Uruguayan authorities walked back a plan to turn a 350-kilogram eagle statue found on a sunken Nazi warship into a dove to symbolize peace, Uruguay’s President Luis Lacalle Pou said Sunday after the idea was met with criticism within his own party.
“There is an overwhelming majority that does not share this decision” to recast the statue, Lacalle Pou said at a press conference, according to local media.
“If one wants to generate peace, the first thing one has to do is to generate unity, and clearly this has not been done,” the president added.
The Uruguayan presidency initially announced on Friday that the bronze statue would be melted and recast into a dove by an Uruguayan artist — but critics within the president’s own party argue that destroying a historically significant piece is wrong, despite the Nazi links.
“I do not understand the artist who accepts to destroy a piece like this to make something else,” said Aldo Lamorte, a member of parliament with the president’s conservative National Party. “The Roman Coliseum was NOT destroyed because Christians were killed there.”
The bronze eagle — which holds a swastika in its talons — was recovered in 2006 by private treasure hunters from the wreck of the Graf Spee, a German cruiser that sunk off the Uruguayan coast in December 1939.
After a long legal battle over the ownership of the Nazi statue, the Uruguayan Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that the eagle belonged to the state.
The Uruguayan president on Sunday did not specify what would be done with the statue instead.
In a statement, Pablo Atchugarry, the artist tasked with recasting the statue, said he would “continue working on the construction of a symbol of peace that helps us get closer to that ideal.”
