While several monuments deemed racist have been debunked by American demonstrators, echoing the disputes that emerged after the death of Georges Floyd, the municipality of San Francisco, in the state of California, decided to take the lead.
This Thursday, it announced that it had removed a statue of Christopher Columbus, indicating that it no longer wanted to welcome the controversial navigator between the walls of his local parliament. "It is not in line with San Francisco's values and commitment to racial justice," said Rachelle Axel, head of the city's cultural service.
Christopher Columbus has gone on another voyage. His Pioneer Park statue at the foot of Coit Tower was removed by the city early this morning after being defaced last week. pic.twitter.com/mjNMR1W31a
- Karl Mondon (@karlmondon) June 18, 2020Protesters planned Friday to unbolt the two-ton statue, already vandalized three times in recent days, which would have posed a danger to the public, she also stressed. "At a time when our country is going through an important period, we are all wondering about how institutional and structural racism permeates our society," the cultural service of the city in the western United States said in a press release. “Public art is no exception. "
"A deeply divisive historical figure"
"Many historic monuments are being removed from cities across the United States because the achievements and ideas they symbolize do not deserve to be honored," he added. The recent protests in the United States against racism and police violence, in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, an African-American killed by a white policeman in Minneapolis, have led Americans to look at their history from a different perspective.
Long celebrated as "the one who discovered America", Christopher Columbus is today seen by some as the symbol of the arrival of Europeans and their violent claims on land that does not belong to them. California state officials announced on Tuesday that another Genoese explorer statue would be removed from the local executive's headquarters in Sacramento, where it has been enthroned since 1883.
Christopher Columbus, they wrote in a statement, is "a deeply divergent historical figure given the deadly consequences for the indigenous populations of his arrival in this part of the globe".
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VIDEO. United States: several degraded statues of Christopher Columbus