The White House installed a statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in the campus, as part of an effort to reshape the administration of President Donald Trump's view of American history and culture.
According to the announcement, the statue is placed north of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House grounds. In a letter to the Conference of Italian-American Organizations, Mr. Trump thanked this organization for donating the statue to the government.
This move is part of a campaign that Mr. Trump calls against the "non-American" ideology. The campaign includes removing exhibitions related to slavery, restoring monuments of the Southern Alliance, and many other measures that civil rights activists believe can reverse social progress over decades.
Christopher Columbus, an explorer funded by Spain for trips from the 1490s, is considered to have paved the way for Europe's conquests of America. In the letter, Mr. Trump called him the "original American hero" and one of the most courageous and visionary people.
However, the image of Columbus is still controversial. In protests for the rights of Africans in 2020, many cities in the United States dismantled his statue. Protesters argued that the honoring of Columbus ignored or mitigated the brutality against Native Americans.
The new statue at the White House is a reconstruction of a statue that was inaugurated by late President Ronald Reagan in Baltimore in 1984. In 2020, the statue was thrown into the port by protesters, an action that Mr. Trump described as caused by "non-American rebels".
In parallel with that, the US Department of Homeland Security announced last week that it would display the statue of Caesar Rodney - one of the "founding meritorious figures" of the United States, associated with the decision to declare independence in 1776 - in Washington, after this statue was demolished during racial equality protests in Delaware.
