Columbus Day is a national holiday in many countries of the Americas and elsewhere, and a federal holiday in the United States, which officially celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Columbus went ashore at Guanahaní, an island in the Bahamas, on October 12, 1492. On his return in 1493, Columbus moved his coastal base of operations 70 miles east to the island of Hispaniola, what is now the Dominican Republic and established the settlement of La Isabela, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Americas.

The Spanish expression la Raza has historically been used to refer to the mixed-race populations, considered as an ethnic or racial unit historically deriving from the Spanish Empire, and the process of racial intermixing during the Spanish colonization of the Americas with the indigenous populations of the Americas.