Among the most important historical events in the course of Western civilizations is the discovery of America, recorded on the 12th of October, 1492, by the Spanish expedition commanded by Christopher Columbus. He searched for an alternative route, through the west, to the exotic lands of Cipango and Cathay. Tzvetan Todorov is one of the many critics who claim that "it is the conquest of America that announces and establishes our present identity. [...] No [dates] are better indicated to mark the beginning of the modern age than the year of 1492, the year in which Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean." (1983: 6--our translation). Ilan Stavans (2001: 6) thinks similarly, by reporting that when Columbus reached Guanahani (Watlings Island) for the first time, and then Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, a new age began. Since that first meeting, the course of America was marked by processes of racial miscegenation and cultural hybridization. Such aspects were always intriguing and drove many American citizens to question their own identity from the cultural bases that opposed each other in that first meeting. Throughout that process of fusion, symbiosis and also imposition of habits and behaviors, which happened in the American Continent, the number of atrocities committed was very large and the limits were overcome. During the following centuries, new nations arose from the encounter between what would be later called Old World and New World--however some scholars rather use the expression "different worlds" when referring to Europe and America in the context of their first relations. These early times after the first encounter were marked by acts of conquest and colonization, which came from the Europeans who arrived here, and by fights, first as a resistance, by the autochthonous people, and then for independence, by the crossbloods--term redefined by Gerald Vizenor in his work for mixed-race people who originated in America.
