Christopher Columbus bids farewell to the most iconic avenue in Mexico City.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced that the statue of Columbus on the Paseo de la Reforma that had been removed late last year – theoretically for its restoration – will be replaced by a sculpture in honor of indigenous women.
“Columbus, of course, was a great universal figure and we must also recognize him, but we believe that, in the center of our city, there must be a recognition of indigenous women and, therefore, this monument.” , Sheinbaum said Sunday, making the announcement.
The decision joins a series of initiatives that have taken place this year aimed at rethinking and, above all, changing the name, anniversaries of Mexican history just as the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlan, the Mexican capital, is commemorated. in the hands of the Spaniards.
The statue of Columbus, donated to the city in 1877, has been an important landmark on the 10-lane boulevard that is one of the main arteries of the capital and a favorite target of protesters who often sprayed it with graffiti denouncing the European repression of Mexico’s indigenous civilizations.
The sculpture was removed last year allegedly for its restoration, shortly before October 12, when in Mexico the Day of the Race is commemorated and in Spain the “discovery” of America. In the United States, this day is called Columbus Day because it was when the navigator arrived on the American continent in 1492.
When the statue was removed last year, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that, according to his data, it was lowered “to restore it” and that he should not “lend himself to misunderstandings”. which would have coincided with the October ephemeris.
Now it seems that his words were only intended to soften an issue that remains the subject of debate on both sides of the Atlantic, especially since the president urged Spain to apologize for the massacres committed during the conquest.
The petition was criticized by Mexican academics and indigenous groups such as the Zapatistas, who considered it demagogic. However, there are academics who have been committed in recent years to reviewing stereotypes of history that have promoted racist attitudes and shunning readings that divide the past between good and bad.
So far, the changes have been more than fundamental. The fifth centenary of the end of the Mexican empire was commemorated on August 13 as the beginning of the indigenous resistance and the hitherto known as “sad night” – which referred to the worst defeat suffered by Hernán Cortés in June 1520- it was renamed “Victorious Night”.
In Spain it is also not a dead end for the most radical sectors of the country. The far-right party Vox, the third largest political force in parliament, said on its official Twitter account on the occasion of the fall of Tenochtitlan that “Mexico and all of America should thank the Spaniards for bringing civilization and ending the reign of terror and barbarism to which they were subjected. “
Instead of remembering the killings and deaths from the diseases the conquest caused, there were those who responded more ironically.
Ruben Rius Uribe, a deputy from Bruna, the pro-government party in the state of Veracruz, chose days later to put this message on its networks “for freedom and democracy.” “We must invade Spain and bring them the Republic. It cannot be that they continue to have a king in the middle of the 21st century.”
The new statue statue that will be placed on the Reformation Walk this year will be called “Tlali,” which means “land” in Nahuatl.
Columbus’s will not be rejected, but will be moved to a less prominent place in a small park in the Polanco neighborhood.