What a year 1992 was! That was the 500th anniversary of the first of four voyages from Spain to the New World by expeditions under the command of Cristobal Colon. In Genoa, Italy where he was born, he was known as Cristoforo Colombo; the English-speaking world knows him as Christopher Columbus. On October 12,1492 the three vessels of the expedition made a landfall in the Bahamas after two months at sea. Columbus, of course, thought he had reached the east coast of Asia.

His objective was to reach the Far East by sailing westward. It could only work if you believed that the earth is a sphere, an idea that most educated Europeans accepted. Starting about 540 B.C. different Greek scholars over the centuries made varying estimates of the size of the spherical earth. Columbus settled on one of these measurements, which considerably underestimated the size of the earth. He also believed Eurasia to be much wider that it actually is, so in his calculations there was little room for a huge Pacific Ocean or the existence of North and South America. He was really convinced on that day in October 1492 that the land he saw from his ship was an island off the east coast of Asia; he believed it to his dying day.

This first island sighted in 1492 turned out to be on the edge of a group of islands, large and small, that enclosed what we now know as the Caribbean Sea. He saw and named many small islands on that voyage, and also a very large one he called Hispaniola, which is presently occupied by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In 1496 his brother Bartholomew established a Spanish colony on the south coast of Hispaniola and it flourished and grew to become the city of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. It holds the honor of being the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Western Hemisphere and our story begins there.

In 1506 Columbus died in Spain at the age of 55. His body was moved to the Cartuja monastery in Seville where it remained until 1540. The remains were then shipped to Santo Domingo to be located in a place of honor in the recently completed cathedral. It seems that Columbus was fated to keep moving, even in death. For some reason or other, he was moved to Havana in 1796 and when the Spanish left Cuba in 1899 they brought the remains back to Seville and you can see his tomb there, in the cathedral.

The Dominicans very strongly believe that the remains brought there from Spain in the 16th century are still in Santo Domingo. In fact, they built a new tomb for the Great Admiral, as he is called in that country. The former president of the Dominican Republic, Joaquin Balaguer, put his money where his belief is, so to speak. An estimated $70 million dollars (no one knows how much exactly) was spent to construct the combination tomb, museum, and lighthouse in time for the 500th anniversary celebrations in 1992. That was a very large expenditure for a third world country with many other urgent needs. There has been considerable unhappiness and grumbling about it in the country ever since.

Columbus, when he was alive, spent more time in Hispaniola than any of the other places he visited in the New World. He was said to love Hispaniola more than any other of his discoveries. That may be, but he didn't have much luck there. Indians destroyed his first settlement on the north coast within months of its establishment. Columbus himself was arrested in Hispaniola and put in chains by other Spanish colonists, before being returned to Spain in disgrace in 1500. Within a few years after his arrival, most of the Indians of Hispaniola were killed off by European diseases, against which they had no immunity, or died from overwork by their Spanish masters, or by suicide. The modern Dominicans think that just uttering the name of Columbus will bring bad luck and they may have a point. They see him as the bearer of misfortune to the island and refer to him as the Great Admiral, rather than speak his name.

None of these considerations deterred President Balaguer from making the most of the planned 500th anniversary celebrations in Spain and Latin America. The inauguration of the newly completed lighthouse, which also served as the new tomb for the remains of Columbus and as a museum, was the centerpiece of the 1992 celebrations in Santo Domingo. It isn't a usual type of lighthouse shining a beacon out to sea. This massive structure is in the shape of a cross lying on the ground and the 145 lights on the roof, totaling 30 billion candle power, shine straight up into the sky. When they are turned on a great shining cross is seen directly overhead and for more than 100 miles around.

The celebrations are over until next time in the year 2092. Meanwhile, if you are interested and would like to visit the tomb of Columbus, you can go either to Seville or Santo Domingo. The citizens of each of these cities sincerely believe that they have the genuine remains of Columbus. Over the years a number of scholars have studied the question without general agreement. It seems that Columbus is the exception proving the rule that a person cannot be in two or more places at the same time.