This year marks the 521th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival to the Americas, but many people in the U.S. as well as indigenous people in Latin America aren't celebrating.

Instead, many indigenous people in Latin America consider it the day Columbus brought slavery, disease, colonization and genocide from Europe to the Americas.

Mapuche Indian activists in Santiago, Chile organized an anti-Columbus Day march on Oct. 12, and took their distaste for the holiday and the European Invasion to another level.

According to Al Jazeera America, protesters clashed with police, with activists calling for the return of ancestral lands taken from them during colonization and the right to self-determination.

The march, which drew more than 15,000 people, escalated with demonstrators hurling rocks and other objects at police who responded with water cannons. At least 10 protesters were detained by police, according to local media reports.

Despite other Columbus Day celebrations across Latin America, the Mapuche were taking another stance on the holiday.  According to a press release submitted by the group, there were complaints of mistreatment by the state, particularly against Mapuche political prisoners, and on-going land disputes in the south.

"On Wednesday, a major police operation cleared indigenous occupants from disputed land in Ercilla, in southern Chile, and eight Mapuche activists were arrested. Witnesses said the police response was aggressive and unprovoked," the Santiago Times adds.

Will the Mapuche get their land back?

The government has said it will return some of the land, but the process has been stalling and "the perceived inaction" has resulted in demonstrations and occasional violence.

Al Jazeera America also points out that Mapuche protesters are considered "terrorists" by the Chilean government, which uses an anti-terrorism law against them. However, thousands of Mapuche and their supporters demanded an end to the application of this law on Mapuche land activists in peaceful marches Saturday.

There has been a global response to the plight of the Mapuche -- in July, the United Nations intervened and urged Chile to stop applying the anti-terrorism law against the Mapuche.

Chile wasn't the only country up in arms over the holiday. Another anti-Columbus Day protest took place Saturday in Mexico City, where various indigenous groups marched peacefully in observance of "Dia de la Raza," or Indigenous People's Day (as Columbus Day is called in Mexico).

"Indigenous people are in resistance because we are survivors after 500 years of the European invasion," Leonico Macuixle, a demonstrator, told The Associated Press. "They came to take from us our culture, our language; they built Catholic churches in our sacred places."

U.N. special investigator on human rights and counter-terrorism Ben Emerson, tells the AP, that Chile's government has used the law to discriminate against the Mapuche. "It has been applied in a confusing and arbitrary way, which has turned into a real injustice that has impaired the right to a fair trial. And it has been perceived as stigmatizing and delegitimizing of the Mapuche territorial demands and protests."