Monument to Christopher Columbus (Buenavista, Mexico City)
The Monument to Christopher Columbus, located at the intersection of av. Buenavista and Héroes Ferrocarrileros, in the Cuauhtémoc section of Mexico City, was inaugurated in 1892, for the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' landfall in the Caribbean. The statue is one of two depicting Columbus in Mexico City; Charles Cordier's Monument to Christopher Columbus (1877) is installed along Paseo de la Reforma. Description and history The monument was Mexican in conception and was realized in Mexico. A history of the two monuments by José Manuel Villalpando shows that plans for a monument to Columbus had been planned well before the Cordier commission, with Catalan sculptor Manuel Vilar, who worked for many years in Mexico City, creating an early model for the statue. The statue erected in 1892 has as part of the pedestal, at Columbus's feet, Vilar's name and the date 1858, seeking to establish the sculpture's conception predating the Cordier statue. Unlike the other Columbus statue in Mexico City, the 1892 statue has no religious iconography, a departure from the usual conventions depicting the Admiral. The inauguration of the second Columbus statue coincided with the 400th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage and an opportunity for the regime of Porfirio