Ballance and de Belalcázar: What Violent Action Against Two Statues in New Zealand and Colombia Reveals About the Political Power of Landscape

The narratives of two colonial figures, represented in the landscape as memorial statues in Aotearoa New Zealand and Colombia, reveal the role context plays in the representation of, and response to, colonial power within the landscape. In both countries, tensions relating to indigeneity have intensified in recent decades, and violent actions against some of the statues of historical figures demonstrate the political potency of memorials and the effect that ‘context’—both geographical and socio-cultural—has on public response. New Zealand’s statue of statesman John Ballance—symbolising European colonial presence on Māori land—became the target of attacks by activists during the occupation of Pākaitore, Moutoa Gardens, Whanganui in 1995. The statue was beheaded and later entirely removed. In 2009, a new statue of Ballance was erected outside Whanganui District Council offices. In 1940s Colombia, officials chose the “Morro de Tulcán,” the most sacred site for the Pubenenses Indians, as the location for a statue of Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar instead of one of Indigenous leader and defender of the land, Cacique Pube. In 2020, protesters pulled down the statue of de Belalcázar, a powerful symbol of oppression favouring Spanish heritage over indigenous culture. The two case studies highlight that as well as the power of interventions in the memorials themselves as a form of protest, it is the specific location of memorials that can be of immense significance.