MEXICO CITY — Goodbye, Fidel.
Hasta la vista, Che.
Denunciations and accolades greeted the abrupt elimination this month of a controversial monument within the Mexican capital commemorating the 2 revolutionaries, Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
The monument, a pair of bronze, life-sized sculptures of Castro and Guevara chilling on a bench, recollects a consequential second in each Mexican and Cuban historical past — the pair’s first assembly, which occurred in an residence in Mexico Metropolis in June or July 1955, in line with historians.
On the time, each have been twentysomething militants within the formative phases of their transformation into leftist icons who would encourage a worldwide technology of revolutionaries and activists.
Fidel Castro makes a televised tackle to the Cuban individuals in 1960, one yr after deposing Fulgencio Batista.
(Related Press)
A leftist Mexico Metropolis authorities put in the monument in 2017 in a small park within the capital’s Colonia Tabacalera neighborhood, not removed from the place the storied duo first met in a Chilly Warfare encounter that has taken on near-mythical dimensions amongst many on the left.
Within the two sculptures, each males stare straight forward and are decked out in gentle fight garb — Guevara in his trademark beret (a glance immortalized on T-shirts throughout the globe) and Castro sporting a fighter’s cap. His legs crossed, Castro grasps a cigar in his left hand, and a e-book on his proper. Guevara’s proper hand secures a pipe.
The sculpture has lengthy sparked polemics: Whereas adherents of the left usually applauded it, and a few guests would depart flowers, critics assailed the art work as a tasteless shrine to a bloody communist dictatorship.
‘Ideological censorship’
— César Huerta, left-wing journalist, on the statues’ elimination
Spearheading its elimination Wednesday was Alessandra Rojo de la Vega, conservative borough president of the capital’s central Cuauhtémoc district, the place the bench (referred to as Encuentro or Encounter) was located.
Her resolution, Rojo de la Vega initially defined on social media, was based mostly on legality — not politics. She stated there wasn’t “one single paper” authorizing the monument’s set up. Its elimination, she added, would enable park denizens to walk in “liberty and safety.”
She posted photographs of metropolis employees prying out the 2 figures from the bench and the bronzed Castro and Guevara being ignominiously hauled away in a bulldozer.
However the borough president later pivoted to a extra ideological rationale.
“This metropolis can not … promote or present refuge for figures who injured human dignity, be it in Mexico or the remainder of the world” Rojo de la Vega advised Radio Formulation.
As to the destiny of the twin bronzes, she stated that officers could think about a sale, utilizing the proceeds — seemingly from lefty purchasers enthralled with the Cuban rebellion — for park repairs.
“If we public sale them off, it should mark a primary — the communists will use their cash, not another person’s,” Rojo de la Vega stated. “In the event that they love them a lot, they’ll put them of their backyard, or their patio.”
Not happy was Mexico’s leftist president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who stated she would communicate to the Mexico Metropolis mayor — a political ally — about putting the monument elsewhere.
The query isn’t whether or not one embraces or rejects the views of the 2 protagonists, Sheinbaum argued to reporters on Thursday. The Castro-Che encounter, the president stated, recalled “a historic second” that unfolded in Mexico and merited a show of reminiscence.
The contretemps right here echoes spats in the US about monuments glorifying Accomplice generals: Critics decry the shows as exalting traitors and white supremacists, whereas others argue that the statues simply replicate historical past.
‘An murderer with good press’
— José Luis Trueba Lara, radio commentator, on Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara
Within the case of the Castro and Guevara likenesses, Sheinbaum advised that their elimination was partisan payback for her personal signature monument-canceling second — the banishment of one in all Mexico’s most illustrious landmarks, a digital image of the town.
In her former submit, as mayor of Mexico Metropolis, Sheinbaum ordered the elimination of a hovering bronze of Christopher Columbus, which, for greater than a century, graced a pedestal within the capital’s elegant Paseo de la Reforma. The stylized tableau depicted Columbus as a noble conqueror: one hand raised to the horizon, the opposite lifting a veil from a globe.
For years, Indigenous activists and others staged protests on the statue, labeling Columbus and different conquistadores as perpetrators of genocide. In 2020, Sheinbaum lastly ordered that the Columbus monument be taken down for renovations; it was by no means returned to its lofty perch.
Its ejection enraged each Columbus’ admirers and others who considered the monument as an integral marker of the Mexican capital. They accuse Sheinbaum of bowing to political correctness.
The site visitors circle the place Columbus lengthy lent his presence has now been renamed the Ladies Who Struggle roundabout, a rallying level for Indigenous, feminist and different protesters hoisting handwritten placards.
The grandiose Columbus determine, meantime, stays out of public sight in museum storage.
The Castro-Guevara bench, located in an easy-to-miss park, didn’t examine in dimension or significance to the towering Columbus of the fashionable Paseo de la Reforma. However its elimination lit up social media, rekindling historic enmities.
“An intent to erase the symbols of battle, of resistance, of Mexican-Cuban humanity,” César Huerta, a left-wing journalist, wrote on X, blasting the motion as “ideological censorship.”
A radio commentator, José Luis Trueba Lara, bid good riddance, calling Guevara “an murderer with good press” and Castro a “bloodcurdling dictator.”
Carlos Bravo Regidor, a columnist, berated the left for being extra involved “concerning the retirement of some depressing statues of Fidel and el Che than for the distress suffered by those that stay beneath the yoke of the Cuban dictatorship.”
On the time of his 1955 encounter with Guevara, Castro, then 28, was not lengthy out of a Cuban jail for an rebel assault in opposition to the U.S.-backed Cuban dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
Guevara, almost two years youthful, was a doctor from a middle-class Buenos Aires’ upbringing brimming with revolutionary fervor — and a imaginative and prescient of a pan-Latin American socialist union, freed from U.S. “imperialism.” The 2 younger males instantly hit if off, historians say, embarking on a lifelong friendship and collaboration within the revolutionary mission.
Each can be amongst 82 fighters aboard the yacht Granma that, in November 1956, set sail for Cuba from Mexico’s Gulf coast. Their voyage, and subsequent guerrilla marketing campaign, would culminate in 1959 in a historic overthrow of Batista and the imposition of a communist authorities in Havana.
Fidel and el Che are lengthy gone, and the e-book on the Chilly Warfare formally closed greater than a quarter-century in the past. However, because the fiery debate right here about an unassuming bench statue illustrates, the ideological fault strains of the Chilly Warfare are removed from fully obscured, not less than not in Latin America.
Particular correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed.
