The New Public Art: Collectivity and Activism in Mexico since the 1980s 9781477327630

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The New Public Art

Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture

edited by

Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra

The New Public Art Collectivity and Activism in Mexico since the 1980s

University of Texas Press   

austin

In loving memory of Erica Segre

Copyright © 2023 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2023 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 utpress.utexas.edu

♾ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z 39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara, editor, contributor. Title: The new public art : collectivity and activism in Mexico since the 1970s / edited by Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra. Other titles: Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture. Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2023. | Series: Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022062237 (print) | LCCN 2022062238 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-4773-2762-3 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4773-2763-0 (pdf ) ISBN 978-1-4773-2885-9 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Community arts projects—Mexico. | Artists and community—Mexico. | Public art—Mexico. | Group work in art—Mexico. | Art and social action—Mexico. | Art—Political aspects—Mexico. | Artists—Political activity—Mexico. Classification: LCC NX 180.A 77 N 49 2023 (print) | LCC NX 180.A77 (ebook) | DDC 701/.030972—dc23/eng/20230503 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022062237 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022062238

doi:10.7560/327623

Contents

INTRODUCTION Agoraphilia

Notes on the Possibility of the Public 1 Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra

NEW MURALISMS

CHAPTER 1

New Muralisms after Muralism 33 Natalia de la Rosa and Julio García Murillo



DOSSIER A

Grupo Germen 58



CHAPTER 2

Public, Political, and Aesthetic Spaces in Ayotzinapa 62 Ana Torres



DOSSIER B

Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante (CAI) 82



CHAPTER 3

FEMINIST PUBLICS Politics of Enunciation and Affect in an Age of Corporeal Violence Mónica Mayer’s The Clothesline and Pinto mi Raya’s Embraces 89 Karen Cordero Reiman

DOSSIER C

Colectivo A.M. 109



CHAPTER 4

Performative Resurrections Necropublics and the Work of Guadalupe García-Vásquez 115 Erin L. McCutcheon



DOSSIER D



CHAPTER 5.

Teatro Ojo 136 The Ultimate Witnesses Listening to Teresa Margolles’s Counterforensic Archive 140 Carlos Fonseca and Enea Zaramella



DOSSIER E



CHAPTER 6

La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote 158

ANTIMONUMENTS AND THE UNDERCOMMONS Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism 165 Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez and Sarah Abel



DOSSIER F



CHAPTER 7

Aeromoto 187 Menos Días Aquí and Bordamos por la Paz Grief, Social Protest, and Grassroots Memorialization in Mexico’s War on Drugs 192 Adriana Ortega Orozco



DOSSIER G Antimonuments

The Brigade for Memory 213

CHAPTER 8

Conceptualizing the Public Femicide, Memorialization, and Human Rights Law 218 Michael R. Orwicz and Robin Adèle Greeley

MIGRANT POETICS AND CAPITALIST LANDSCAPES

CHAPTER 9

On Affordable Housing Reflections on the (A)political Evolution of the Territory 247 Arturo Ortiz-Struck



DOSSIER H



CHAPTER 10

Brigada Tlayacapan 266 Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda The Poetics of Dust, Dissent, and Migration 271 Erica Segre

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

299



CONTRIBUTORS 301



INDEX 307

viii  Contents

The New Public Art

INTRODUCTION

Agoraphilia Notes on the Possibility of the Public Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra

On September 19, 2017, exactly thirty-two years from the day in 1985 when Mexico City suffered an earthquake that killed between 3,000 and 20,000 people, a seemingly inexplicable geological coincidence led to another seismic catastrophe. At 1:14 p.m., just over two hours after a loud siren had signaled a citywide drill to commemorate the 1985 event, the same terrifying hum was heard again. “Was this a glitch?” many of us wondered, with our characteristic distrust of state infrastructures and government planning. The piercing noise of shattering windows brought with it the harrowing realization that a tragedy was happening before our eyes, in real time, on the same day that so many of us already remembered with so much sorrow. In the hours of chaos and confusion that followed, those living in the affected areas—which extended beyond Mexico City into the states of Puebla, Morelos, Oaxaca, and Chiapas—experienced a flux of overwhelming and conflicted feelings, from disbelief to paralysis, from fear to courage and solidarity. As telephone lines reached capacity and children left their schools in tears, thousands of us rushed to our homes amid a sea of cars to find out whether our relatives were alive and our homes still standing. I vividly recall my walk in the midday sun, turning left and right in search of 1

those contours of the city that had vanished. The air carried a strange type of dust, possibly emanating from the rubble. It threw everything out of focus. The sound of ambulances became equally pervasive and seemed to travel in all directions. The sky was populated with helicopters, and the city seemed at once frenetic and close to a standstill. Both fake and real images of the disaster soon began circulating on every available screen at a speed almost synchronized to the pace of the damage, an acceleration ill-suited to the muddled sense of temporality that many of us were feeling. The uncanny return of the memories of 1985 and the almost terrifying symmetry between two September 19s unleashed a puzzling feeling of historical repetition in a country arduously struggling to leave behind a sticky past, a past heavily reliant on the century-old symbols and heroic narratives of the 1910 Mexican Revolution and the seventy-year-long authoritarian regime that had followed.1 As night fell, my mother, sister, and I, having earlier celebrated finding one another alive, headed to one of the affected sites in Colonia del Valle to offer help. We didn’t have a specific address but knew that several buildings had suffered severe damage in the area, some had collapsed, and the number of victims remained unknown. Upon arriving at the first site, we quickly understood that fellow volunteers had little information and that communication was difficult and confusing. The only message we could grasp was that the site was overcrowded and no more help was needed; indeed, the presence of so many people visibly obstructed the movements of rescue teams, ambulances, and rubble trucks. We headed instead to a nearby shelter set up by volunteers in a private school. Here my sister, a medic, was called forward, and I was asked to sort medicines and food. The place was overflowing with first-aid kits, fresh and packed food, clean water, blankets, and people willing to offer help. The zeal and commitment of all those present were exhilarating, but there was also a general sense of chaos. Contrary to what we might have imagined in an era that is often characterized as one of increasing apathy and individualism, the collective response to the tragedy exceeded the capacity of the damaged sites to receive aid. Only hours after the initial shock, thousands of people unwilling to leave the rescue efforts in the hands of the government found ways to reorganize the entire dynamics of the city and of social networks around what seemed like a single set of shared values: the defense of victims’ lives and the possibility of assuaging their losses. Those of us who worked in shelters witnessed an outpouring of aid donated by individuals and families, rich and poor. At the damaged sites, those who worked on the direct removal of the rubble recall that they found themselves shoulder to shoulder with persons from all classes and ethnicities. 2  Introduction

Together, as Luis Villoro writes in his poem “El puño en alto” (“The Raised Fist”), we began to create a new language for collective action, one in which the raised fist, usually a symbol of protest and resistance, became a call for collective silence,2 for only silence would allow the cries of the victims to be heard. Human chains, human belts, human hugs thus became the cogs of a new kind of social machinery in which emergency led the way to solidarity. The tragedy necessitated that we act as embodied beings capable of giving flesh to a larger body, one able to offer care and create the conditions for shelter. In the days that followed the earthquake, fatigue kicked in, yet many kept their fists firmly aloft so as to continue listening to those left most vulnerable, insisting that the salvage efforts should not cease before all those who could be rescued had been. The newly formed networks of exchange, communication, and participation held fast, yielding a sense of common cause. Many of us began to feel that the seemingly old or dated notion of “the public,” much battered, on the one hand, by authoritarian uses of the term and, on the other, by the fiercely privatizing logics of the neoliberal market, could, once again, be resurrected and reimagined. Yet those days of pervasive uncertainty also raised innumerable questions about what we may consider to be “public” and made visible the many challenges that come with every act of “commoning.”3 During the catastrophe and its aftermath, the idea of the public was continually embodied and disembodied, performed and undone in rapid bursts of emotion, followed by bafflement, confusion, and disagreement, then by excitement and optimism once again. How long would this sense of collective care last, and what would its limits be? Would the new public equally serve the haves and the have-nots, those living in Mexico City and those living in the poorer, bordering states? Which victims would be rescued and comforted first, and why? Whose stories would become more visible? The passing of days saw much of the donated food going to waste, medical supplies being piled up and stored (rather than distributed), and goods being taken from affected homes by unaccountable officials and petty criminals. The altruistic and caring public that had formed soon learned the bitter lesson that goodwill would not suffice to save the lives of those trapped in the rubble or provide shelter to those left homeless. News arrived that more-isolated communities had received scarcely any aid, while richer neighborhoods were overflowing with clear water and other basic goods they did not need.4 The stories of the latter were being overrepresented in the media, while those of the former remained uncommunicated and largely out of sight. This series of questions and paradoxes revolving around the notion of “the public,” together with its temporalities, dynamics, and imaginaries, motivate The New Public Art. The book takes art as a sphere in which new meanings Agoraphilia  3

of the public are not just symbolically represented but also lived, enacted, and brought to life. Some of the sites most visibly affected by both the 1985 and the 2017 earthquakes had historically been considered ”public spaces” while also being closely associated with the nationalist iconography of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) regime. The PRI was born in the aftermath of the ten-year revolutionary struggle that set the constitutional foundations of political and civil life in Mexico during the twentieth century. Having ruled the entire country during most of that period, through a clientelist system whereby citizens’ votes were effectively exchanged for political favors, the party was ousted from the presidency in 2000, only to return, partially transformed, in 2012–2018. The infrastructural damage Mexico City suffered in 1985 may thus be seen as an allegory for the impending demise of the PRI-led postrevolutionary project and the accompanying ideas of public space, public art, and public participation it had shaped. The fifteen-story Nuevo León building in the landmark social housing unit of Nonoalco Tlatelolco, designed by the modernist architect Mario Pani, cataclysmically collapsed, as well as two major towers in the General Hospital, including the gynecological section, with more than a hundred newborn babies inside, only seven of whom survived. A census of the city’s extensive network of public murals, many of which dated back to the immediate aftermath of the revolution, found that out of 550 murals, 95 had “damages of some type,” ranging from small cracks to total destruction.5 If the iconic murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco housed at the grandiose Bellas Artes Palace seemed intact after the earthquake, a number of murals in public hospitals and social housing units suffered a different fate. Carlos Mérida’s Leyendas mexicanas (Mexican legends: 1950–1952), a series of architectural plates built into the stairways of Mario Pani’s Benito Juárez social housing unit in the Roma neighborhood, survived only as the décor of a building facing imminent demolition.6 After chiseling the plates from the walls was deemed too dangerous and the proposal to “leave the stairways standing as monuments”—to surely become the ciphers of an increasingly void social revolutionary discourse—was abandoned, Mérida’s mural cycle was left to suffer the effects of dynamite and was never reconstructed elsewhere. Though there was little choice to proceed otherwise to salvage the pieces, their eventual destruction was partly the consequence of years of neglecting Mérida’s public artworks, arguably as a result of his estrangement from official ideas of nationalism.7 Furthermore, state commissions for such monumental works had become rare, and as Robin Adèle Greeley suggests, the old murals had gradually been drained of their sociopolitical meaning and transformed 4  Introduction

into “patrimony,” while the priista discourse of the revolution had itself lost substance.8 If, as Greeley adds, Mexican muralism had become not just a conveyor of official ideology but a central player in the country’s public sphere—stirring up agitated debates on the desired relationship between the Mexican state and an ethnically and culturally diverse political body—by the 1970s onward muralism’s “message of popular consciousness [had] effectively [been] neutralized.” Foreseeing some of the developments we discuss in this book (to which she is also a contributor), Greeley continues: “The [public art] adventure of the 1920s and 1930s had ended: it would be left to others outside the institutional reach of the state to express a popular national consciousness.”9 The 2017 earthquake inflicted similar damage on the symbolic tissue of the urban commons, although on a lesser scale. Moreover, this tremor impacted a society used to perceiving the representations of the 1910 revolution and previous eras as ghosted relics, the meaning of which has been worn away by a culture of image capitalism prone to rapid discard. During the less than two minutes that the earthquake lasted, the cross that had stood for over two hundred years atop the San Juan Bautista church in Coyoacán fell off the main tower, with passers-by (including my father) running to collect its fragments.10 The imposing Monumento a la Madre (Monument to the Mother), designed in 1949 by the sculptor Luis Ortiz Monasterio and the architect José Villagrán García, which heavily featured the symbolism of mestizaje (miscegenation), was completely ravaged, leaving in its place an empty pedestal surrounded by debris.11 The large-scale architectural complex of the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas (Ministry of Communication and Public Works, or SCOP), conceived by Carlos Lazo in the early 1950s as a modernist example of integration of painting, sculpture, and architecture, deserves mention too.12 In this case, the buildings were so heavily damaged that they remain vacant to this day, yet the murals—by Juan O’Gorman, José Chávez Morado, Luis García Robledo, Guillermo Monroy, and Arturo Estrada—that lined their walls were impressively preserved. It seems that Juan O’Gorman’s innovative stone mosaic mural technique enabled such resilience and, in so doing, saved the complex from total collapse.13 This was a case, in other words, of public art ”heroically” holding up the country’s debilitated infrastructures. How long this precarious salvation will last remains unclear. At the time of writing this introduction, both the murals and the buildings are still standing, but the government has decided to transfer the murals to a new location, purportedly to preserve them.14 The iconic complex of modernist buildings to which the murals belonged is unlikely to survive, a situation that ultimately symbolizes the uncertainty that historic public artworks and public spaces face today. Many of the country’s major Agoraphilia  5

twentieth-century public projects were spearheaded precisely from the SCOP’s headquarters. Its imminent disappearance thus raises the question of whether the 2017 earthquake delivered a coup de grâce to the symbolic armature sustaining the notions of “the people” and “the public” in postrevolutionary Mexico, turning its old landmarks into cracked, transposed, and simulacral relics. This question underpins the pertinence and urgency of this book. In The New Public Art, scholars and artists, writing as individuals, pairs, and collectives, explore practices and narratives organized around a desire for art to have a tangible public impact. In each of the case studies that follow, however, visions of artistic processes and approaches to community and participation are markedly different from those that characterize historical understandings of public art in Mexico. Through a combination of scholarly chapters and a series of dossiers (or statements) written by artists and artists’ collectives, the premise of this book is that a new, non-state-led understanding of “the public” came into being in Mexico during the temporal arc roughly traced by these two major earthquakes, from the mid-1980s to the late 2010s. Carlos Monsiváis identified the 1985 earthquake as the moment in which “civil society” first emerged in Mexico as an organizing idea for civil opposition to the PRI regime. After the earthquake, and in response to the many government failures during the tragedy, Monsiváis writes that “hundreds of thousands of people drew a new relationship with the government,” moving away from the melancholic expectation of a solution into the search for these solutions.15 This collective transformation in the relationship between the citizenry and the state entailed reclaiming an idea of the “public good” that was different from official versions. Moreover, it gave rise to spatial, symbolic, discursive, and embodied forms of participation able to create and sustain this “good.” The public response to the 2017 earthquake and its aftermath was as much a reenactment of citizens’ involvement in the rescue efforts thirty years prior as it was an attempt to overcome past failings, giving new corporealities and new names to collective problems and common ideals, and generating spaces for public participation aimed not so much toward consensus as toward nonviolent disagreement, debate, and caring dissent. The New Public Art roughly spans the period from what Monsiváis calls the birth of this “civil society” in 1985 to the emergence of a dense amalgam of grassroots projects contributing to the reconstruction efforts in 2017. The latter proliferated in the midst of a large-scale security crisis unleashed by former president Felipe Calderón’s so-called war on drugs (2006–2012), the dire (necropolitical) consequences of which feature heavily in the following chapters. The 2017 earthquake also arrived in the aftermath of more than three decades of 6  Introduction

“structural reforms” and neoliberal transformations of the economy and society that heavily defunded social services and left entire areas of the country exposed to the exploitative dynamics of corporate extractivism and what Sayak Valencia calls “gore capitalism.”16 As the chapters that constitute The New Public Art suggest, during this arduous thirty-year period, a fundamental reconfiguration of the meanings of “the public” and practices of “commoning” has taken place in Mexico, yet past desires and imaginaries associated with such ideals have often also reemerged. The eerie occurrence of both earthquakes on September 19 and the mass public involvement that ensued on both occasions serve here to allegorize the cyclical constitution, disappearance, and reappearance of publics and counterpublics.17 These phenomena also remind us of the significance that historical memory plays in such processes. In his seminal book Publics and Counterpublics, Michael Warner describes publics as “queer creatures.” He adds, “You cannot point to them, count them, or look them in the eye.”18 Publics are elusive because they entail a connection among strangers, creating shared spheres of belonging beyond kin or nation. “They are a kind of fiction that has taken on life, and a very potent life at that,” writes Warner.19 Rather than existing as stable, measurable entities, they are constantly appearing and disappearing, mutating, expanding, falling into oblivion, returning from the past. They have a circular relationship with the discourses and practices that shape them: while publics are shaped by discourse, discourses also attend and respond to the concerns and desires of their imagined publics.20 The New Public Art takes its cue from Warner’s queering of the notion of “the public” to account for the recent history of public art and public spaces in Mexico. Exploring practices that often interweave private and collective experiences, as well as artworks and discourses emerging in peripheral and interstitial spaces, the authors’ collective intention is to move beyond the standardized and limited understanding of “public art” as state-sponsored art and “public spaces” as spaces accessible to everyone. In a context characterized by escalating levels of violence, mass-scale femicide, homicide, and disappearance, The New Public Art bears witness to the proliferation of antimonuments, grassroots memorials, dissident murals, ephemeral street dances, independent archives and libraries, and feminist and queer installations that embody and perform rapidly changing ideas of the public, publics, public art, public space, counterpublics, necropublics, commons, and undercommons. These heterogeneous practices attest to a complex remodeling of the relationship between art and that which is common, collective, public, and assembled. As we seek to show, these practices embrace relationality and community building as ethical horizons, expressed through site-specific attempts to weave closer connections Agoraphilia  7

between art and place. Moreover, artists’ collectives involved in human rights work have blurred distinctions between art and activism, working with communities and victims of state violence to create nonofficial spaces of remembrance and memorialization. And though “new public art” has established critical dialogues with previous understandings of public art in the country, its approach to the heroic and nationalist narratives of the Mexican Revolution has aimed at debunking such myths. The dismantling of the so-called public sector in Mexico dates back to at least the early 1980s, when a ferocious neoliberal economic model was introduced by the enfeebled PRI regime. This left the country’s precarious democratic structures vulnerable to the greedy interventions of a corporate and extractivist private sector. The neoliberal undoing of the postrevolutionary state was accompanied by the rapid privatization of public spaces, now transformed into shopping malls or lucrative and hard-to-access housing complexes.21 What Wendy Brown describes as “neoliberal reason” has encroached as a new political moral, reconfiguring most “aspects of existence in economic terms” and quietly undoing “vocabularies, principles of justice, political cultures, habits of citizenship, practices of rule, and above all, democratic imaginaries.”22 One of the “old” democratic imaginaries under attack is that of the public itself, as the large-scale privatization of public goods has made us all too aware of the potential perils of public enterprises and the exclusionary dynamics of public spaces. A collective feeling of agoraphobia driven by financial interest, accompanied by pervasive insecurity and violence, has arguably emerged as Mexico’s “new normal” since the country’s structurally disadvantaged entry into the global markets. How has public art changed, and what has it come to signify under these conditions? How have new dissensual spaces been shaped? How have artist collectives responded to human rights violations, state-imposed public memorials, and the proliferation of drug-related violence in outdoor spaces? In what ways have artists and activists reimagined spheres of collective creation and shared struggle? What Is Public Art? Any attempt at newly defining “public art” in the early twenty-first century would at best be naïve. The history of this notion is long, momentous, and complex. Yet the task is also indispensable for apprehending art’s current imprint on the social and vice versa. If all art is made for a public, the concept of “public art” entails a surplus or an excess in this fundamental relationship. One of this book’s claims is that understanding this excess requires shifting our attention from the presence or absence of public funding to a foregrounding, instead, of 8  Introduction

the role of artistic practices in everyday forms of social organization, often on the margins of the state. In other words, public art may fall below or outside established political projects or institutions and encompass practices seeking not only to critique a certain regime of aesthetic or political representation but also to articulate new ways of inhabiting spaces, relating to and affecting others, and perceiving or creating spheres of belonging. The term “public art” has all too frequently been used without sufficient critical investigation. Lucy Lippard argues that “not all the varied . . . forms that have come to be called ‘public art’ deserve the name.”23 The usual association of public art with state commissions places narrow emphasis on matters of funding and ownership, thus failing to say anything about the art itself and the individuals or communities involved in its making. The history of state involvement in the arts to promote political agendas has similarly reduced public art in the eyes of a number of scholars to being a sheer bearer of state ideology, the opposite of what participatory and dissensual practices could yield.24 Though the authors in this volume carefully consider the significance of the state’s current and past involvement in the making of art and in defining its meaning and purpose, we problematize any top-down approach to the politics and aesthetics of public art in Mexico over the last three to four decades. In other words, the authors of The New Public Art aim to acknowledge critically the history of the state’s use of the arts to further authoritarian agendas while recuperating Lippard’s resistance to relinquishing the notion of “public art.” This renunciation would not just be a missed opportunity, as she says; it would in itself limit the possibility of public art mattering. In her investigations on the temporality of public art, Patricia C. Phillips argues that “the notion of public may . . . be the most quixotic idea encountered in contemporary culture.” “The public is invented—and re-created by each generation,” she writes, for it is profoundly entwined with the material conditions of social life and the technologies that enable the communication of ideas.25 The mutability of this category necessarily demands a definition of public art that prevents fixity or permanence—such as, for instance, its being tied to the outdoors or to some civil space. As Phillips demonstrates, public art is imbued with the cyclical temporality of the meaning of the public. Its definition must therefore account for that cyclicity by absorbing the quest for the meaning of the public as its fundamental singularity. To put it another way, for Phillips, public art “is public because it is a manifestation of art activities and strategies that take the idea of public as the genesis and subject of analysis. It is public because of the kinds of questions it chooses to ask or address and not because of its accessibility or volume of viewers.”26 This understanding of public art renders Agoraphilia  9

it potentially multiple, generative, and prone to experimentation. Moreover, it situates public art as a fertile ground for political and philosophical reflection, as the chapters of this volume also go on to show. The philosophical relevance of public art has arguably been insufficiently studied not just in Latin America but also in the United States and Europe. While “much has been said about the failures or successes of public art,” Phillips writes, little has been written about “the philosophical questions a [work of] public art may raise.”27 Foremost among these, as she suggests, is the issue of temporality. What are the temporal conditions within which collective meanings emerge and vanish? What processes constitute a collective body or a collective experience and how do they unfold in time? What practices assist democratic creativity over space and time? What trajectories of change do public artworks follow? If public artworks act as performative bodies, producing meaning, subjectivity, and action over time, can artists avoid the perils of obsolescence by privileging historically and geographically situated (ephemeral) interventions? Seeking to address these questions, the authors in The New Public Art stray from a normative approach to defining what is or should be public. Instead, they seek answers in existing practices, analyzing a highly diverse recent history of public art in Mexico that remains underinvestigated and undertheorized. Additionally, they pay homage to and continue the feminist embrace of the notion of public art since the 1980s and celebrate what the art historian Arlene Raven described in 1989 as an “explosion of new forms,” from “street art” to “guerrilla theatre, video, page art, billboards, protest actions and demonstrations, oral histories, dances, environments, posters, murals, paintings and sculpture.”28 As Raven puts it, since the late 1980s, largely thanks to a number of feminist interventions, “public art isn’t a hero on a horse anymore.”29 The proliferation of forms that was already apparent in the 1980s has accelerated even more in recent years, as understandings of agency have expanded not just from a patriarchal to a feminist vision or from the individual artist to collective action, but from a human-centered approach to the recognition and embrace of an ecological realm in which materials, objects, technologies, and living beings coproduce action. The trajectory of change, as this book attests, has been anything but smooth or linear, having been subject to heated polemic, contestation, conflict, and reversal. Almost every transformation has arguably witnessed the anachronistic return of symbols and gestures from a past that refuses to depart unchanged.30 Working along a similar path toward inclusivity and feminist commitment, in the mid-1990s Lippard broadly defined public art as “work of any kind that cares about, challenges, involves, and consults the audience for or with whom

10  Introduction

it is made, respecting community and environment.”31 For her, public art is not (or not necessarily) to be looked at. It looks out. Lippard’s list of “outlooking art” encompasses everything from conventional works for indoor exhibitions “that refer to local communities, history or environmental issues” to site-­specific artworks that significantly engage with communities in their “execution, background information, or ongoing function.”32 Some of the arguably most original or unexpected examples that she mentions in her extensive list include “public-access radio, television, or print media, such as audio- and videotapes, postcards, comics, guides, manuals, artists’ books, and posters,” together with performative actions that travel or appear simultaneously in different locations, “to highlight or link current issues.”33 Like Raven’s, Lippard’s understanding of public art stands out for considering a variety of unconventional media, most notably artists’ books, mail art, performance, and synchronic pieces, which she calls “chain actions.” These are all practices in which women artists have been pioneers and protagonists, and Lippard’s own relationship with them grew out of her involvement in the construction of a feminist art history. As she points out, the concerns of public and participatory art are closely tied to the concerns of feminist art, and women have embraced the category of “public art” more frequently in their writings. Significantly, she adds, both public and feminist art are moved by a desire for art to be useful, though not—or not always—utilitarian.34 An Agoraphilic Vision Though this is not a book about feminism or feminist art, its conceptual points of departure are the writings by Raven and Lippard in the 1980s and 1990s and a series of contributions emerging from feminist debates on public art, in particular Rosalyn Deutsche’s seminal essay titled “Agoraphobia,” which I discuss below. Along the lines of Nancy Fraser’s “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” these thinkers’ shared conviction is that adopting a feminist understanding of public art and public space is particularly telling in the sense that it makes visible the contested and exclusionary character of the notion of the public.35 As they stress, public space has historically been understood in negative terms as falling outside the “private realm” and thus being fundamentally separate from the “feminine” space of the home.36 Even as these divisions have been questioned and redrawn, the official rhetoric of publicity continues to create “significant exclusions.”37 Fraser adds that the boundaries between the private and the public are not naturally given: “what will count as a matter of common concern [is] decided . . . through discursive contestation,” and she argues that

