Baracutey blows on a conch shell outside the Capitol building while joining a group of activists demanding statues and street names commemorating symbols of colonial oppression be removed, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Saturday, July 11, 2020. Dozens of activists marched through the historic part of Puerto Rico’s capital on Saturday to demand that the U.S. territory’s government start by removing statues, including those of explorer Christopher Columbus. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)
By DÁNICA COTO, Associated Press
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Statues, street names, plazas and even the body of conquistador Juan Ponce de León himself: Spain left a nearly indelible legacy in Puerto Rico that attracts hordes of tourists every year, but some activists are trying to erase it as they join a U.S. movement to eradicate symbols of oppression.
Dozens of activists marched through the historic part of Puerto Rico’s capital on Saturday, some wearing traditional Taíno clothing as they banged on drums and blew on conch shells to demand that the U.S. territory’s government start by removing statues including those of explorer Christopher Columbus.
“These statues represent all that history of violence, of invasion, of looting, of theft, of murder,” said an activist who goes by the name of Pluma and is a member of Puerto Rico’s Council for the Defense of Indigenous Rights. “These are crimes against humanity.”
Columbus landed in Puerto Rico in 1493 accompanied by Spaniard Ponce de León, who later became the island’s first governor and quelled an uprising by the native Taínos, a subgroup of the Arawak Indians. Historians and anthropologists believe that up to 60,000 Taínos lived in Puerto Rico at the time, but they were soon forced into labor and succumbed to infectious disease outbreaks.
Centuries later, local government officials honored both explorers by erecting statues and naming streets and plazas after them across Puerto Rico. The Columbus Plaza is located at the entrance of Old San Juan and bears a statue of Columbus unveiled in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his arrival. Meanwhile, a nearby statue of Ponce de León stands facing south with his left hand on his hip and right finger pointed toward the first settlement he founded. The ruins still mark the spot of the island’s first Spanish capital and is a U.S. National Historic Landmark. The statue made of melted steel from British cannons also points in the same direction of the nearby San Juan Bautista Cathedral that bears Ponce de León’s remains and is a popular tourist spot.
A group of activists surround a monument to Christopher Columbus demanding statues and street names commemorating symbols of colonial oppression be removed, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Saturday, July 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)
Activists on Saturday demanded that both statues be removed as the first step in taking down symbols of oppression across Puerto Rico.
“No, it won’t be easy,” acknowledged activist Francisco Jordán García, who helped organize the march. “It’s going to be a long process.”
But he quickly offered alternatives: “We can melt them and create a different statue of someone who truly deserves it.”
Activists recently contacted the office of San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and said an assistant told them officials would evaluate the cost of taking down the statues. A Cruz spokesman did not return a message for comment.
The march comes as Puerto Ricans’ interest in the territory’s indigenous past continues to grow. In the 2010 Census, some 42,000 of the 3.7 million people living on the island at that time identified themselves as at least partially Taino.
A group of activists march demanding statues and street names commemorating symbols of colonial oppression be removed, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Saturday, July 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)
Statues of Columbus have been removed or toppled elsewhere in the U.S. mainland following an uproar over racism after the police killing of George Floyd. Protesters in Baltimore threw a Columbus statue into a harbor, while they beheaded another one in Boston. Meanwhile, officials in states including New York, Ohio, California, Missouri and Connecticut have removed similar statues.
However, one colossal statue of Columbus remains upright and rooted in U.S. soil. The creation, titled “Birth of a New World,” rises defiantly along Puerto Rico’s north coast, a 660-ton statue that is more than twice the size of the Statue of Liberty without its pedestal. It was once homeless for two decades as several U.S. cities refused to accept it for reasons ranging from cost to appearance until Puerto Rico’s government accepted it as a gift in 1998 and used $2.4 million in public funds to bring it to the island.
Reality check:
I was born and raised in the beautiful mountains of Puerto Rico so I know the facts.
