The battleship “Admiral Graf Spee” was sunk off the coast of Uruguay in 1939 by British cruisers in World War II. There was a plan to turn the eagle on the prow of the ship into a dove of peace, but the idea was discarded by President Luis Lacalle Pou
Text: RFI / AFP
The President of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, announced on Sunday, June 18, the abandonment of the project to convert the bronze eagle with Nazi symbols that adorned the German battleship Graf Spee, sunk in Uruguayan waters in 1939 at dawn, into a dove of peace. of the Second World War.
“There is an overwhelming majority that does not share this decision, and if you want to generate peace, the first thing you have to do is generate unity. Clearly this has not generated it, “explained the president from the city of Melo, in the east of the country, where he had traveled to pay tribute to a local figure.
Lacalle has already communicated his decision to the Uruguayan sculptor Pablo Atchugarry, who had been in charge of the project.
After being announced on Friday, the initiative was harshly criticized in different spheres, from the cultural to the political, even within the government coalition itself.
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“It is an idea that we had many years ago, precisely from a symbol of violence, of war, to transform it into a symbol of peace and union,” the president had said when announcing his project.
The imposing bronze eagle with outstretched wings and a swastika in its claws, 2.8 meters long by 2 meters high and weighing 350 kilos, was recovered in 2006 in the Río de la Plata by private rescuers.
The “Admiral Graf Spee” starred alongside the British cruisers “Exeter” and “Ajax”, and the New Zealand cruiser “Achilles” in the Battle of the Río de la Plata, one of the first naval clashes of World War II (1939-1945). , which took place off the Uruguayan coast on December 13, 1939.
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