Memory Protest and Contested Time: The <em>Antimonumentos</em> Route in Mexico City

Alexandra Délano Alonso; Benjamin Nienass

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/16942

Authors

Alexandra Délano Alonso Global Studies, The New School https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5066-0902

Alexandra Délano Alonso is Associate Professor of Global Studies at The New School (USA) and holder of the Eugene M. Lang Professorship for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring. Her research on Mexico-US migration and diaspora policies includes the books Mexico and its Diaspora in the United States: Policies of Emigration since 1848 (2011, Cambridge University Press), From Here and There: Diaspora Policies, Integration and Social Rights beyond Borders (2018, Oxford University Press). In co-authorship with Benjamin Nienass they have published various articles on the politics of memory as well as the special issue Borders and the Politics of Mourning (2016, Social Research. An International Quarterly). Délano Alonso is also the author of the poetry collection Brotes (2021, Interstitial Press) and co-director of the short film Fragmentos (2021). Her forthcoming publications include the co-edited volume Las luchas por la memoria contra las violencias en México (El Collegio de México), and New Narratives on the Peopling of America: Immigration, Race and Dispossession.
Benjamin Nienass Department of Political Science and Law, Montclair State University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6708-3320

Benjamin Nienass is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University (USA). His research on the politics of memory in Germany, the United States, and Mexico has appeared in The Review of Politics, Politics and Society, the German Studies Review, the Latin American Research Review, Current History, Globalizations, and many other journals. He is also the co-editor of Silence, Screen, and Spectacle: Rethinking Social Memory in the Age of Information (2014, Berghahn), Las luchas por la memoria contra las violencias en México (forthcoming, El Colegio de México), and of several special journal issues, most recently “Myths of Innocence in German Public Memory” (2021) in German Politics and Society.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/16942

Keywords:

Memory, Countermonuments, Protest, Memory activism, Mexico

Abstract

This article examines the corridor of Antimonumentos (antimonuments) in Mexico City. In a context of more than 110,000 enforced disappearances and hundreds of thousands of deaths since the start of the “war on drug cartels” in 2006, the Antimonumentos are one of the ways in which memory activists seek to mark significant events of violence and state neglect, and expressly confront both the government and society by voicing public demands for justice, accountability, and non-repetition. They occupy public spaces anonymously, without permission, and establish a link between past and present instances of state violence, thereby drawing attention to intersecting forms of violence. We examine how these countermonuments exemplify a protest against a specific regime of temporality, and how they also allow us to reflect on the temporality of protests.

References

Antimonumentos: Memoria, Verdad y Justicia. (2020). 1st ed. Heinrich Böll Stiftung: Mexico City.

Allier Montaño, E., Ovalle, C.V., & Granada-Cardona, J.S. (2022). An Outline for a History of Political Violence in Mexico, 1960–2018. In S. Mandolessi & K. Olalde Rico (Eds.), Disappearances in Mexico: From the “Dirty War” to the “War on Drugs”. London: Routledge.

Badilla Rajevic, M. (2019). Ephemeral and Ludic Strategies of Remembering in the Streets: A Springboard for Public Memory in Chile. Sociological Forum, 34(3), 729–751. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12522

Berger, S., Scalmer, S., & Wicke, C. (Eds.). (2021). Remembering Social Movements: Activism and Memory. London: Routledge.

Bevernage, B. (2015). The Past is Evil/Evil is Past: On Retrospective Politics, Philosophy of History, and Temporal Manichaeism. History and Theory, 54(3), 333–352. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.10763

Daphi, P., & Zamponi, L. (2019). Exploring the Movement-Memory Nexus: Insights and Ways Forward. Mobilization, 24(4), 399–417. https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-24-4-399

Délano Alonso, A., & Nienass, B. (2021). Countermonuments, Resistance, and the Politics of Time: Memory Activism in Mexico. Latin American Research Review, 56(2), 353–370. https://doi.org/10.25222/larr.534

Délano Alonso, A., & Nienass, B. (2022). The Struggle for Memory and Justice in Mexico. Current History, 121(832), 43–49. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2022.121.832.43

De Vecchi Gerli, M. (2018). ¡Vivxs lxs Queremos! The Battles for Memory around the Disappeared in Mexico. [Doctoral dissertation, University College London].

Gabowitsch, M. (2023). Regimes of Temporality. In Y. Gutman & J. Wüstenberg (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism (pp. 48–51). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003127550-9

Gutman, Y., & Wüstenberg, J. (2022). Challenging the Meaning of the Past from Below: A Typology for Comparative Research on Memory Activists. Memory Studies, 15(5), 1070–1086. https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980211044696

Jaster, D. (2020). Protest and the Experience of Time: Action as Synchronizing Temporalities. Time & Society,29(3), 750–771. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X19867571

Hernández, E. (2021). Dimensiones y paradojas de los antimonumentos en la Ciudad de México. Arquine, May 7.

Muñoz Ramírez, G. (2018). Antimonumento 68, primera escultura que interpela al ejército en el zócalo de la Ciudad de México, a contracorriente de la memoria embalsamada. Desinformémonos, October 6.

Musil, R. (2006 1936). Monuments. In Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, translated by P. Wortsman. New York: Archipelago Books.

Ovalle, L.P., & Tovar, A.D. (2019). Memoria Prematura. Una Década de “Guerra” En México y La Conmemoración De Sus Víctimas. México: Fundación Heinrich Boll.

Pearce, S.C. (2015). Who Owns a Movement’s Memory? The Case of Poland’s Solidarity. In A. Reading & T. Katriel (Eds.), Cultural Memories of Nonviolent Struggles (pp. 166–187). London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137032720_9

Rigney, A. (2022). Toxic Monuments and Mnemonic Regime Change. Studies on National Movements, 9(1), 7–41. https://doi.org/10.21825/snm.85270

Rigney, A. (2023). Decommissioning Monuments, Mobilizing Materialities. In Y. Gutman & J. Wüstenberg (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism (pp. 21–27). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003127550-5

Rozental, S. (Forthcoming). La némesis de Colón. Replicar la estatua de Amajac en Reforma. In A. Délano Alonso et al. (Eds.), Las luchas por la memoria contra las violencias en México. El Colegio de México.

Schwedler, J. (2016). Taking Time Seriously: Temporality and the Arab Uprisings. Project on Middle East Political Science. https://pomeps.org/taking-time-seriously-temporality-and-the-arab-uprisings

Stevens, Q., Franck, K.A., & Fazakerley, R. (2012). Counter-Monuments: The Anti-Monumental and the Dialogic. Journal of Architecture, 17(6), 951–972. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2012.746035

Wolin, S. (2005). Agitated Times. Parallax, 11(4), 2–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534640500331633

Wüstenberg, J. (2017). Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316822746

Memory Protest and Contested Time: The Antimonumentos Route in Mexico City

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

References

Downloads

Published

How to Cite

Issue

Section

License

Information

Make a Submission

Keywords

Current Issue