As part of an International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples celebration in Mexico City on Sunday, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced a major new addition to a space in the city’s historic Paseo de la Reforma recently vacated by a monument to its colonial past.

Artist Pedro Reyes has now been commissioned for a replacement of a monumental bronze sculpture depicting Christopher Columbus by the Frenchman Charles Cordier that has moved around the city to its eventual place on the historic boulevard since being inaugurated by the controversial President Porfirio Diaz in 1877.

The statue was removed in October of last year in advance of the Dia de la Raza, a holiday that has in recent years drawn protests marking the arrival of the infamous colonizer in the Americas.

Reyes’ commission will depict an Indigenous woman from the Olmec civilization and come with a title that refers to a Uto-Aztecan word for “land.”

“We owe it to them, and we exist because of them,” Sheinbaum said of the new monument’s subjects at the public ceremony. 2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the founding of Tenochtitlan, a precursor to Mexico City that was an Aztec stronghold until falling to Spanish conquistadors in 1521.

Mexico City’s move replicates similar decisions in cities large and small across the globe. A minimum of 33 statues has been taken down as part of anti-racist protests that caused an increasing sea change in public thinking about monuments in the past decade.  

The commission is expected to be executed rather quickly. Reyes told artnet News that the new statue could be ready in time for Dia de la Raza, which falls on October 12.