Responding to a question on the subject during her usual meeting with the media, the governor said that the head of the aforementioned portfolio, Claudia Curiel, sent on Friday an official letter with the request, in coordination with the Government of this capital city.

“What was requested (…) is to deliver the monument and to relocate it in another place, in order to resolve it in that way. What is certain is that it was removed in an illegal manner”, said the Chief Executive when stressing her disagreement with the removal of the monument.

The mayor of the capital city, Alejandra Rojo de la Vega, alleged that the statues, installed for years in Tabacalera Park, lacked the required permits, an argument later denied by authorities of the city government.

A communiqué from the city informed last Friday that the removal of the figures was “outside the established norms”, as it was not authorized by the Committee of Monuments and Artistic Works in Public Spaces (Comaep).

“You can’t remove a statue, a monument just like that just because, because someone thought of it. It has to go through a committee. And in this case it didn’t go through the Committee,” Sheinbaum insisted when alluding to the issue, that has generated reactions on social media and beyond.

Sheinbaum described Rojo de la Vega’s argument as “tremendously intolerant” and pointed out her hypocrisy, since “afterward she was seen that she was also on vacation in Cuba.”

Considered a symbol of friendship between Cuba and Mexico, the cast bronze work by artist Óscar Ponzanelli commemorates the first meeting of both figures.

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