A Peaceful Monument Falls

Last week we published a post about a monument raised on the six-month anniversary of that violent afternoon in January when Cochabamba turned a bloodstained red in the political conflicts over autonomy and the Constituent Assembly. I wrote in that Blog that passers by had threatened the new statue of an Andean cross, dedicated to all of those who died in that conflict. I wrote, "Now both sides [have a physical symbol of their mourning] – until some of Cochabamba's protectors of democracy decide to tear it to pieces in the dark of night."

That night was last night. This morning the monument lies destroyed on its side, the brown cross inscribed with the twin faces of the sun and the moon was robbed altogether.

While there are no eyewitnesses to the vandalism, it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to sort out who deemed the simple statue a threat. Last week Podemos Senator Tito Hoz de Vila procialmed he would demand that Congress take the statue down. When the monument went up on Wednesday a small crowd of well-dressed youth took in the ceremony from a distance, snapping photos of the people in attendance with their cell phones. One yelled to the crowd, "This piece of shit will fly tonight!"

In contrast, the monument erected in January, to the young man from the city's north who died that day, has stood in peace in all the days since. I hope it continues to do so.

The irony of course, is that by destroying the statue on downtown's edge, the vandals who feel so threatened by plaster, paint, and words, have only drawn more attention to it and to its message. They aren’t the first such fools to believe that ideas are silenced with violence, nor will they be the last. Here is the message they found so frightening:

In memory of the fallen of January 11, 2007 and to the 514 years of resistence by the native people's of Abya Yala [the indiginous cutures of the Americas].