On September 17, 2020, in Popayán, in the territory occupied by the Colombian state,
indigenous Mizak people tore down the statue of Sebastián de Belalcázar,
a symbol of colonization and slavery that has haunted those lands since the 16th century.
Recently, the image of Christopher Columbus was torn down in Barranquilla.
The ecstasy of the population in the euphoria of the toppling went viral on the internet.
In the early days of the uprisings in response to the racist murder of George Floyd
by police in the United States, dozens of statues of Confederate leaders were
destroyed or torn down by protesters.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in Bristol, United Kingdom, a statue of
slave trader Edward Colston was toppled, dragged through the city streets,
and thrown into a river.
Recently, in the stolen lands of Canada,
hundreds of bones of Indigenous children
were discovered buried in the grounds of so-called "residential schools".
These schools, created by the Canadian state and run by Christian churches,
were intended to isolate indigenous children
from the cultural influence of their families.
The discovery of the bodies was the spark for outrage and counterattacks.
Eight churches have already been burned down in the region of so-called British Columbia,
in addition to various attacks in the rest of the country.
The images are straightforward,
where the symbol of the institution that for five centuries
has been silently and institutionally burning down native languages, cultures
and spiritualities burns.
On July 1, the national independence holiday,
the image of Queen Victoria was torn down in the city of Winnipeg, province of Manitoba.
There are similar claims against Salesian and nun boarding schools in
lands now occupied by the Chilean state, where children of native peoples
like Yaganes, Kawésqar and Selk'nam were kidnapped, tortured and murdered.
Throughout the cordillera, forests and deserts of the entire continent,
there are countless accounts of Catholic colonial institutions
committing atrocities like these.
What is really at stake when oppression is fought through the destruction
of a symbolic heritage?
And what, in fact, keeps these racist, colonial, genocidal symbols
standing in many cities across the continent?
Who really benefits from this colonial history occupying
the public space until today?
We pay a high price for keeping the images of colonizers,
torturers, and symbols of oppression intact today.
While memorials were erected in neighboring countries after amnesty processes,
in Brazil we still see the state defending torture and forced acculturation,
along with the kidnapping of indigenous children even in the 21st century.
With the escalation of the military and religious state, the discourse of missionaries
"saving" children from indigenous cultural practices reinforces
prejudice and violence against native cultures.
This game of cultural distortions makes it clear that diversity is only accepted in the
current Brazilian inquisition when connected to productivist,
liberal, capitalist logics.
Columbus, Cabral, Vasco da Gama, Anchieta or Americo:
all traitors in the service of the colonial patriarchy.
Bento Gonçalves, Duque de Caxias, Marquês do Pombal:
cowardly slaveholding generals.
Dom Pedro, Princess Isabel, Bandeirantes: impostors of a false independence.
As long as these symbols stand, and we fail to recognize the cruelty
and racism behind them, we will not be free of their legacy of injustices.
If monuments still honor slavers, murderers and rapists,
it is because the system they built is still standing.
In Chile, the constant interventions and attacks on the statue of Manuel Baquedano,
led the government to remove it.
In La Paz, Bolivia, the old image of the Spanish Queen Isabel the Catholic
received the intervention of Mujeres Creando,
renaming the space to Plaza de la Chola Globalizada
as a vindication of the identity of the many women who built
the communities of the region.
In São Paulo, images of the cowardly Bandeirantes and of Father Anchieta are
constantly attacked.
There was no "discovery", it was invasion and genocide.
Colonial history is the origin of most inequalities and injustices in these lands.
The higher the church, the deeper the wound
and the blood stains left by it.
The supposed foreign debt is reversed.
It is the so-called "rich countries" that owe the colonized peoples and territories.
Their wealth is the result of the looting of these lands,
of the genocide of native and enslaved peoples.
We want the immediate reparations for these cultures and territories.
The colonizers are in debt.
They owe every life, every ounce of gold stolen,
every botanical knowledge appropriated,
every river polluted, every language silenced.
Today it is statues and churches.
Tomorrow it will be the ideals, values, institutions and structures
that these symbols represent that will be on fire.
And their ashes will feed the seeds of more just and free worlds.