Andrada Statue- Sixth Avenue in Bryant Park

Again, have walked past this statue of The Liberator of Brazil countless times and not paid it too much attention...it is just another of the many statues that are in Manhattan's Park ( Union Square used to have one of Gandhi in one corner---why, I don't know)

Before I get to quoting the story of this from the internet, just want to say a few words about the statue's placement on Sixth Avenue-- which is officially Avenue of the Americas.

The Avenue of the Americas name was adopted back in the 1930's as part of the "Good Neighbor Policy" ( the U.S. realized with a start that war was probably coming with the Axis and that there were a lot of Axis sympathizers in Latin America...witness Juan Peron's later attempt to emulate Mussolini...)

Anyway, there was just a popular revolt against the renaming of Sixth Avenue, and now the City has given up more or less and has "Sixth Avenue" signs below the "Avenue of the Americas' street signs.

Still are these big metal medallions in some places I think that hang from light poles and show emblems of various Latin American countries..

Anyway, here is the lowdown on Andrade:

This statue of the naturalist and hero of Brazilian independence Jose Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva sits on the west side of Bryant Park, towering glumly over the sidewalk near the corner of 40th Street, a stern counterpoint to the much-smaller and more engaging figure of Benito Juarez, the first native-born president of Mexico, which is just a few dozen feet up Sixth Avenue. Which was about the spot where Andrada’s statue originally stood before it was moved with not a small amount of controversy in the 1990s, during Bryant Park’s famous renovation.

A view of Jose from the bus lane on Sixth Avenue.
The figure of Andrada is larger than life size, nearly nine feet tall. He is standing with his heels together and his right knee slightly bent, as though he is about to take a step — or kick a passerby in the head. Andrada is wearing colonial garb, with his left hand clutching a coat or cloak that is slung over his left shoulder and his right hand holding at his side what appears to be a rolled-up piece of paper. On the whole, Andrada looks like he just stepped out of an unsuccessful audition for the role of Ebenezer Scrooge.
The statue was a gift to the City of New York from Brazil, for whatever reason. The New York Times reporter who covered the statue’s dedication called it “symbolic of Brazilian-United States amity.” An amity that is scarcely heard about today.
The figure was made by the Brazilian sculptor Jose Otavio Correia Lima, who won the commission in a competition sponsored by the Brazilian government.
The statue was dedicated on April 22, 1955, in a ceremony presided over by the infamous parks commissioner, Robert Moses. Cardinal Francis Spellman gave the invocation, and there was the typical blah, blah, blah from the Manhattan Borough President Hulan E. Jack; Edward J. Sparks, the deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs; the Brazilian Ambassador to the United States, Joao Calos Muniz; and Mayor Robert F. Wagner.
Moses’s remarks were the most interesting, if not the most delusional. He said that the statue was another sign that the Avenue of the Americas, which had been renamed just six years earlier, was “coming into its own,” according to a story in The Times the next day. Moses mused that one day Sixth Avenue would resemble the Prado in Havana, with a landscaped promenade down the middle. (The figure of Andrada is one of six statues commemorating historical figures from the Americas along the avenue from SoHo to Central Park.)