Mexico City‘s Shifting Symbols: from Columbus to Castro and Guevara

Mexico City, a metropolis steeped in history and vibrant with contemporary debate, is currently grappling with teh legacy of its public monuments. Recent decisions to remove statues of Christopher Columbus and a bench honoring Fidel Castro and Che Guevara have ignited passionate discussions about past interpretation, political correctness, and the enduring ideological fault lines of the past.

The Ejection of the Conqueror

For over a century, a towering bronze statue of Christopher columbus stood as a prominent fixture on Mexico City’s elegant Paseo de la Reforma. The monument depicted Columbus as a noble conqueror, one hand raised to the horizon, the other lifting a veil from a globe. However, for years, indigenous activists and others staged protests at the statue, labeling Columbus and other “Conquerors” as perpetrators of genocide.

In 2020, then-Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum ordered the monument’s removal for renovations, a move that ultimately led to its permanent absence from its lofty perch. This decision enraged both admirers of Columbus, who viewed the monument as an integral marker of the Mexican capital, and others who accused Sheinbaum of bowing to political correctness. The traffic circle where Columbus once stood has since been renamed the “Women Who Fight roundabout,” a rallying point for Indigenous,feminist,and other protesters. The grandiose Columbus figure now remains out of public sight in museum storage.

The Castro-Guevara Bench: A Smaller Scale, Larger Debate

While not comparable in size or importance to the towering Columbus monument, the removal of the Castro-Guevara bench, situated in an easily overlooked park, also lit up social media, rekindling historic enmities. The action prompted sharp criticism from some quarters, with left-wing journalist César Huerta lamenting on X, “An intent to erase the symbols of battle, of resistance, of Mexican-Cuban humanity,” blasting the action as “ideological censorship.”

Conversely, others welcomed the removal. Radio commentator José Luis Trueba Lara called Guevara “an assassin with good press” and Castro a “bloodcurdling dictator.” Columnist Carlos Bravo Regidor criticized the left for being more concerned “about the retirement of some miserable statues of Fidel and the Che than for the misery suffered by those who live beneath the yoke of the Cuban dictatorship.”

the genesis of a Revolutionary Alliance

The controversy surrounding the bench is rooted in the historic encounter between Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Mexico in 1955. Castro, then 28, had recently been released from a Cuban prison for an insurgent attack against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Guevara, a year younger, was a physician from Buenos Aires brimming with revolutionary fervor and a vision of a pan-Latin American socialist union, free of U.S. “imperialism.”

Historians note that the two men instantly connected, embarking on a lifelong friendship and collaboration in the revolutionary project. Both were among the 82 fighters aboard the yacht Granma, which set sail from Mexico’s Gulf coast in November 1956 for Cuba. Their voyage and subsequent guerrilla campaign culminated in 1959 with the overthrow of Batista and the establishment of a communist government in Havana.

Echoes of the Cold War in Latin America

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are long gone, and the Cold War officially concluded over a quarter-century ago.However, as the fiery debate in Mexico city over an unassuming bench statue illustrates, the ideological fault lines of that era are far from entirely obscured, particularly in Latin America. The city’s evolving public spaces reflect an ongoing, frequently enough contentious, dialogue about how to interpret and represent a complex and often painful past.