Agoraphilia  11

this process is often initiated by subaltern publics.38 The New Public Art takes Fraser’s idea of (subaltern) contestation beyond the realm of discourse into a plurality of fields of experience, visuality, affect, and perception. A telling entry point into the discussion of how gender has permeated ideas of the public is the history of agoraphobia, understood as a pathological fear of open or public spaces. A medical category that continues to be in use, the agoraphobic condition was first described by the Austrian psychiatrist Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal in 1871, after coming across three male patients who, on approaching “certain large, open public squares ( freie Plätze) in Berlin,” would experience dizziness, trembling, heart palpitations, and an acute fear of dying.39 Westphal’s neologism is based on the Greek notion of the agora, which describes open public spaces, especially marketplaces, where people gathered and assembled. Westphal’s diagnosis was rapidly popularized in Europe, where, during the turn of the nineteenth century, doctors identified a number of primarily male patients with similar symptoms and attributed the disease to “a problem of the liver (Cherchevsky) or the ear (M. Lannois and C. Tournier) . . . insufficient will (Paul Emil Lévy) . . . excessive sex and alcohol (Henry Sutherland) or coffee (Legrand du Salle),” among other causes, like fatigue (Emil Cordes) and childbearing (C. W. Suckling).40 The early detection of agoraphobia among men did not prevent the disease from being considered “fundamentally ‘female’ in character,” described as a “housewife’s disease” by doctors.41 Freud’s writings represent a poignant example of this gender bias. In a series of letters to the German Jewish otolaryngologist Wilhelm Fliess, written between 1896 and 1899, the founder of psychoanalysis developed a theory of phobias, or “anxiety symptoms,” which includes a description of agoraphobia in women as dependent on a “romance of prostitution” and “the repression of the intention to take the first man one meets in the street” (December 17, 1896). This association of agoraphobia with repressed erotic desire also gained popularity in circulating cultural understandings of this form of fear, and it was used insidiously to stigmatize women. Joanna Bourke points out that a popular textbook in mid-twentieth-century Britain “maintained that agoraphobia was a response to the desire to be raped. The agoraphobic was afraid to go outside, believing that she would faint and fall. But that was exactly the position that the agoraphobic unconsciously desired, being attracted to the idea of sexual molestation.”42 Contemporary clinical descriptions of agoraphobia avoid gendered listings of symptoms, yet the condition continues to be most commonly diagnosed among women, and this tendency is on the rise. In 1987, Robyn Vines argued that “about two-thirds or more of agoraphobics seen by psychiatrists and other health professionals are women,”43 and the 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical 12  Introduction

Manual of Mental Disorders states that “females are twice as likely as males to experience [it].”44 The agoraphobic condition, which could also be described as the fear of the marketplace, reflects in this sense the extent to which women and minority groups have had to (and continue to) struggle to feel safe in public spaces. The staggering rates of femicide in Mexico and indeed throughout Latin America form part of the insufficiently accounted-for forms of violence that have spread a deathly fear in those spaces theoretically accessible to everyone.45 A seeming paradox at the heart of agoraphobia is that it not only involves the fear of finding oneself in crowded spaces but also encompasses the fear of being alone in the street, in parking lots, in marketplaces, on bridges, or anywhere outside the home. In other words, agoraphobia is the fear of being surrounded by too many disconnected people—a crowd, a mob—or facing the city in solitude. In this latter sense, it can be seen as fear of alienation rather than a fear of community. Kathryn Milun describes this duality as immanent to the “structure of feeling of the urban commons,”46 which never just captures an individual condition but reflects a broader fear that circulates in societies. Agoraphobia, in particular, is symptomatic of the ways in which societies facilitate or repress public debate and conceive of inclusivity, participation, safety, and care. Milun tellingly signals that “agoraphobia appeared . . . during a period of massive migrations from countryside to city, together with the construction of monumental architectural forms that accompanied both metropolitan growth and the rise of the modern nation-state. Nineteenth-century agoraphobics experienced the gigantic squares and boulevards introduced into their cities as hostile environments. They perceived these monumental spaces as ‘empty,’ and suffered intense anxiety that caused them to retreat to the curb, to their homes, and even to their beds.”47 While emptiness and monumentalism continue to trigger fear of public spaces, these are not the exclusive and possibly most prevalent sources of agoraphobic feelings in the present. The neoliberal undoing of the demos (to use Wendy Brown’s phrasing48), the crumbling of the welfare state, and, in certain cases like Mexico’s, the state’s infiltration by organized crime, alongside pervasive surveillance, biopolitical control, and violence, have jointly triggered new, equally hostile waves of agoraphobia in the past decades, pushing many, once again, to retire to their homes and to their beds—with suicide rates and anxiety rocketing throughout the country.49 In discussions about public art, however, the notion of agoraphobia has taken on a more complex and nuanced meaning, shaped by, among others, the writings of the art historian Rosalyn Deutsche. Her book Evictions revisits this concept to analyze the removal of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc from New York City’s Federal Plaza in 1989. She describes what left-wing critics saw as Agoraphilia  13

a neoconservative campaign to remove the sculpture from the plaza based on a purported defense of the plaza’s “public use” and the need of an imagined “public” to enjoy free access and free circulation within it. During the debate, Deutsche argues, the meaning of the public was assumed to be self-evident, whereas, in reality, the use of the term was imbued with (implied) value judgments. She writes that the public “was presumed to be a group of aggregated individuals unified by their adherence to fundamental, objective values or by their possession of essential needs and interests or, what amounts to the same thing, divided by equally essential conflicts.”50 That understanding of the public as a coherent unity capable of reaching so-called democratic consensus through rational critical discussion dates back to Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). In this influential and polemical book, Habermas construes an “ideal type of the bourgeois public sphere,” understood as a sphere between society and the state where citizens discuss matters of common concern to hold the state accountable.51 Yet according to Deutsche, who recuperates the critiques of a number of radical and feminist thinkers, including Fraser, Chantal Mouffe, and Claude Lefort, Habermas’s model primarily generates exclusions—of women, nonwhite subjects, the “non-educated,” the non-liberal-minded, the more-than-human, and so on— and may thus be paradoxically described as agoraphobic, or fearful of a diverse and agonistic public. In this light, agoraphobics become those aiming for “consensus, coherence, and universality” in the public realm, rather than pluralism, heterogeneity, hybridity, and difference.52 Correspondingly, they react with panic to the “openness and indeterminacy of the democratic public.”53 Building on Deutsche’s work, a central claim of this volume is that for a democratic public to emerge, it must also create the conditions that enable the critique of its own nature, its conditions of possibility, and its modes of inclusion and exclusion. Any homogeneous or coherent understanding of “the public” necessarily involves disavowing social difference and social conflict. A radically democratic discussion of the meaning of “the public” involves, by contrast, understanding public space as “the social space where, in the absence of an essential, historical or metaphysical foundation, the very meaning of the social and the terms of its confluence are negotiated, constituted and put at risk.”54 “What is recognized in public space,” writes Deutsche, “is the legitimacy of debate about what is legitimate.”55 How we imagine, represent, or perform these senses of legitimacy and publicity, and how we name and recognize the agents that might contribute to this debate, has enormous consequences for the livability of life in common. The authors of The New Public Art argue that this is a problem that concerns artists not only as individual creators but also 14  Introduction

as common or collective subjects, and as makers of actant objects capable of participating in and shaping material assemblages.56 In so doing, contributors place new understandings of the significance of public art in dialogue with novel forms of decolonial, affect-driven, materialist, and necropolitical critique, while paying particular attention to the roles that not only representations but also materials, environments, networks, processes, and technologies might play in cocreating inclusive forms of collective action and belonging. A Site-Specific Approach This book contributes to theoretical reflection on public art, yet the authors refuse the universalizing vision that has problematically characterized Western art history. Like art, theory can and should remain aware of site specificities. One of the labors of decolonial theory is to critique and renegotiate the relationships between concrete histories and the conceptual possibilities generated by abstraction—through which experiences travel and migrate.57 As readers navigate this book’s case studies and artists’ dossiers, they must be mindful of the singular histories of public art and public space in Mexico. This history is deeply entangled with international political and economic developments but has also been specifically affected by public art’s centrality in the construction of the nation-state in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution. Claudio Lomnitz suggests that the ideology of the revolution was often pragmatic and contradictory; however, the country’s “cultural revolution had radical foundational elements, exemplified by its rabid secularism, its educational programs, and its peculiar brand of modern art for the people.”58 Lomnitz adds that the cultural programs of the revolutionary state were often conceived of as a “second conquest,” in which “Mexican imagery” would harness communitarianism, solidarity, and collective expression, while the spirit of the Indians would “animate the collective project.”59 The muralist movement is the most striking visual expression of this “second conquest,” and both the ideological principles that mobilized it and the relationship between art and the state that it initiated permeated public art in Mexico well beyond the movement’s so-called golden age in the 1920s and 1930s. Attending to this legacy, this book explores the ways in which the postrevolutionary understanding of public art (what Lomnitz terms “the modern art for the people”) began to change with the crisis of the PRI regime, the weakening of the welfare state, Mexico’s turn to neoliberalism, and the country’s wavering transition to democracy. In other words, how do contemporary artists’ and activists’ visions of community and participation differ from those sponsored by the regime that conditioned and shaped Mexican modernity? Agoraphilia  15

Before I move into a discussion of how The New Public Art addresses these questions, it is important to stress that the postrevolutionary search for communitarianism through public art was closely bound up with a disabling authoritarianism. While the state generously promoted public works and motivated the lay Mexican to visit and enjoy the country’s innumerable monumental public plazas and museums, it also allowed the normalization of social privilege within those spaces and used them as spectacles of allegiance to the regime.60 Moreover, access to state funds for public art was often controlled by informal, illegal, and corrupt networks and bureaucracies, and these funds became a privileged means of co-opting artists and intellectuals.61 By intimidating and repressing independent and dissident projects, as well as promoting unclear rules for free expression and participation, the postrevolutionary state created a ripe environment for the spread of agoraphobic sentiments. Coming to terms with this specific fear and its exclusionary consequences— particularly during moments in which an agoraphilic position would become a matter of life and death, as in the case of the 1968 movement or the 1985 earthquake—is precisely what led to Mexico’s arduous democratic transition, namely, the transition from a one-party rule maintained in power through fraudulent elections, to the slow and all-too-imperfect strengthening of the country’s electoral institutions, leading to the turnover of power across parties and coalitions. The transition was largely led by those who refused to belong to the PRI’s monolithic and monumental idea of “the people,” including progressive students; Catholic organizations marginalized by the staunch secularism of the revolutionary ideology;62 dissident intellectuals who resisted the PRI’s complex machinery of co-optation; and political leaders who split with the PRI and mobilized sectors of the population that had suffered from the contradictions, inconsistencies, and deficiencies of the priista model.63 The close entwinement of the party with the Mexican state meant that the transition to democracy also entailed a gradual and uneven restructuring of the state itself, a process that unfolded in parallel with—and was largely triggered by—a change in economic model from a protectionist to a neoliberal economy. The shining promises of economic and political inclusivity that purportedly would accompany the opening up of the Mexican economy have, however, failed to materialize, as the current unspeakable levels of violence attest. With staggering numbers of missing and murdered people since the onset of the war on drugs in 2006, rocketing levels of femicide, and continual attacks on journalists and activists, the risks of participating in public discussion or occupying public spaces in today’s Mexico are high.64 Those risks span different forms of public visibility and participation: from walking the streets at night 16  Introduction

as a woman to the practice of investigative journalism or the defense of endangered environments. Violence has permeated all aspects of public life and has left its physical traces in public spaces.65 It is in this context that public art has gained unprecedented relevance as a form of participation in the contemporary agora—perhaps more appropriately named in Mexico the tianguis (open-air market)—which Cornelius Castoriadis defines as a public-private space where citizens meet with one another not to make political decisions in the name of the state or to represent one another, but to articulate spaces of community and dissent while practicing politics on a nongovernmental scale.66 The interest of Castoriadis’s definition lies in his treatment of the agora as a space that not only suspends the division between the public and the private but also recognizes a nonexclusively discursive realm of collective interest and action, beyond the limited spheres of the state and the government. Decisively shifting away from their common conception as state-sanctioned art, current expressions of public or “agoraphilic art” are significantly more complex and diverse in terms of the processes of art making involved and the strategies used to knit together common ideals and demands. Resistance against official and propagandistic uses of art has become process- rather than message-driven, thus inscribing public art in the slow temporality of lived experience and direct engagement rather than in an easily appropriated symbolic economy. Furthermore, new understandings of what constitutes authorship have produced a shift away from the established model of the “exceptional” nationalist intellectual—in Carlos Monsiváis’s words—to different models of collective creation and belonging.67 Additionally, in the face of the country’s current human rights crisis, activist and human rights groups have become increasingly involved both in the critique of certain public monuments and in the creation of “grassroots memorials,” in which collective participation defies monumentality, and memory becomes a live process—marked by rituals of mourning and the persistent search for justice. The New Public Art recuperates a history of unflinching artistic dissidence through collective action and explores the theoretical possibilities emerging from situated aesthetic acts produced by agoraphilic bodies. Combining the individual and collective voices of artists and scholars, it critically reexamines the crucial notions of “public art” and “public space” in view of the emergence and proliferation of often collective artistic practices for which, as Phillips suggests, the idea of the public and its mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion have become “the genesis and subject of analysis”—in many cases to give rise to new dynamics of dissent and participation. Moreover, this book and the series of questions it addresses are haunted by a history of significant state Agoraphilia  17

intervention in the arts in Mexico. Authors therefore identify the temporality of public art and its currency as marked not just by linear transformations but also by circularity and return. In the face of new waves of agoraphobia—aggravated by privatization, insecurity, and pandemic fears—The New Public Art refuses to relinquish a claim to the commons nonetheless. Overview of Chapters and Dossiers Titled “New Muralisms,” the book’s opening section explores the relationships between past and present in contemporary public art, focusing on the critique of the muralist tradition in the 1970s and 1980s by artists nevertheless deeply interested in the public and indeed political dimensions of their art. In “New Muralisms after Muralism,” Natalia de la Rosa and Julio García Murillo revisit the notion of “new muralism,” a term coined during the 1970s that they describe as offering critical possibilities for interrogating the meaning of public art during the last decades of the twentieth century. They look, in particular, at a series of historiographic, curatorial, and institutional projects that confronted the instrumentalization of the Mexican muralist tradition to bolster a nationalist ideology, both during the postrevolutionary years and during Mexico’s turn to neoliberalism in the 1990s. Rather than abandoning muralism tout court, these projects recuperated muralist propositions that had been central during the early years of this movement’s development. De la Rosa and García Murillo argue that in artworks by the likes of Felipe Ehrenberg and Melquiades Herrera, and in the theoretical and critical work of Alberto Híjar, Ida Rodríguez Prampolini, and Juan Acha, muralism reemerges as an art in dialogue with experimentation, pedagogy, and conceptualism. Moreover, muralism returned as a renovated and participatory practice, capable of engaging with new and dissident “realisms,” thereby renewing its critical potentiality by leaving behind its aesthetic hegemony and architectural monumentality. This chapter is followed by an artistic dossier put together by Grupo Germen, an artists’ collective originally from Guadalajara, in which they discuss a different practice and understanding of “new muralism.” This involves using graffiti as a means of embellishing disadvantaged neighborhoods on the peripheries of major cities and as a way of strengthening community ties weakened by violence and insecurity. Adopting yet another approach to the critical reemergence of muralism in Mexico, in “Public, Political, and Aesthetic Spaces in Ayotzinapa” Ana Torres discusses a series of murals painted in the aftermath of the painful events of September 26 and 27, 2014, in Iguala, Guerrero, when forty-three students attending the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College were forcibly abducted, then disappeared, having first been allegedly taken into custody by local police officers 18  Introduction

with ties to organized crime. During the abduction, three people in the vicinity and three student-teachers were killed; the body of one of the latter, Julio César Mondragón, was later found with his eyes gouged out and the skin of his face flayed, a devastating image probably intended to send shockwaves across the country and spread paralyzing fear.68 Torres’s analysis of these murals expands previous scholarship on the historical recurrence and reenactment of ideas of the public by considering the collectively painted murals, located on the walls of Ayotzinapa’s Rural Teachers’ College and in a nearby city, named Tixtla, as expressions of what Paolo Virno describes as a “non-state-run public sphere.” This sphere articulates a form of “publicness” fundamentally distinct from the state’s.69 As collective expressions of both past and present symbols of protest, as well as ritual manifestations of a common will to mourn the disappeared students and the social project of the rural schools, which various governments have tried to dismantle since the 1970s, the murals, Torres says, “teach us to witness violence from unconventional loci of enunciation.” Although the murals respond to a recent event, Torres sees them as “dialectical images” in which flashes from the horrors of history illuminate the present. Moreover, Torres pits the critical, decolonizing gaze that the murals articulate through collective action and collective memory against a hegemonic public sphere dominated by mass media. Agonism thus emerges as the fundamental dynamic of public spheres—a theme we continue to develop in subsequent chapters. This section closes with a dossier on Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante (CAI), a community cinema organization that draws on Indigenous practices of collective decision-making to produce cinema “for and with the community.” Luna Marán, a filmmaker and one of the main organizers of CAI, argues that this experience of community cinema expresses possibilities for cinematic creation distinct from “auteur cinema.” Stemming from rural and Indigenous practices, CAI’s understanding of “collective creation for a common good” is closely linked to the grassroots vision of the rural teacher-training colleges. Titled “Feminist Publics,” the book’s second section addresses a range of feminist artists’ incursions in an affective and counterforensic private-public realm as a means to contest past and present forms of gendered and racialized violence against both the living and the dead. Karen Cordero Reiman’s “Politics of Enunciation and Affect in an Age of Corporeal Violence” analyzes the work of the artist Mónica Mayer, examining two participatory pieces that solicit a politics of solidarity in response to everyday gender violence, while also exploring affective forms of restitution, encounter, and corporeal healing. Cordero describes Mayer as one of the “most consistent referents in Mexican feminist art since the 1970s” and relates her current work to her initial involvement with Agoraphilia  19

feminism and feminist art in that decade—a time when the feminist movement burst into visibility in public spaces. Mayer conceives of her art as a “social practice” and thereby positions herself within a feminist genealogy that includes Judy Chicago, Arlene Raven, and Suzanne Lacy, among others. Her work intersects the private and the public to foreground the politics of their boundaries. Most important, she crafts a mobile, inclusive, and participatory sense of the collective, leaving behind more stable, passive, and arguably oppressive ideas of “the public” or “the people.” In revisiting the relationship between previous understandings of public art in Mexico and Mayer’s practice, Cordero suggests that “in contrast to the homogeneous, monumental conception of the political body that had characterized muralism and related artistic movements,” women artists in Mexico from the 1960s on “explored the differentiated experiences of bodies and the polysemic and fragmentary nature of corporeal experience in contemporary culture.”70 This interest in the significance of embodied gestures in the production of public spheres of belonging and critique is also present in the “conversational essay” by Colectivo A.M., an artists’ collective dedicated to choreographic production, reflection, and practice. In their essay, the eleven dancers jointly explore the possibilities dance offers for constituting collective and political subjectivities beyond the ephemeral temporality of spectacle. They recall their piece La pista de baile (The Dance Floor, 2015), which involved inviting people to dance for hours in the streets of Los Angeles in the United States and in both Cuernavaca and Mexico City in Mexico. In the process, they interrogate whether there was indeed a public dimension to this experience of dancing in open-air spaces. As they put it, “strictly speaking, [public space is] a space that belongs to no one in particular. But it’s not free either, and not everyone has the same freedom or possibility to move through it. It’s regulated, and its use can be criminalized. It falls within the sphere of the state: it isn’t a field in the middle of nowhere where you can go and do whatever you want. Yet [these] spaces can occasionally offer alternatives to the state.”71 As their choreographic practice shows, such alternatives can be truly transformational and embodied, even if often ephemeral. The next chapter, by Erin L. McCutcheon, addresses the work of another early feminist performance artist, Guadalupe García-Vásquez, who is a contemporary of Mayer but much less known. García-Vásquez seeks to expand the reach of the public beyond what she describes as linear conceptions of space and time, imbuing it with a sense of ritual that she recognizes as inherited from her Indigenous and Afro-mestizo ancestors. She evokes a “necropublic” that McCutcheon theorizes in dialogue with Achille Mbembe’s concept of 20  Introduction

“necro­politics,” on the one hand, and, on the other, with activist practices giving agency to the dead, often victims of femicide, to confront today’s and past injustices. Having only acknowledged her Afro-Mexican ancestry in adulthood, García-Vásquez has developed performative rituals that make perceptible the violence inherent in the historical invisibility of black bodies in the Mexican national imaginary and the ways in which racial categories imposed in colonial times continue to organize forms of exclusion in the present. In this process, she blurs the boundaries between the personal and the public, past and present, the living and the dead, and performance and ritual. If publics and counterpublics are indeed to become forms of “poetic world making,” and spheres that allow some kind of personal and societal healing in the aftermath of violence and trauma, McCutcheon suggests they must encompass necropolitical forms of resistance that refuse to leave the dead behind.72 Expanding the discussions on embodiment and performativity, the next dossier addresses Teatro Ojo’s 2018 experimental stage performance Deus ex machina, in which the Mexico City–based theater collective used “open dramaturgy” to set up a call center in El Galeón theater. From this unusual stage, using a technology that has increasingly been co-opted for the purposes of sales and extortions, Teatro Ojo rang people across Mexico to “materialize voices from the farthest-flung parts of the country” and untangle the “historic knots” that tie them together. They did this before an audience—also embedded in this imagined community—that could attend the sessions for as long as they wished to and could also wander onto the stage. In their conversations, callers asked questions, read news stories, recounted dreams, and evoked the country’s “often anachronistic national imagery.”73 As Laura Furlan from Teatro Ojo recounts, this performance triggered a reflection on the kind of political community that the disembodied voices on the calls constitute and the fears, emotions, and memories that haunt them. The necropolitical discussion continues in the chapter by Carlos Fonseca and Enea Zaramella, where they analyze a series of sound pieces and installations by Teresa Margolles. A former member of the SEMEFO art collective (an acronym standing for Mexico City’s Servicio Médico Forense, or Forensic Medical Service), Margolles has spent the last three decades reflecting on what happens when traces of violence are displaced away from the bureaucratic archival machinery of the state and into the public exhibition space. Whether she is at work filling a gallery with dense fog composed of vaporized water previously used to wash corpses, or transporting, re-creating, and displaying the floor tiles upon which her friend Luis Miguel Suro was murdered, her work is guided by an attempt to exhibit those leftovers of violence that are Agoraphilia  21

often concealed from the public gaze. Fonseca and Zaramella’s text focuses on the forensic and counterforensic dimension of Margolles’s work, which they analyze through the prism of Eyal Weizman’s writings.74 Moving away from the subjective voice of the witness, the forensic approach aims to find truth in the remnants of all that’s left. It explores the stories these remnants can tell us and how they wrestle the truth away from that proposed by the state (hence its counterforensic potential). For years, Margolles has been interested in the wave of violence that has rocked the north of Mexico and, in particular, border towns like Ciudad Juárez. Forensics, to her, offers a solution from within a world where few witnesses survive, and those who do are often terrified into silence. For Fonseca and Zaramella, turning the gallery into a public forum not only focuses attention on the stories forensic remnants have to tell but also interpellates the spectator to rethink central categories such as witnessing, evidence, and truth. A dossier by Diego Flores Magón follows, expanding these reflections on the counterforensic archive. Flores Magón outlines his own involvement in the creation of La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote, an archive, a printing press, and a museum that opened its doors in 2015 in the building that once housed the anarchist satirical newspaper strongly opposed to the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship El Hijo del Ahuizote (1885–1903). The primarily reflexive dossier interrogates how to situate an archive at the center of a creative venture; how to give motion to a series of documents destined for stillness and oblivion; and how, in the face of today’s injustices, to create the conditions for the archive to “live dangerously,” reawakening critical voices that may otherwise lie dormant in the dusty pages of El Hijo del Ahuizote. The book continues with a section titled “Antimonuments and the Undercommons” that looks at activist approaches to public art, bringing together a comparative analysis of recent antiracist interventions with two conceptually evocative chapters addressing the notion of the “public memorial.” In “Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism,” Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez and Sarah Abel argue that “racial discourses have historically played a central role in the narratives and practices of state-sponsored public art.”75 In view of this history, they explore what it means to incorporate antiracist and decolonial positions in artistic practices. To begin to form an answer they compare three different “grammars of antiracism,”76 understood as styles of antiracist activity: first, the 2019 exhibition La nación (The Nation), which displayed works by the Mexico City–based artist Yutsil Cruz looking at the imbrication of racism with mestizaje logics through the representation of Indigenous subjects; second, the performance Buscando a Bruno (Looking for Bruno), in which the muxe artist Lukas Avendaño tells the story of the enforced disappearance of his brother 22  Introduction

