Is the statue of Sergeant Blandan in Lyon on borrowed time?

Although he died young at the age of 23, killed in Boufarik during the colonial conquest of Algeria in 1842, Sergeant Blandan had the honors of his hometown, with a street in his name, as well as as a park and a statue enthroned on Place Sathonay, a stone’s throw from the district town hall.

However, this statue could well find itself on borrowed time. Because this Thursday, during the municipal council meeting, the mayor of the 1st arrondissement Yasmine Bouagga intends to ask a question on the merits of leaving the work as it is.

The ecologist believes that it would be necessary “improve information” pour “update memory in accordance with the values ​​of the present”. She recalls that the statue of Sergeant Blandan was erected in 1900 in her district to “glorify colonization” and it represents “an appropriation of the colonial enterprise by the Republic”. And that once melted during the Second World War, it was reinstalled at Place Sathonay in 1962, the year of Algeria’s independence.

If Yasmine Bouagga does not call for the statue of Jean Pierre Hippolyte Blandan to be unbolted, she believes that a “explanation of the historical context”potentially by adding a plate, could “open to recognition of victims and promote a pluralism of memories, a factor of democratic inclusion”.

And therefore to end up questioning Mayor Grégory Doucet on what he intends to do to “supporting a democracy of memory in public spaces”.