Statues of colonial figures, including Winston Churchill and Christopher Columbus, reassessed worldwide after George Floyd’s death
- The Black Lives Matter movement is sparking a reckoning in countries from Belgium to New Zealand, as they grapple with their colonial pasts
- Figures associated with slave-trading and imperialism, including Columbus and Churchill, are being torn down or defaced
Protests, and in some cases, acts of vandalism, have taken place in cities from Boston to Paris, in an intense re-examination of racial injustices over the centuries. Scholars are divided over whether the campaign amounts to erasing history or updating it.
Colonial-era statues are toppled and damaged in global Black Lives Matter protests
Near Santa Fe, New Mexico, activists in the US are calling for the removal of a statue of Don Juan de Oñate, a 16th-century Spanish conquistador revered as a Hispanic founding father and reviled for brutality against Native Americans, including an order to cut off the feet of two dozen people. Vandals sawed off the statue’s right foot in the 1990s.
In New York, protesters have attacked statues of Christopher Columbus in recent days during anti-racist demonstrations. When asked if it was time for monuments in the state celebrating the Italian explorer to go, Governor Andrew Cuomo said no.
“I understand the feelings about Christopher Columbus and some of his acts, which nobody would support,” said Cuomo, an Italian-American. “But the statue has come to represent and signify appreciation for the Italian-American contribution to New York.”