Columbus statue in San Antonio removed
It may be returned to local Italian Society, which had donated it
SAN ANTONIO — A statue of Christopher Columbus — heralded for more than 500 years as the explorer who “discovered” the Americas — no longer is standing in a downtown San Antonio park.
Crews hauled the bronze statue from Columbus Park on Wednesday morning on a flatbed truck rented from Home Depot — and escorted by police — in a calm ceremony.
“We’re moving forward,” Councilman Roberto Treviño said. “We’re doing it together, and we’re setting just a really great example for everybody. The beauty of all this is everybody’s focused on healing and on moving forward.”
In Houston, two Confederate statues and one of Columbus have been removed in the last month.
Columbus long was lionized as the European discoverer of the “New World.” But in the past two decades, he has been widely reassessed as a violent colonizer who slaughtered Native Americans.
Jennifer Falcon of the Indigenous Environmental Network, a grassroots environmental justice organization, brought her two daughters to see the statue come down. She burned sage in prayer.
For Falcon, bearing witness carried urgency in light of violent confrontations surrounding other statue removals around the country. She pointed to a shooting in Albuquerque, N.M., last month when protesters gathered to call for the removal of a statue of Juan de Oñate, a Spanish conquistador who established the state.
But officials shouldn’t stop working at removing these kinds of statues, Falcon said.
“I’d like to also see us not just move down statues of white supremacy but also talk about the systems of white supremacy that oppress black and indigenous and people of color,” Falcon said, naming police as an example.
The removal of the statue, originally donated by the Christopher Columbus Italian Society, was accelerated in the wake of protests over the killing of longtime Houston resident George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police, as similar statues as well as those depicting slaveholders and key figures in the Confederacy were vandalized or destroyed.
In an attempt to prevent that outcome, Treviño and the Italian society struck a deal — to be voted on by the City Council next month — to remove the statue of the explorer from the park, return the statue to the society and rename the park “Piazza Italia Park.”
“We wanted to avoid something getting out of control,” said Paolo Cristadoro, who serves on the society’s board.
The statue was vandalized last week with red paint resembling blood. And on Saturday, dozens of protesters who want the monument torn down confronted armed counterprotesters who favor keeping Columbus on a pedestal.
The statue of Columbus, created by sculptor Armando Dattelli, had stood in the park since 1957.