A statue of Christopher Columbus was removed Thursday by the municipality of San Francisco, in the state of California, which no longer wants to see the controversial navigator between the walls of his local parliament. "It is not in line with the values and commitment of San Francisco for racial justice," said Rachelle Axel, head of the city's cultural service, to AFP.
Protesters 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 the way in which institutional and structural racism permeates our society," the cultural service of the city on the west coast of the United States said in a press release. "Public art is no exception." "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.
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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 statue of the Genoese explorer would be removed from the seat of the local executive in Sacramento, where it has been enthroned since 1883. Christopher Columbus, they wrote in a statement, is "a deeply divisive historical figure given the deadly consequences for the indigenous populations of his arrival in this part of the globe" .