overview
Monuments and Protests :
Disputed Memory in the Latin American Public Space
Claudia Wasserman PhD in Social History ( Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ ), Professor of History at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul ( UFRGS ), CNPQ Researcher
The toppling , removal or resignification of monuments that pay homage to controversial historical figures has divided the opinions of politicians , heritage specialists , historians and the general population . Amongst the supporters of such demonstrations are those who defend the need to revise a colonial history narrated as heroic by monuments that , while honouring the conquerors , also conceal slavery , genocide and spoliation . Those who oppose the removal of statues deem it anachronism to judge , in the 21 st century , realities and values from the 19 th century and centuries before . They consider the protests to be an unjustifiable form of presentism , or an erroneous historical reinterpretation . The latest events were precipitated by the murder of George Floyd in the United States , at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis , on 25 May 2020 . The movement , which began in the United States as an anti-racial struggle , has spread across Latin America and has become a movement of colonial history revisionism and colonial legacy confrontation . Above all , the protests are directed not only against Spanish figures ( or against figures of Spanish descent ) who were part of the conquest and colonisation of America , but also against the founders of cities during the colonial period , metropolitan political proceres , and the clergy who came to America in order to catechise the indigenous population , as well as the leaders of the independence movements , and the politicians who established the national foundations in the 19 th century . The movement against the heroicised memory of the conquistadores has crossed national boundaries , countering the nationalist framework of the elites that erected monuments to affirm their nation-states . This movement has also reclaimed the memory of the indigenous peoples , of black people and poverty-stricken white people who live in all countries in Latin America , regardless of the territorial boundaries set by the independence movements .
50
Observing Memories Issue 6