More action at last!
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/30/917046641/u-s-statue-removals-inspire-indigenous-people-in-latin-america-to-topple-monumenThe campaign to remove Confederate statues and other symbols of white supremacy in the United States is resonating in Latin America, where protesters have destroyed monuments to European colonizers who brutalized Indigenous populations.
The latest target was a statue of Sebastián de Belalcázar, a Spanish conquistador. He founded the Colombian cities of Popayán and Cali in 1537, while leading a military campaign that killed and enslaved of thousands of Misak Indigenous people.
After authorities foiled two previous attempts to remove the statue, located on the outskirts of Popayán, Misak leaders sent decoy protesters into the center of the city on Sept. 16, drawing police attention. Meanwhile, a smaller group of Misak approached the monument, used ropes to pull down it down, then pounded it with rocks, separating the head from the torso.
"The time has come to get rid of these statues all across the Americas," said Jesus Maria Aranda, a Misak leader who noted that the de Belalcázar statue was built atop a sacred Misak religious site. "The conquistadors did so much damage to Indigenous peoples."
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But more often, protesters focus on representations of Christopher Columbus and other European explorers who first landed in the Americas at the end of the 15th century. During anti-government marches last year in Chile, Mapuche protesters toppled an effigy of the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, who established the Chilean capital city of Santiago but is now widely reviled for waging war on the Mapuche.
All told, about 60 statues in Chile were damaged or destroyed during the protests, according to the National Monuments Council. Such acts are considered criminal vandalism, but they haven't stopped. Last month, protesters in the Chilean town of Lumaco attacked a bust of Cornelio Saavedra, an army officer who led raids against the Mapuche in the 1800s. The protesters pulled it down and tossed it into a river.
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In Mexico City, city council member Teresa Ramos wants all traces of the conquistadors erased. She is demanding the removal of statues of Columbus and Hernán Cortés, who conquered the Aztec Empire in the 1500s, and wants streets honoring their memory to be renamed.
Yes! And this must happen not just in the New World, but in
all lands ever subjected to Western colonialism. This is what will synbolize the unification of people all over the world as victims of Western colonialism, and with this unification we will kill Western civilization once and for all!
(And again, what is with all these implicitly Turanian compositions for statues of colonialists?)