The Latin American Monument Debate: Reckoning with the Region’s Colonial Past

On October 10, 2020, Mexico’s government removed the Christopher Columbus statue from its pedestal in Reforma, Mexico City´s most prominent avenue. The capital´s mayor affirmed that the statue would be returned after undergoing “profound restoration,” urging critics to keep at bay. There is skepticism around reinstating the statue, as it was removed only two days before the “Day of the Race,” Mexico´s commemoration of Columbus’ arrival at the Americas in 1492. The timing is hardly a coincidence; it is a call to historical reckoning.

Mexico’s government, like many others around the globe, faces a policy challenge without an unambiguous right answer: namely, what is the role of symbols in a society´s public life? How to determine where historical revisionism — defined as the reinterpretation of a historical account — ends and ideological propaganda begins?

In response to these questions, controversies around historical monuments have sprouted in every corner of the world. Italy continues to wrestle with the structures built during its fascist decade; last year, Spain removed General Franco’s remains from his memorial at El Valle de los Caídos; and the United States has yet to achieve consensus over the statues of slave-owning founding fathers and confederate generals. Mexico’s most recent version of this now-commonplace dilemma provides a lens through which we can view the broader debate on the government´s role in building and removing symbols.

In its most simplified version, the debate has two opposing fronts. The opposition party, Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), calls for the preservation of monuments as a vital representation of a country’s history and an important connection to the past. Christopher Columbus statues represent an unavoidable and ineffaceable truth: the statue is part of the country’s scenery and history, and as such it cannot and should not be negated. PAN accused President López Obrador of “manipulating history for political purposes.” On the other hand, López Obrador and others that call for revisionism conceive statues as more than a representation of a static, collective past. Under this lens, monuments do not offer a neutral perspective: they can be divisive, they can misrepresent history, and to some, they can be hurtful reminders of a darker past.

López Obrador is not alone in the region. His left-wing forbears — Kirchner in Argentina, Morales in Bolivia, and Chavez in Venezuela — all removed Cristopher Columbus statues from their pedestals. It is not happenstance that the Genovese explorer sits at the center stage of the monument debate in Latin America, for it is not his individual history that is being revised, but the symbol for which it stands.

MORENA, Mexico’s ruling party, has aptly harnessed the power of symbols — arguably more so than any government in the country’s past. The current administration claims the title of Mexico´s “fourth transformation.” That is, MORENA conceives itself as the fourth great epoch in Mexico’s history: first came the country’s independence, next its revolution, then its war of reform, and now López Obrador’s transformation. Historical revisionism has become a trademark of MORENA’s rule, and in such a context, the country´s colonial past is a recurring source of dispute. In what became a diplomatic scandal, President López Obrador sent King Felipe VI of Spain a dispatch asking the Spanish Crown to apologize for the atrocities committed toward Indigenous people from 1521 to 1821. Although the Mexican government cannot force Spain to apologize for the past, it can work within its own territory to debunk old colonial narratives and substitute them for more critical ones. Monuments play a key role in this transformation.

More than three months have passed since the Columbus’ statue was removed “for restoration.” Nobody yet knows whether it will be put back in place or not, and if it does, in what way. We find ourselves at the right time to ask uncomfortable questions: what should be done with the statue? Should it be restored, permanently removed, or modified? And most importantly, how can this debate inform similar cultural policy questions that will continue to surface in Latin America and across the globe? Indeed, Mexico’s debate over the Columbus statue may help advance frameworks to understand the complexities of cultural policy in Latin America and to imagine solutions that preserve history while respecting those affected by it.

The ideal policy outcome, most would agree, is one where the truth isn’t manipulated, as preservationists tend to argue occurs, but where historically contentious figures are not extolled and eulogized in such a way that undermines the pain they caused. Different alternatives have been put forward to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable objectives. Some have argued that statues should be placed in neutral grounds (i.e. museums), where anyone can “study the Empire’s sins in all their shades of grey.” Others consider that such normative questions should be resolved democratically, “where towns and cities would hold a mass review of their monuments, say every 50 years.” Finally, some suggest that monuments can be contextualized in a way that allows every viewer the freedom to interpret them.

It is too easy to get caught in the dichotomy of preservation versus removal, where we should instead strive for a balance between both extremes. While deciding what to do with Columbus statues, Mexico would do right to grapple with the whole spectrum of policy alternatives rather than fallaciously reduce the discussion to preservation and censorship. Countries like Italy have successfully contextualized some of Mussolini’s monuments, countering their original symbolic power without effacing a central episode in the country’s history. One could think of similar interventions for Columbus statues in Mexico and throughout Latin America — his ankles could be tied to chains (symbolizing his participation in slave trade), or in a less metaphoric effort, a plaque could be added to his statue explaining the atrocities that he committed. Whatever may become of the Columbus statue in Reforma, the time has come for Latin America to wrestle with the symbols of its colonial years in a way that allows the region to reconcile its past with its future.