Pizarro, Francisco

See original.

An equestrian statue by Charles Cary Rumsey, portraying Francisco Pizarro, was erected in Lima, Peru in 1935. It is a larger copy of one made in plaster for the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. The small original in bronze stands in front of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo (US). Another copy is located in the birthplace of Pizarro: Trujillo, in Spain.

From the very beginning, the monument in Lima caused conflict. Conservatives considered it appropriate to commemorate the founder of the city and to celebrate the colonial roots of contemporary Peru. They likened the Spanish conquest of Peru to the Roman conquest of Spain, and argued that Peru in its essence was Spanish. Progressives viewed the monument as a symbol of colonialism and oppression, and argued that Lima should not honour the destroyer of the Inca culture; an oppressor and murderer of Peru’s indigenous people. They viewed Peru as a nation rooted in indigenous culture, which had survived centuries of efforts to eradicate it.

In 2003, after years of lobbying by an indigenous and mixed-raced majority requesting the removal of the statue of Pizarro, the mayor of Lima approved the transfer of the statue to another location: a square adjacent to the country’s Government Palace. The statue was later relocated to a remote corner of a park that was developed to protect remnants of the historic city wall. The statue also has been deprived of its large and commanding base – which it enjoyed in its previous two locations– and has been demoted to a pedestrian level. Although the statue still is publicly displayed, it is clear that Pizarro has been exiled to an insignificant spot outside the boundaries of colonial Lima.

Photo by Manuel Olaechea

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