Belfast Telegraph

Saturday 27 December 2014

Mexico moves Azerbaijan row statue

A life-size bronze statue of late Azerbaijan president Geidar Aliev has been moved in Mexico City (AP)

Mexico City authorities have removed a much-derided statue of the late leader of Azerbaijan from a park where it had stood for almost half a year at a prominent spot along the city's main boulevard.


In the end, the city sent police and workers into the park in the pre-dawn darkness to loosen the life-size, seated bronze statue from its marble plinth, swathe it in protective wrapping and haul it away.

The city government said it was holding the statue in safe keeping and was still in talks with the Embassy of Azerbaijan about where to put it. Local media showed photos of the statue being hauled on a flat-bed truck to a government warehouse in an unfashionable district of the city.

The early-morning removal represented a sharp change of fortunes for the statue, which since August had gazed serenely from a flowery corner of Chapultepec Park, with a marble map of Azerbaijan at its back.

City officials had previously suggested the statue might be moved to an indoor setting, perhaps in some sort of Azerbaijani cultural centre. But the city apparently cannot just hide the statue away, given the five million dollars Azerbaijan has paid to restore the park, erect the monument and other public works.




Mexican activist and writer Homero Aridjis, who helped lead opposition to the statue, said: "Mexico doesn't need to import, in exchange for money, tyrants from other countries, nor make others conflicts our own. We already have enough of our own problems."

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