Bruno in 2018 while simultaneously contesting the historically denied right of Indigenous peoples and sexually diverse communities (those who cohabit in the space of the “undercommons”) to become visible public agents;77 and third, the street murals painted by the Pueblo de Xoco, self-identified as one of Mexico’s pueblos indígenas u originarios (Indigenous or originary peoples/ towns), to express their rage at the rapid gentrification of their locality. Taking their cue from Hannah Arendt, Ortega Domínguez and Abel argue that each of these distinct strategies produces “spaces of appearance” that, on the one hand, resist an “aesthetic regime” in which those “outside the canon of racialized class privilege cannot speak” and, on the other, cultivate a gaze in which public art becomes a “political site for the enactment of social justice and the evolution of civil imagination.”78 This reflection on public art’s activist but also utopian dimensions is akin to the subject of the next dossier, a free public library in Mexico City known as Aeromoto, understood by its founders as an “exercise in micropolitics.”79 Aeromoto was created to collectivize books and practices of reading via gatherings and loans from the immediate community. Resisting the idea of private property, which they see as a damaging fiction sustained by the state, Aeromoto encourages the use of books as shared property and common goods that can foster both embodied and anonymous forms of socialization and community. The authors of the next two chapters propose a discussion on the relationship between public grief and mass-scale death. They address the fundamental issues that public art poses both as a mechanism to search for justice in the face of human rights violations and as a means of “symbolic reparation” that seeks to accord recognition to the victims of such violations. While public memorials are often built as a consequence of the legal responsibility of the state to grant material and symbolic reparations to victims of human rights abuses, the “public” character of such memorials has been the subject of much dispute. In “Menos Días Aquí and Bordamos por la Paz: Grief, Social Protest, and Grassroots Memorialization in Mexico’s War on Drugs,” Adriana Ortega Orozco notes the recurrent rejection of official memorials by victims of drug-related violence in Mexico. She in turn describes the emergence of nonofficial (ritual) forms of memorialization in both physical and online contexts responding to the wave of violence unleashed by President Felipe Calderón’s so-called war on drugs. Defining these as “grassroots memorials,” Ortega Orozco identifies in them a strong link between commemoration and social protest. She argues that grassroots memorials have focused on the individual identification of the victims both to become acts of remembrance and to prevent the victims’ voices from being silenced. Moreover, she suggests that new “memorial communities” form Agoraphilia  23

around this political cause on the basis of affective exchanges and other interactions. These practices thus create threads of continuity and persistence that turn them into much more than ephemeral or quasi-spontaneous expressions of grief and call for an expansion of the definition of the grassroots memorial in the direction of longer-lasting forms of commemoration. A dossier by the Antimonuments collective, which has been placing what they call “antimonuments” across Mexico City since 2014 to protest various instances of human rights violations, complements and expands Ortega Orozco’s analysis of the grassroots memorial and points to yet another contemporary expression of this collective practice. In “Conceptualizing the Public: Femicide, Memorialization, and Human Rights Law,” Michael R. Orwicz and Robin Adèle Greeley discuss the Memorial del Campo Algodonero in Ciudad Juárez, mandated by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2009 as a form of symbolic reparation in the landmark human rights case González y otras v. México (or Campo Algodonero). This monument purportedly commemorates the lives of three young women brutally murdered in gender-related violence in Ciudad Juárez in 2001. It also calls attention to the state’s violation of international human rights law in failing to protect women from systemic discrimination. However, as the authors note, since its inauguration in 2012, the Campo Algodonero memorial has been a site not of public commemoration but of vociferous contestation by the very audience for which it was intended: the families and representatives of the murdered women. The scorn directed at this public monument reveals the contested character of the public while making visible unresolved tensions among what would best be described as a plurality of publics, from the direct victims of femicide and their families to larger political constituencies. The authors in the book’s concluding section, “Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes,” suspend traditional categories associated with public art and public space, from monumentality to state involvement. Furthermore, they explore shifting spatialities constituted by often invisible flows of capital—which nevertheless result in very concrete forms of spatial exclusion—and by the migratory flows of people to whom any kind of public belonging is often denied. In the first chapter, the architect and artist Arturo Ortiz-Struck explores the relationship between public participation and the living conditions of political bodies. Discussion of public assembly has described public spaces as sites where individuals—or bodies—come together to make a political claim. As Judith Butler suggests, this “presumes that public space is given, that it is already public and recognized as such.”80 Both the privatization of areas formerly seen as “common ground” and the criminalization and repression of certain forms 24  Introduction

of protest tell a different story, one of continuous dispute and struggle for the existence and the signification of political assembly. Civil movements “have depended on the prior existence of pavement, street, and square,”81 qualities of urban space that Ortiz-Struck describes as gradually disappearing within mass-scale new housing developments on the peripheries of major Mexican cities, which have been designed to maximize financial gain. Ortiz-Struck claims that in the last twenty years public policies aimed at building social housing have resulted in the creation of over fourteen million housing units in isolated residential complexes located far away from sources of employment and with deficient access to public services. Although from a financial point of view the strategy has been successful, the resulting urban environments have created precarious living conditions for their inhabitants. A high percentage of the houses have been abandoned, not only due to poor construction and inconvenient location but also because of the prevailing insecurity in desolate and impoverished walled communities. The urban planning of housing complexes tends not to consider a variety of uses of space, including parks and plazas for public exchange and discussion. Common space is reduced to areas for circulation and mock playgrounds with added bits and pieces of greenery. Ortiz-Struck spent years studying these spaces and describing them using Georges Perec’s exercises in street observation. On this basis, he suggests that the social housing model promoted by government institutions in Mexico over the past three decades—reliant on lucrative international investment—is not just ineffective at promoting greater equality and social diversity but directly hinders individuals and families from engaging in collective discussion and public action. Ortiz-Struck’s thinking about the politics of space shifts the locus of public action from an anthropocentric view, focused on the political will of (rational and) organized publics, to a concept of assemblage and assembly that outweighs human agency. In other words, he suggests that we must consider how material assemblages constitute, organize, and potentially transform political entities. This view expands common understandings of “the political” into a more-than-human terrain that Bruno Latour describes by means of the German neologism Dingpolitik, referring to the politics of things, buildings, and landscapes.82 Infrastuctures and their effects on bodies—their capacity not just to support them but also to leave them vulnerable and exposed—have different degrees of visibility and intelligibility, which are themselves objects of dispute and struggle. The dossier that follows, by Brigada Tlayacapan—an interdisciplinary group of architecture students, construction workers, and local residents from Tlayacapan, Morelos—poignantly addresses this agency of Agoraphilia  25

the land by discussing the Tlayacapan Brigade’s efforts to help in reconstructing the town in the aftermath of the 2017 earthquake while at the same time trying to preserve local traditional construction methods. Rather than being limited to people’s sense of belonging to a certain place, the dossier addresses the notion of collectivity as able to encompass shared, and often historically inherited, knowledges, occasionally put to the test by large-scale environmental phenomena and natural catastrophes. In “Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda: The Poetics of Dust, Dissent, and Migration,” Erica Segre addresses the presence of polvo (dust) in the literary and visual imagining of the Mexican landscape and the way it conjures a poetics of migration, displacement, and (subjective) nomadism, dissociated from fixed or stable localities. From Alfonso Reyes’s Visión de Anáhuac (Vision of Anáhuac) and Palinodia del polvo (Recantation of Dust), via Mariano Azuela, Juan Rulfo, and Rosario Castellanos to José Emilio Pacheco and Mario Bellatin in literature, to the artworks of Helen Escobedo, Felipe Ehrenberg, Gerardo Suter, Francis Alÿs, and Teresa Margolles, Segre argues that dust not only evokes disintegration and dispersal but that it has figured, too, as the accumulation of historical and prehistorical deposits that have the potential to gather together and yield form. Increasingly, the scattered materiality and metaphor of dust has become a measure of mobile indeterminacy, linked to the politics and poetics of exodus, migration, depopulation, and violence. For Segre, thinking about and with dust allows an ambivalent revision of the relationships between identity and environment on the US-Mexico border, capable of eroding and moving beyond fixed imaginaries of nation, identity, and belonging. Furthermore, Segre suggests that the “atomized identities” that dust often signifies “prompt a dislocated sentience that may nevertheless have the capacity to mobilize contestation.”83 Segre’s discussion of a land caught between layers of historical deposits and migratory exodus brings us full circle to the questions that motivate this book: What do we understand by “the public” and “public space” in today’s Mexico? How has so-called public art changed since the 1980s? What ought to be its role in the current century? Can a feminist vision continue to motivate us to supersede the old masculinist notion of “agoraphobia”? I believe that these questions remain timely and important. The toppling of statues around the world, even in defiance of lockdown rules during the Covid pandemic, similarly reminds us that public art is not only undergoing rapid transformations but also lies at the core of contemporary struggles for visibility, recognition, and belonging. The new public art, as a practice, as a process, as a performance, and as a “politics of things,” has become a meaningful agora in itself. This art refuses, by means of collective practice, the neoliberal privatization of every aspect of life. 26  Introduction

Notes 1.

2. 3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

To everyone’s surprise, Mexico suffered a third earthquake on September 19, 2022. The magnitude was 7.7 on the Richter scale, and two people died. Geologists still cannot explain the temporal coincidence of these phenomena. The 1985 earthquake measured 8.1, and the 2017 earthquake, 7.1. A total of 369 people died in the latter. Rodrigo Soriano, “El terre­moto del 19 de septiembre deja daños en siete Estados de México,” El País, September 20, 2022, https://elpais.com/mexico/2022-09-20/el-terremoto-del-19-de-septiembre -deja-danos-en-siete-estados-de-mexico.html. Luis Villoro, “El puño en alto,” Reforma, September 22, 2017. Following the work of, among others, Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, “commoning” is here understood as a verb, that is, as the act and practice of commoning, which exceeds a situation of co-belonging or co-ownership. It involves participation in the building of common goods and in their sustenance. See Imre Szeman, “Preface,” in Common: On Revolution in the 21st Century, trans. Matthew MacLellan (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), xii. See Juan Tonda, “El nuevo sismo del 19 de septiembre,” La Jornada, September 29, 2017; and Elisabeth Malkin and Azam Ahmed, “Stunned by Quake, Mexican Town Fears It ‘Will Never Be the Same,’” New York Times, September 21, 2017. William Stockton, “Mexicans Seek to Save Murals in Quake Ruins,” New York Times, November 16, 1985. For an in-depth discussion of Mérida’s singular approach to muralism and his description as a “solitary modernist” (modernista solitario), alongside Rufino Tamayo and Mathias Goeritz, see Judith Sierra-Rivera, “Carlos Mérida’s ‘Goce Emocional’: An Aesthetics Proposal Circumventing the Space of Catastrophe of Mexican Nationalism,” The Comparatist 41 (October 2017): 41–59. Sierra-Rivera, “Carlos Mérida’s ‘Goce Emocional,’” 42. In 1972, a law was passed declaring Mexican muralism part of the cultural patrimony of the nation. See Robin Adèle Greeley, “Muralism and the State in Post-Revolution Mexico, 1920–1970,” in Mexican Muralism: A Critical History, ed. Alejandro Anreus, Robin Adèle Greeley, and Leonard Folgarait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 30. Greeley, “Muralism and the State,” 31. On the history of this church and its tower, see Martha Fernández, “Convento de San Juan Bautista,” http://www.revistaimagenes.esteticas.unam.mx/convento_de_san_juan _bautista?fbclid=IwAR3qpUQnV392O7ZqTBCXEm6mce5BFvdIsXEmK4OHW5-BNZfy _Z9IPKRn37o, accessed November 13, 2022. The monument has now been fully reconstructed. Natalia de la Rosa, “Integración plástica y arte público: Del Estado de bienestar al nuevo liberalismo,” Campo de relámpagos, January 13, 2019, http://campoderelampagos.org /critica-y-reviews/12/1/2019. Miguel Crespo, “Sistema de O’Gorman salva los murales de la SCT de demolición,” La Razón, October 8, 2017, https://www.razon.com.mx/cultura/sistema-ogorman-salva-los-murales -la-sct-demolicion/. The architects Norman Foster and Fernando Romero proposed the relocation of the murals to their projected new airport in Texcoco. However, this project was scrapped after a public vote, creating uncertainty around the fate of the murals. See Anna Fixsen, “Mexico City’s Controversial Airport Project Could Be a Preservation Site for a Collection of Modernist Murals,” ArchDaily, May 8, 2018. Carlos Monsiváis, “No sin nosotros”: Los días del terremoto 1985–2005 (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 2005), 9. While Monsiváis endorses the notion of “civil society,” in this volume

Agoraphilia  27

16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

we largely refrain from its use, as it conveys an often simplistic sense of consensus among groups and individuals that oppose government policies. See Joseph A. Buttigieg, “The Contemporary Discourse on Civil Society: A Gramscian Critique,” boundary 2 32, no. 1 (2005): 33–52. See Henry Veltmeyer and James Petras, eds., The New Extractivism: A Post-Neoliberal Development Model or Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century? (London: Zed Books, 2014); Sayak Valencia, Gore Capitalism (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2018). Michael Warner describes counterpublics as defined by a tension with a larger public and an awareness of having a subordinate status. Publics and Counterpublics (Brooklyn, NY, and Cambridge, MA: Zone Books, 2005), 56. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 7. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 8. Warner adds that “a public might be real and efficacious, but its reality lies in just this reflexivity by which an addressable object is conjured into being in order to enable the very discourse that gives it existence” (67). Patricia Ramírez Kuri, “Espacio público, ¿espacio de todos? Reflexiones desde la Ciudad de México,” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 77, no. 1 (2015), http://www.scielo.org.mx /scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0188-25032015000100001. Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York: Zone Books, 2015), 17. Lucy R. Lippard, “Looking Around: Where We Are, Where We Could Be,” in Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, ed. Suzanne Lacy (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995), 121. For Jacques Rancière, “dissensus” is the primary force through which the politics of aesthetics unfold; “it is an activity that cuts across forms of cultural identity and hierarchies between discourses and genres, working to introduce new subjects and heterogeneous objects into the field of perception.” Steve Corcoran, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (London: Continuum, 2009), 2. Patricia C. Phillips, “Temporality and Public Art,” in Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy, ed. Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1992), 296. Phillips, “Temporality and Public Art,” 298. Phillips, “Temporality and Public Art,” 296. Arlene Raven, “Introduction,” in Art in the Public Interest, ed. Arlene Raven (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989), 2. Raven, “Introduction,” 2. Public art thus becomes a site of both spatial contestation and temporal clash. For a discussion of anachronism as a clash of temporalities, see Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant le temps: Histoire de l’art et anachronisme des images (Paris: Minuit, 2002). Lippard, “Looking Around,” 121. Lippard, “Looking Around,” 122. Lippard, “Looking Around,” 122–123. Lippard, “Looking Around,” 124. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56–80. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 23. Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 59. Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 71. Kathryn Milun, Pathologies of Modern Space: Empty Space, Urban Anxiety, and the Recovery of the Public Self (New York and London: Routledge, 2007), 25.

28  Introduction

40. Milun, Pathologies of Modern Space, 26. 41. Anthony Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 36. 42. Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (London: Virago, 2005). 43. Robyn Vines, Agoraphobia: The Fear of Panic (New York: Fontana-Collins, 1987), 28. 44. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association, 2013). 45. For two accounts of necropolitical forms of violence inflicted on (female) bodies in Mexico, looking in particular at the bordering city of Tijuana, see Sergio González Rodríguez, The Femicide Machine, trans. Michael Parker-Stainback (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2012); Valencia, Gore Capitalism. 46. Milun, Pathologies of Modern Space, 1. 47. Milun, Pathologies of Modern Space, 2. 48. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 9. 49. Instituto Belisario Domínguez, “Suicidio en México,” Mirada legislativa 62 (October 2014): 1–10. 50. Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 259. 51. Jürgen Habermas, “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig J. Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 422–423. The various controversies around this notion, and criticism directed at it, escape the scope of this introduction. 52. Deutsche, Evictions, 281. While Deutsche does not take into account the realm of the morethan-human, more recent critiques of the idea of the commons—particularly when poorly understood as a common pool of (natural) resources to be exploited—have developed an enhanced awareness of the role of other-than-human agents in processes of commoning. The “uncommons,” an oft-unassimilable excess, has been described as a “condition of possibility for the common good and of commons.” Mario Blaser and Marisol de la Cadena, “The Uncommons: An Introduction,” Anthropologica 59 (2017): 186. 53. Deutsche, Evictions, 325. 54. Deutsche, Evictions, 273. 55. Deutsche, Evictions, 273. 56. For a discussion of the notion of “common subject,” see Silvia Federici, “Feminism and the Politics of the Commons,” in The Wealth of the Commons: A World beyond Market and State, ed. David Bollier and Silke Helfrich (Amherst, MA: Levellers Press, 2014), 228–229. 57. Catherine Grant and Dorothy Price, “Decolonizing Art History,” Art History 43, no. 1 (2020): 8–66. See in particular the answers to Grant and Price’s questionnaire by Griselda Pollock and James D’Emilio. 58. Claudio Lomnitz, “Final Reflections,” in The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920–1940, ed. Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 335. 59. Lomnitz, “Final Reflections,” 343. 60. Greeley, “Muralism and the State.” 61. Octavio Paz, El ogro filantrópico: Historia y política, 1971–1978 (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1979); Ignacio Sánchez Prado, Naciones intelectuales: Las fundaciones de la modernidad literaria mexicana (1917–1959) (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009), 66. 62. See Soledad Loaeza, El Partido Acción Nacional, la larga marcha, 1939–1994: Oposición leal y partido de protesta (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999). 63. Joy K. Langston, Democratization and Authoritarian Party Survival: Mexico’s PRI (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 63–88.

Agoraphilia  29

64. For a detailed list of murdered journalists in the country since 2000, see Artículo 19, “Periodistas asesinadas/os en México, en relación con su labor informativa,” https:// articulo19.org/periodistasasesinados/; accessed February 21, 2022. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) currently considers Mexico the world’s deadliest country for journalists. See Aljazeera, “Why Is Mexico Still the Most Dangerous Country for Journalists?,” January 25, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2022/1/25 /why-is-mexico-still-the-most-dangerous-country-for-journalists. 65. See Wil Pansters and Hector Castillo Berthier, “Mexico City,” in Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence and Contested Spaces in Latin America, ed. Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (London: Zed Books, 2007), 36–56; Andrew Lantz, “The Performativity of Violence: Abducting Agency in Mexico’s Drug War,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 25, no. 2 (2016): 253–269. 66. For a discussion of this understanding of the agora, proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis contra Hannah Arendt, see Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, Common: On Revolution in the 21st Century, trans. Matthew MacLellan (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 317. 67. Carlos Monsiváis, “Notas sobre la cultura mexicana en el siglo XX,” in Historia General de México, prepared by the Centro de Estudios Históricos (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2002), 1040. 68. A number of people, including two teachers, various football players, and a reporter, suffered life-changing injuries. 69. Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life, trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito, and Andrea Casson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004), 68. 70. Karen Cordero, “Politics of Enunciation and Affect in an Age of Corporeal Violence,” in this volume, 89. 71. “Colectivo A.M.,” in this volume, 110. 72. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 114. 73. Teatro Ojo, “Dossier D,” in this volume, 139. 74. See Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman, Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of a Forensic Aesthetics (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012); Eyal Weizman, “Introduction: Forensis,” in Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth, ed. Forensic Architecture (London: Sternberg Press, 2014), 9–32. 75. Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez and Sarah Abel, “Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism,” in this volume, 165. 76. Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Peter Wade, “Inflections of Anti-Racism in Latin America,” talk, CEDLA Lecture Series, online, April 9, 2021, https://www.cedla.nl/090421. 77. Muxe is a nonbinary gender identity present in Zapotec culture. I am using Avendaño’s preferred pronoun, as Ortega Domínguez and Abel discuss it. 78. Ortega Domínguez and Abel develop their understanding of “aesthetic regimes” on the basis of Jacques Rancière’s writings. See Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, trans. Steven Corcoran (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). 79. Aeromoto, “Dossier F,” in this volume, 191. 80. Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 70. 81. Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 71. 82. Bruno Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public,” in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA and London: ZKM, Center for Art and Media–MIT Press, 2005), 14. 83. Erica Segre, “Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda: The Poetics of Dust, Dissent, and Migration,” in this volume, 273.

30  Introduction

CHAPTER 1

New Muralisms after Muralism Natalia de la Rosa and Julio García Murillo

This text revisits the notion of “new muralism” as established in the 1970s, a period in which the itineraries of realism and public art—from their early expressions on public buildings to their escape from the walls—were artistically and theoretically reformulated. We seek to study the process through which muralism’s public role was reactivated, in various senses and through a variety of approaches, in a number of practices between 1970 and 1990. The Mexican artist Melquiades Herrera once said that there was a time when “the revolution dismounted its horse”;1 in this text we walk through the itineraries through which muralisms, in the plural, came down from the wall. These are the itineraries that some conceptual and experimental artists undertook during those decades as a form of criticism of the period’s ideological field. Many of these artists were born in the thirties and forties and stood against “la vieja bestia” (the old beast), that is, the modern pictorial tradition in Mexico.2 Over the years, a number of schools of thought with local agendas have employed different terms, from conceptualism to nonobjectualisms, as an entryway into these experimental practices. They attempted to reason through or against “the new” as a critical means of understanding artistic practice and 33

its relationship with the avant-garde. In this chapter, we wish to explore how, in the late seventies and early eighties, Mexican art and art criticism activated a series of disputes in favor of and against heterogeneous modalities of muralism, often from antagonistic positions. Taking into account artists from different generations, we discuss a series of critical approaches to muralism during a period of intense experimentation: David Alfaro Siqueiros and the creation of the Sala de Arte Público; José Luis Cuevas and other abstract painters who produced ephemeral murals; Felipe Ehrenberg and his proposal of portable self-made murals; and Melquiades Herrera’s conceptual and mass-media muralist exercises. As we discuss the work of these figures, we also review analytical constructions formulated by art critics and theorists such as Alberto Híjar, Ida Rodríguez Prampolini, and Juan Acha, who not only oversaw the emergence of committed and conceptualist practices during the 1970s and 1980s but also offered perspectives that subverted cultural hegemony by studying muralism “again.” When we refer to muralism in this text, we allude not only to an artistic current, a monumental format, or a visual movement but also to the process of producing an aesthetic theory linked to public artistic practice.3 Mexican muralism was a political-aesthetic movement led by artists, among whom the most visible were Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros—known as “the three greats” (los tres grandes). Despite most of the scholarly attention being focused on them, the movement was broad, intersectional, and diverse. Due to its proximity to the postrevolutionary state in terms of commissions and methods of production, it became an efficient ideological instrument, yet muralists also articulated political critiques close to socialism and communism. The movement can be periodized around three main eras: the Mexican Mural Renaissance (1920–1925), Plastic Integration (1940–1960), and,4 as we wish to suggest here, New Muralisms (from the 1970s onward). The term “new muralism” first appeared in the conclusion of an article by Juan Acha after the death of David Alfaro Siqueiros in 1974. It also surfaced in a poem written by Melquiades Herrera to commemorate the late “El Coronelazo” (Siqueiros’s nickname) and in various references throughout much of his work, including the video made for public television Uno por 5, 3 por diez (One for Five [Pesos], Three for Ten, 1992). Through the instances we study in this chapter, we contend that “new muralism” does not solely include monumental painting within institutional spaces. Rather, it represents an actualization of the meaning of public art, as well as its political reformulation under the new conditions of late-capitalist economies in Latin America.5 New muralism, in 34  New Muralisms

other words, reviewed, updated, reread, and subverted the mural’s pedagogical, political, and aesthetic system “after muralism.” Muralism: Between Pedagogy and the Museum Octavio Paz issued a judgment against muralism in 1950. Discussing Rufino Tamayo, he argued: “La ausencia de relación entre realidad y las visiones que pretenden expresarla da a buena parte de la pintura de Rivera y Siqueiros y a algunos otros un valor de inauténtico. Cuando su pintura predica, deja de ser lo que ellos quieren que sea: una respuesta orgánica de la realidad”6 (The nonexistent relationship between reality and the visions that seek to express it lies behind much of Rivera’s and Siqueiros’s and others’ work, producing in them a sense of inauthenticity. When their painting preaches, it ceases to be what they want it to be: an organic response to reality). Paz was attempting to negate muralism by reducing it to a type of painted literature in which Rivera was epic, Siqueiros dramatic, and Orozco tragic (although the third, with his anarchic strategies, came off best for Paz). With this narrative, Paz suggested a different artistic genealogy for Mexican art: far removed from “ideology,” isolated from politics, and appealing to the individual. He would later in the same text use the term “ruptura” (rupture) to describe this alternative genealogy.7 Yet if we revisit the history of mural painting’s own aesthetic/political program and open up the discussion of its national or “nationalist” space, we can draw a parallel line that extends beyond the official system of “state co-optation.” Certainly, at least in the case of Rivera and Siqueiros (and later Juan O’Gorman and José Chávez Morado), the work and writing affiliated with muralism helped constitute a broader study of “la realidad local” (local reality)—contrary to what Paz proposed. Indeed, the orthodoxy attributed to these Marxist painters may be refuted if analyzed at a remove from Pazian prejudice. For instance, if we review the direct connections between muralism and Mexico’s avant-garde revolutionary cultural program, we find that muralism was always linked to a more inclusive public project. This project bears no resemblance to the simplification often ascribed to it as “obra didáctica” (didactic work), devoid of narrative experimentation.8 As has been repeatedly remarked upon, muralism began when José Vasconcelos called on painters to join the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Ministry of Public Education) in 1920.9 What is rarely discussed, however, is muralism’s affiliation with the programs at the Universidades Populares (Popular Universities) during their early phase, from 1920 to 1924. These university programs were both Mexican (to which Vasconcelos contributed as part of the postrevolutionary cultural agenda)10 and Peruvian (spearheaded by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre and New Muralisms after Muralism   35

in which José Carlos Mariátegui took part). These transnational connections help us measure and determine the role of muralism in the establishment of aesthetic theory and practice in Latin America. They allow us, too, to explore muralism’s radical pedagogical dimension as a means of activating a direct relationship between art and society. Conceptualizations of public art, as evidenced by Meyer Schapiro’s texts from the 1930s, defined it as an ideal sphere having a direct impact on society.11 That is, as was true in the Mexican context (and later in the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration [WPA] program), social art needed to do more than decorate public offices with labor allegories. It had to reach the worker’s own consciousness, affecting the conditions of his or her participation in the class struggle, by means of the circulation of images, posters, and other forms of propaganda in factories, schools, unions, and hospitals. Siqueiros and Rivera believed in a notion of public art dedicated to generating a new kind of society. Through the study of sociohistorical reality, both artists had sought to create spaces devoted to reorganizing the means of capitalist production and accumulation. In the process, they also reacted against the hegemonic cultural policies of the state. Rivera, for instance, stressed the relationship between artistic production and handicrafts. Close to Latin American Marxist theorists like José Carlos Mariátegui, Siqueiros placed great significance on the region’s historical and cultural reality: a rural and semi-industrial land with Indigenous and farming populations equipped for sustaining revolutionary activity. Siqueiros conceived of a workshop/school devoted to collective work. He also fostered theoretical discussion and material and visual experimentation with muralism in its “fourth stage”12—incorporating other subworkshops on film, graphic art, publishing, chemistry, and mathematics, like those he organized simultaneously at La Tallera in Cuernavaca. Through these creative and political processes, Siqueiros sought the transformation of the hemisphere’s socioeconomic reality. The museum—a characteristic apparatus of modernity that can stir the sensibilities of viewer-citizens13—was another disputed space for public art. For this reason, Rivera’s and Siqueiros’s late utopian models, conceived in the 1950s and 1970s, respectively, proposed a concept of the museum in which pedagogical practice was an alternative for attaining the social dimension of art. Rather than viewing the museum as a space devoted to “educating” the public in an erudite sense, they saw society as a constitutive element of the art that would be produced in said space. In this way, they conceived of this art as a model for an ideal society from a Sorelian perspective (with Rivera emphasizing the importance of craftsmen and Siqueiros of the proletariat).14 This process is apparent in the projects designed for Museo Anahuacalli (ca. 36  New Muralisms

