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(Chicago) Two statues of explorer Christopher Columbus were unbolted Friday before dawn in Chicago at the request of the mayoress of the city, worried confrontations around monuments to the glory of this increasingly contested character in the United States.
Published on 21 July 2020 at 11 h 26 Updated at 11 h 00
France Media Agency
In the middle of the night, municipal workers with a crane removed a statue wrapped in a white tarpaulin, located in the park Grant.
“It feels good to see the statue fall,” Brenda Armenta, a Chicago resident, told AFP. “People realize that we have been told lies to oppress us,” she added.
Long presented as “the discoverer of America”, Christopher Columbus is now associated by some with the atrocities committed by Europeans against Amerindians.
A second statue of the Genoese navigator has been unbolted in the Italian quarter of the third largest city in the United States. The authorities did not specify where the statues were taken.
These withdrawals were ordered by Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot “in response to the demonstrations which have become dangerous for the demonstrators and the police, but also because of the individual efforts “to bring down the statue, his services said in a statement.
Defenders and detractors of Christopher Columbus clashed at the foot of the statue in Grant Park on several occasions, and again on Thursday evening.
The death of George Floyd, an African-American suffocated by a white policeman on 24 May in Minneapolis, opened a debate across the United States about racism and its historical foundations. This examination of conscience led to the debunking of several statues of figures linked to slavery or the oppression of minorities.
Statues of Christopher Columbus have been removed in Baltimore, Boston or San Francisco, but Republican President Donald Trump, who sees these actions as the work ” of anarchists ”and“ agitators ”, flew to the aid of the explorer.
“We will fight together for the American Dream, and we will defend, protect, and preserve the American way of life that began in 944 when Christopher Columbus discovered America ”, he declared during his speech for the celebration national, July 4.
Lori Lightfoot's decision could increase tensions with the White House which has already decided to send, against the mayor's advice, police officers federal government backs up in Chicago, where crime has been on the rise in recent weeks.
