10 Dollars - Elizabeth II Discovery

Issued to mark the 500th anniversary of Columbus's first Caribbean landfall in 1492, this piece was part of a wave of commemorative issues produced across the region in 1992 — a program that generated significant controversy among Caribbean nations still grappling with how to frame colonization as a celebratory occasion. Barbados itself was uninhabited when the Spanish arrived and was later settled by the English, giving the island an unusually detached relationship to the Columbus narrative compared to its neighbors.

KM#53 was struck in limited proof quantities by the Royal Canadian Mint on contract.