MEXICO CITY (CN) — After nearly two years of quarreling with the Mexico City government over an unsanctioned statue, feminist activists on Monday celebrated a promise from city officials that their anti-monument would not be taken down.
“Perhaps they thought we were going to get tired, that we were going to give in, but we didn’t,” activist Argelia Betanzos told supporters and members of the media at a press conference Monday morning. “The site grew stronger with each passing day.”
Mexico City Mayor Martí Batres said last week that the city is “not going to touch” the statue. Batres recently assumed the office after former Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum resigned to go all-in on her 2024 presidential bid.
The activists set up the anti-monument on a plinth where a statue to Christopher Columbus once stood on a median of Mexico City’s iconic Paseo de la Reforma Avenue in September 2021. It consists of a metal statue of the silhouette of a young woman with her fist raised, the word “justice” etched into the support, among other installations on the median.
The coalition quarreled with the city government over what should occupy the space. The city pushed for the removal of the anti-monument and the placement of a replica of a statue of an Indigenous woman found in Veracruz in 2021 known as the Young Woman from Amajac.
Alarms went off for coalition members this past Wednesday night when city employees were spotted setting up metal barriers near their anti-monument. But the barriers were placed on a smaller median across the eastbound lanes of Paseo de la Reforma.
The Young Woman of Amajac and the feminist anti-monument will now live an uneasy coexistence on the intersection the activists have dubbed the Roundabout of the Women Who Fight. Batres called the city’s statue a “tribute to the struggle of Indigenous communities, particularly Indigenous women.”
Activists with the Women Who Fight — many of whom are Indigenous women — have said the statue does not represent them for its depiction of a ruling class pre-Hispanic woman.
While the arrangement is not ideal for the activists, they still consider its placement on the nearby median a win for their cause.
“Last year we all thought it was going to be the opposite, that they were going to put the Young Woman of Amajac here and there wasn’t anything we could do to stop them,” Betanzos said in an interview. For her and her fellow activists, it was a question of faith. “Nevertheless, we made it happen.”
Batres and other city officials last week spoke of the intersection as a “collection” of sites that memorialize Mexican and Indigenous women and their struggles, but the activists did not see it that way.
“Really, we’re not sharing the space with the city’s statue,” said Marcela, an activist with the Women Who Fight who preferred to withhold her last name due to safety concerns. “By putting it over there across the street, it imposes a marked visual division, doesn’t it? Over there, it’s one thing, and here it’s another.”
The anti-monument has united women from several social struggles, from the searching mothers of the disappeared to victims of gender violence to relatives of the politically oppressed. Betanzos, for example, also heads a movement demanding the release of her father and five other political prisoners from her hometown of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca.
Another coalition member, Elizabeth Álvarez, coordinates a group protesting Mexico City’s tallest skyscraper in her neighborhood of Xoco. The neighborhood is considered an “original town” established before the conquest of Tenochtitlán and other Indigenous settlements in the Valley of Mexico.
Backed by an all-female mariachi band, Álvarez led a dance and singalong to traditional Mexican songs to close out the press conference.
Batres said last week that the city had tried to open dialogues with the activists, but “we haven’t always gotten a response.”
Activists have told Courthouse News the same regarding their attempts at dialogue with the city. But it appears that they can finally breathe a sigh of relief in what has become a constant worry over the fate of their anti-monument.
“We do not want any kind of confrontation,” Batres assured reporters last week.
Public Works Secretary Jesús Antonio Esteva said last week that the installation of the Young Woman of Amajac should take four to five weeks.
Batres also said that the plinth will eventually be moved to a museum in Mexico state and that the city will enter into talks with the activists when the time comes.
Activist told Courthouse News they have no problem with the removal of the plinth, but that they will demand that its replacement be funded by donations of solidarity with the movement, rather than public funds.
“The anti-monument deserves one it can call its own,” said Betanzos. “That has been the dynamic of this memorial from the beginning. It is built on the work of each of our fellow activists and the solidarity of those who have joined our call for justice.”
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