About statues and street fights

I don't think tearing down statues is a good approach, but the reaction of the newly converted defenders of public statuary is strange and warrants some analysis. 

Even if the impeachment was a mistake, which is debatable, is all this sudden outcry normal? Is it reasonable to call the movement dictatorial, violent, and...fascist? Isn't it strange that the movement that brought down the Trump administration is understood only or primarily through these actions? 

It is important to remember that we are talking about public monuments whose main function is to construct a collective memory. They are scattered throughout the city precisely for this reason: because they have the clear and assumed political function of constructing a discourse about the past.

If they have a political mission in our world, if they are destined to build a collective memory, then they are not sacred, indisputable, and untouchable. If they are within a political context, they must be discussed politically, they must be the subject of public deliberation. Of course, this definition is always subjective, but a statue of President Campos Salles in a square in Campinas is not the same thing as a Pietà by Michelangelo inside an Italian church, even though the latter also carries a discourse within it. 

Someone might say they are not against political discussion and even the removal of monuments, but are against their forcible removal. If the author of this assertion is on the democratic side, they know that street protests occur when institutional channels of political deliberation are unable to channel that process, either because they are clogged or because the questioning nature of the struggle is at a level that does not allow for such absorption. In short, statues in public places are political, and street politics are legitimate. To agree with this, one doesn't need to be left-wing; one simply needs to be a true liberal.

When we look at a city, we see a version of history. This narrative is not neutral, but presents both a vision of the past and a position on the present and the future. To paraphrase a famous saying, the dominant city, from the point of view of its monuments, is the city of the dominant discourse.

Sometimes large mass movements have more immediate objectives: a salary increase, blocking budget cuts, ousting a political figure. But, in special moments, these movements have deeper, more strategic meanings, even if we may or may not sympathize with them. At these times, people are in the streets because they have a different vision of what the past was, what the present is, and what the future should be. It is natural that, under these circumstances, they clash with this type of discourse sustained by monuments and street names. 

It's important to remember that the stage for these struggles is precisely the city: its streets, squares, and avenues. It is in this public space that this somewhat dramatic encounter between statues and the crowd takes place, the former representing the existing world, the latter a desired new era. The streets where history is made have names, and it is often against these names that the struggle takes place, that the political battle over what the future should be is waged. Isn't it understandable that this confrontation arises? I wonder if the people who are so concerned with the powerful aesthetic experiences that a statue of Nilo Peçanha on Rua da Quitanda provides could consider the aesthetic dimension of this event, this encounter between two discourses.

During the Russian Revolution, before the Bolsheviks came to power, there was a massive attack on monuments of the Tsarist regime. The masses hated what these monuments represented, what they said about the past, present, and future. Once in power, the Bolsheviks focused on removing these references. Were the masses in revolt, the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, fascists? On the other hand, when this experiment was defeated and the USSR and Eastern Europe fell, the masses attacked the statues erected by the communists, to the applause of many of today's enthusiasts of the Borba Gatos of our time. Regardless of your position on the fall of the first socialist experiments, I ask: were those masses fascists, or are we facing a kind of historical pattern that repeats itself in these situations?

When fascism, Salazarism, and Francoism fell in the Iberian Peninsula and Italy, hundreds of monuments were destroyed by the people. Should they have been preserved? That's debatable. But what matters to my reasoning: were the masses who fought against fascism dictatorial, violent, and fascist? That conclusion seems absurd. Should Algerians, Haitians, and Vietnamese coexist with monuments to the French who enslaved, massacred, and destroyed them in the name of preserving history? 

A legacy from the past can be reinterpreted, criticized, or preserved as a reminder of what we don't want to repeat, but none of these actions is inherently better or more democratic than its removal. And, most importantly, we must respect those who are fighting for all of humanity at this moment. 

I understand there is legitimate concern about where this momentum might lead. It's true: many of humanity's greatest artistic achievements are discourses that reflect the ideas of the dominant sectors of a given era, and this needs to be discussed. We need to discuss boundaries democratically. During the French Revolution, for example, these limits were crossed, and the confrontation between past and present led to the destruction of works of art that (these, indeed!) were the heritage of all humanity. But we should ask ourselves why it didn't occur to anyone reasonable to call Robespierre and Danton fascists.