Explore the Description of this artwork, Monument to Christopher Columbus (Paseo de la Reforma).
On the monument's pedestal were two bas-reliefs, one depicting Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World and the other, the construction of a church. On the corners of the pedestal were statues of friars, depicted in a seated position, said to be those who were important to the early history of Mexico including Franciscan Pedro de Gante, the first to evangelize Mexico's indigenous population, and Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas; and Antonio de Marchena and Diego de Deza, who aided Columbus in Spain.
As with "almost all the [Columbus] monuments, the gift or inspiration of Europeans or Europeans of mixed descent, include some reference to religion." In Mexico, where anticlericalism and suppression of the power of the Catholic Church had embroiled Mexico in a civil war and a foreign intervention during the nineteenth-century liberal Reform, the Columbus statue's combination of religious iconography and symbolic embodiment of European conquest and domination, has made the statue a target of protesters. One scholar suggests that Columbus "is portrayed as a conqueror, or even a conjurer, for he plucks a veil from the globe he holds."
Antonio de Marchena Pedro de Gante Diego de Deza Bartolomé de las Casas es Christopher Columbus liberal Reform