In 1492, as any schoolchild knows, Columbus sailed from Spain with three small ships, searching for a new sea route to the rich countries of India and China. He didn’t find India, but he did stumble upon the Americas. On October 12, his flagship, the Santa Maria, ran aground on a reef just off the coast of the island of Hispaniola. The local chief of the Arawaks, the native inhabitants, rescued Columbus's crew and welcomed them warmly, in accordance with their customs.
The Spanish sailors did not share the Arawak custom of sharing and peaceable coexistence. They spied the tiny gold ornaments the Arawaks were sporting and decided that the region was swimming in riches. Columbus also noticed that the locals had no weapons capable of resisting Spanish rule. As historian Howard Zinn documents in “A People’s History of the United States” (Harper & Row, 1980), Columbus wrote in his journal, "They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane .... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."
After King Ferdinand granted him governorship of the region, Columbus and his men captured Arawaks by the thousands, forcing them to procure gold. Those who could not produce the required amounts had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death. Columbus forced the men to work in Spanish gold mines and the women to grow food. Natives who resisted the new rulers were hunted down with dogs and burned alive or hanged.
Soon the Arawaks, their spirits broken, their bodies starved and racked with the diseases brought by the invaders, began ending their own lives to escape the horror. Starving mothers, lacking the milk to nourish their infants, drowned them to prevent a slower death. The killings for sport and punishment, the deaths from disease and malnutrition and the suicides contributed to a rapid decline in the population. Bartolomeo de las Casas, a young priest who assisted Columbus in the conquest of Cuba, writes in his book “History of the Indies” (reprinted by Harper & Row, 1971) that "from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it."
http://www.progressive.org/mpkrol1098.htm
The article doesn't address the main demerit of Columbus, in my mind - his genocide of the Arawak Indians. He didn't have to do that to map the New World.
The article doesn't debunk these charges against Columbus, it appears to avoid them. To quote Rand: "blankout".
I know you know a lot of Spanish history, perhaps you cna help.