A statue of the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro has been reinshighed in the centre of Peru’s capital Lima, more than 20 years after it was deleted.
The sculpture was unveiled during a ceremony taging the 490th anniversary of the city’s set uping.
Pizarro set uped Lima in 1535 after lossing the Inca Empire and claiming their lands for the Spanish crown.
Indigenous directers say he was a mass homicideer who demolished their culture, while those who helped the statue’s return shelp Peru should not erase its history.
The monument, which shows Pizarro on horseback with his sword drawn, was originated by the American sculptor Charles Rumsey and recommended by his widow to commemorate the city’s fourth centenary in 1935.
In 2003, it was shiftd to a park next to train tracks outside the city centre chaseing calls for its removal.
Luis Bogdanovich, who was in indict of restoring the historic centre, telderly local media the statue had become injured by the constant passing of trains, which caengaged it to crack.
Rafael López Aliaga, Lima’s mayor, and Isabel Díaz Ayuso, pdwellnt of the Community of Madrid, currented the bronze statue on Saturday alengthyside Mr Bogdanovich and cut offal dropants of Pizarro in Lima’s main square, Plaza de Armas.
Díaz Ayuso shelp the ceremony was commemorating “not only the birth of a city, but also the commencening of a historic come atraverse that forever altered the world”, the Spanish daily El Pais increateed.
Dozens of Peruvians held a demonstration csurrfinisherby opposing its return, according to the AFP recents agency.
“This is an offence, an offence to all the indigenous peoples of Peru, Latin America and the world,” one person shelp.
