The use of good guy or bad guy for a person doesn't make much sense.
I'll just list some major facts about Columbus and let you make your own conclusions.
Christopher Columbus believed the world was round. Others during his time didn't believe so. Columbus also thought that the world was smaller than what it actually is, principally because North America and South America were not yet discovered. Columbus went to many people and asked them to fund him, and finally the King and Queen of Spain funded him. When Columbus reached the Americas, he treated the natives harshly. He took their wealth, such as gold, etc, and made the natives slaves. And he brought back the riches of the Caribbean to Spain. Columbus never knew that he had stumbled across an undiscovered land, and instead thought he had reached India, where he was originally going for, and so he called the natives "Indians."
Hope that helped :)
Gold..........................
The reasons why the United States provided loans for the Latin American countries after they gained independence from Spain were mostly of economic and political interests.
By providing loans to these newly formed nations, the United States tried to create a positive opinion by the people in these nations about them, as they would have thought that the United States are helping them to develop. The real reason why the loans were granted though was to make these nations economically dependent and connected with the United States, thus the United States to have big power over them. Also, because this is a region in the neighborhood of the United States, they wanted to make sure that they would have things under control, create good relations with these nations, and avoid any future problems.
A microhistorian might document one day in a town that experienced particularly high unemployment levels, while a comparative historian might graph unemployment levels in several cities throughout the Great Depression
