{"id":225015,"date":"2020-07-25T13:45:16","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T17:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=225015"},"modified":"2020-07-27T08:26:50","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T12:26:50","slug":"the-glory-is-theirs-and-nobody-can-take-it-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/our-life\/the-glory-is-theirs-and-nobody-can-take-it-away\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe glory is theirs and nobody can take it away\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Help us keep OnCuba alive<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina were major centers of slave production. Today they are among the poorest states in the United States. The long trace of slavery is an unavoidable part of the explanation of poverty. The deep unease towards that past is expressed today in several ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

The demolition of statues of slave-trading figures constitutes one of them. The murder of George Floyd has fueled that intention, prompting the removal of statues of Confederate people and monuments such as those of Robert E. Lee and John B. Castleman, the Bentonville Confederate Monument (Arkansas), and the Athens Confederate Monument (Georgia).<\/span><\/p>\n

The process has been seen by some sectors as the latest radical fad. Its critics say that it will end up knocking down everything, including Cervantes. A sign with \u201c<\/span>bastard<\/span><\/a>\u201d was already hung on a statue of the genius. It\u2019s certainly foolish. Cervantes\u2019s most famous character \u201cvowed\u2026to favor the needy and oppressed from the elders\u201d and it seemed \u201ca hard case to turn into slaves those whom God and nature made free.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The excesses of anger are <\/span>fertile ground for classist and racist discourses<\/span><\/a> on \u201ccorrect\u201d civic behavior. It\u2019s forgotten that anger, as a moral outrage in the face of injustice, has always been part of citizen virtue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aristotle rebuked the \u201cexcessive ease\u201d for anger\u2014as \u201cbad disposition\u201d\u2014but he also did not approve \u201cif nothing moves us.\u201d His judgment valued \u201cjust anger\u201d as part of virtue. Dragging Cervantes into anger is \u201cbad disposition,\u201d but slavery, its consequences and monuments provoke just anger.<\/span><\/p>\n

An old fad<\/b><\/p>\n

The demolition of statues has been \u201cin vogue\u201d everywhere and at all times. Trajan\u2019s column in Rome (114 BC) was crowned by the statue of this emperor until it was replaced by that of Saint Peter. During American independence, the bronze statue of George III of England, in Bowling Green Square (south of Manhattan), was dismantled and turned into ammunition.<\/span><\/p>\n

No power has been resisted without also confronting the symbols that represent it. In this, vandalism \u201cfrom above\u201d\u2014by the hand of the actors with power\u2014is different from vandalism \u201cfrom below.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The first type has been praised \u201camong the great milestones in history,\u201d but the second has been denounced as \u201cblind vandalism.\u201d Vandalism, it turns out, is \u201ca privilege for the victors and a sacrilege for the vanquished.\u201d<\/span>1<\/b><\/p>\n

The debate has come to Cuba as a discussion about the statue that is part of the monument to Jos\u00e9 Miguel G\u00f3mez, in Havana. There have been many who see criticism of him as importing \u201cAmerican fashions.\u201d The idea that it\u2019s a \u201cfashion\u201d is ironic, if we take into account that for almost 200 years Cuba has seen statues replaced or demolished.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Queen Elizabeth II statue is just one example. First placed in the current Parque Central (1857), at the fall of the Bourbons, Captain General Lersundi sent it to the prison chapel in Havana (1869). With the return of the Bourbons, it returned to its original place. After independence, it was dispatched \u201cas a useless piece of junk\u201d to the municipal moats.<\/span>2<\/b><\/p>\n

In 1905, on the pedestal \u201cbelonging\u201d to Elizabeth II, <\/span>the statue of Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed was placed there, until today <\/span><\/a>. Similarly, the statue of Carlos Manuel de C\u00e9spedes, in what is known as the Plaza de Armas, replaced the effigy of Fernando VII.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1930s, following the overthrow of Gerardo Machado, monuments associated with his name were destroyed. The same happened with the face of the dictator engraved on the main door of the Capitolio.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Door of the Capitolio, which still has the mark of popular action that erased Machado\u2019s face from it. Photo: Julio C\u00e9sar Guanche<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the revolutionary triumph of 1959, only the shoes of the statue of Tom\u00e1s Estrada Palma was left and the eagle of the monument to the victims of the Maine was brought down.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Period views: On the left, the monument to Tom\u00e1s Estrada Palma on G Street. (1928). On the right, a parade of American Marines in front of the Maine Monument (1930). (Photos: Ministry of Public Works)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With such a history, Cubans should be more careful to describe as \u201cfashionable\u201d the new political currents of interpretation of the symbols of the past.<\/span><\/p>\n