1940–1964), proposed by Rivera, and in the Sala de Arte Público (Hall of Public Art, 1969), inaugurated by Siqueiros in his own home. Museo Anahuacalli (a “city of the arts” to be created by a future community) was envisioned as a place dedicated to reactivating practices of artisanal production and precapitalist social organization.15 Rivera planned it around a modern pyramid, offering workshops that would establish direct forms of contact with the primitive art of the Americas (as Rivera called it), “cuya fuerza vital única transforma estéticamente la apreciación de la realidad entera”16 (the singular life force of which aesthetically transforms the perception of reality as a whole). Meanwhile, the Sala de Arte Público was founded in 1969 as a space for the study of the relationships between production, composition, geometry, and the possibilities of public art, applying, in a sort of laboratory for social transformation, the dynamics of the workshop and the factory. This space also functioned as a public platform for Siqueiros’s legal defense after the painter, charged with the crime of “disolución social” (social dissolution), was imprisoned in Lecumberri in 1960. One of the names Siqueiros considered for it after it opened was the Museo de la Composición del Muralismo (Museum of the Composition of Muralism); its project was to promote pictorial, compositional, and architectural techniques leading to emancipatory social integration. The deaths of these two artists in 1957 (Rivera) and 1974 (Siqueiros) brought to a close an era based on their social understanding of public art and marked the shift toward the institutionalization of this practice.17 The Tabloid-Sized Mural and the Aesthetic Dimension During the 1960s, criticism against muralism came from figures as heterogeneous as Paz, Cuevas, Carlos Monsiváis, Carlos Fuentes, Juan García Ponce, and Luis Guillermo Piazza, among many others. For these thinkers, respectively, “la ideología de esta pintura sólo es una máscara”18 (the ideology of this form of painting is merely a mask), and “el dogmatismo de los pintores ‘revolucionarios’ entrañaba una inaceptable sujeción del arte a un ‘realismo’ que nunca se ha mostrado muy respetuoso de la realidad”19 (the dogmatism of “revolutionary” painters entailed art’s unacceptable subjection to a “realism” that has never treated reality with much respect). Further, in narrative form, Cuevas evoked the parable of “Juan,” a painter who, since he was “un escuincle de quince años” (a youngster of fifteen), absorbs and inserts himself into the ethos of Mexican art until he ends up “acomodado y protegido dentro de una cortina que no llamaremos de humo, sino de nopal” (settled and protected behind a curtain we won’t describe as made of smoke, but rather of cacti). There, “Juan recibe, además, algunas recompensas extras a sus ventas a los turistas y a sus murales New Muralisms after Muralism   37

encargados por el Estado”20 (Juan receives, moreover, various rewards above and beyond his sales to tourists and his state-commissioned murals). Such caricatures and criticisms signaled an artistic field engaged in discursive and power conflicts, in which the US postwar political, economic, and diplomatic tactics in Latin America played a significant role, such as in the reinvention of the young artist and the cultural intervention of the Mexican art field.21 These interventionist strategies—including the establishment of the Esso Salon of Painting—are also designated by expressions such as the “Americanization of the world,” by the Mexican-Ecuadorian philosopher Bolívar Echeverría, and reached a critical point between May and October 1968.22 A shift ensued then whereby the modernizing hopes that had focused on the young individual (the social construct of the Mexican Revolution) were thrown into crisis. Yet in the 1970s, a number of thinkers began to identify a transformation in ongoing muralist practices, which in their view revealed significant social and political potential. These thinkers include Híjar, Rodríguez Prampolini, Acha, and Raquel Tibol. Their writings interweave poststructuralist and critical theory, Marxism, and an effort to combine art historiography with experimental pedagogies in museum spaces.23 Híjar has studied the subject of aesthetic praxis in muralism.24 In his book La praxis estética: Dimensión estética libertaria, he rearticulates his approach and revisits muralism’s change of direction in the 1970s. There, he returns to a text he wrote in 2008 about “los muralismos” (muralisms), deliberately expressed in the plural. For Híjar, the differences between “muralisms” are evident if we examine Ehrenberg’s project of 1976–1977, Archivo nuevo mural mexicano tamaño doble carta (New Mexican Tabloid-Size Mural Archive). The project was signed by the Centro Regional de Ejercicios Culturales (Regional Center for Cultural Exercises) in Xico, Veracruz, where the author settled after returning from England. In Xico, Ehrenberg explored certain muralism- and public art–related approaches, one example being his project of making modestly priced mural prototypes. These include a sketch published by the magazine Plural in 1977: “un prototipo a color donde la cabeza decapitada de Siqueiros ocupa el primer plano derecho, la cabeza de ‘El Santo,’ figura de la lucha libre, en el centro, Juan Diego con su ayate extendido a la izquierda y en el extremo la cabeza de Pancho Villa clavada en un soporte”25 (a color prototype in which the decapitated head of Siqueiros occupies the right foreground; the head of “El Santo,” a lucha libre star, in the middle; Juan Diego with his ayate cloth spread out on the left; and the head of Pancho Villa, impaled on a spear, at the far end). An element missing from Híjar’s description is the landscape displaying Siqueiros’s felled monolithic head (formally similar to the classic fallen idol in 38  New Muralisms

FIGURE 1.1. Felipe Ehrenberg, Archivo nuevo mural mexicano tamaño doble carta (New Mexican Tabloid-Size Mural Archive), sketch printed in “El nuevo mural mexicano es a doble carta,” Plural, no. 72 (1977). Courtesy of Lourdes Hernández.

Cuauhtémoc contra el mito [Cuauhtemoc against the Myth, 1944–1964]), Juan Diego prostrated before “El Santo,” and Villa’s impaled head. The prototype is, then, a caricature of a post-Cubist Mexican countryside superimposed onto a modern building—one that is, as may be deduced from a series of geometric brushstrokes and multicolored planes above Siqueiros’s head, a likely allusion to the Polyforum Siqueiros. For Ehrenberg, the manner in which these cultural projects were distributed resembled a street vendor’s sales pitch: ¡¡Una pintura mural por sólo 3 mil pesos!! El Centro Regional de Ejercicios Culturales (CREC) con sede en Xico, Veracruz; ofrece al público una interesante selección de prototipos depositados en el Archivo Nuevo Mural Mexicano Tamaño Doble Carta. Aproveche los talentos de su región.

New Muralisms after Muralism   39

Cada prototipo está planeado de tal forma que puede ser realizado por el rotulista de su preferencia.26 (A mural painting for only three thousand pesos! The Regional Center for Cultural Exercises [CREC], located in Xico, Veracruz, offers the public an interesting selection of prototypes deposited in the New Mexican Tabloid-Size Mural Archive. Make the most of these regional talents. Each prototype is planned out in such a way that it can be created by the street-sign painter of your choice.) The ad and prototype image launched a series of collective practices that ran parallel to the official activities of the Fourth Festival Cervantino in 1977. Ehrenberg and two sign painters made a set of banners to be exhibited in the bus station near the main city market and in the Parque del Minero (Miners’ Park) in the city of Guanajuato. The banners addressed the “encuentro con ‘el público local y accidental’ distinto al asiduo de los actos culturales”27 (encounter with the “local and accidental public,” which is different from the typical audience at cultural events). Various other artists would constantly reiterate this vernacular street-painting practice during the 1970s, including Gelsen Gas.28 With these actions, Híjar explains, Ehrenberg gave continuity to other strategies spearheaded by the CREC in Xico, Veracruz. In turn, he set a precedent for the community mural workshops organized by the Taller de Comunicación Haltos Ornos (H20), which he also founded. These workshops were held in the 1980s across Mexico and were officially supported by the ISSSTE (Mexican Civil Service Social Security and Services Institute).29 In Archivo nuevo mural mexicano tamaño doble carta, Híjar singles out a decisive aspect that illuminates its common ground with muralism. While Ehrenberg criticized the bureaucratization of muralism, he also emphasized the political possibilities of wall painting. In Híjar’s view, Ehrenberg’s ad illustrates the fact that there was indeed an erosion of official iconography and a loss of “fervor revolucionario” (revolutionary fervor) caused by the obliteration of muralism’s political effectiveness as the state repeatedly appropriated its images.30 Nonetheless, the critic also stresses the myriad possibilities of muralism by adding: “el lenguaje de los muros no ha muerto”31 (the language of walls has not died). For Híjar, another alternative (also developed in Xico by Ehrenberg) was the use of strategies drawn from communication theory and the consumer economy to create a new model for mural work: “a manera de promoción comercial concluida con el slogan ‘dele a su comunidad la oportunidad de poseer un mural mexicano a muy bajo costo’” (a means of commercial

40  New Muralisms

promotion culminating in the slogan “give your community the chance to own a Mexican mural at a very low cost”). Ehrenberg would compare his initiative to his personal experience with Chicano murals. The latter are anonymous, collective, produced using “supradesarrollada” (highly developed) technology, iconographically fresh, created by embracing street-based visual communication despite its prohibition by the authorities. Moreover, they are located in social centers, not commissioned, and designed in response to the current moment using present-day symbols. By contrast, Ehrenberg saw Mexican murals as individual, produced by artisanal and Renaissance-like teams, dependent on state funding, limited to walls, commissioned, and purist in both form and content. This Manichaean comparison operates rhetorically with the goal of returning to the problem of art and its ability to offer answers to practices that appealed to a “public” function. The Chicano mural, viewed together with the Mexican mural, considering its social and semiotic function, responds to the latter with symbols and attitudes of its time. Through this comparison, Ehrenberg identified a series of similar practices employed both by Chicano murals and by the politically committed pop-conceptualist exercises that included the artist collectives of the 1970s, known as “los Grupos” (the Groups). Yet the attention to mural production in the southwestern United States suggested, above all, a strategy that was repeated on both sides of the border. The American art historian and activist Shifra Goldman, who visited Siqueiros in 1972 at the Tallera in Cuernavaca, highlighted Mexican muralism’s galvanizing influence on and legacy in Chicano art. To Goldman, the mural does not merely signify or represent; it also constructs or activates a real and symbolic territory occupied by a community.32 Yet, according to her, Mexican muralism does not offer a precedent as such to Chicano art.33 Rather, it constitutes the operation of a reciprocal relationship between two countries, rearticulated in Latin Americanist and indigenist narratives in which the avant-garde, politics, and the myth of Aztlán come together.34 Grupo Proceso Pentágono, a collective cofounded by Ehrenberg in 1976, held one of Mexico City’s first exhibitions of Chicano graphic art in its own production space. Harry Gamboa Jr.,35 cofounder of the Asco collective,36 took part in this exhibition: Chicanos en el Pentágono (Chicanos in the Pentagon). Together, they also organized the exhibition Muros frente a muros (Walls Facing Walls) at the Casa de Cultura de Morelia, where Ehrenberg would interview Juan O’Gorman.37 The context of “international solidarity” also led to binational collaborations, such as Grupo 65 (later Grupo Mira) with their

New Muralisms after Muralism   41

1971 mural Los indocumentados (The Undocumented),38 which used political/ formal montage and a mixture of posters and solarized abstraction. Rodríguez Prampolini also reviewed Archivo nuevo mural mexicano tamaño doble carta but from a “neo-Marxist” perspective.39 In an article in Plural, the historian and art critic questions the mechanisms and results obtained by Ehrenberg’s experience in Guanajuato. She also raises essential questions: the idea of the reproducible mural and the erasure of individual authorship were valid, but she felt that Ehrenberg’s strategy, more than revitalizing the practices of muralism (particularly those associated with social and political struggle), merely transferred commercial language onto art. She contended that Siqueiros had embodied the organic intellectual as described by Antonio Gramsci and added that amid the crisis of the time, an artist must confront the ensuing challenges with new actions. (In this period, Rodríguez Prampolini herself began a process of pedagogical/community action in Veracruz and participated in the documentary Tlayacapan in 1976.)40 Híjar brings to light another perspective emerging from this debate, one put forth by the Canadian Mexican muralist Arnold Belkin. Belkin had no interest in linking mural art with commercial aspirations or cosmetic values.41 Such a position resembles the way in which “urban art” is used today in processes of gentrification: geometrical designs painted on walls to make the city “beautiful.” Instead, Belkin sought to transform the mural into a ready-made produced by the mechanisms of industrial societies, thus attending to the needs of consumption. Both Rodríguez Prampolini’s and Belkin’s interpretations focused on a notion of direct action that became current during the 1970s. They also referred to public art practices being articulated across the world. In correspondence with, or in opposition to, the cases cited by Ehrenberg, including his own initiative, such points of reference offered a production repertoire within a field of artistic internationalism.42 Híjar would, in turn, suggest that these operations, which criticized the foundations of muralism, opened up the possibility of dethroning it as a canonical concept and turning it into a plurality of “muralisms.” This overturning of the concept diversifies the idea of public art and emphasizes its aesthetic activation as a toolbox for civil political organization, demonstration tactics, and artistic occupation of the streets. As Ehrenberg put it, “El poderoso lenguaje del mural, si bien no el muralismo mismo, puede servir como transmisor de los lenguajes que requiere el momento”43 (the powerful language of the mural, if not muralism itself, can serve as a vector for the languages that the present demands).

42  New Muralisms

Mass(-Media) Muralism In 1974, the Peruvian Mexican critic Juan Acha, who researched and theorized on Mexican and Latin American art, wrote the text “El muralismo en el proceso revolucionario de América Latina” (“Muralism in Latin America’s Revolutionary Process”) for the cultural supplement Diorama de la cultura.44 In this text, Acha identifies something decisive in the Siqueiran project: muralism hadn’t ended, it was still embryonic, still something about to happen (in revolutionary terms). The “new muralist” space of possibility—contrary to what Paz, Cuevas, and the circle of antimuralist intellectuals and artists asserted, arguing that mural art had been co-opted—was to become a space, created by the old guard, to be combatted again: “no desde posiciones anteriores, sino de posiciones adelantadas”45 (not using old positions, but new or avant-garde ones). Moreover, in Acha’s view, Siqueiros’s proposal had never been entirely “nationalist.” Rather, it always maintained a “Latin Americanist” tone, which Acha saw as part of a genealogy of regional Marxism.46 Acha furthermore explores the link between the muralism of Siqueiros and conceptual art. He states, in reference to the region’s political reality: “Hoy muchos artistas jóvenes politizan su obra e incursionan en el arte conceptual. Ellos de alguna manera continúan la estética de Siqueiros”47 (Today, many young artists politicize their work and venture into conceptual art. In some way, they are continuing the Siqueiran aesthetic). In Achian terms, Siqueiros’s “baroque” paintings set out to develop a dialectical aesthetic project that, in the production and organization of his work, led to an analysis of social and economic reality and to an application of theory as practice. Acha saw this as the most relevant characterization of the painter’s work, the one that would prompt the label “new art” under a sort of plural idea of realism, “a imagen y semejanza de los pueblos latinoamericanos” (in the image and likeness of Latin American peoples).48 Combining a materialist analysis with studies of technology in art, Acha explains that Siqueiros’s Marxist contribution offers a reading of the means of production and organization of the labor forces in capitalism. The artist illustrated this interpretation by spotlighting the relationship between human and machine, counterbalanced by collective creation. Nevertheless, despite Siqueiros’s elaborations on painting and cinema with concepts such as “mural o montaje cinemático” (cinematic mural or montage), the muralist did not consider—according to Acha’s interpretation—the possibilities raised by film and television as new media in a mass-media or spectacle society; this was, then, a task for the youth. Pursuing this logic further, we must highlight the work of the Taller de Arte

New Muralisms after Muralism   43

e Ideología (Workshop on Art and Ideology; TAI), an artistic group founded by Híjar as a continuation of the Curso Vivo de Arte (Living Art Course) at the UNAM’s Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Department of Philosophy and Literature). A standout example of their work, which was based on a dialogue with Argentina’s Centro de Arte y Comunicación (Center for Art and Communication; CAYC) and dedicated to the sociological art movement spearheaded by Hervé Fischer, Fred Forest, and Jean-Paul Thenot, took place as part of the 1977 exhibition organized by CAYC at the Fundación Joan Miró (Joan Miró Foundation) in Barcelona. On this occasion, the TAI presented a series of works that exhibited their own sociological/artistic methods. One of them was a heliographic print with a chart comprising three rows and three columns: nine squares with different visual motifs from a conceptual and sequential scheme—almost in a comic-like style. The first three images, distributed in the first row, are a catalogue of abstract expressionism strokes: drippings, stains, and erasures; in the second row, the strokes metamorphose, sequentially, into a map of the United States; in the third and last row, the US map transforms itself into two distorted bottles and, finally, a Coca-Cola. The title, Manifiesto expresionista (Expressionist Manifesto), and the juxtaposition of stencil lettering over the vignettes that reads “Sobre expresionismo psicologismo” (On expressionist psychologism), poses a twisted reading of the Rorschach test as a key for ideologically interpreting the painting movement in which abstract expressionism and Coca-Cola carry the same weight as cultural and material exports.49 The names Lukács, Marcuse, Cockcroft, Híjar, and Siqueiros are written in pencil. In this way, Siqueiros’s Lukacsian physiological aesthetics was brought together by the TAI. From 1966 onward, in a “carta teórica” (theoretical letter) that Híjar dedicated to Siqueiros, he suggests that his work be seen as seeking to revisit questions that Siqueiros had left open and, in this sense, pursuing the objectives of public art. Ephemeral Inversions: Authorities in Conflict Artistic productions linking muralism with mass media had their precedent in projects produced a decade earlier by the artists of the so-called Ruptura generation, who endorsed antithetical ideological views. That is, during the sixties, a group of artists often identified with the abstract painting movement in Mexico articulated a series of experimental approaches to muralism through an inversion of its temporal character in two directions: the first in terms of a pop spectacle against an author (Siqueiros), and the second in terms of a contingent series of events against authoritarian policies (the repression of

44  New Muralisms

FIGURE 1.2. Taller de Arte e Ideología, Manifiesto expresionista (Expressionist Manifesto), 1977, heliographic printing and stencil, Arkheia, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), UNAM. Courtesy of Arkheia and Alberto Híjar.

the student movement). Both approaches were known as “murales efímeros” (ephemeral murals). The first of these inversions is the painting produced by José Luis Cuevas on a “billboard atop a building in the Zona Rosa, located at the junction of Londres and Génova Streets”50 in 1967. It consisted of a communication campaign in radio, television, and magazines headed by the journalist Jacobo Zabludovsky that ended with the unveiling of a mural in the chic neighborhood on June 8. The ad, painted by a sign painter from sketches by Cuevas, contained three juxtaposed images, all of them traced in a sort of expressionist aesthetic—which contrasted with the billboard’s pop gesture: a big signature of the author “Cuevas” alongside a self-portrait as a soccer player, and two more images. With this act of (self-)publicity, Cuevas designed a plot against the only modernist mural painter alive: “Since Siqueiros has said that his work would resist the passage of time, I think that my mural should be called ‘ephemeral.’ It will only exist for a month, at which point it will be destroyed. Isn’t it an act of modesty in contrast to Siqueiros’s pride?”51 The second of these ephemeral inversions of muralism is the collective pictorial installation carried out in a student festival organized by the Comité de Huelga (Strike Committee) of the 1968 Student Movement in Ciudad Universitaria, in front of President Miguel Alemán’s vandalized statue and between the National Library and the administration building. The artists José Luis Cuevas, Adolfo Mexiac, Benito Messeguer, Guillermo Meza, Manuel Felguérez, Gustavo Arias Murueta, Carlos Olachea, Ricardo Rocha, and Francisco Icaza participated in the creation of an ephemeral mural, painted as a form of protest against state repression, on the corrugated sheet metal covering the partially destroyed statue of Miguel Alemán. This mural was produced as part of the artists’ support of the student movement. The process was filmed by the young director Raul Kampfer, and the final film was edited several years later; the edition would be, probably, the first cinematic memorial of the 1968 student massacre. Both of these ephemeral mural pieces tend toward the cinematic format, not just by way of their respective digital and film documentation but also by themselves becoming acts of historical montage. While these activations of different versions of ephemeral murals were taking place, Fernando Gamboa, an authority in the field of Mexican museology, defined a new international version of muralism in the context of the 1970 Osaka World Expo.52 Gamboa explored through this exhibition a dialogue between lyrical, geometric, and neofigurative painters such as Lilia Carrillo, Manuel Felguérez, Fernando García Ponce, Antonio Peyrí, Brian Nissen, Roger von Gunten, Arnaldo Coen, Francisco Corzas, Francisco Icaza, and Vlady. Gamboa named 46  New Muralisms

this commission for monumental paintings “nuevo muralismo.” Here, the big canvas represented a complementary attempt to create a political mural after the 1968 events, whereas the ephemeral exercises demonstrated that materiality and format should not be seen as fixed within the practice of muralism. Making a shift from his previous works, Ehrenberg produced for the third Salón Independiente (Independent Exhibition) Obra secretamente titulada Arriba y adelante . . . y si no pues también (Work Secretly Titled Up and Forward . . . and If Not Well That Too, 1970). Made during Ehrenberg’s exile in Great Britain, this piece took up an intensely publicized slogan of former president Luis Echeverría’s electoral campaign. Using the British and Mexican postal systems, Ehrenberg would send a fragmented image in dozens of postcards, to be subsequently reassembled at the University Museum of Science and Art (MUCA). Híjar, who was the coordinator of the same museum’s Curso Vivo de Arte (Live Art Course) at the time, would receive the pieces in Mexico and mount the work.53 Another relevant yet seldom discussed work is Arnaldo Coen’s 1973 collaboration with the Spanish anthropologist Santiago Genovés on the design of a monumental sail for the Acali raft. This work, marked by the hard-edged eroticism of Venus’s birth, involved a large-scale painting with the clear purpose of sailing a raft across the Atlantic with a crew of eleven persons for one hundred days. This was described by its creator, Genovés, as an “expedition to violence,” a sociological experiment in gender roles, power, and society. It was misunderstood by the press, and probably by Genovés himself, as a sort of artistic/social orgy from the Canary Islands to Cozumel.54 The use of the media and transport platforms as the basis for production, the notion of murals made for television, the formal references shifting between high-contrast and proto-figurative hard-edge, also presupposed the appropriation of a sociological turn in artistic practice—the aesthetic dimension that Híjar had sought from Hervé Fischer’s perspective. This sociological shift, which involved the public condemnation and critique of economic and cultural dependence, would also appear in the concepts formulated by Acha in the same period. When Acha asserted that film and television were the experimental spaces for a new public art associated with muralism, he was thinking of “non-objectualisms.” For him, the mass information media (using audiovisual entertainment, videotape, and performance) represented a shift in what was “public” about art and resituated functions of muralism by way of its pluralization, toward “muralisms.” We identify a conceptual affinity between Acha’s “non-objectualisms” and Híjar’s “muralisms.” For the former, videotape—and, later, the possibility of learning to make television—would become an essential pedagogical function for “ser sensible”55 (being sensitive), beyond learning to New Muralisms after Muralism   47

make art in a traditional sense. It is hardly accidental that the concept of public art, which was undergoing a global spread of media-related discourses, also evolved toward increasingly malleable and social formats. Among them were the “fayuquera” variants,56 introduced by the visual artist and teacher Melquiades Herrera and emerging into an underexplored arena. Herrera—artist, professor, and amateur mathematician—was a key member of the metropolitan Los Grupos of the 1970s. His individual work, produced during the 1980s and ’90s, transmutes the configuration of conceptualism as generally established by the idea of dematerialization into an understanding of the disruptive, critical nature of commodities within the specific theoretical framework of non-objectualisms—with their neomuralist undertones.57 The Revolution Dismounted the Horse (and So Did Muralism) In the February issue of the magazine Columnas, where Melquiades Herrera was a regular contributor, he published a poem he wrote on January 6, 1974, the day Siqueiros died. It reads: SIQUEIROS El hombre de volcánicos rasgos . . . negro, negro, que no olvidamos . . . ¡”No hay esperanzas de salvarlo”!58 (SIQUEIROS The man of volcanic features . . . black, black, we won’t forget . . . “There is no hope of saving him!”) Bemoaning the loss of Siqueiros, Pablo Picasso, and Pablo Neruda, the poem’s tone is nearly as epic and mawkish as a popular songbook. In the form of a requiem, it marks a conceptual continuity with the modern pictorial tradition based on revolutionary gestures in pigments, lines, and words—even if the

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muralist, Siqueiros, remains “black, black, black” amid the oblivion of other deaths (some in 1968, about which Herrera would also write). The references to actors and works of classical Mexican muralism, “el de los tres grandes” (that of the three greats), are a constant presence in Herrera’s work. They complexify Herrera’s public critique of aesthetics, art history, and popular culture using playful, pedagogical, and experimental elements. His shift from and revision of the muralist canon rearticulates and destabilizes Ehrenberg’s notion of “new muralism,” as well as Híjar’s “muralisms.” It reconfigures the act of political engagement by addressing a specific context: the Mexico City of the 1980s and 1990s. After the dissolution of the artists collective No-Grupo (Non-Group), Herrera’s practice focused on a long research process that combined his work as a university professor in art and design; his obsession with mathematical and geometric problems; the constant exercise and critique of “performance”; and his compulsive collecting of objects, toys, magic tricks, and Coca-Cola bottles and their variations. Almost all of the above were produced in Asia and bought in Mexican flea and street markets in the 1980s and 1990s; for Herrera, “después de México, todo es Taiwán” (after Mexico, everything is Taiwan). This poetic provocation was elaborated by the artist in a moment of global transformation of the economy and in the aftermath of the coming into effect of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed asymmetrically between Mexico, the United States, and Canada, and which came into force in 1994.59 According to Amy Sara Carroll, NAFTA was designed “to sell a ‘capital fiction’ of continental free trade and . . . to promote a sutured Mexican-US economy.”60 Yet for Melquiades Herrera, to propose a simultaneous “Taiwanization” of the world—alluding directly to the transformation of the Far East into a global factory of cheap commodities—implied highlighting a specific difference: the Mexican appropriation of the free-circulating commodity with little to no use value into a field of discourse and practice. Herrera’s political activity as an active member of the Communist Party meant that he employed both educational and comic strategies in his work, often impersonating the figures of the street vendor and the court’s scientist (científico de la corte). His commitment to performance, as well as his television appearances, articulates aspects of what we describe as critical, entropic, and utopian “muralisms.” However, the mythical textbook muralism also remained a key object of reflection in his artistic output. In a series called “Botana Cultural: Sátira” (“Cultural Snacks: Satire”), Herrera stages a dispute between the muralists and the avant-garde literary group Los Contemporáneos during the 1920s through wordplay accompanied

