Columbus' quincentennial provokes protests throughout Latin America

In the U.S., the controversy had raged so long and so intensely before the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discov . . . err, voyage to the New World that the actual day passed almost unnoticed last week. Not so in Latin America, where Native Americans constitute a majority of the population in a few countries and a large minority in others, and where cultural tensions between Indians, mixed-bloods and descendants of the conquista dores have long been severe. Two groups of native peoples from nearly opposite ends of the hemisphere -- Alaska and Peru -- met at the Teotihuacan pyramids outside Mexico City at the end of a month-long march to celebrate "500 years of survival." In the city, thousands of additional demonstrators danced and prayed on the Zocalo, the central square; still others hung a sign reading FIVE CENTURIES OF MASSACRE around the neck of a statue of Columbus on the elegant main avenue, Paseo de la Reforma. Mass demonstrations also occurred in Bolivia and Chile. In Buenos Aires some native people staged a three-day hunger strike that ended on Columbus Day in front of the Casa Rosada, the Argentine presidential palace. And in Managua, Nicaragua, a poster branded Columbus A BIG THIEF, MURDERER, RACIST, TORTURER, OPPRESSOR OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND INSTIGATOR OF THE BIG LIE.