Most Puerto Ricans are descendants of hard working, productive and courageous European immigrants, not colonizadores or conquistadores. The vast majority of Puerto Ricans are PROUD whites of European heritage and blood. So if their ancestry is Spanish they are gonna look like Spaniards!!! But of course Spaniard is not a race and not everybody in Spain looks the same! Some Spaniards are more German or french than Spanish and some are Basque or Galicians or Catalan and they don’t look alike. Many Puerto Ricans look or resemble Germans or French or Greek or Jewish or Arab…..Ricky Martin is a white Puerto Rican and he resembles French or Corsican men, guess what? That’s his heritage and ethnic background. So white Puerto Ricans resemble Whites! And black Puerto Ricans resemble blacks! Common sense 101.
Most Puerto Ricans, like me, celebrate who we are and our European/Spanish heritage. Everything in Puerto Rican culture is linked to our European roots. The music, the religions, the traditions, the language, the cuisine, our architecture, our sense of humor, our sense of beauty and dignity. Puerto Rican culture is very Mediterranean. We have more in common with the Greeks, the Italians, the Spaniards than with any “natives” or with Africans.
A few creepy, colorful, self hating clowns cannot talk for us. They grew up in the trashy ghettos around non Puerto Ricans and are bitter and full of ENVY. Our white skin drives them nuts. But we do not have white guilt so that their nasty loud mouths cannot scare us! We fight back! We are not afraid of them! We celebrate our history and our Spanish heritage. We even have the Monumento al Jíbaro Puertorriqueño (Monument to the Puerto Rican Hillbilly/ Countryman).
The Monumento al Jíbaro, sculpted by renowned local artist Tomás Batista, stands proudly in front of the majestic backdrop, a powerful symbol of national identity. Jibaros were and still are the WHITE peasants, the rural men and women of the mountains. Today many of them are descendants of Corsican, Basques, french, Irish and other European immigrants. Most of us still have family connections in the Canary Islands and Corsica.
Christopher Columbus was a great man, a man who endured much and achieved much, and his voyage of discovery deserves the celebration it once had. The monuments of our European ancestors will stay forever! Like all the Spanish names for the majority of towns, rivers, and schools!
The most informative, intelligent and insightful post EVER on this site.
Te botaste nene!!!
Thank you.
I too am born and raised IN Puerto Rico and I learned my culture, history, identity and ethnicity from my family who STILL lives in the same mountain towns that they settled in when they arrived in the mid-to-late 1800s from Europe…Basque country, Galicia, Mallorca, Canary Islands, Corsica, France, Germany, Denmark and Holland…so not surprisingly they are White and NOT ashamed of that!
People reading this KNOW you are right, but in the US, too many Puerto Rican-descended idiots have no clue about their history, their cultural roots or even their own families. They have been identity raped by in American ghettoes by homeys with their asses hanging out who don’t even know who their fathers are.
For many years I used to go to the Puerto Rican Day parade, but when I kept seeing ghetto-gorillas screaming Apache War Cries, wearing Navajo War Paint, doing Hopi Rain Dances and diving through hoops of fire and telling us that this nonsense was “real” Boreekwa “culture” I stopped attending.
They think “Duh Bronx” is the Capitol of Puerto Rico and J-Low’s ass is the Mayor of San Juan.
Thank you again for sharing what has to be THE most intelligent post here EVER!!!
Meanwhile J-Low is sliding up and down a KY-lubricated stripper pole at Super-Bowl Half-Time and telling the world that she is “reppin’ my culture”. She wouldn’t know Puerto Rican culture unless she stepped in it in a subway car full of Coqui shit.
Like my Basque grandfather used to say…
“…Mijo, la mona bailando en un traje de seda,
nunca deja de ser una mona bailando en en traje de seda”.
I am afraid that there are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many monas and monos today wearing the Puerto Rican flag as underwear and think that is respectful….smh
These protests were in PR and carried out by boricuas from the island but leave it to the small minded fools above me to make this about Nuyoricans, always a convenient target for racism and xenophobia. Pathetic. The funny thing is, I don’t disagree with most of what the comments said. I just wonder why the isla that gave the world trash like reggaeton and trap music and is filled with drugs and gun violence always wants to project its problems on those of us on the mainland. Take care of your problems and stop blaming others please