volume collection of virtually all the documents associated with Columbus' explorations.

The collection will finally put to rest the centuries-old gossip on Columbus' background. Although Columbus was raised a Roman Catholic, his mother, as long rumored, had Jewish parents, and the documents show Columbus had a life-long empathy toward Jews, which he had to conceal in Spain: the beginning of the Inquisition coincided with his first voyage.

There will be events throughout the year around Los Angeles County.

The 1992 Tournament of Roses Parade, for instance, will revolve around a Columbian theme. The Huntington Library, the County Museum, the Natural History Museum and even the Gene Autry Museum are all mounting special exhibits tied to Columbus.

All this for a man who no longer is regarded as the discoverer of the New World.

Although native Americans arrived a Millennium before and the Vikings paid a visit a few centuries earlier, "it is irrefutable that a bridge between the old and new world was permanently built as a result of Columbus, and it changed the complexion of the world forever." Joustra said.

Native American Indians -- those with the least reason to celebrate -- seem generally indifferent to the upcoming festivities. "Although we discovered America long before, I don't feel strongly one way or the other," said Lincoln Billedeaux, a member of the Los Angeles City and County Native American Indian Commission. "I am pro-Italian and speak Italian, and I don't think Columbus knew what he was doing when he got lost," Billedeaux added.

PHOTO : Hello Columbus: Controversy dogs discoverer