Mexican feminists install a statue of a woman to replace one where Columbus stood

Feminist collectives installed this Saturday a statue in honor of “the women who fight” on the pedestal where México City’s government removed the effigy of Christopher Columbus last year.

“This place is from now on the Roundabout of Women Who Fight and will be dedicated to those who throughout the country have faced violence, repression and re-victimization against injustices,” the activists said in a statement.

Hooded women climbed the pedestal, located in a roundabout on the central Paseo de la Reforma, to install and reveal the figure of a woman with her fist raised.

In the statement, the activists declared that the space is dedicated to women who are looking for their disappeared relatives, to the mothers of victims of femicide and their daughters, to the defenders of the territory, to Afro-Mexican women, to indigenous women and to “all women who with their struggles have built our history.”

This statue joins the list of “anti-monuments,” some memorials raised by the citizens themselves that in recent years have been proliferating in Mexico City to remember, for example, the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa or the student massacre of Oct. 2, 1968.

Last year, the capital authorities removed the statue of Columbus, a Charles Cordier work erected in the 19th century, days before a demonstration was held to demolish it on Oct.12.

The head of México City’ government, Claudia Sheinbaum, recently announced that the statue of Columbus would no longer return to its place and that it would be replaced by the figure of an indigenous woman made by the artist Pedro Reyes.

But in the face of criticism for commissioning the work to a non-indigenous man, the mayor had to back down and commission the monument to a committee.

México commemorates in 2021 the 500 years of the conquest of Hernán Cortés, who has wanted to resignify under the name of “indigenous resistance.”