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by iconography from the US cultural and sports industries of the 1990s. Specifically, he develops a conditional sentence in which antecedent and consequent are illustrated by the collection of Mexican art-related tales in a verbal/iconic strategy: for example, “Si Diego Rivera es buey . . . Salvador Novo es Pluto”61 (If Diego Rivera is a bull . . . Salvador Novo is Pluto). In Spanish, the two animal references alluded to specific insults: buey implied being called dumb (güey) and Pluto, faggot (puto). The conditional phrase, typical of Mexican macho homoeroticism, updates an ideological tension between Rivera and Novo. The specific reference is the intellectual tension, the “dimes y diretes” (bickering), between the two. While Rivera mockingly portrays Novo as a donkey in the Palacio Nacional (National Palace) and openly attacks him for his homosexuality, Novo celebrates “la situación ‘cornuda’ del pintor luego del enlace entre Lupe Marín (previo abandono de Diego) y el escritor Jorge Cuesta”62 (the painter’s cuckolded state after the relationship between Lupe Marín [before Diego left her] and the writer Jorge Cuesta) in his poem “La Diegada.”63 Below the first part of the conditional phrase, Herrera adds the drawing of a bull—a childish trace of the Chicago Bulls logo, an omnipresent commodity in the 1990s, included in Herrera’s collection of personal objects. In the next phrase, he displays the smiling face of Pluto, Mickey Mouse’s planetary dog. In this case, instead of drawing them directly by hand, the lines are traced from an illustration book or a Disney advertisement, a common practice in He­rrera’s work. The tension between Rivera and Novo, opposites in their aesthetic and political postures, is mediated by a homoeroticization of corporate images from the cultural and athletics industries. But the strategy of portraying Novo via Walt Disney resonates as a conceptualist tactic while also echoing through He­­ rrera’s large collection of erotic/comic objects: “Pluto” will also be understood colloquially as puto, a violent and degrading term for gay or queer people.64 Rivera would reappear in a series of works that directly corroborate the reference to and rerouting of art’s public role through television, as Acha would discuss by way of Marshall McLuhan’s mass media and communication theory and studies in psychology and semiotics.65 At the end of the video Venta de peines (Combs for Sale; TvUNAM, 1991), directed by the filmmaker Jorge Prior, Herrera simulates a street vendor’s tone of voice to sell various social, affective, and historical situations, all associated with the characteristics of many different combs that appear on a stage covered with mannequin busts. Herrera says: In the newspaper Excélsior, the painter José Luis Cuevas describes how, at a lecture attended by some of his enemies, he was able to impress them by showing them his gun (he pulls open the left lapel of his jacket,

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revealing a comb), which was actually none other than his comb . . . but on this occasion, I’ve come to show you this lighter (he extracts it from his briefcase and lights a cigarette), which is easily transformed if we move it this way and place it in this position . . . (he shifts a mechanism of the lighter and positions it as if it were a gun, looks straight at the camera, and raises his voice). In Mexico, there are only three great men: Tubby Soto, Tubby Diego Rivera, and Tubby Melquiades Herrera . . . which is why I’ve come here very well-armed today . . . (with his earlier street-vendor air, he takes out an enormous comb and tosses it onto the table).66 The legendary pot-bellied trio of art and the carpa—a term that designates popular theater—would foreshadow a critical genealogy. In fact, the actor Roberto “El Panzón” Soto played Rivera in the play El último fresco (The last fresco), a production directed by Carlos M. Ortega and Francisco Benítez in 1934, with music by Federico Ruiz, at the Teatro Lírico in Mexico City.67 He­­rrera, instead of positioning himself on a continuous line with Cuevas and other artists of his generation, inserted himself into the cinematographic and muralist traditions; his “panza” (belly) served as a code for popular motifs (and gastronomic pleasures). Finally, we come to the video Uno por 5, 3 por diez (One for Five, Three for Ten, 1992), produced by the public television channel from the National University, TV UNAM, in collaboration with the filmmaker Jorge Prior. In the guise of a street seller/magician/thaumaturge, Herrera activates a hallucinatory initiation ceremony in the capital city through the street sale of kaleidoscopes. Offering them among the chaotic lanes of the metropolis to a woman in a truck at a red light, she raises a kaleidoscope to her right eye and a cut and transition occurs. In her eye/lens, a subjective camera, sequences of kaleidoscopic shots appear: geometric patterns are juxtaposed with shots of Herrera in the formal attire of an urban bureaucrat. These images are accompanied by an auditory cacophony, mixing moans with the constant repetition of the price of a kaleidoscope, against a backdrop of blaring car horns: “One times five, three times ten.” This exercise in popular optics triggers the transition into hallucination, into the strangeness that suggests the corruption of virtue or the city’s own postrevolutionary deceit: “Las ciudades han sido siempre los lugares idóneos para probar fortuna, y la Ciudad de México no ha sido la excepción. En solamente el tiempo de una sola década, la ciudad pasó rápidamente de una situación rural a una citadina. . . . El Distrito Federal se ha convertido en la más monstruosa mancha urbana que ha conocido la historia de la humanidad. . . . La revolución se bajó del caballo” (Cities have always been the perfect places for trying your

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FIGURE 1.3. Melquiades Herrera, Uno por 5, 3 por diez (One for Five, Three for Ten), 1992. Video still, TV-UNAM. Directed by Jorge Prior. Courtesy of Jorge Prior.

luck, and Mexico City is no exception. Over the course of a single decade, the city swiftly evolved from a rural environment into an urban one. . . . The Federal District has become the most monstrous urban area that humanity has ever known. . . . The revolution dismounted its horse). These phrases are uttered over scenes of constant optic motion and juxtaposed with contemporary urban sounds. They present a comparative study of the city’s merolicos—a popular/ urban lyrical tradition of “town criers”—almost as if to stress the difference between the countryside and the metropolis. From a technical standpoint, the need for a specific device to project optical distortions before the camera forced Herrera and Prior to build an enormous kaleidoscope for the camera lens—and, therefore, to project an ideological transformation through a visual delirium. The effect wasn’t far from the Riveran conception of la chose, a type of optical gelatin filter that enabled alternative visions to Euclidean geometry.68 Muralisms in plural, or those conceptual explorations of the 1970s, were therefore transformed in Herrera’s work in the 1990s: they moved into a cultural dimension that overflowed beyond the limited field of contemporary art. In so doing, they paid formal, thematic, and social attention to marginalized territories within the hegemonic visual register of Mexico City. For Herrera, the use of the word plástico alluded to the “Artes Plásticas”—the disciplinary description of the visual arts in Mexican art schools and institutions—as well as to the raw materiality of the postmodern industrial world of plastic crafts, such as those made in Taiwan. The plasticidad (plasticity) constituted a peculiar and

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paradoxical way to experience the world. From this delusional and economical perspective, the Mexican Revolution (and its supposed rupture) dismounted the horse. Coda: Between Poison and the Beast Híjar’s and Rodríguez Prampolini’s political/aesthetic projects, the tensions set in motion by Ehrenberg and his Archivo nuevo mural mexicano tamaño doble carta, Acha’s theoretical conceptions of non-objectualisms, and Melquiades Herrera’s narrative and television-based exercises allow us to suggest a hypothesis. Perhaps the specific difference between “Mexican conceptualisms” (an arbitrary and exoticizing name for the local artistic phenomenon) and their hemispheric context lies in their constant return to muralism or muralisms and to their deferred repetition of them. In other words, what characterizes local practices of dematerialization is their dialogue with muralism and how they insisted on muralisms’ public function while leaving the wall aside. Luis Camnitzer’s thesis, which presents hemispheric specificities on the basis of a synchronic global perspective, rings hollow in the local context, particularly when he expresses the idea that Mexican conceptualism’s singularity consists in a persistent collectivity.69 In the face of this construct, based on the avalanching generalization of a collective approach to the political in 1970s Mexican art, the artistic exercises we discuss here can contribute to an alternative understanding of this period. While recent histories often follow the wave proposed by Octavio Paz, asserting that muralism has been left behind and ultimately surpassed, the practices of the 1960s and 1970s we analyze suggest an alternative reading: muralisms were not something to overcome but something from which to constantly dismount. “The revolution dismounted its horse,” as Melquiades Herrera said, and new muralisms came down from the wall. Notes This chapter was translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers. 1. Voiced by Melquiades Herrera as part of the video-performance Uno por 5, 3 por diez (Tv­UNAM, 1992). Herrera is quoting here the famous and corrupt journalist Carlos Denegri, who pointed out a fundamental transformation since the 1940s in Mexico’s postrevolutionary program, from rural reform to urban modernization: “The revolution dismounted its horse and got into a Cadillac.” 2. Grupo Proceso Pentágono, “Cronología de las convergencias,” in Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Sección Experimentación (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes [INBA], 1979), 195–196. 3. This quandary appears in the context of Mexican philosophy in Miguel Ángel Esquivel, “Prólogo: Alberto Híjar, fuera de lugar,” in Alberto Híjar Serrano, La praxis estética: Dimensión estética libertaria (Mexico City: INBA, 2013). 4. Jean Charlot, El renacimiento del muralismo mexicano, 1920–1925 (Mexico City: Domés,

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1985); David Alfaro Siqueiros, Esculto-pintura: Cuarta etapa del muralismo en México (Mexico City: Galería de Arte Misrachi, 1968). 5. Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2010). 6. Octavio Paz, Tamayo en la pintura mexicana (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Dirección General de Publicaciones, 1959), 11. 7. Paz, Tamayo en la pintura mexicana, 14. 8. Renato González Mello and Anthony Stanton, Vanguardia en México, 1915–1950 (Mexico City: Museo Nacional de Arte [MUNAL], 2013). 9. Charlot, El renacimiento del muralismo mexicano. 10. Boletín de la Universidad Popular Mexicana 2, no. 4 (Mexico City, 1916). 11. See Meyer Schapiro, “The Social Bases of Art,” paper presented at the First American Artists’ Congress (New York, February 13–14, 1936), 31; David Craven, “Meyer Schapiro, Karl Korsch, and the Emergence of Critical Theory,” Oxford Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1994): 42–54; Alicia Azuela, “Public Art, Meyer Schapiro and Mexican Muralism,” Oxford Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1994): 55–59. 12. David Alfaro Siqueiros divided the muralist movement’s history into four stages: preindustrial fresco technique, industrial and experimental muralism, integración plástica (plastic integration), and esculto-pintura (sculpture-painting). See Siqueiros, Esculto-pintura. 13. Jean-Louis Déotte, ¿Qué es un aparato estético? (Santiago, Chile: Metales Pesados, 2007). 14. Georges Sorel’s theory was an important reference for the development of the Mexican and Latin American avant-gardes. Sorel’s ideas of violence and revolutionary syndicalism were particularly important for the consolidation of Siqueiros’s artistic program. See Natalia de la Rosa, “Aesthetic Constructions of Latin American Reality: Avant-Garde Dialogues between Mexico and Peru, 1926–1930,” in The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s, ed. Beverly Adams and Natalia Majluf (Austin: Blanton Museum of Art; Lima: MALI; Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Raina Sofía, 2019); and Renato González Mello, La máquina de pintar: Rivera, Orozco y la invención de un lenguaje (Mexico City: UNAM-IIE, 2003). 15. Daniel Vargas Parra, “Indicios del guardián,” in Usted me dijo que los artistas tienen pacto con el diablo, ed. Jorge Satorre and Onésimo Ventura (Mexico City: De Sitio, 2015). 16. Vargas Parra, “Indicios del guardián,” 50. 17. See Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba, Cómo se imprime un mural (Mexico City: Ediciones Gato Negro, 2017). 18. Paz, Tamayo en la pintura mexicana, 11. 19. Paz, Tamayo en la pintura mexicana, 13. 20. José Luis Cuevas, “La cortina de nopal,” in Ruptura, ed. Rita Eder (Mexico City: INBA-​ Museo de Arte Álvar Carrillo Gil, 1988) 84, 90. 21. See Nadia Moreno Moya, Arte y juventud: El salón ESSO de artistas jóvenes en Colombia (Bogotá: Idartes/La Silueta, 2013); Christopher Fulton, “José Luis Cuevas and the ‘New’ Latin American Artist,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 34, no. 101 (2012): 139–179; Claire F. Fox, Making Art Panamerican: Cultural Policy and the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013); Francisco Reyes Palma, “Transterrados, migrantes y guerra fría en la disolución de una escuela nacional de pintura,” in Hacia otra historia del arte en México: Disolvencias (1960–2000), vol. 4, coord. Issa Benítez Dueñas (Mexico City: CONACULTA/Curare, 2004), 183–216. 22. Bolívar Echeverría, “La Ciudad de México y el 68,” in Modernidad y blanquitud (Mexico City: Era, 2010), 209–230.

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23. Robin Adèle Greeley, “Marx’s Aesthetics in Mexico: Conceptual Art after 1968,” in Aesthetic Marx, ed. Samir Gandesha and Johan F. Hartle (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 203–228. 24. Alberto Híjar Serrano, “Comunicación popular revolucionaria: Dificultades y recursos,” Zurda 2, nos. 7–8 (1990): 101–112. 25. Híjar, “Ideología, muralismo y muralismos,” 125. 26. Felipe Ehrenberg, “El nuevo mural mexicano es tamaño doble carta,” Plural, no. 72 (1977). 27. Híjar, “Ideología, muralismo y muralismos,” 125. 28. Personal communication with Arnaldo Coen. Interviews with Julio García Murillo, August 6 and October 21, 2013. 29. See Felipe Ehrenberg, Fernando Llanos, Guillermo Arriaga, and Issa Benítez Dueñas, Felipe Ehrenberg: Manchuria (Mexico City: Editorial Diamantina, 2007); and Nicolás Pradilla, Un modelo de organización colectiva para la subjetivación política: El “Manual del editor con huaraches” y los seminarios de labor editorial en las escuelas normales rurales de México (Mexico City: Taller de Ediciones Económicas, 2019). 30. Ehrenberg, “El nuevo mural mexicano es tamaño doble carta.” 31. See Jorge Glusberg, ed., Hacia un perfil del arte latinoamericano (Buenos Aires: Centro de Arte y Comunicación, 1972); Felipe Ehrenberg, “Carta dirigida a Juan Acha,” January 2, 1974, facsimile published in Joaquín Barriendos, ed., Juan Acha: Despertar revolucionario (Mexico City: UNAM-MUAC, 2017), 80–81. 32. Shifra M. Goldman, “Resistance and Identity: Street Murals of Occupied Aztlán,” Latin American Literary Review 5, no. 10, special issue on Chicano Literature (Spring 1977): 124–128. 33. Goldman, “Resistance and Identity.” 34. “Aztlán is known, from an anthropological perspective, as ‘the mythic’ place of ancestral origin of the Mexica and other Nahuatl-speaking peoples.” It “worked as the principal catalyst in the formulation of imagined geographies.” Danna Levin Rojo, Return to Aztlan: Indians, Spaniards, and the Invention of Nuevo México (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), 35. The conquerors and expeditionaries construed from oral history this cultural area in the political territory of today’s New Mexico, along the US-Mexico border (40). This myth has been historically appropriated from multiple perspectives and agendas. Chicano activists and artists during the sixties and seventies used this imaginary geography as a means of cultural and political emancipation, as well as a trope for the Mexican American civil rights movement. 35. Grupo Proceso Pentágono, “Chicanos en el Pentágono,” press release, September 1978, 3. Consulted at Fondo Grupo Proceso Pentágono, Centro de Documentación Arkheia, MUAC-UNAM. 36. The ASCO collective—formed by Harry Gamboa Jr., Glugio “Gronk” Nicandro, Willie Herrón, and Patssi Valdez—was a key agent in the conceptualization of new ways of understanding muralism. As Tere Romo argues, “One of ASCO’s earliest and defining street interventions was the Walking Mural enacted on December 24, 1972.” She describes how Patssi Valdez became “a pivotal figure in the group’s efforts to bring a parade back to Whittier Boulevard, the annual parade having been canceled after the L.A. riots. “Walking alongside Gronk, who went as a Christmas tree, and Willie F. Herrón III, transformed into a three-dimensional mural, Valdez was the Virgen de Guadalupe in black.” This is one of the ways in which muralism came down from the walls. Tere Romo, “Conceptually Divine: Patssi Valdez’s Virgen de Guadalupe Walking the Mural” in ASCO: Elite of the Obscure, org. C. Ondine Chavoya and Rita González (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011), 276.

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37. Muros frente a muros: Confrontación de arte público (Morelia: Comité Conmemorativo del Sesquicentenario del Nombre de Morelia, Casa de la Cultura de Michoacán, 1978). Fondo Grupo Proceso Pentágono, Centro de Documentación Arkheia, MUAC-UNAM. 38. Annabela Tournon, “‘Aunque al seco tronco lo sigan regando’: Reprises du muralism chez les grupos (1968–1978),” in Nuevo mundo, Mundos nuevos, December 15, 2014, http:// journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/67543. 39. The politicization process in the criticism and practice of Ida Rodríguez following the events of October 2, 1968, and her dialogue with figures such as José Revueltas are described in Rita Eder, “Ida Rodríguez: El arte y el harte,” and Cristóbal Andrés Jácome, “La experiencia de los setenta,” in Ida Rodríguez Prampolini: La crítica de arte en el siglo XX, comp. Cristóbal Andrés Jácome (Mexico City: UNAM-IIE, 2016), 17–24 and 47–54, respectively. 40. Jácome, “La experiencia de los setenta,” 48. 41. Híjar, “Ideología, muralismo y muralismos,” 9. 42. Ana Longoni, Vanguardia y revolución: Arte e izquierdas en la Argentina de los sesenta– setenta (Buenos Aires: Ariel, 2014); Ana Longoni, Del Di Tella a “Tucumán Arde”: Vanguardia artística y política en el 68 argentino (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2013). 43. Ehrenberg, “El nuevo mural mexicano es tamaño doble carta.” 44. Juan Acha, “El muralismo en el proceso revolucionario de América Latina,” Diorama de la Cultura, suplemento cultural de Excélsior, Mexico City, May 13, 1973, 7. 45. Acha, “El muralismo en el proceso revolucionario,” 7. 46. Bruno Bosteels, Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror (London and New York: Verso, 2012). 47. Acha, “El muralismo en el proceso revolucionario,” 7. 48. Acha, “El muralismo en el proceso revolucionario,” 7. 49. Early commentary on these images appears in Los Yacuzis, Grupo de Estudios Sub-Críticos, Melquiades Herrera: Reportaje plástico de un teorema cultural (Mexico City: MUAC-UNAM, 2018), 20. We are grateful to Roselin R. Espinosa for her support in locating the complete file on this work by the TAI. 50. Pilar García, “New Artistic Strategies: The Case of José Luis Cuevas and his Mural efímero,” in Desafío a la estabilidad: Procesos artísticos en México, 1952–1967, ed. Rita Eder (Mexico City: UNAM-Turner, 2014), 505. 51. José Luis Cuevas, “El mural efímero,” in Letras Libres, no. 2 (February 1999); quoted in García, “New Artistic Strategies,” 509. See also Pilar García, “The Salón Independiente as an Alternative Model of Autonomy, Collective Practice, and Experimentation in the History of Contemporary Art,” in Art without Guardianship: Salon Independiente in Mexico, 1968–1971, ed. Pilar García and Cuauhtémoc Medina (Mexico City: UNAM/RM, 2018), 47. 52. Daniel Garza Usabiaga has studied the process of defining this official “new muralism.” This author insists on specifying the Montreal World Expo ’67 as the beginning of this museological proposal by Fernando Gamboa. Garza Usabiaga also proposes recovering this new muralism to resolve a superficial dichotomy between realism and abstraction developed by canonical historiography. Daniel Garza Usabiaga, “1965, 1968, 1979,” Coloquio CEVIDI, September, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQlFKnjc0SU&t=2288s. 53. Felipe Ehrenberg, Chicles, chocolates y cacahuates: Obras y actitudes (Mexico City: Galería José María Velasco-INBA, 1973). 54. Santiago Genovés, “¿Por qué Acali?,” Revista de la Universidad de México 28, no. 7 (March 1974): 30–36. 55. Juan Acha, “El arte del video-tape contra la TV,” Diorama de la Cultura, suplemento cultural de Excélsior, Mexico City, July 15, 1973. 56. Fayuca is generally understood in Mexico as the contraband merchandise brought into the

56  New Muralisms

country, then sold illegally and without any fiscal processes. The term was used more intensively during the 1970s and ’80s, designating both the nature of the merchandise and its distributor, or fayuquero. For the use of the term in the Mexican art field, see Colectivo Los Yacuzis, “Melquiades Herrera: Fuera de México todo es Taiwán,” Revista de la Universidad de México, no. 837 (June 2018): 115–119. 57. Amy Sara Carroll, Remex: Toward an Art History of the NAFTA Era (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), 58–59, 72. 58. Melquiades Herrera, “Siqueiros,” Columnas, no. 96 (February 1974), n.p., Fondo Melquiades Herrera, Centro de Documentación Arkheia, MUAC-UNAM. 59. NAFTA led to the implementation of new forms of production, distribution, and consumption of merchandise and cultural products and even to a renewed status of the English language in the country, which renders the change in economic model a true transformation of what Jacques Rancière would describe as an “aesthetic regime.” The writing collective Arte y Trabajo BWEPS proposes the use of the term “NAFTAlgia” as a retro-critical concept to describe a sensitive and historical regime. See Arte y Trabajo BWEPS, “NAFTAlgia,” Campo de relámpagos, July 22, 2017, http://campoderelampagos.org/critica-y-reviews/20/7/201. 60. Carroll, Remex, 58–59, 13. 61. Melquiades Herrera, Si Diego Rivera es buey, Salvador Novo es Pluto: Botana cultural, November 1991. Pen on paper on the front side, typewritten text on the back, 22 × 28 cm, Fondo Melquiades Herrera, Centro de Documentación Arkheia, MUAC-UNAM. 62. Carlos Monsiváis, “Salvador Novo: Los que tenemos unas manos que no nos pertenecen,” in Amor perdido (Mexico City: Era, 2010), 277. 63. “La Diegada,” submitted in 1926 on typewritten pages by Salvador Novo, was later published in Antología personal: Poesía, 1915–1974 (Mexico City: CONACULTA, 1991). 64. Herrera, Si Diego Rivera es buey, 1991. 65. Juan Acha guest-edited the seventh issue of Artes visuales magazine, the topic of which was “the future.” The publication reprinted two articles by McLuhan translated into Spanish: ”Stuctural Media Analysis” and “Classrooms without Walls.” In the same issue, Acha authored “Los problemas del arte de nuestro futuro,” in which the Peruvian critic refers to the Canadian author. 66. Melquiades Herrera, Venta de peines, dir. Jorge Prior, TV UNAM, 1991. 67. Armando de María y Campos, El teatro de género chico en la Revolución Mexicana (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1996). 68. Bertram D. Wolfe, The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), 107. 69. Here Camnitzer is referring to the so-called Los Grupos movement. See Luis Camnitzer, Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007).

New Muralisms after Muralism   57

DOSSIER A

Grupo Germen

A germ (germen in Spanish) is a microorganism that can engage in symbiosis with other microorganisms and thus strengthen life. Grupo Germen is a germinator of people and societies: a group of young people, both unwaged and professional, united by graffiti. We come from rough, marginalized neighborhoods in the Mexico City metropolitan area. We were born into family environments eroded by alcoholism; single-parent households; and places where school dropout rates, meager academic opportunities, and teenage pregnancies are facts of everyday life. Grupo Germen came into being in 2012 in Guadalajara, transforming an abandoned drainage site into a skate park for a national competition. Germen may have officially started there, but its members have spent over thirteen years promoting new ways to make art and deploy visual communication— two activities that seek to strengthen sociocultural practices, shape identity, and restore the social fabric through the construction and reinterpretation of the contemporary concept of citizenship. As an artists’ collective, Germen specializes in alternative forms of communication, such as graffiti, murals, social research, and audiovisual documentation. Its members include painters, muralists, photographers, historians, and communications experts. As we see it, graffiti and murals share an essence: social transformation. Each employs different techniques and strategies to achieve its goals. Graffiti can be either “illegal” or “legal,” and both forms are fleeting (while transience isn’t a necessary characteristic, it’s certainly a constant). Meanwhile, murals are more complex conceptually; each work contemplates its own sociohistorical context and pre­ sents itself as a means of social education. 58  

Our concept of “new muralism” involves both forms: graffiti’s rebelliousness against preestablished values and mural art’s focus on sociohistorical context and popular education. In this way, we encourage social participation and create new forms of engaging with art. Our technique is mixed (in every sense) and always open to experimentation. We see public art as a tool for social transformation and as an instrument capable of forging human dialogue in the most inhospitable places. Our interventions seek to inspire spectators to work collaboratively, to think as a community, and to create awareness around the fact that we are all actors in the same story. The urban landscape offers countless possibilities for interaction and artistic innovation. We see public space as a stage for everyday forms of inclusion, which can fulfill many different functions related to satisfying the need for collective development—and not just in individual and economic terms. We believe that respect for public space lies at the heart of its transformation. Our work is an artistic offering to the cities where it appears. Through colors, shapes, textures, and mixed techniques, we share a means to make and understand art. We work to refunctionalize public space, making it more useful to its inhabitants: a place that educates, contributes, inspires, and germinates a new relationship between citizens and their environment. When a community stops thinking collectively and thinks individually, the bonds of unity are broken and symbiosis becomes impossible. And so, if we manage to restore this symbiosis among communities, artists, government, and private initiatives, collective identity is fertilized, ready for transformational projects to be planted. With workshops, talks, and strategies rooted in community participation and inclusion, we seek to foster a sense of belonging, to strengthen a sense of togetherness, and to build cultural heritage. Through these activities, we also encourage people to share our efforts in appropriating and transforming public space. Macro-Mural Pachuca In 2015, the government of Pachuca de Soto (in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico) invited Grupo Germen to participate in the project “Painting Pachuca,” as part of the National Crime Prevention Program (PRONAPRED is its acronym in Spanish). During the project, young people and neighbors from the two participating neighborhoods (Palmitas and Cubitos) worked tirelessly in collaboration with Grupo Germen to collectively define their objectives; clean walls; prepare surfaces; and participate in musical, theater, and street circus events, as well Grupo Germen   59

as to paint the outer walls of houses around the neighborhood. When it comes to projects of this magnitude, we engage the community one house at a time. On arrival, we noticed that the houses had rough finishes and scratches. We also decided to live in Palmitas throughout the process so that we could reach agreements with the neighbors, share with them the aims of the project, and involve them directly. The neighbors were skeptical at first, because they said they didn’t want us to do graffiti; they saw graffiti as something negative. So, at community meetings and individual home visits, we started to explain our own view of graffiti and mural art. This is the first step of our process: we discuss the situation in a way that serves as a practice of community cohesion; strengthens ties between the community involved, artists, and government; and invites the entire neighborhood to participate. In parallel, we carry out historical research, both orally and institutionally, in search of information that will bolster community support and help us determine which elements we will use for the murals. Then we embark on the white phase. White is a color that carries a lot of energy; to us, it signifies light, hope, and unity. Focusing on this color, we forge agreements with the neighbors concerning coexistence and cooperation, and we show them that the transformation of the hillside has begun. As we see it, painting the surface white means taking part in a ritual, offering up a gift of

FIGURE A.1. Palmitas neighborhood in Pachuca, Hidalgo. Painted by Grupo Germen. Photo by Aldo Brum González. Courtesy of Grupo Germen.

