According to NYPD detectives, vandals drenched the statue of Christopher Columbus in Central Park with red paint and then wrote “Murderer” across its pedestal, and “land back” on three sides of the bronze-and-granite statue. The New York Post reported that investigators are in possession of a video of two people, perhaps a man and a woman, who are seen defacing the statue at around 11:30 p.m. on Sunday. By early morning the statue had already been cleaned.
The NYPD began guarding monuments to Columbus in Central Park and Columbus Circle, as well as of other historical figures who have been accused of oppression throughout American history, after the George Floyd murder in the summer of 2020.
To indigenous peoples, Columbus is seen as a symbol of violence, unleashing centuries of European colonization and slavery upon his arrival to the new world in 1492. Some instead view the statues as symbols of Italian American pride, as they highlight Italians’ contributions to America and the oppression and xenophobia they faced when they began arriving in waves in the late 1880s to the United States.
There are five Columbus statues in the city’s parks, including Central Park in Manhattan, Columbus Circle in Manhattan, Columbus Park in Downtown Brooklyn, D’Auria Murphy Park in the Bronx, and Columbus Square in Astoria, Queens. According to the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation website, the Christopher Columbus statue was gifted to Central Park in 1892 by the Genealogical and Biographical Society in honor of the explorer’s 400th anniversary of his discovery of the new world.
