President of Uruguay abandons plan to turn bronze Nazi eagle into dove of peace
Two days after Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou announced a plan to transform a Nazi sculpture of an eagle with a 300-pound swastika into a dove of peace, Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou said it project was canceled after thousands signed a petition calling for the project to be stopped. instead to a museum.
Mr Lacalle Pou said on Sunday that in the hours since he presented the idea at a press conference on Friday, an “overwhelming majority” had objected to the plan to retrieve the eagle, found on a sunken German warship in Uruguayan waters in 2006. , to rearrange. .
“If you want to create peace, the first thing you have to do is create unity, and this clearly hasn’t worked,” he told reporters in Cerro Largo, Uruguay. He said he still thought it was a good idea, but nevertheless acknowledged, “It’s up to a president to listen and represent.”
The seven-foot-tall eagle was on the stern of a German warship sunk by its captain in the River Plata after being damaged in one of the first major battles of World War II.
The eagle has been controversial since it was recovered: the private salvage operation that found the bronze claimed it had the right to sell the statue, while the German Foreign Office and Jewish groups warned it should not go to private buyers who want it. to glorify Nazism. . The bronze remained in a Uruguayan Navy storage unit while legal battles over its ownership raged through the courts. The Uruguayan Supreme Court eventually transferred custody of the statue to national authorities.
The project to melt down the eagle and transform it into a dove had been in the hands of a Uruguayan artist, Pablo Atchugarry, but after it was announced thousands signed a online petition calling for the statue to be kept in a museum. Felipe Artucio, the creator of the petition, wrote: “Remembering the bad, taking into account the symbols that represent it, is a huge responsibility for society, both local and foreign.”
A day after the president’s initial announcement, Guido Manini Ríos, leader of the right-wing Cabildo Abierto party, which forms a coalition with Mr Lacalle Pou’s conservative National Party, spoke out against the idea of converting the statue, threatening he introduce a parliamentary bill to prevent the eagle’s destruction.
Mr. Atchugarry, the artist, said he would continue to work on a “peace symbol” but agreed with the president’s decision to cancel the idea of using the Nazi eagle material.
“A symbol of peace and unity cannot be born of discord,” Mr Atchugarry wrote on Facebook.