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FIGURE A.2. Mural in Palmitas neighborhood, Pachuca, Hidalgo. Painted by Grupo Germen. Photo by Aldo Brum González. Courtesy of Grupo Germen.

color, in which we become detached from our individual “I” and come to see one another as equals. There are no distinctions: white symbolizes collective union and our commitment to a culture of peace, one that will set aside the violence within communities. After the white phase, the “spirit of color” arrives and cleanses the space. The spirit of color comes to protect the community. The arrival of color sparks a series of educational activities with the neighbors. One such is a paper lantern–​ making workshop: together, we learn to create these lanterns and launch them into the air, full of good wishes, in the company of friends and family from all over the neighborhood. The color phase begins with a neighborhood assessment to select the colors that will be applied on the front-facing part of the hillside. In this case, we illustrated the soul of Pachuca, known as “la Bella Airosa” (the beautiful airy city), painting the houses so that they would all look like part of a whole rather than a series of isolated elements. For this reason, the curved lines travel across each house, as if the wind between them could be painted. We finally proceed to work directly on making murals within the neighborhoods, murals that cannot be seen or accessed so easily. These internal murals narrate the history, customs, and daily life on the streets of Palmitas.

Grupo Germen   61

CHAPTER 2

Public, Political, and Aesthetic Spaces in Ayotzinapa Ana Torres

In the wake of the disappearance and likely murder of forty-three students in Iguala, Guerrero, on September 26, 2014, the walls of buildings in Tixtla de Guerrero and the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa (hereafter the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College) were covered with images that denounced these horrendous acts of violence. Such images were primarily the work of volunteers who traveled to the sites to leave a visual inscription of their protest. With time, mural work around these events has become an experience leading to the constitution of collective political subjectivities.1 The murals have become micropolitical places, whereby diverse and heterogeneous critical voices recuperate the instituting capacity of public space,2 which those in power have brought into crisis. Artists’ collectives have painted murals on the walls of the Teachers’ College as an expression of solidarity with the young student victims of the violence.3 Although these collectives became involved in the communities at first through artistic actions, these same actions have generated a series of collective rituals, the participants of which include not only those who contribute to painting the murals but also the entire community. This has created meaningful intersections 62  

between the aesthetic, public, and social realms. In this sense, the murals in Tixtla and at the Teachers’ College have become one great antimonument that activates the aesthetic from the standpoint of resistance and critical memory. Moreover, these artistic and political manifestations take the form of decolonial visualities4 that attempt to make visible and question the mechanisms through which the coloniality of seeing operates in global modernity, by turning the gaze into a form of domination.5 Bearing in mind that the murals teach us how to witness violence from unconventional loci of enunciation, my interest in this chapter is to analyze the murals as dialectical images, allowing us both to recall a history of violence against rural and Indigenous communities and to critique the present situation.6 My account addresses the work of artists’ collectives that have shaped alternative public, political, and aesthetic spaces of sociability.7 I draw theoretical and methodological connections between the decolonization of seeing, the configuration of multisensory and agonistic public spaces, and artistic practices of resistance. I touch upon a small part of the history of impunity in Mexico and the ongoing dismantling of alternative political projects. I also address the practice of enforced disappearance in the country, specifically the disappearance of the student teachers, not in terms of the “war on drugs”8 but rather as a way of dismantling the rural teachers’ colleges, whose project has been rejected and repressed by the federal government’s educational policies for decades. Seen from this perspective, the murals’ imagery sheds light on the historical conflict surrounding the rural teachers’ colleges and denounces the persecution and torture of rural student teachers, which has been a form of social and political control in Mexico since the 1970s. The State versus the Rural Teachers’ Colleges The Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College was founded in 1926. In the absence of its own dedicated physical space, it occupied different venues in Tixtla de Guerrero, but Professor Rodolfo A. Bonilla eventually took it upon himself to acquire a plot of land, which was donated by the town council. The then governor, Adrián Castrejón, laid the first stone on March 30, 1933. Professor Bonilla was the first director, followed by Professor Raúl Isidro Burgos. At the time the school functioned as both a high school and a teachers’ college. Its enrollment was originally coeducational, but in 1943 it became exclusively for young men. This college was among the first rural schools in Mexico, which began appearing in 19229 under the initiative of then secretary of public education José Vasconcelos. To educate and transform the lives of Mexico’s peasantry, Vasconcelos relied on “cultural missionaries,” who got involved not only in SPACES IN AYOTZINAPA   63

literacy programs for children and adults but also treated diseases, helped with the construction of houses, and contributed to solving water scarcity problems. They also managed credit for agricultural production and oversaw the community’s handicraft production. The missions helped expand rural schooling and laid the foundations for the teacher-training programs. During the 1930s, the number of teachers’ colleges rose significantly, eventually reaching thirty-six in all. After 1933, these schools were merged with the Central Agricultural Schools, whose objective was to train technicians to support collective work such as agriculture and reforestation and to deal with related issues in the countryside. Around 1941, these were transformed into rural teachers’ colleges (Escuelas Normales Rurales), and four years later the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) approved a curriculum that unified the educational programs in all schools. However, in the following decades, the schools found themselves struggling to survive. By the end of the 1960s, nineteen of the teachers’ colleges had been converted into middle and high schools. As I describe below, the schools that did survive have been involved in constant confrontations with state policies that reject self-governance by educational centers. In a number of cases, this has led to school closures, preventing entire communities from accessing their right to education. Throughout their history, the rural teachers’ colleges have been categorized as “the devil’s schools,” a label given to them by conservative priests during the Cristero War (1926–1929), who threatened families with excommunication if they allowed their children to attend them. In the 1940s, the rural teachers’ colleges became a source of discomfort for governments that pursued developmentalist models and allied themselves with landholders. After that decade, the student teachers became synonymous with “communists,” and the colleges came to be seen as “nests for commie leaders.”10 Conflicts at the rural colleges over control of their educational, political, and administrative autonomy were accompanied by a search for pedagogies linked to participatory and socialist education.11 Professor Adolfo Gómez, director of the college in Xocoyucan, Tlaxcala, in 1926, was a disciple of John Dewey, who proposed a holistic education that would embrace the idea of experiential learning, a program that was promoted by many of the directors of the teachers’ colleges, including Professor Bonilla in Tixtla and later Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa. Cutting-edge pedagogies have been a point of contention in the vast majority of these schools, with the exception of the years in which they were expanded and strengthened by the socialist educational reform, which had been debated in the Mexican legislature since 1932 and, amid great political and journalistic convulsion, was approved in late 1934, shortly before the triumph 64  New Muralisms

of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), who opposed the clergy’s intervention in education and saw religion as counterproductive for Mexico’s youth.12 During Cárdenas’s presidential term, curricula were developed on the basis of holistic, participatory forms of teaching and learning, with the main objective of linking theory and practice. In addition to training student teachers, a technical curriculum was developed for the rural colleges, integrating students into the process of making agricultural reforms and offering them the conceptual and technical tools with which to fully assume their roles as social leaders and defenders of the cooperative movement. Student teachers created the Mexican Federation of Socialist Peasant Students (Federación de Estudiantes Campesinos Socialistas de México, or FECSM) in 1935.13 Each teachers’ college also has a Political and Ideological Orientation Committee (Comité de Orientación Política e Ideológica, or COPI). These autonomous political organizations have taken responsibility for raising the students’ consciousness, enabling them to see that their poverty is the result of structures of exploitation. Consciousness-raising is also part of the teachers’ colleges objectives more broadly, which seek to train participatory agents of change among those who are most marginalized, forgotten, and impoverished. Rural teachers’ organizing capacity, their links to grassroots communities, their solidarity with the rights of the poor and the peasantry, and their participation in the struggle to shape alternative educational models have enabled them to get involved in the real problems of their communities and turned them into true agents of social transformation. Violence against socialist teachers began in 1937, when they were cast as enemies of, or at least a nuisance to not only the church but also conservative businessmen and politicians.14 Synarchist groups and plantation holders arranged for the murders of such teachers as Ramón Orta del Río, Juan Martínez Escobar, Arnulfo Sosa Portillo, José Martínez Ramírez, Ildefonso Vargas, María Salud Morales, and others. In that era, rural teachers were key agents in building alliances between society and Cárdenas’s government, since he treated them as protégés. But by the 1940s, when Cárdenas’s presidency came to an end, socialist teachers had come to be perceived as enemies of the state. They nevertheless continued their fight for social transformation, supporting railway workers’ and miners’ strikes in the 1950s. They were also involved in political proselytizing and in agrarian reform as advisers to those peasants reclaiming land. During the 1960s, various groups of teachers participated in social movements, pushing for an accelerated distribution of lands, organizing the peasantry and the workers into unions, and reinforcing a culture allowing for both modern and popular practices.15 SPACES IN AYOTZINAPA   65

The arrest, disappearance, and murder of hundreds of teachers, like Félix Bello Manzanares and Macario Nava Hipólito, and the murders of Arturo Gámiz (Chihuahua) in 1965 and Genaro Vázquez and Lucio Cabañas in 1974, reveal the PRI government’s refusal to negotiate with people who championed alternative educational projects. As a response to this exercise of state violence against its own population, groups of armed guerrilla fighters began to spring up in urban and rural areas. Their slogans were designed to shape alternative social spaces that would dignify the lives of poor, subaltern cultures and all those who have been pushed to the margins of both society and history. In early April 1967, together with other teachers as well as student, peasant, and popular leaders, Lucio Cabañas founded the Frente de Defensa de los Intereses de la Escuela Juan Álvarez (Front in Defense of the Interests of the Juan Álvarez School) in the municipality of Atoyac, calling for a peaceful protest on May 18 of that year.16 The assembly was removed from the Plaza Cívica by the forces of the State Judicial Police, which led to a shootout that left several casualties, although Cabañas himself was uninjured. From then on, the movement had to be maintained undercover, together with various fighters. This eventually enabled Cabañas to extend his contacts and form the Partido de los Pobres (Party of the Poor) and its so-called Brigada de Ajusticiamiento (Execution Brigade). At the ejido of Mexcaltepec, in the mountains near Atoyac, peasants were concerned that their forest was being massively exploited by a lumber company. Cabañas organized them so they could reclaim the rights to this land, which resulted in his being transferred to the Modesto Alarcón school in Atoyac. He was persecuted for months until dawn on December 2, 1974, when he faced the army for the last time. The military communiqué that reported his death defamed Cabañas as “linked to groups of caciques, agitators, deforesters, and drug traffickers, on whom he bestowed protection.”17 Another important confrontation between teachers and the government occurred during the presidency of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz (1964–1970), when the latter closed down fourteen of the twenty-nine remaining schools in 1969, accusing the students of being communists. On August 6, 2003, around two thousand policemen entered the Mactumactzá Teachers’ College and removed all the students by force, arresting over two hundred students and heads of household. The following day, Governor Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía gave the order to demolish the school’s dormitory, bathrooms, kitchen, and dining room. In spite of these aggressions, the students resisted and prevented the school from being closed.18 The governor of Hidalgo, Murillo Karam, who was attorney general from 2012 to 2015, ordered a significant reduction in enrollment at the Rural Teachers’ College in El Mexe, 66  New Muralisms

Hidalgo. A similar series of aggressions was carried out until 2008, when Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, then governor of Hidalgo and secretary of the interior between 2012 and 2018, defeated the students and succeeded in closing the school. When he was serving as governor of the state of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto—who went on to become Mexico’s president—voided the enrollment of eighteen of the thirty-six teachers’ colleges in the state.19 Those same politicians continued to obstruct the development of the school in Ayotzinapa, cutting its budget and impeding the advancement of its academic activities.20 The Alianza por la Calidad de la Educación (Alliance for Educational Quality), proposed by the duo of President Felipe Calderón and the now-­imprisoned former union leader Elba Esther Gordillo, and Peña Nieto’s educational reform program, in particular the Ley de Servicios Profesionales Docentes (Professional Instructional Services Law), have completely cut off access to teaching jobs, even though hundreds of teachers are needed in rural areas.21 In November 2012, Calderón passed to his successor some documents containing matters of “top priority [for] national security,” in which the student teachers at Ayotzinapa were mentioned.22 However, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president since 2018, has failed to lead a transparent investigation of the disappearance and likely murder of the forty-three students and make those responsible for these crimes face justice. Significantly, as I have shown in this section, the enforced disappearance of the forty-three students arose from attempts to censor an educational model that challenges the hegemonic educational project, which itself grew out of the neoliberal and globalized policies of the eighties and nineties. Official Memory vs. Subaltern Memory The disappearance of the student teachers occurred as follows: On September 26, 2014, state and city police as well as armed civilians corralled five buses full of students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, who were planning to travel to Mexico City to participate in a march scheduled for October 2. The buses were pursued by patrol vehicles, but the student teachers did not understand that they were being attacked until they heard the first gunshots, precursors to the massacre. A few students exited one of the buses to move a patrol car that was blocking their way, and shots were fired at them. Three students died in this confrontation (Daniel Solís, Julio Cesar Ramírez, and Julio César Mondragón), and forty-three others have not been seen since. There is evidence that the students had been infiltrated by federal forces.23 Nevertheless, the official version declared that the attack was ordered by then mayor José Luis Abarca—who was purportedly worried that the students might disrupt the annual activities report of his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, then head SPACES IN AYOTZINAPA   67

of the local Sistema Nacional para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (National System for Integral Family Development). According to this version, police from the cities of Iguala and Cocula attacked and captured the students, who were then burned by Guerreros Unidos, a criminal organization, unbeknownst to federal agents and soldiers. Despite the indisputable presence of police and military personnel, the federal government made statements denying the bloody events and making it appear—as it had with Lucio Cabañas and his followers—as though the students were involved with organized crime. The first news reports declared that Bernardo “El Cochiloco” (Crazy Pig) Flores, one of the student teachers who had been disappeared, was an agent of the Los Rojos cartel, a criminal group who were enemies of Guerreros Unidos.24 Nevertheless, testimony from relatives and acquaintances has revealed this “official truth” to be a lie, affirming that “El Cochiloco” was a representative of the Comité de la Lucha at the school in Ayotzinapa. These statements have confirmed that he was a responsible albeit combative student.25 Investigative reporting by Anabel Hernández, Marcela Turati, Steve Fisher, and José Gil Olmos,26 together with data gathered by researchers at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM), raised questions about the official version given by the Attorney General’s Office (Procuraduría General de la República, or PGR). The official version of events has likewise been questioned by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (IGIE) of the Inter-­American Commission on Human Rights, which demonstrated that data had been falsified and information distorted. Collective Murals and Agonistic Public Spaces The Autonomous Council of Tixtla and the National Artists’ Front have invited artists’ collectives to paint the walls of the buildings of the Palacio Municipal in Tixtla, which has been taken over by independent organizations that have declared themselves to be in open resistance to the state. This space already included murals by Jaime Antonio Gómez del Payán (1940–2016) showcasing contrasting elements of the history of the state of Guerrero: dances, handicrafts, and idyllic landscapes are juxtaposed with images of repeated popular struggles. Those involved in the creation of the new murals begin their version of history with the 1988 electoral fraud before turning to the student strike at the UNAM-CEU, the Zapatista uprising in 1994, and the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) and its consequences. The murals also feature the massacre at Aguas Blancas in 1995 and the rise of the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (a 68  New Muralisms

guerrilla movement in Mexico) and the Coordinadora Estatal de Trabajadores de la Educación de Guerrero (CETEG). Numerous images of rural teachers are depicted, along with the 1997 Acteal massacre and the repression at San Salvador Atenco in 2006, as well as protests by peasants in defense of their lands, including the autonomous community of Sheram in defense of the forests and that of Huiricuta against foreign mining companies. There are also scenes of community police killing city and federal police. At the end there is a mural painted by several siblings of disappeared persons, expressing their grief. The mural cycle concludes with a mural dedicated to the forty-three disappeared persons and the three murdered students. In addition to the murals on the Palacio Municipal, other groups of artists have painted the walls of the houses in the neighborhood of Camposanto—just as at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, it is already a tradition to paint murals about the history of the school and its conflicts. One large-scale mural in Camposanto is located on Igualdad Street and was coordinated by the painter Víctor Hugo Apreza, nicknamed “Rock,” who worked with volunteers from different states and municipalities in Guerrero, as well as with the support of the victims’ relatives, friends, and acquaintances. This “mural meeting,” as this collective community action is known, features the faces of the disappeared student teachers and the murdered students,27 accompanied by the faces of Lucio Cabañas and Che Guevara. These acts of solidarity create a visual testament to the community’s feelings and its collective memory. They are present not only at the school and in its immediate surroundings but also around the country. Students from the Centro de Educación Normal in the state of Oaxaca made murals demanding justice for the disappeared students and clarification of the facts. They took down billboards on a major thoroughfare, blocked the street, and painted the walls with images of protest and indignation. This act was censored by the authorities, who immediately whitewashed the mural.28 The Dee artists of the SV collective, Mexa of Zoociedad, and Berek of DSR created another mural in Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, after the bloody expulsion of a group of teachers on June 19, 2016. The mural depicts the events that took place through Mixtec symbols—for example, an eye that makes up the central part of the mural’s composition, the shield of the region, and a warrior skull— all accompanied by a jaguar with a machete, brandishing the speared head of an eagle. In the same mural, the cartoonish images of ex-presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Enrique Peña Nieto are also featured, escorted by the federal police. In Mexico City, too, numerous groups of artists and activists have come together to create murals in public spaces to protest the “Ayotzinapa events,” as SPACES IN AYOTZINAPA   69

in Delegación Tláhuac and at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH). At the latter, a mural was painted by students and professors in collaboration with the collective María Pistolas and the Mexican Communist Party. In New York, a group of Mexicans made a quilt in solidarity with Antonio Tizapa, who lives in that city and is the father of Antonio Tizapa, one of the forty-three disappeared students. The collective, called “Nueva York con Ayotzinapa,” keeps up a protest in a public space—namely, Washington Square—with quilts and posters denouncing the events and informing the local citizens of the injustices carried out in Mexico against the rural teachers’ colleges.29 These different groups that collaborate in realizing collective public murals of protest see art as an instrument of struggle capable of raising consciousness and giving some sense of restitution to those who have been deprived of their rights.30 For Chantal Mouffe, artistic practices can create public, political, critical, and agonistic spaces.31 In her view, although all artistic practices are political, critical art encourages dissensus and so makes visible that which the dominant consensus tends to obscure and erase. In this sense, Mouffe affirms that “critical artistic practices can ruin the agreeable image that the capitalism of large corporations is attempting to spread, by foregrounding its repressive character, and they can also contribute, in many different ways, to the construction of new subjectivities, a decisive dimension of the radical democratic project.”32 The murals in Ayotzinapa are public artistic practices that, to use Mouffe’s terms, promote agonistic spaces as “new forms of artistic activism that have emerged recently and that, in a great variety of ways, aim at challenging the existing consensus.”33 They are likewise agonistic because, upon being created through a collective collaboration, they generate plural, democratic dynamics of participation. The murals at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College and in its surroundings activate political, public, revolutionary, and democratic meanings that make the invisible visible. Multiple images made by artists’ collectives, as well as by the students themselves, not only organize reality differently but also become collective memory, which, as Umberto Eco argues, is necessary to survive the censorship of power and the silences of history.34 The murals endure. They are political bodies that resist disappearance, producing cracks in the political power structures that impose fear and empty public spaces of meanings. Murals as Collective Memory: Mediating Remembrance The teachers’ college murals refute the official version of the events in Iguala. Several of them are dedicated to events that occurred prior to the disappearances, and some of the images recuperate the memory of the confrontations of 70  New Muralisms

FIGURE 2.1. Untitled mural at Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College at Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, 2015. © Ignacio Rosaslanda. Courtesy of Ignacio Rosaslanda.

December 12, 2011, when federal and state police, as well as ministerial agents, murdered Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús during the violent evacuation of a group of students who were blocking the “Highway of the Sun.”35 These images feature animal-like shapes symbolizing the ferocity of the aggressors. The lower part shows Alexis Herrera Pino knocked to the ground, paradoxically holding a white dove of peace and a book, accompanied by the phrase “Ni olvido, ni perdón!!!” (No forgetting, no forgiving!!!). The iconography of 1970s guerrilla warfare also prevails in the imagery: Cabañas’s ghost appears in several of the murals, becoming the symbol of an extramural pedagogy leading to different educational models and new dynamics of solidarity and social transformation. Several of the murals at the teachers’ college feature the faces of the main proponents of socialist and communist thought. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara, and Lucio Cabañas have become ideological points of reference in the programs and curricula of the teachers’ colleges. Their faces operate on the dynamics of collective memory as remediated36 forms of survival that, in the case of the wall as a physical medium, enable us to delve into the history of these schools from referents of remembrance other than the ones offered to us in the hegemonic mass media. SPACES IN AYOTZINAPA   71

Moreover, the faces of the thinkers and political leaders and all the murals of Ayotzinapa form a public memory that becomes a collective cultural memory in the present; they are also symbolic constellations of historical and heterogeneous times that reappear in a violent context. In this context, they acquire a social meaning that subverts the institutional order. The mural that welcomes one to the school bears the colors of the Mexican flag. To the left, atop the green band, are Marx, Engels, and Lenin. The white part in the middle, in the shape of the state of Guerrero, features the school’s emblem, which consists of a turtle,37 an architectural structure that represents the school, and an open book that symbolizes teaching; on either side there are a closed fist and a hammer and sickle, all referents to socialist struggle. The top part reads Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, while the bottom reads FECSM 1933–2013 (Federación de Estudiantes Campesinos Socialistas de México). On the red part are the faces of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Lucio Cabañas. In another mural, the faces of Marx, Lenin, and Guevara are not foregrounded as in the previous one, but instead sit above—like gods—forming a single line sheltering teachers who are instructing a group of children. On the left, next to one of the children’s faces, is Lucio Cabañas and a man knocked to the ground. The socialist leaders become an extension of socialist education. The book is a protagonist in many of the murals as a tool of cultural and social, as well as individual and collective, transformation, a symbol that stands against both ignorance and authoritarianism. In another mural, Lucio Cabañas’s face is fused with the face of Che Guevara. Cabañas also appears in a large collective mural completed under the oversight of the artist Javier Campos, known as “El Cienfuegos.” Unlike the others, it was made using a tile technique and financed by means of a raffle. It was completed in five days and involved a group of women and men from the community and volunteers who had traveled from elsewhere. Socialist leaders are also present on the walls of the school cafeteria, as well as in nooks and crannies and on walls that are not as visible. These images are converted into symbols offering transformative modes of thought, positioning the rural student teachers in a space of resistance. These images operate as ghost signs from an archive representing hope, resistance, and transformative consciousness. They remain in the collective imaginary regardless of the seeming impossibility of realizing true democratic change, and become an awakening to struggle in spite of the cancellation of a clearly determined future. Lucio Cabañas reappears as the symbol of the poor, socialist, guerrilla-fighting peasant teacher who defended experiential learning in an effort to construct different educational models, the extermination of 72  New Muralisms

FIGURE 2.2. Untitled mural at Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College at Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, 2015. © Ignacio Rosaslanda. Courtesy of Ignacio Rosaslanda.

which we are witnessing. His image is displaced into the present as one of the living-dead who embodies in his condition the disappearance/appearance of the young student teachers. He also prompts us to recall—despite their absence—the hundreds of teachers who have been massacred over several decades. Walter Benjamin proposed that dialectical sublation is an irruption of an awakened consciousness: “Awakening is the great exemplar of memory: the occasion on which it is given us to remember what is closest, tritest, most obvious.”38 In this sense, the dialectical turn lies in the act of remembering that which lies hidden in the past in order to illuminate the present. Another mural reminds us that there have been precursors to the violence and murder since 2012. The mural is signed with the tags SONESCA and GOSEK, and represents a confrontation between the powers that be and the students. The powers that be are represented by Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, 2005–2013); Ángel Aguirre Rivero, governor of Guerrero (April 2011–October 2014), who resigned over the disappearance of the student teachers; and former president of Mexico Felipe Calderón (2006–2012). Between the pope and Aguirre Rivero is a dog in an aggressive pose with a chain that connects the three figures; the governor holds a sack of money with the initials “A. Morlet. E.,” and the president rests his left arm on a group of soldiers. SPACES IN AYOTZINAPA   73

Together they oppose a defenseless group of students raising their closed fists in a sign of struggle, two of whom are bloodied. Above this section are two white doves in flight, the sign of a peaceful social movement. Here we have two opposing forces with no possibility of reconciliation, signifiers, in other words, of Mouffe’s understanding of an agonistic public space, as described above. Concluding Remarks Compared with the media representations of enforced disappearance and violence in Mexico, the murals of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College speak to us of a different reality. The images are there for everyone to see and to be made into collective histories. While the media have often veiled or neutralized the students’ voice and gaze, the murals expose the intersections between the recent disappearance of the forty-three students and a history of socialist struggle. Moreover, they constitute a critical, collective form of memorialization that safeguards histories that refuse to be forgotten, even in the face of decades of governmental oblivion. The murals are symbolic constellations that confront official representations; they are also testimonies that speak to us of a hidden, marginal history that the dynamics of power manipulate at their will. They reveal the incomplete, fractured condition of a hegemonic politics that admits no dissidence or difference. The murals of Ayotzinapa show us, too, a reality that the media obscure or even disappear from the screen. They teach us to see by remembering rather than forgetting. To paraphrase Georges Didi-​Huberman, these images are more than simple drawings: they are traces, furrows, a visual trail of anachronic and fatally chaotic time; they are a mixed and warm accumulation of ashes that come from multiple fires.39 The murals are also dialectical images that activate the dynamics of a public space in a state of resistance and lay out a critique of the present situation in the country. For Benjamin, the historian must possess the gift of “fanning the spark of hope in the past . . . to wrest tradition away from the conformism that is working to overpower it.”40 The political potential of dialectical images must be transformation, in the sense that the latter is made possible by regarding the fragments of the past as a montage41 and understanding that the past is not reconstructed, but rather survives in the remains of histories, the wreckage of unending storylines that return as ghosts to outlast the barbarism of progress. Following Benjamin, it is important to find other truths in the wreckage of history by way of a different conception of time, and to represent the fragments and ruins of the natural and chronological dimensions of progress through dialectical images that cause the historical continuum to flash, activating all its tensions and contradictions.42 According to Benjamin, the traditional model 74  New Muralisms

of history, constituted in the idea of progress, excludes failures and conflicts from collective memory, hiding and denying the rights of those who have been vanquished.43 In this sense, suffering lies at the heart of memory, in the eyes of the oppressed, who propel a politics supported by the processes of social justice and reactivated in the uncovering of difference.44 This is the memory that the murals illuminate; these are memories that have been pursued by history but have survived the apocalypse of progress. They reveal the “discontinuous” character of the dialectical image: “destined precisely to the understanding of the ways in which the times are made visible, how history itself appears to us as a momentary flash that we ought to call an ‘image.’”45 In the murals of Ayotzinapa, images are constituted by fragments of history that, if regarded as constellations in resistance, signify the conflict, struggle, and fracturing of structures and schemes determined by global society. They are also manifestos that seek to defend political spaces and political forms (debate, polemic, struggle) against the loss of cultural differentiation.46 From this perspective, the murals are political, aesthetic, and collective bodies; they are a self-referential, identitarian extension of the history of the teachers’ colleges, of their ideology, their scholastic programs, their teachers and students. The historical disappearance of rural, Indigenous, and socialist teachers is a consequence of historical forms of coloniality in rural schools, which crush the possibility of generating different educational models and respond to a hegemonic global model in which the educational system is part of the structure of the hierarchized world system, governed for the production and distribution of wealth. The history of rural teachers’ colleges in Mexico has been rife with conflict precisely because they operate according to educational models that do not respond to global educational prototypes, which are pervaded by colonial ways of knowing, being, and seeing. Enforced disappearances in Mexico similarly conform to political processes that partake in global networks of power made up of heterogeneous economic, political, and cultural structures, the sum total of which maintains a certain system of dominion. According to Ramón Grosfogel and Walter Mignolo, “On this new economic and cultural stage, the peripheral regions of the modern world-system are still submitting to the multiple hierarchies of coloniality, occupying a subordinate position in the international division of labor and being submitted to processes of inferiorization and racialization at a global level.”47 Building on this analysis, I propose that the events that took place in Tixtla and Iguala, Guerrero, on September 26, 2014, were not isolated occurrences but rather part of a broader strategy of politically disappearing that which offers a different model of community and education. In this sense, the images in SPACES IN AYOTZINAPA   75

FIGURE 2.3. Untitled mural at Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, 2015. © Ignacio Rosaslanda. Courtesy of Ignacio Rosaslanda.

the murals “light up” memories that are not constructed from a position of authoritative power, but rather from public, aesthetic, and democratic spaces that make possible the presence of a culture in resistance amid conditions of violence and impunity. In the case of Mexico, corrupt politics, economic crisis, organized crime, the war on drug trafficking, discursive control, official truths, the dismantling of alternative projects, teachers’ protests, educational reform, human rights violations, unpunished murders and massacres, and mass disappearances all move around simultaneously, tying the “events of Ayotzinapa” into a knot whose ends are increasingly tangled up. It is in this complex web that public art finds its subversive role. Systemic violence appears in our societies as “natural,” legitimized and covered up by structures that we have learned to accept as given48 and reinforced by the state’s policies of representation, which construct an image of violence, justifying its actions against crime, designing discourses that take apart and neutralize public space. The murals of Ayotzinapa can be said to operate in the public sphere if we regard artistic activity as a practice that always necessarily constitutes a public by “engaging people in political discussion or by entering a political struggle. . . . [It] is not only a site of discourse; it is also a discursively 76  New Muralisms

FIGURE 2.4. Untitled mural in Tixtla, Guerrero, 2014. © Jessica Natividad Torres Barrera. Courtesy of Jessica Natividad Torres Barrera.

constructed site.”49 The murals represent the fragility of the victims and give voice to the subjects who have been transformed into “bare life,” stripped of their human condition and forced to live on the margins of the law; one image shows them as abandoned, incarcerated fetuses who no longer want to be born. Perhaps this image is the point of departure for a properly democratic politics that will have to be rethought from the standpoint of the subversion and dislocation of the social.50 But it is also an image of the nullification of engaged subjects. It is a call for resistance, but at the same time it is the chilling presentiment that everything is finished. The murals of Ayotzinapa are also a great assemblage of public images showing rural teachers’ struggle to survive. In one of them, we see fragments of newspaper articles about the Ayotzinapa case that are being shot at by hooded, black-clad men. Their bullets shut down ideas and in particular the alternative model of rural education. At the same time, they represent a war that purportedly aims to eliminate drug trafficking but instead eliminates projects, murders ideas,51 and destroys schools that are opposed to the policies of a government that cleaves to a neoliberal, globalized model of mass-scale surveillance and fear. SPACES IN AYOTZINAPA   77

Notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9.

