Скачать или смотреть Puerto Ricans face Spain legacy amid US protests

(11 Jul 2020) Puerto Rican activists demanding the removal of statues and tributes to Spanish colonizers demonstrated on Saturday as they join a global movement to eradicate symbols of oppression.
Some of the protesters sported headdresses and body paint to remember the Indigenous Taino who inhabited the island, which they called Borikén, before the arrival of Christopher Columbus.
Gypsy Cordova, president of the Yucayeue Taíno de Borikén organization, called for the statues of Columbus and conquistador Juan Ponce de León to be taken down.
"In Israel there are no statues of Hitler because he is a genocide," said Cordova, as part of the protest outside the territory's Capitol building.
Columbus landed in Puerto Rico in 1493 accompanied by Spaniard Ponce de León, who later became the island’s first governor and quelled an uprising by the native Taino, a subgroup of the Arawak Indians.
Historians and anthropologists believe that up to 60,000 Tainos lived in Puerto Rico at the time, but they were soon forced into labor and succumbed to infectious disease outbreaks.
Across the US and the world, statues of historical figures, including Columbus, have been toppled in protests or as part of governments' responses to a widespread call to end police brutality and symbols of racism or minorities' oppression.

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