IN MY OP-ED last week I spoke of Columbus Day and tried to explain the significance for Latin America of the Spanish conquest and how much we are still tied to the colonial world.

This weeks celebration of Columbus Day, just in the Bicentenary year, is an event of great importance, which accumulates all our colonial and republican history on the same date.

Columnists are not only critical but receive criticism in droves.

SOMETIMES you get the impression that societies, like people, have their temperament, their personality. Some are lively and spontaneous, others are secretive and impenetrable, some disciplined and obedient and others impulsive and creative.

To understand a criminal code it is less important to know the crimes than to know how they are ordered according to crime severity, from the most serious to the most soft one.

Parents know very well that when it comes to banning something it is better to remain silent than to impose a sanction that children will not comply or that they will not be able to impose.

BY THESE DAYS I have been following the fate of the 33 Chilean miners of the Atacama Desert.

To the surprise of all Colombians, the Minister of Agriculture has said the government wants to put forward an agrarian reform.

IN SOCIETIES THAT HAVE Latino heritage, like ours, there is a particular liking for abstract discussions.