Marcelo Expósito, “Desobediencia: La hipótesis imaginativa,” in Tendencias del arte: Arte de tendencias, ed. Jesús Carrillo and Juan Antonio Ramírez (Madrid: Cátedra, 2004), 7, http:// marceloexposito.net/pdf/exposito_desobediencia.pdf. Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life, trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito, and Andrea Casson (Los Angeles: Semiotext[e], 2004), 69. Several collectives have made murals as support and resistance against the acts of violence and impunity that are being experienced in Mexico. I have identified the names of SONESCA and GOSEK, and I know that Javier Campos, alias “El Cienfuegos,” has collaborated in organizing collective murals. It is important to clarify that the majority of the murals are anonymous, since they arise out of a collective labor in which what matters least is authorship. On many occasions, volunteers and the general public participate, regardless of whether they are artists or not. Decoloniality has become a key concept in Latin American/Latinx postcolonial studies. It focuses its attention on the networked articulation of multiple regimes of power to understand that capitalism is not just an economic system or a cultural system but rather a global network of power, made up of economic, political, and cultural processes—the sum of which maintains the whole world system. In the face of a modern-colonial-global visual culture, decolonial visualities address models that supplant dominant visualities. Decolonial critique is constituted as an epistemological point of departure for understanding the relationships between power and ways of seeing. Santiago Castro-Gómez and Ramón Grosfoguel, “Giro decolonial, teoría crítica y pensamiento heterárquico,” in El giro decolonial: Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global, ed. Santiago Castro-Gómez and Ramón Grosfoguel (Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javierana, 2007), 9–25; Ramón Grosfoguel and Walter Mignolo, “Intervenciones decoloniales: Una breve introducción,” Tabula rasa 9 (July–December 2008): 29–37; León Christian, “Telecolonialidad, visualidad y poder: Desafíos actuales de los estudios visuales desde América Latina,” in Culturas visuales desde América Latina, coord. Deborah Dorotinski and Rían Lozano (Mexico City: UNAM-IIE, 2022), http://www.ebooks.esteticas.unam.mx/items/show/69. Joaquín Barriendos, “La colonialidad del Ver: Hacia un nuevo diálogo visual interepistémico,” Nómadas 35 (October 2011): 16. Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” trans. Harry Zohn, in Selected Writings: Volume 4, 1938–1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennigs (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003), 389–400. Expósito, “Desobediencia,” 3. Investigative reporting by journalists like Anabel Hernández, Marcela Turati, and Steve Fisher, among others, has refuted the official version of the events that took place on the night of September 26, 2014, in the surroundings of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College. Anabel Hernández, La verdadera noche de Iguala: La historia que el gobierno trató de ocultar (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2017). During the 1920s, the first rural teachers’ colleges were created in Tacámbaro, Michoacán; Molango, Hidalgo; Acámbaro, Guanajuato; and Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla. During Lázaro Cárdenas’s presidency, the rural teachers’ colleges were given a strong push. There came to be a total of thirty-six such schools across the country, only sixteen of which currently remain. The account of the rural teachers’ colleges presented here is based on Tatiana Coll, “Las Normales Rurales: Noventa años de lucha y resistencia,” El cotidiano 89 (January–February 2015): 90.

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10. Coll, “Las Normales Rurales,” 90. 11. Alicia Civera Cerecedo, La escuela como opción de vida: La formación de maestros normalistas rurales en México, 1921–1945 (Mexico City: El Colegio Mexiquense, 2008), 24. 12. Lorenzo Meyer, “El Maximato,” in Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, período 1928–1934: Los inicios de la institucionalización; La política del Maximato, ed. Lorenzo Meyer, Rafael Segovia, and Alejandra Lajous (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1995), 85–104. 13. There are many kinds of public teacher-training institutions in Mexico. Indeed, there are currently 265 colleges with over 90,000 students among them. Each of these has different types of community and formation, not only in the way they were established but also in how they developed in the decades since. There are Meritorious and Centennial Colleges (Normales Beneméritas and Centenarias), Rural Colleges, Vocational Colleges, Regional Centers for Teacher Training, Indigenous Colleges, and Colleges for Special Needs Education and for Physical Education, as well as Colleges for the Arts. Each of them has participated in forms of activism and resistance to the neoliberal state. Outstanding among them are the Rural Teachers’ Colleges, of which there are sixteen (fifteen of which form part of FECSM, the Mexican Federation of Socialist Peasant Students). See Yanín Zareli Ruvalcaba Monroy, Horacio Barbosa Cruz, and Édgar Omar Avilés Martínez, eds., Los normurales: Un grito de resistencia y color por la memoria (Mexico City: Ediciones Normalismo Extraordinario– CONAEN, 2021), 21. 14. David L. Raby, Educación y revolución social en México (1921 a 1940) (Mexico City: SEP, 1974), 112. 15. Raquel Sosa Elízaga, Los códigos ocultos del cardenismo: Un estudio de la violencia política, el cambio social y la continuidad institucional (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdés, 1996), 256. 16. Carlos Montemayor, Guerra en el Paraíso (Mexico City: Debolsillo, 2015). 17. “Muere Lucio Cabañas, fin de una guerrilla,” El Universal, December 3, 1974, http://archivo .eluniversal.com.mx/estados/82350.html. 18. Coll, “Las Normales Rurales,” 90. 19. After various acts of pressure against the measures of repression, the students at the Tenería Rural Teachers’ College succeeded in establishing a dialogue with the authorities. Nevertheless, Peña Nieto’s current educational reform runs counter to the principles of these schools, which want to maintain their multidisciplinary education, their agricultural workshops, the Indigenous language, their boarding school, and their positions for rural teachers. Coll, “Las Normales Rurales,” 88–89. 20. Civera Cerecedo, La escuela como opción de vida, 4–14. 21. Coll, “Las Normales Rurales,” 84. 22. Hernández, La verdadera noche de Iguala, 50. 23. “Una historia de corrupción, barbarie e impunidad,” Proceso, special edition, 48 (January 2015): 62; “Iguala: Las horas del exterminio,” Proceso, September 20, 2015, 12. 24. Rubén Mosso, “‘El Cochiloco,’ normalista infiltrado de ‘Los Rojos,’” Milenio, September 11, 2015, https://www.milenio.com/policia/el-cochiloco-normalista-infiltrado-de-los-rojos. 25. Humberto Padgett, “Bernardo Flores Alcaraz, El Cochiloco,” in Ayotzinapa, la travesía de las tortugas: La vida de los normalistas antes del 26 de septiembre de 2014, ed. Mónica Ocampo and José Luis Tapia (Mexico City: Ediciones Proceso, 2015), 117–122. 26. Anabel Hernández and Steve Fisher, “Iguala: La historia no oficial,” Proceso, special edition, 48 (January 2015): 62–65; Marcela Turati, “Una ‘verdad histórica’ a base de intimidación y falsedades,” Proceso, September 12, 2015, 6–10. 27. Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, murdered in December 2012, and Daniel Solís, Julio César Ramírez, and Julio César Mondragón, murdered in September 2014.

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28. “Hacen mural por normalista muerto y desaparecidos en Ayotzinapa; policía lo ‘borra,’” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUJJFwt2FNU, accessed September 13, 2016, but no longer available. 29. Many murals are now part of the collective struggle of the student teachers, as the 2021 book Los normurales by Yanín Zareli Ruvalcaba Monroy, Horacio Barbosa Cruz, and Édgar Omar Avilés Martínez suggests. 30. David Cabañas, the brother of Lucio Cabañas, cofounder of Izquierda Democrática y Popular (Popular Democratic Left), was invited to ENAH as part of the inauguration of the mural. He described the mural as “highly meaningful, since it puts art at the service of noble, revolutionary and progressive causes” (“Inauguración de mural por Ayotzinapa en la ENAH,” August 4, 2016, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JjzFGXyiNA). He recalls that Lucio, who was a leader of the Federación de Estudiantes Campesinos Socialistas, sought to unify the people to work toward ending the repressive capitalist system. 31. Walter Benjamin drew on the notion of agonism in his Arcades Project: “The apotheosis of organization and of rationalism which the Communist party has to promote unceasingly in the face of feudal and hierarchical powers must always be understood in this agonistic relation.” It is a matter of “gather[ing] again, in revolutionary action and in revolutionary thinking . . . the first beginning and the final decay.” The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999), 698–699 (translation modified by Christopher Fraga). (The relevant passage from Benjamin’s German is “genau in dieser ihrer polemischen Beziehung aufzufassen.” Cf. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften [Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982], 5:853.) 32. Chantal Mouffe, Prácticas artísticas y democracia agonística, trans. Carlos Manzano (Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2007), 70. (The source text for this translation is a slightly revised version of Mouffe, “Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces,” Art & Research 1, no. 2 [2007]: 1–5. The quoted passage does not appear in the English-​ language text.) 33. Mouffe, Prácticas artísticas, 67. (This passage appears on p. 5 of the English-language text cited in the previous footnote.—Trans.) 34. Umberto Eco, “L’avenir ne peut-il se construire que sur la mémoire du passé? Préambule,” in Pourquoi se souvenir?, ed. Françoise Barret-Ducrocq (Paris: Grasset, 1999), 237–240. 35. Around five hundred student teachers reached the site in buses, supported by twenty-six indigenes from the Organización Campesina del Municipio de Tecoanapa and another twenty from the organization Xanni Tsavvi (Mixtec Dream). They requested an audience with Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero—who refused to meet with them—to petition for classes to resume at the college. They had been suspended since November 2 because some of the teachers were attempting to install a new director, Eugenio Hernández García, whom the students had identified as a repressor. Their demands also included increasing enrollment from 140 to 170 students for the 2011–2012 academic year, as well as requesting that candidates with a C average be able to take the entrance exam. Aguirre’s response was to repress and murder the protesters. Aggressions toward the schools continued during 2012; on October 15, units from several police forces (including state and federal police, as well as the Grupo de Operaciones Especiales) took by force and emptied out the teachers’ colleges in Tiritepío, Cherán, and Arteaga in Michoacán. Coll, “Las Normales Rurales,” 85. 36. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney, eds., Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, vol. 10 in the Media and Cultural Memory series (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 4. 37. In Nahuatl, the word “Ayotzinapa” comes from ayotli-tzintli-apan, meaning “little squash river” or perhaps “little turtle river,” from ayotl-i (squash); tzin-tli (diminutive); and apan (river).

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38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 389. Georges Didi-Huberman, Arde la imagen (Mexico City: Fundación Televisa, 2012), 42. Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” 391. “That is, to assemble large-scale constructions out of the smallest and most precisely cut components. Indeed, to discover in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event. And, therefore, to break with vulgar historical naturalism. To grasp the construction of history as such. In the structure of commentary. Refuse of History.” Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 461. Simón Díez, “Walter Benjamin y la imagen dialéctica: Una aproximación metódica,” https://www.academia.edu/37376841/Walter_Benjamin_y_la_imagen_dialéctica_Una _aproximación_metódica, accessed May 14, 2016. María Teresa de la Garza Camino, “Tiempo y memoria en Walter Benjamin,” in Topografías de la modernidad: El pensamiento de Walter Benjamin, ed. Dominik Finkelde et al. (Mexico City: UNAM-Ibero, 2007), 173. Garza Camino, “Tiempo y memoria en Walter Benjamin,” 181. Georges Didi-Huberman, Survivance des lucioles (Paris: Minuit, 2009), 38. Didi-Huberman, Survivance des lucioles, 35. Grosfogel and Mignolo, “Intervenciones decoloniales,” 106. Helena Chávez Mac Gregor, “Aproximaciones para una crítica de la violencia,” in Estética y violencia: Necropolítica, militarización y vidas lloradas, ed. Helena Chávez MacGregor (Mexico City: MUAC-UNAM, 2012), 7–8. Rosalyn Deutsche, “Agoraphobia,” in Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 288–289. Deutsche, “Agoraphobia,” 274. In recent years, hundreds of clandestine graves have appeared containing dozens of cadavers that had been mutilated, hanged, or had their throats slit. Since 2006, the year when Calderón declared war on drug trafficking, the death toll has risen to 120,000, many of whom were innocent people. According to the National Register of Data on Missing or Disappeared Persons, the toll of enforced disappearances is 27,659. When tallying the casualties of this war, we must also consider the murders of 120 journalists in the last twenty-five years. Censorship and freedom of expression should also be counted as part of Mexico’s historical memory. See David Vicenteño, “Hay 27 mil 659 desaparecidos; reporte oficial del gobierno,” Excélsior, February 11, 2016, http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2016/02/11/1074404.

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DOSSIER B

Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante (CAI) Luna Marán

The Screen as a Mirror Imagining ourselves onscreen, picking up a camera, gathering a community together to tell a story: these are the steps we take in the process of representation. Community cinema aims to be an art of the everyday and sees this art as a necessity, like looking at ourselves in the mirror, like wondering who we are and what our desires are. When we started the Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante (Itinerant Audiovisual Camp, or CAI in Spanish), we were interested in and committed to telling other kinds of stories, the stories not usually found either on big screens or on small ones. Over the past eight years, screens, screening platforms, and networks of social engagement have multiplied. At the same time, the flow of images has grown more complicated, changing relationships between artists and spectators. Shaking Off the Stench of Auteur Cinema Telling stories from the perspective of the individual(ist) auteur is a heavy burden, a distressing path, wrapped up in the romantic narrative of the tormented artist. In Mexico, this archetype is invariably ascribed to filmmakers in schools, festivals, and exhibitions, and even within the meager national film industry. But when we manage to break that shell, the labor of filmmaking proves itself capable of revealing one of its greatest virtues: the beauty and heterogeneity of collaborative creation. Where I come from, the town celebration is the engine that organizes our annual cycle, and people work all year long to make it possible. It’s an enormous responsibility to serve on the committee for this event. After many months of

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FIGURE B.1. CAI logo. © CAI. Courtesy of CAI.

work and effort, the whole community celebrates life and starts the cycle anew. There’s no such thing as a fiesta de autor (auteur party). When we make community cinema, we create a celebration. Inevitably, we confront production hurdles, endless funding obstacles, major and minor narrative questions, aesthetic challenges, and a set of direct and indirect struggles to achieve our goal. But these tasks are always carried out as a team, for the joy and benefit of the collective. This crucial aspect means that community cinema doesn’t have just one result; it yields an entire working process, which is very different from the process of making auteur or commercial films. We make cinema with and for the community, whether you call it a community village, community neighborhood, community of friends, school community, community social network, or any other expression of collective existence. Collective Decisions When one deals with a collective creation, the highest authority is the creative assembly. In community cinema, we organize our work through processes that enable consensus. Reaching an agreement means expressing our differences, recognizing the diversity of opinions, discussing our points of view, and finding forms of mediation. This allows us to make both narrative and aesthetic decisions together and assign roles, thus meeting the project’s practical needs. Under this organizational framework, the days of tyrannical rule are over; the collective authority decides who the director will be. Nothing is more necessary—​or more challenging—for the construction of the “other” stories and narratives that we want to tell. When CAI emerged in 2011, we knew intuitively that we wanted to go about things differently, to tell stories differently. Little by little, we’ve discovered the challenges of community filmmaking as well as its intrinsic power. Recognizing ourselves onscreen as communities has generated horizontal dialogues. At the same time, it has nurtured cinema’s potential to spark empathy with other ways

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of being and understanding the world. Community film has become a tool to resignify the present and reimagine the future. We are called an “itinerant camp” because every summer for three weeks we bring together a group of young people who gather in a different community in Sierra Juárez, Oaxaca, to discover and make films. The Indigenous community opens its doors for us, so that together we undertake a process of co-learning, in which those who inhabit the area and those visiting share their stories. This dialogue is joined by professionals from the film industry who share their knowledge in a fresh and horizontal manner. Most of them leave the camp full of enthusiasm, as they also learn immensely both from the community and from the young participants. Repeatedly, the teachers are the ones who are most surprised; at CAI they encounter a very different kind of cinema. CAI has formulated a series of practical and philosophical propositions to be shared. These are: • Communality (comunalidad): Forms of community organization provide elements for the organization of audiovisual production. • Linguistic diversity: Acknowledging and understanding the diversity of languages in the Mexican territory allows us to take on the challenges of narrative exploration resulting from the complexity of each language. • Experimentation: We take audiovisual thought not as a given but as something under continuous construction. • Community communication: Four generations of Indigenous communicators have left us a precedent concerning the importance of utilizing media to communicate our ways of thinking as Indigenous peoples; cinema is one of them. • Exhibition: Cinema does not exist until it is seen and talked about by the public. Learning to make cinema involves learning to exhibit cinema and to understand the significance of conversing with the public. • Assembly: The CAI is organized as an assembly, understood as a space that allows the making of organizational, aesthetic, and production decisions based on a diversity of knowledges and experiences. Every year, each group faces specific difficulties resulting from the process of collective action: this is the emotional rollercoaster that defines CAI’s learning process. When participants reach the camp, they are usually meeting for the first time, but they can already perceive immediate affinities. As they begin to share the stories they want to shoot and to plan each short film, differences—political, aesthetic, organizational—begin to surface. This is where the real challenge begins: how to navigate these conflicts. Some start out as subtle differences in 84  New Muralisms

FIGURE B.2.

Still of CAI’s film Salva, 2019. 3.40 mins. © CAI. Courtesy of CAI.

Still of CAI’s film Ka Niula Yanni (Mujeres activas/Active Women), 2018. 7.35 mins. Collective creation by Ana Monserrat Cárdenas Rojas, Emmanuel Hernández Martínez, Herminio López Maldonado, Itzel Muñoz Mora, and Kevin Santiago Manzano. Courtesy of CAI.

FIGURE B.3.

the tone of particular social interactions. These can often escalate into crises that ultimately help participants test their own abilities to work as a collective, to make concessions, to let go of their preconceptions, and to find themselves affected by other people’s ideas. After the shoot, tired and nursing the frustrations that the process always generates, they regroup at the editing table, where they have to cook something up in just a few hours using only the ingredients they have to hand. Sometimes the prior tensions dissipate in the editing stage, sometimes they intensify; either way, the learning process endures. Each group comes with its own avatars and possibilities for transformation. Reaching consensus is never easy. Yet in the end, they all share the satisfaction of having finished a film, as well as the recognition. We want to bring urgent, necessary stories to the screen—to make films that represent us. We seek to question hegemonic discourses, shake off aesthetic impositions, and escape narrative prisons. CAI takes place for three weeks every year, but it unleashes an avalanche of questions that opens up even more questions. We are like a crack in a wall that opens the imagination onto other possible cinemas, like a community practicing resistance through strategies of communality, organization, and solidarity.

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CHAPTER 3

Politics of Enunciation and Affect in an Age of Corporeal Violence Mónica Mayer’s The Clothesline and Pinto mi Raya’s Embraces Karen Cordero Reiman

Feminist art and aesthetics have made a key contribution to the constellation of proposals that have reimagined and reconfigured public space in Mexico since the 1970s. In this chapter, I address the participatory aesthetics and political pertinence of two feminist artworks that have blurred the boundary between aesthetics and activism or, perhaps more accurately, put them into productive dialogue: Mónica Mayer’s El tendedero (The Clothesline), originally conceived in 1978, and Abrazos (Embraces), conceived in 2008 by Pinto mi Raya, a collective formed in 1989 by Mónica Mayer and Víctor Lerma. In the second half of the twentieth century, and particularly from 1960 onward, women artists in Mexico explored new bodily discourses that challenged not only the modes of corporeal representation but also the concept of political art that had characterized the dominant narratives of Mexican art up to that time. In contrast to the homogeneous, monumental conception of the political body present in muralism and related artistic movements, these women artists explored the differentiated experiences of bodies and the polysemic and fragmentary nature of corporeal experience in contemporary culture. Their work also introduced innovations in visual and conceptual languages and in the 89

use of materials to account for a gendered understanding of the body and a new, situated analysis of subject-object relations as well as to address distinct social and historical issues.1 This process can be compared to parallel initiatives in Europe (from Mary Kelly in Great Britain to Fina Miralles in Catalonia), in the United States (from Hannah Wilke to Ana Mendieta), and in South America (from Lygia Clark in Brazil to Liliana Maresca in Argentina), to mention only a few examples. However, the particular examples addressed in this chapter have distinctive qualities that have acquired increasing resonance, both in Mexico and abroad, in the decades since their conception. The Clothesline, re-created in various contexts since the 1970s and ever more so since 2016, makes verbal testimonies of gender-based violence visible. Using a structure that alludes to a traditionally feminine everyday activity— hanging up clothes to dry—Mayer (b. Mexico City, 1954) and her collaborators on this project invite the public to share their experiences of the city, which in most cases involve some degree of violence, insecurity, and harassment. The documentation and contextualization of various versions of the piece, which span over forty years across different countries and within Mexico, in turn construct a visual archive of cultural memory that links the situation of women, feminism, and social activism in the late 1970s to the present. Embraces was originally presented by Pinto mi Raya in performance festivals in 2008 in Romania and in 2009 in Israel, and was reactivated in 2016 in Mexico City as part of a retrospective exhibition of Mayer’s work. Since then, it has been restaged and reactivated in several other contexts. The piece motivates a collective dynamic based on the recollection and reenactment of significant embraces by a diverse group of individuals, whose testimonies were documented by Mayer and Lerma. It incites forms of corporeal and affective interaction that suggest models for countering the same urban alienation documented in The Clothesline. Created originally as a performative strategy to establish cross-cultural interaction without presuming a knowledge of the other’s context, Embraces uses physical empathy to cut across linguistic and cultural boundaries, underlining a basic gesture that can have infinite variants and interpretations but nevertheless maintains a single intention. In a period of increasing political and economic polarization, this piece, one might say, “returns to the basics,” emphasizing the importance of experiencing the body as the locus of subjectivization, which is the essence of feminist performance. I compare and contrast the diverse strategies conceived by the artists and participants in these pieces for their activation; the reception and resonance of the works in distinct social and geographical contexts, including the museum,

