A group of activists raises a statue ‘to the women who fight’ on the pedestal where Columbus was

Members of feminist collectives and mothers of disappeared women, intervened on the pedestal where the statue of Christopher Columbus was located and placed a monument in honor of the victims of femicide.Nayeli Cruz

The controversial Colón roundabout in Mexico City took a new turn this Saturday after a group of women took the pedestal where until a few weeks ago the statue of the Genoese sailor stood and in its place placed a figure of almost two meters to the which they called “monumenta”, a wooden sculpture that represents a woman with a raised fist painted purple.

More information

Located in the heart of the Mexican capital, the sculpture is 1.90 meters tall. Feminists intend that, from now on, the place be called “Glorieta de las mujeres que lucha”, said the groups of victims of violence and relatives of the disappeared in charge of the installation.

The statue began to rise first thing in the morning on Saturday when the group of women jumped the fences that protected the pedestal that supported Christopher Columbus and began the installation of the so-called “woman defender”.

Women intervening on the pedestal of Paseo de la Reforma. Nayeli Cruz

According to a statement from “Antimonumenta. We want each other alive ”, after the public consultation that the head of government of Mexico City had offered to decide the fate of the Glorieta will not take place, the women’s groups decided to rename it the Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan. “It will be dedicated to those throughout the country who have faced violence, repression and re-victimization for fighting injustice,” they detailed on social media.

The Paseo de la Reforma is almost an open-air museum, where each roundabout has a symbol and where in recent times citizens have been placing others to record recent causes, such as the miners buried in Pasta de Conchos, the 43 students disappeared from Ayotzinapa or the 49 children killed in the fire of a nursery in Sonora. They are living struggles that find in the heart of the capital of Mexico a space for vindication and visibility.

The Colón roundabout is once again involved in controversy after in early September the head of the Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced the replacement of the sculpture by a monument to indigenous women by the Mexican artist Pedro Kings. The controversial project was finally postponed due to the controversy generated by the selected design, an Olmec head, of a modernist style that many have not liked.

For his part, Sheinbaum has recognized the admiral as “a great, universal character”, but believes that the city center should have recognition of indigenous women, hence the change, agreed, he explained, after agreements with the Senate. “It will be given a place, it is not about hiding the sculpture.” Regarding the new location of the statue of Columbus, Sheinbaum has specifically pointed out the Parque América, in the mayor’s office of Miguel Hidalgo.

Subscribe here to the newsletter of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of this country

Source