Mexico City to Replace Christopher Columbus Statue
Mexico City will replace a statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus with a statue of an Indigenous Olmec woman.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said the 19th century Columbus statue will be moved from the Paseo de la Reforma, one of the city's main streets, to a park, and that the new statue will be put in its place.
Columbus has been controversial for many years. To some, he is the man who "discovered" the Americas. To others, his arrival on October 12, 1492, represents the beginning of European conquest in the New World, starting with Columbus himself kidnapping six Indigenous people the day he arrived.
In the US, the second Monday of October is celebrated as Columbus Day. But some parts of the country choose to celebrate this date as Indigenous People's Day instead.
In Mexico, October 12 is celebrated as Día de la Raza, which means "Day of the Race" or "Day of the People," and celebrates the country's mixed European and Indigenous heritage.
In recent years, Columbus statues in the US and Latin America have been vandalized, and last year many Columbus statues across the US were removed.
The statue in Mexico City has also previously been vandalized, and was removed for "restoration" two days before planned anti-Columbus protests in October 2020 — after which it was never returned.
Mayor Sheinbaum said the new Olmec statue will be called "Tlali," which means "land" or "earth" in Nahuatl, the language spoken by the people of central Mexico when Europeans arrived, and which is still spoken by over a million people today. The statue is being created by Mexican artist Pedro Reyes.
The Olmec people lived between about 1200 and 400 BC in what's now southern Mexico. It's believed that their culture influenced later Mexican and Central American populations, such as the Maya and the Aztecs.
