Looking back,  the 500th birthday of the Americas in 1992 was more far more messy fracas than transcendental. The Americas had too many  festering grievances with their history to celebrate the moment.
The quincentenary anniversary of the age of discovery had marketing types salivating with hopeful excitement that their version of a phoenix rising would translate to commercial success but instead the roar of outrage was silencing.

  Columbus, for millions represented a chance to air  collectively their dismay at the centuries of European and even American imperial subservience and enslavement imposed primarily by brutality. Even racism itself, a concept as old as the tribes of the human race, was blamed on white European intellectuals as having been invented to justify the atrocity of the Atlantic slave trade 

Two centuries earlier the United States had rediscovered Columbus as a symbol of individualism and escape from Old World tyranny. The original frontiersman who challenged the unknown sea and brought back stories that fired the imagination of a new beginning where all would be possible. Today, the great discoverer remains not only a symbol of Italian heritage and the age of discovery but also the crimes committed against the indigenous peoples and four hundred years of mostly African slavery following the European diseases which wiped out 90% of the native populations. 

Also the number of people who celebrate Columbus day as Indigenous people day continues to grow.

Yet  Christobol Colon was a man whose belief in the greater glory of god led him to ride the waves of a destiny which opened the doors to  the greatest mixing of the peoples of the earth. With this sea of change comes ongoing tension and our own challenge to find diversity more blessing than curse.

Carnaval.com explores the mythical figures & movements of the past present and future

As Carnaval is deeply rooted in the impulse to celebrate the rebirth of life in Spring following the death of Winter, we though it best to revisit Columbus, man and myth for 2002 in time for the  510th anniversary of the Americas.  If all goes well, the wounds will be healed enough to truly celebrate the 520th birthday. The year 2012 has been perceived for millennia by Mayan and Egyptian priests as the dawn of the 6th age or age of Aquarius. more

Nueva Vida: New Life A Time for Carnavals Remembering 510 Years of Resistance, Celebrating Our Diversity on Indigenous and Immigrant People's Day,  and moving forward at the dawn of a new age of freedom for truth, beauty and wisdom. The chance to joyfully celebrate who we are today. For this we pray or party more

CURSE of Columbus 

Lacking historical self-confidence

To know an acceptance of the past

As crucial soil to nourish the present

To shape models of society

Patterns of community

Type of development

Build the new on foundations of the old

To develop from my own genius

Scrap negative aspects of my own, if any

Respect everything the world has conquered

In the service of mankind

Liberation in my mind

Must the curse of Columbus live in me forever?

by Biggie Tembo 's lyrics posted at 2ndsight.co.uk Records from the "Skin" abum

"In 1492, the Jewish community of Spain was expelled or forced to convert. Millions of Moors suffered the same fate. The fall of Granada in 1492, ending eight centuries of Moorish sovereignty, allowed the Spanish Inquisition to extend its barbaric sway.  The stage was set for the decline of Spain, and also for the racism and savagery of the world conquest -- 
"the curse of Columbus" ..."
Noam Chomsky. & Indigenous Peoples Day