The statue of Columbus will not return to the Paseo de la Reforma

The pigeons will no longer perch on the statue of Columbus that, long ago, guarded a section of the Paseo de la Reforma in the Mexican capital. Or, if they do, it will be elsewhere. On October 10 of last year, the local authorities ordered the removal of the sculptural group at dawn, two days before the arrival of the admiral to the American coasts was commemorated. Many suspected then that under the excuse of restoration was hiding a firm decision: to remove Columbus from his pedestal forever. This was announced this Sunday by the Head of Government of the City, Claudia Sheinbaum. In its place will be placed a work of recognition of indigenous women. And Colón, as he will navigate to one of the city parks, in another city hall.The statue arrived on the shores of Veracruz in 1875 from the workshop of the French sculptor Charles Cordier, donated by the Mexican businessman and banker Antonio Escandón.

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For months, the navigator and his bronze accompaniment, the friars Pedro de Gante, Bartolomé de las Casas, Juan Pérez de Marchena and Diego de Deza, settled in a workshop for repair.

It was said that the restoration, in charge of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), would conclude in August, but it would be the authorities who would have to decide its return.

First it was the figure of the Genoese who was renovated, then it was announced that the pedestal was also damaged by the passage of time and the enormous contamination by road traffic that supports this boulevard.

And so the months went by.

Definitely, the Colón de Reforma has taken the same route as other of its representations in America. With great repercussion the statue that honored him fell in Baltimore, for example. Don Cristóbal is not one of the most controversial figures among those who still find wounds with the arrival of Europeans to the New World, but there are those who think that he was the one who opened the way that others followed with all the luxury of atrocities. What some see as 500 years of encounter between two worlds, Sheinbaum has preferred to describe it as "of cultural resistance and in multiple areas". Inevitable has been to link the statue of Columbus and the arrival of the Spaniards with the visit this week of the Spanish far-right leader Santiago Abascal, of whom the head of Government has once again emphasized his “fascist” ideology.“Some think that the Spanish brought civilization to Mexico, it is not true, we have centuries of history and what comes from abroad is not better. We are a multicultural nation ”, he pointed out.

The Paseo de la Reforma is almost an open-air museum, where each roundabout has a symbol and where in recent times citizens have been placing others to record recent causes, such as the miners buried in Pasta de Conchos, the 43 students disappeared from Ayotzinapa or the 49 children killed in the fire of a nursery in Sonora. They are living struggles that find in the heart of the capital of Mexico a space for vindication and visibility. For the same reason, it is the citizens that sometimes demand the removal of statues that they do not feel conform to current times. Columbus seems to be one of them. In addition, Sheinbaum has commented to the media that they have received many letters in recent months asking for a gesture with indigenous women. "This will be a millennial and current recognition,the city center is the center of our history ”.

Hours before the bronze ensemble presided over by the navigator was withdrawn, social networks were already talking about his demolition as a peculiar commemoration of October 12 and a campaign to collect signatures asked the local government for his disappearance to be treated, they said, of a tribute to colonialism. Feelings and reflections are very much alive in Mexico this year, when it marks the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlan at the hands of Hernán Cortés and his allies. The removal of the statue of Columbus thus becomes one of the contributions of the capital in that sense.

The head of Government has recognized the admiral as "a great, universal character", but believes that the city center should have recognition of indigenous women, hence the change, agreed, she explained, after agreements with the Senate . "It will be given a place, it is not about hiding the sculpture." Asked about its new location, Sheinbaum has specifically pointed out Parque América, in the mayor's office of Miguel Hidalgo.

Statues have always been part of cities.

They are there as a tribute, but also as history lessons that must remain in the collective memory, although thousands of passersby put them aside every day without scarcely suspecting who these stone beings are.

The demolition of the statues now seems like an artistic intervention, a performance, a declaration of intent similar to what is intended when they are placed on the pedestals.

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