Boulevard of the Americas: What Survives

An eighteen-metre obelisk built by a dictator in 1935, with an eternal flame added by Guatemala's first democratic president. The flame is out. The plaque still asks a country to protect it.

An equestrian statue donated by Venezuela in 1990, honouring the liberator who freed six nations and died owning nothing.

The Man of Laws — Francisco de Paula Santander, who built nations through constitutions while Bolivar built them through force.

Jose Cecilio del Valle drafted the Act of Independence of Central America but was not allowed to sign it. He won the presidency twice and served not a single day.

A fifteen-metre Argentine flag built in concrete, with Guatemala's sky showing through the blue. The statue of San Martin was flown in on an Argentine Air Force plane.

The grandest plaza on the boulevard, holding the first monument Guatemala ever erected to a foreign citizen. A Zapotec orphan who defeated a European emperor.

A priest who rang a bell for independence in 1811, and a bishop who was assassinated for demanding peace in 1980. Both demanded freedom. Only one has a bust.

Bernardo O'Higgins Riquelme — half Irish, half Chilean, the illegitimate son of a Spanish viceroy who overthrew the system his father governed.

The only plaza that hedged on the Great Man portrait. An arch, a pyramid, a sphere, and a bust — Nicaragua sent geometry alongside the face of the poet who remade Spanish.

Juan Pablo Duarte founded a clandestine revolution in three-person cells and won independence not from Spain but from Haiti. He was exiled before he could govern.

The oldest monument on the boulevard, contracted in 1893 and moved three times. Across the Americas, Columbus is being reconsidered. Guatemala City keeps theirs.

Ramon Castilla served in Bolivar's army and later, as president, abolished slavery in Peru. The soldier carried the liberator's project forward in ways Bolivar could not have imagined.

Every other country sent a portrait. Canada sent a pile of stones in the shape of a human figure — an Inukshuk, the only indigenous art form on the entire boulevard.

Jose Marti lived in Guatemala City, fell in love with a Guatemalan woman, and wrote a poem about her that is carved into this monument's base. The most personal story on the boulevard.

This bust is brand new because the last one was stolen. Uruguay replaced it. The man it honours ordered land redistribution to 'the most unfortunate' in 1815.

The plaza reinvented more times than any other. A stolen bust led to a mural, a new bust, and a literary garden. The response to vandalism was to go bigger, not backward.

The sculptor who started the boulevard's art in 1935 completed it here in 1985 — a papal statue with a peace manifesto carved into its base during a civil war.

Three original sections of the Berlin Wall at the southern end of the boulevard. A hundred and thirty years of arguing about freedom, and here, at the end, proof that walls fall. Plus: the full tour wrap-up.