We reported earlier on a radical leftist/Antifa action, attacking statues in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
Among the statues they tore down were St. Junipero Serra, Francis Scott Key, the author of the lyrics of the “Star Spangled Banner” and Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States.
The attack on Grant was perhaps the one that left people most stupefied and disturbed since Grant was largely the person responsible for the Union winning the war and putting an end to slavery. He also advocated for the 15the Amendment and signed law that helped crush the KKK in its original form. Grant was lauded by none other than Frederick Douglass as a champion of the oppressed and honored in black churches when he died.
These historic statues were toppled or defaced in SF's Golden Gate Park on Friday night:
– St. Junipero Serra
– President Ulysses S. Grant
– Star Spangled Banner lyricist Francis Scott Key
– Miguel de Cervanteshttps://t.co/cALaNBvnVn— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) June 20, 2020
But one of the other statues that got hit and defaced was that of Miguel de Cervantes, widely considered one of the greatest Spanish writers, author of “Don Quixote.”
Why Cervantes?
Cervantes, famously, was a slave himself- captured by Barbary Pirates, and enslaved in the galleys of Algiers for five years before being ransomed pic.twitter.com/elEpGjexVT
— Aris Roussinos (@arisroussinos) June 20, 2020
What was particularly ironic about defacing his statue?
Cervantes himself was captured and held as a slave for five years and it forever influence his writing and his view of freedom. Obviously, something the leftists never read.
From BBC:
In 1575, after fighting in military campaigns against the Turks in the Mediterranean, the Spaniard was captured by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers. There, he was kept as a slave for five years. When he was freed – with a ransom raised by Trinitarian friars attached to the convent he was to be buried beneath – he had become the man who would write one of the greatest novels in history.
“His five-year captivity in Algiers left an indelible impression on his fiction,” Cervantes scholar María Antonia Garcés tells BBC Culture. “From the first works written after his liberation, such as the play Life in Algiers (c. 1581-1583) and his novel La Galatea (1585), to his posthumous book The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda (1617), the story of this traumatic experience continuously speaks through his work.”
The leftists apparently saw a Spanish name and thought “colonizer” despite the fact that Cervantes never was in this country and never owned a slave.
They also missed that he wrote this:
“Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men; no treasures that the earth holds buried or the sea conceals can compare with it; for freedom, as for honour, life may and should be ventured; and on the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can fall to the lot of man.”
The action was roundly criticized on Twitter.
Vandalizing a Cervantes statue and imagining that you're attacking an evil slave owner is the most meta thing I've seen in my life. pic.twitter.com/RnTCyg4f6g
— neontaster (@neontaster) June 20, 2020
Even the Embassy of Spain USA Twitter account called it out and asked state and local officials to protect their heritage.
(2/4) It is also with great regret that we receive the news of the damages inflicted upon the bust of Miguel de Cervantes, who was himself held as a slave in Algiers for 5 years, and whose literature serves as a call for freedom and equality.
— Embassy of Spain USA (@SpainInTheUSA) June 20, 2020
(4/4) We are also expressing our deep concern regarding these attacks to federal, state, and local authorities, asking that the memory of our rich shared history be protected, always with the utmost respect for the debates currently taking place. pic.twitter.com/KKGAohesIG
— Embassy of Spain USA (@SpainInTheUSA) June 20, 2020
Spanish accounts on Twitter were also up in arms over this.
Imagine in Spain, now, people think these ignoramuses are somehow representative of us.
Ignorant violent mobs are dangerous and they’ve shown it has nothing to do with the Confederacy, everything to do with tearing down American history, causing chaos and trying to control the narrative.
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