Columbus Day century found definitive evidence proving April 22 to be the actual date of the arrival of Cabral's fleet on South American shores. In 2000, the government of Brazil used the date to celebrate 500 years of the existence of the country. The festivities, however, were met with protests by indigenous peoples who claimed it marked 500 years of genocide of indigenous Brazilians. Only a handful of Caribbean countries still observe holidays related to Columbus Day. In Belize, October 12 is celebrated as Day of the Americas or Pan American Day. In the Bahamas, it was formerly known as Discovery Day,
The Heirs of Columbus the novel is that the Mayans were the first civilization in the world, and that they had taken their civilization to Europe during the time of Antiquity. Columbus was a descendant of the Mayans through his secret Sephardic Jewish ancestry, and his ancestral memories called him to return to the ancestral homelands in America. During his first landing in the Americas, he was visited by a Native American healer named Samana, who took him to bed and became pregnant by him. The heirs of the title are the present-day (1990s) descendants of Samana and Columbus. The plot of the novel