MIAMI — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday unveiled a gilded statue of former President Ronald Reagan at Florida International University, marking the late conservative leader’s birthday and continuing a statewide series of commemorations tied to the United States’ upcoming 250th anniversary.

The ceremony took place Friday morning outside FIU’s Ronald W. Reagan Presidential House, the on-campus residency of university President Jeanette Nuñez, who previously served as DeSantis’ lieutenant governor. Nuñez joined DeSantis for the unveiling, with the two standing on opposite sides of the covered statue before the shroud fell away.

The life-size monument depicts Reagan in a suit and tie with a composed expression and slight smile, his hands positioned near his waist as if adjusting his jacket. Finished in a bronze tone, the figure stands atop a marble pedestal in front of the president’s mansion, framed by patriotic bunting and palm trees.

As the veil was removed, red, white and blue streamers shot in the air and fell over the crowd.

“It’s an honor to be here on what would have been President Reagan’s 115th birthday,” Nuñez told reporters after the ceremony. “I think the timing was right for a statue, and it’s good to see how lovely it is.”

FIU spokesperson Maydel Santana said the statue was donated by the chairman of FIU’s Board of Trustees, Carlos Duart, and created by Havana-born sculptor Carlos Enrique Prado, who teaches at University of Miami.

The Reagan memorial is the latest in a series of efforts to honor American leaders ahead of the nation’s upcoming semiquincentennial on July 4. A 6½-foot bronze statue of George Washington is currently displayed in the Florida Capitol, on loan from the former president’s Mount Vernon estate, and statues of founding fathers have been erected in Florida counties that bear their names, including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

DeSantis on Friday said a James Monroe statue is slated for installation in Monroe County, and a Frederick Douglas statue is coming to St. Augustine.

The governor said FIU’s Miami campus was a fitting location for a Reagan statue, pointing to the former Republican president’s strong opposition to communist regimes and its resonance among South Florida’s large Cuban community.

“There was nobody, certainly at that time, who was stronger against communism than Ronald Reagan — and that meant there was nobody more popular in Miami at the time than Ronald Reagan,” DeSantis quipped. Many residents, he added, still carry memories of the Castro takeover of Cuba and its aftermath.

“It was never going to work, but it was really just something that was used by power-hungry dictators to be able to justify their misrule and their oppression of their own people,” DeSantis said of communist ideologies. “Ronald Reagan always stood firmly against that.”

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