Protesters assembled around Bogota’s National Museum of Colombia over the weekend after the removal of more than 30 objects “related to the struggles of the LGBTQ+ movement, feminism, and the political left,” according to the digital news source Colombia One.
As reported, “The decision by Abelardo De La Espriella’s government, announced last Friday, turned the area around the museum into a site of public demonstrations against what protesters describe as ‘an attempt to impose an ideological view of the country’s history.’”
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The protests on Saturday and Sunday included anti-censorship sentiment and political theater but also clashes with the police, who used water cannons and riot-control equipment to combat opponents of De La Espriella’s right-wing campaign against so-called wokismo.
“Some participants placed reproductions of the removed works outside the museum, bringing them back into the public space and denouncing their disappearance from the exhibitions as an attempt to silence the stories they represented,” according to Colombia One. “The affected materials included objects and documents related to feminist and LGBTQ+ causes, the history of Colombia’s political left, and the 2016 peace agreement with the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).”
The National Museum has not posted anything related to the protests to its website or social media accounts, but the former does include a notice dated October 6 about damage done to Fernando Botero’s bronze sculpture The Dove of Peace. After a visitor knocked over the work while leaning against its pedestal to take a photograph, the museum’s conservation department found abrasions and a loss of paint as well as “dents in the metal, resulting from the impact on different points of the sculpture, especially the beak.”