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public spaces, mass media, and social networks; and the poetics of representation they encompass. I also explore the ways in which they intersect in a performative work presented in Culiacán, Sinaloa, in October 2016, which emerged in the context of a workshop and exhibition on feminist art. I argue that Mayer’s and Pinto mi Raya’s performances are living works that continue to evolve, procreate, and take on multiple forms that underline the role of both the body and verbal testimony as sites of resistance and reconstruction of social ties, even as they index the unrepresentable.2 The unfortunate context for much of this extraordinary vitality is the persistence of violence, and particularly gender-based violence, in Mexico, which has reached epidemic proportions, increasing over the course of the past four decades in spite of the fact that it coincides with the growth of the feminist movement and with social, legal, and political initiatives that seek to raise awareness of it, control it, and sanction it.3 This speaks to less detectable social phenomena that underlie this problem, as well as to a continuing need for its visibilization and analysis as well as its denunciation. The distinctive contribution of feminist art in general in this context, and of the two works analyzed here in particular, is that they allow the development of a politics of affect that preserves the voices and experiences of individuals, without insisting on a homogeneous agenda or strategy. Rather, these works focus, like the consciousness-raising groups of second-wave feminism in the 1970s, on creating a space in which personal testimonies can be shared in a context of respect and empathy. This allows for a collective recognition of the political nature of the personal that fosters adherence rather than introspection, in contrast to the more dogmatic and homogenizing discourse of many political movements. By generating processes that can be replicated in different circumstances and moments while considering the particularities of distinct contexts, these works create a model for another, more horizontal politics tied to everyday practices. It also situates dialogue with others as an objective in itself, while recognizing the radical potentiality of this position in a society characterized by the repression of dissent. This was notably the case in Mexico in the 1970s, a period marked by the government’s violent repression of dissidence in the years following the Tlatelolco student massacre of 1968.4 In the previous two decades, the country and Mexico City in particular had experienced rapid industrialization and urban expansion, accompanied by an influx of migrants from rural areas to the capital and the concomitant growth of an increasingly sprawling and dehumanized metropolis. This led to both an architectonic transformation, with concrete

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international-style high-rises, new traffic, and public transportation routes, and changes in spatial and social structures that effected a dramatic shift in class, racial, generational, and gender relations. The parallel bureaucratization of the political system and the developmentalist economic apparatus also impacted the structures of the art system, which saw the emergence of new formal canons and both state and commercial institutions, as well as a countercultural undercurrent that pushed back against the strictures imposed by them.5 In this context, feminist art represented a break with official institutions and hierarchies, questioning dogmas and opening up spaces for critical reflection in which individuals could maintain their autonomy within a collaborative structure.6 In spite of the critical role they played in many of the cultural and social struggles linked to the Mexican Revolution and other protest movements of the first half of the twentieth century, women only achieved the right to vote in Mexico in 1953. The ensuing decades were marked by the emergence of an independent feminist movement that—in connection with the advent of interdisciplinary and new media strategies in the arts—made possible new modes of self-representation, subjectivity, and political enunciation through both individual artistic creations and collective work.7 The radical impact of these works by women artists on the cultural scene and on the possibilities for self-representation by women in a broader sense, as well as on the representation of vulnerability and difference in relation to conventional constructs of gender and sexual identity, has only much more recently become the object of art historical analysis and begun to be integrated into the museological and critical narratives of modern and contemporary Mexican art. After years of struggle, today it has been established that a richer and more complete narrative of Mexican art emerges when we consider the work produced by women artists since the 1970s and its treatment, use of, and allusions to the body. Mónica Mayer’s creative production as an artist, critic, teacher, and activist has positioned her on a national and international level as one of the clearest and most consistent referents in Mexican feminist art since the 1970s in this context.8 A review of her career reveals an oeuvre that constitutes a holistic, multidisciplinary phenomenon that moves constantly between individual and collective work, as well as between two-dimensional, performative, and conceptual production. Moreover, Mayer’s art is in reflexive dialogue with both her personal life and her social context, seeking to configure an alternative model to the hegemonic art system while constituting a key presence in the field of contemporary Mexican art.9

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Becoming a Feminist Artist Mayer studied art between 1972 and 1976 at the National School of Fine Arts in Mexico City. Her initial involvement with feminism and feminist art was a result of her experience in that context, where women artists were expected to relegate their personal, creative, and political concerns to the broader “revolutionary” goals of their male colleagues, as well as to social expectations such as motherhood. She quickly surmised that she needed to become a feminist to become a successful artist, and since that time, her development in those two aspects became inextricably intertwined.10 During her student years, she produced a poster for one of the first roundtables on feminist art that took place in Mexico, in which she participated alongside the art historians Juana Gutiérrez Haces and Armando Torres Michúa. The poster design—a fist clasping a paintbrush in the middle of the graphic symbol for women—echoes the vignettes that she was drawing at the time for the newspaper Cihuat: Voz de la Coalición de Mujeres, published by the feminist group she had joined. In both cases, her creations were anonymous participations as a member of a collective project. The visible presence of the feminist movement in public spaces at the time, despite its limited constituency, also emerges in Mayer’s early drawings and collages, which include photographic documentation of her participation at protests in favor of free, legal abortion in the 1970s—often accompanied by her mother, Lilia Lucido—taken by the activist, photographer, and editor Ana Victoria Jiménez; by Mónica’s brother, Antonio Mayer; or by her partner, Víctor Lerma. Early two-dimensional pieces such as Primero de diciembre 77 (December 1, 1977) and Genealogías (Genealogies, 1979) inaugurate a process that she has continued throughout her graphic and conceptual work of imbricating, reworking, and resignifying elements from her vital archive (literal or performed, photographed or photocopied)—incorporating them by means of drawing, collage, stitching, or weaving, and later on through digital graphics, writing in blogs, and what she calls “performative lectures,” in a fluid operation that constitutes not only a metaphor for the integral character of her life and work but also an artistic proposition in itself. Mayer’s eloquent handling of interweaving, which invites an intimate and tactile approach to materials as an extension of the body, also came into play in a series of watercolors on paper titled Tapices (Tapestries) from 1978. These are among the few works by Mayer that we might call abstract, but their titles refer explicitly to the dynamics of desired and undesired sexual encounters: Tapíz para un amante (Tapestry for a Lover), Tapíz para un seductor (Tapestry for a Seducer), and Tapíz para un violador (Tapestry for a Rapist), and they also

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subvert the conventional expectations regarding female production of textile works. Here and in the Collage íntimo (Intimate Collage) series of the previous year—which employed photography, gauze, and acrylic on canvas—we can perceive the ways in which the concern with introducing into the public sphere a reflection on the experience of the female body, without isolating its personal and political dimensions, generates formal and conceptual innovations that embody a feminist perspective. Likewise, in Lo normal (On Normality) of 1978, made up of a series of postcards that constitute a playful survey about desire and gesturality, Mayer introduces the elements of humor and irony, and a merging of popular visual culture and contemporary conceptual aesthetics, which have become essential elements of her visual and verbal discourse. This in turn echoes one of the distinctive characteristics of feminist protests of the time by groups such as La Revuelta, which used satirical presentations of patriarchal icons (policemen, doctors, priests, etc.) in demonstrations that took on a performative character avant la lettre.11 In 1975, Mexico was the site of the United Nations’ first World Conference on Women, sparking a flurry of parallel activities in the art world, including the exhibition La mujer como creadora y tema del arte (Woman as Creator and Theme of Art) that included primarily male participants. In reaction, Carla Stellweg organized a conference at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City on women’s art and aesthetics, and published an issue of the magazine Artes visuales that included documentation of the discussions during the conference placed in dialogue with articles related to the emerging movement around feminist art and education in the United States. The publication provoked Mayer’s interest in traveling to Los Angeles to study in this context, and in the ensuing years—while she and her partner, Víctor Lerma, saved money for this endeavor—she participated in the organization of a number of explicitly feminist exhibitions and in the Cine Mujer collective, run by Rosa Marta Fernández, which produced documentaries on issues relating to the social, medical, and legal abuse of women.12 The Clothesline The initial Clothesline was created by Mayer in 1978, when she was just finishing art school, in the context of a collective exhibition of young artists in the Museo de Arte Moderno (MAM) in Mexico City organized by one of their professors. The subject agreed upon by consensus was the city, then undergoing rapid growth and transformation, a process affecting its inhabitants on an interpersonal and structural level. Influenced by the conceptual actions that were being explored by artists’ groups of the time as well as the emergent 94  Feminist Publics

FIGURE 3.1. Mónica Mayer, El tendedero (The Clothesline), Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, participatory installation, 1978. Photo by Víctor Lerma. Courtesy of Mónica Mayer and Víctor Lerma.

feminist movement, Mayer invented the “vehicle” that became the basis of the piece—small pink sheets of paper with a sentence to be completed: “As a woman, what I detest most about the city is . . .” These pieces of paper were distributed among women in different social contexts and their responses then hung on a simulated clothesline in the museum gallery, where they continued to accumulate and incite dialogue, both through the public’s reception and through writing on the clothesline sheets themselves. The material conception of the piece, a free-standing wooden structure with parallel lines of cord and small pink sheets of paper attached with wooden clothespins—all conceived as ephemeral (indeed, nothing but photographic documentation of this first Clothesline survives)—proved an efficient and POLITICS OF ENUNCIATION AND AFFECT   95

visually provocative device with which to construct an open inventory or census of women’s daily encounters with harassment and violence in public space and transportation, and to catalyze the sharing of these experiences that had not previously been the target of feminist reflection. Mayer is always careful to note that her piece has no sociological or statistical pretensions; rather, its focus is on the dialogue and the individual and collective consciousness it generates, both at the moment of writing and in the act of exhibiting and reading these intimate testimonies in a public arena. The color of the paper, an ironic wink at the stereotypical social construction of femininity, contrasts with the varied and at times painful recollections they record. Departing from the comfort zone of conventional questionnaires by using the charged and forceful word “detest,” The Clothesline opened up new, raw territory for social observation and consideration, recognizing and validating the importance of women’s discomfort, indignation, and anger in their daily encounters with machismo projected on their bodies. The piece also approached the “burning topics” of the feminist movement of the time—abortion and rape13—from an oblique perspective that related them to personal experiences and emotions and to everyday attitudes rather than public demands, facilitating both consciousness-raising in the participants and a silent dialogue regarding these issues with the museum audience that came close to the piece to read the handwritten testimonies. Thus, while Mayer characterizes this moment in her early career as her period as a “furious feminist”—“that first moment when one becomes aware of the [havoc] caused by sexism, and all the myths that one has swallowed start to crumble and one’s anger is so intense that you lose your sense of humor and sometimes end up believing that the enemy [is] men and not the system in which we all participate”14—​in fact we can already observe in these early works the dialogical focus and attention to affect that is one of her key contributions. The following year, Mayer traveled to Los Angeles to participate in the Feminist Studio Workshop program in the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles, where artists such as Judy Chicago, Arlene Raven, Suzanne Lacy, and others were collaborating in the generation of feminist art in the United States. Working closely with Suzanne Lacy, who—with Leslie Labowitz—had formed Ariadne: A Social Art Network, Mayer learned about and explored the theory and implementation of social practice art, which promoted a process-based strategy of social action and intervention, acquiring elements that allowed her a more precise analysis of the vehicle and social situation her participatory installation had produced. In the context of Lacy and Labowitz’s project Making It Safe in the Ocean Park area of Los Angeles, she developed a second Clothesline, in 96  Feminist Publics

FIGURE 3.2. Mónica Mayer, El tendedero (The Clothesline), Los Angeles, California, participatory installation as part of the project “Making It Safe,” organized by Ariadne: A Social Art Network (Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz), 1979. Photo by Víctor Lerma.

which she explored more radical exhibition strategies in nonart spaces: from the street to local libraries, as well as on ephemeral “clotheslines” strung between lampposts, utility poles, and other artifacts of the urban milieu. She also honed her abilities in linking art, social action, and activism, since the questions posed by the piece in this case addressed both the problems and possible solutions in a context that, in contrast to the previous Clothesline, was not her home turf. Whereas in the Mexico City Clothesline the question was printed in a somewhat baroque font on small sheets of paper, in Los Angeles larger sheets were used, in three different tonalities of pink, on which three questions were posed in bolder, handwritten capital letters: “Do you feel safe in Ocean Park?,” “Where do you feel safer?,” “What would make you feel safer?” Moreover, while the photographic documentation of the Museo de Arte Moderno’s El tendedero shows only the installation in the museum and its public, the photographs from Los Angeles show Mayer in action on the street, in various scenarios and in conversation with the people from the Ocean Park neighborhood, highlighting precisely the dialogue that she came to see as the central element of the piece and a key part of her work as an artist. As Mayer emerged as a pioneering feminist artist in Mexico, The Clothesline POLITICS OF ENUNCIATION AND AFFECT   97

became one of her signature pieces, exhibited through documentation in shows of feminist art and activist art all over the world. For example, it was the only work of a Mexican artist featured in WACK!, the major retrospective of feminist art in 2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.15 In the years since 2016, however, the piece seems to have become what we might term “viral” on a national and international level, spurring new developments in its process-based structure, and its appropriation by both activist groups and art institutions has become a way of generating collective interactions around issues of gender-based violence and a greater appreciation of the social potential of art in areas where political action has fallen short.16 In 2015, in MDE15, a city-wide art event in Medellín, Colombia—an area that has been plagued by violence—Mayer not only exhibited the documentation of the piece from the 1970s but also created a new Clothesline. In its conception, Mayer introduced elements that reflected her ensuing development and her concerns as an artist with feminist pedagogy: the creation of interdisciplinary networks, the dialogue with younger generations, and the formation of accomplices or cronies at the interstices of art and activism. A key factor in this respect was a workshop coordinated by Mayer in which the participants— primarily artists and activists in the area of gender violence—worked together to generate the questions and processes for collecting answers for the Clothesline in relation to their specific context. This process, which was also enriched by Mayer’s parallel involvement with activist groups in Mexico working on gender violence—such as the collective Las Hijas de Violencia (The Daughters of Violence)—­resulted in a series of pointed questions that homed in on the documentation of harassment and the proposal of strategies of resistance and transformation in this respect: 1. 2. 3. 4.

What was the first time you were harassed? What situations make you feel uncomfortable in the street? What have you done to defend yourself against sexual harassment? How have you defended others against sexual harassment, or how do you propose to defend them?

In 2016, I curated a retrospective of Mayer’s work at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) in Mexico City titled When in Doubt . . . Ask: A Retrocollective Exhibition of Mónica Mayer (Si tiene dudas . . . pregunte: Una exposición retrocolectiva de Mónica Mayer). “Retrocollective”—a term suggested by the Argentinian art historian María Laura Rosa—refers precisely to the blurring of individual authorship in many of her pieces as a result of their participatory or collective character, and the first section—a kind of prologue 98  Feminist Publics

to the exhibition, called Tendiendo redes (Setting Up Networks)—introduced the temporal span of Mayer’s work through the evolution of the Clothesline. It also included the creation of a new version of the work for and throughout the course of the exhibition, one of several strategies of activation inherent to the show’s conception.17 This section of the exhibition was located in the corridor leading to the entry to the galleries per se, suggesting a kind of “spilling out onto the street” of the exhibition in museological terms, which in fact took place more literally prior to and during the show. In reflecting on the pertinence of the reactivation of a work initiated decades ago, Mayer has noted not only the persistence but the increase in harassment and gender-based violence; however, she also underlines that in the second decade of the twenty-first century—unlike in the 1970s—there are many groups of activists and artists visibilizing the issue and promoting strategies of resistance. As a result, the installation included a computer and monitor that not only served as a supplementary method for public participation but also made available information on artistic and social initiatives related to harassment, the subject on which the questions in this case (as in Medellín) focused. In addition, the MUAC Clothesline included an expanded workshop dynamic that began several months before the inauguration of the exhibition, not only generating the materials for the piece but also involving the participants—many of them young artists—in the conception of their own individual and collective artwork dealing with gender-based violence. The MUAC’s Clothesline and exhibition also coincided with a heightened social consciousness and a surge of visible social and institutional actions around harassment that contributed to the resignification of the work as an activist vehicle, expanding the impact of art very directly into the social and political sphere. Among the aspects highlighted by this process is the fact that the work permits collective participation that preserves and visibilizes individual testimony and experience while enabling a collective process of consciousness-raising and political initiative. It also literally makes evident the overwhelming scale of the problem and exposes the personal and the political as deeply entwined. Among the groups that took up, replicated, and appropriated the artistic-​ activist model of the Clothesline, both with and without Mayer’s participation, were Amnesty International; feminist groups in Zacatecas, Mexico; and middle school teachers and their students in Mexico City.18 The workshop participants also proposed additional strategies to activate the performative qualities that characterize Mayer’s work. For a major demonstration against gender-based violence in April 2016, they invented the Destendedero (Unhanging), a mobile POLITICS OF ENUNCIATION AND AFFECT   99

clothesline that they carried in the march on which they hung sealed letters that were then distributed to bystanders. These letters formed a part of the work Tejiendo cómplices (Weaving Complicities), in which workshop participants distributed in various locations throughout Mexico City “secret” letters inviting the recipient to denounce harassment when she observes or experiences it, and expressing the author’s commitment to support and defend her in these circumstances, thus forming a support network among women through this distinctive “chain letter.”19 The complex, critical nature of El tendedero was also evident in the public programs and parallel activities accompanying Mayer’s retrospective. These emphasized and developed strategies for community creation that prioritized diversity, humor, and warmth, articulated through visual, material, and process-based methodologies. Throughout the exhibition, Mayer, members of the Clothesline workshop, and a number of invited performance artists and researchers of feminist art interrupted the usual solemnity of the museum and the physical and verbal norms inherent in its relationship to contemporary art by inciting dialogue as well as embodiment.20 Among the “guest artists” who gave personalized tours to activate the exhibit were the actress and cabaret performer Marisol Gasé, a member of the Reinas Chulas company; Julia Antivilo, a performance artist as well as cultural historian specializing in Latin American feminist art; Katnira Bello, a visual and performance artist; and the visual artist María Rodríguez Cruz. Each interpreted a selection of works from their own perspective and experience, and invited the public to participate in acts of personal appropriation of Mayer’s pieces, thus underlining and extending the “retrocollective” nature of the exhibition and its inherent critique of decontextualized, hagiographic art historical and curatorial narratives.21 For the closing day of the exhibit, the painful, diverse, emotionally and politically charged content of the Clothesline was additionally activated, as participants in the exhibition teamed up to read aloud the contents of the more than eight thousand pink sheets that responded to the four highlighted issues. These sheets underscored, among other aspects, the early age—consistently around six or seven—at which people recalled their first experience of harassment, and just how recent their last experience of harassment was, often occurring on public transportation that people took to get to the museum. The reading aloud of these testimonies resonated for the visitors circulating throughout the exhibition and served to exacerbate the multisensorial quality of the work, which refused to let us separate our aesthetic from our political experience and our personal experience from the aesthetic and the political. Simultaneously,

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the Clothesline workshop members invited museum visitors to “take one” of the letters on the clothesline, individually appealing to them to stand in solidarity with other victims of harassment. Also, throughout the day, a knitting circle in the galleries, led by the Yarn Bombers, or Lana Desastre, collective, produced tiny blankets to cover and cushion the pain embodied in each of the pink sheets of paper on the Clothesline, while creating a new opportunity for dialogue, solidarity, and conversation about art, feminism, and related topics in an informal, small-group format, thus echoing a historical feminist tradition. Performative Interventions In addition to Mayer’s two-dimensional creations and her conceptual works that catalyze conversations within and between communities regarding issues related to gender, a significant part of her career has also been work in artistic groups that prioritize performative actions around cultural and social issues.22 In 1983, with Maris Bustamante, she formed the group Polvo de Gallina Negra (Black Hen Powder), the first feminist art group in Mexico, which for a decade carried out performances and actions for live publics and through mass media. The name of the group comes from a powder that is sold in traditional markets in Mexico to protect people from the evil eye, a quality that seemed appropriate to Maris and Mónica, given the precarious situation of art in Mexico at the time, exacerbated in the case of women and feminist artists. One of the group’s first works was the performance Receta del grupo Polvo de Gallina Negra para causarle el mal de ojo a los violadores o el respeto al derecho del cuerpo ajeno es la paz (The Black Hen Powder Group’s Recipe for Giving the Evil Eye to Rapists, or, Peace Is Respecting the Rights of Others’ Bodies), presented at the monument to Juárez during a demonstration against violence toward women.23 The group read their recipe designed to give the evil eye to rapists, which was later published in a feminist calendar and in the magazine Fem, a pioneering publication founded by Alaíde Foppa and Margarita García Flores.24 Pinto mi Raya, the group Mayer formed with her partner Víctor Lerma in 1989, expresses its objective as “lubricating the art system”: proposing multidisciplinary projects of applied conceptual art that, in addition to their symbolic value, aim to critique and transform the processes of the art system in practical and political terms. The duo proposes a dialogue with the community within their own professional domain, using humor, affect, the body, personal commitment, and irreverence as vehicles for promoting change and producing alternatives to the hegemonic art system. Their presence in the Mexican cultural sphere is insistent and incisive.25

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Embraces Created by Pinto mi Raya for performance festivals in Romania and Israel in 2008 and 2009, respectively, Embraces uses embodiment, in particular the physical embrace, to cut through cultural, social, personal, and linguistic differences while accounting for the singularity of an archive of recollections of what, for each person, has been a particularly meaningful hug. The strategy of the work drew on the training in storytelling that Mayer and Lerma followed at that time to enrich their performative practice, but it also ties in—perhaps intuitively—to research about narrative and embodiment as key elements in the healing of trauma.26 In conceiving and preparing the piece, Pinto mi Raya used Facebook (then just entering into vogue) to invite various friends to share their narrations of significant embraces. They then transcribed them and invited the public participating in the collective performance piece to read one of the narrations out loud and share their re-creation of the recollected hug with another participant. The enactment of the piece in Romania and then in Israel reveals different visual markers; in Israel, the public was invited, as part of the installation, to share additional related memories.27 The testimonies of hugs were brief, moving statements in the first-person that described the circumstances leading up to the embrace, allowing the participants in the performance to imagine and re-create their physical expression on the basis of their emotional identification with the experience recounted. Among them are the following: A memorable hug that still moves me deeply is the one my daughter and I gave each other when we found out I was not going to die from cancer. My father’s hug when I left jail. He was just outside waiting for me. I remember a group hug at the end of a workshop. It was a moment of reconciliation with myself and everyone else. When we began the workshop, many of us were angry at the idea of suffering because we were women, and that hug was like accepting myself in the arms of others. In proposing the activation of this piece as part of Mayer’s “retrocollective” exhibition—in particular during the performative visits by Mayer or the enlaces (guides trained as accomplices in the project)—we were unsure if it would work, given its position almost at the end of the exhibition script. However, it turned out to be an effective cathartic moment in relation to the emotions stirred by the exhibit’s treatment of the personal as political. The physical contact, normally repressed in the museum context, despite the multisensorial and emotional arousal it invokes, underlined the essential nature and power of performance in general and particularly in Mayer’s and Pinto mi Raya’s work. What was 102  Feminist Publics

FIGURE 3.3. Pinto mi Raya, Abrazos (Embraces) reactivated in the exhibit Si tiene dudas . . . pregunte: Una exposición retrocolectiva de Mónica Mayer (When in Doubt . . . Ask: A Retrocollective Exhibit of Mónica Mayer), Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico, 2016. Photograph by Ulises Valderrama.

perhaps one of the most stark, conceptual aspects of the gallery installation—a single enlarged image of the performance of Embraces in Israel, accompanied by brightly colored placards with the instructions for the piece and a selection of the original narrations of embraces contributed by Mayer and Lerma’s friends—became a vehicle for the emotional and physical participation of the public in the experience of the body as an artistic vehicle, the basis of performance art (figure 3.3). Afterlives in Culiacán Inspired by Mayer’s retrocollective show, the Galería Antonio López Sáenz (GAALS) in Culiacán, Sinaloa—a public contemporary art space in a city notorious for its drug cartel–related and gender-based violence—organized a workshop on feminist art and invited Mayer to create a Clothesline piece together with a group of local women artists for an exhibition titled Ni de Venus ni de Marte: Feminismo, arte y diferencia (Neither from Venus nor from Mars: Feminism, Art, and Difference). The individual and collective works they proposed as a result of the workshop highlighted, in a broad variety of media and from multiple perspectives, the persistence of physical, cultural, and verbal violence toward women; the aggression toward and disdain for the female body; and the lack of government action in the face of feminist denunciations. This was POLITICS OF ENUNCIATION AND AFFECT   103

FIGURE 3.4. Cutzi Salgado, Acciones para convertirme en los otros (Actions to Convert Myself into Others), performance in the inauguration of the exhibition Ni de Venus ni de Marte: Feminismo, arte y diferencia (Neither from Venus nor from Mars: Feminism, Art, and Difference) in the Galería Antonio López Sáenz (GAALS), Instituto Sinaloense de Cultura, Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico, October 2016. Photograph by Karen Cordero Reiman.

the first explicitly feminist exhibition in the state and became the basis for an ongoing artistic and political collaboration between the participating artists and activists. A conceptual performance work and installation conceived for the exhibition by Cutzi Salgado integrated aspects that characterize Mayer’s Clothesline and Embraces in terms of the distinctive, brutal iconography of local violence. In the weeks before the show, with a Styrofoam cooler—the receptacle in which the body parts of victims of the drug cartels are often found—from the OXXO convenience store over her head, Salgado walked naked along the edge of the river where these “trophies” are often deposited. Salgado’s piece was carefully documented for an installation that would form part of the exhibition; at the same time, the informal, unplanned documentation of the action went viral on the internet and in the press. This incited both threats of government prosecution and solidarity among the group linked with the public initiative of which the exhibition formed a part, and these responses were eventually incorporated into the installation. In addition, Salgado presented a performance for the 104  Feminist Publics

show’s opening in which, with her naked body covered with mud from the river, she sat huddled, silent, and vulnerable in a corner as the viewers streamed into the gallery. Salgado then slowly stood upright, walking through the gallery, where one by one the other participating artists gently cleansed her body with water from the OXXO cooler and an adjacent pile of rags, which they then hung on a makeshift “clothesline” attached to a tree branch, opposite that created by the artists in the workshop with Mayer. Following these individual actions, each participant embraced Salgado, echoing the gesture and key act of physical contact that is the basis of Pinto mi Raya’s Embraces, as well as the exposure, vulnerability, and sharing that are the affective basis of the Clothesline.28 Significantly, the piece was titled Acciones para convertirme en los otros (Actions to Convert Myself into Others). The capacity of this performance to mobilize affect can be illuminated by the following comments by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth: Affect arises in the midst of in-between-ness: between-ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon. Affect is an impingement or extrusion of a momentary or sometimes more sustained state of relation as well as the passage (and the duration of passage) of forces or intensities. That is, affect is found in those intensities that pass body to body . . . and in the very passages or variations between these intensities and resonances themselves. Affect, at its most anthropomorphic, is the name we give to those forces—visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing, vital forces insisting beyond emotion—that can serve to drive us toward movement, toward thought and extension.29 The significance of embodiment and narration, as mentioned earlier, in releasing and processing traumatic experiences that have been repressed on both a societal and individual level, and that have lacked modes of representation, is a key aspect, then, in understanding the political potential of channeling affect in participatory and performative artworks such as those I have discussed here from a feminist perspective. The sharing of recollections and gestures in collective contexts that do not fix their significance through rhetorical or symbolic vehicles allows the flow of “intensities that pass body to body,” enacting rather than naming sorority, a sense of accompaniment that crosses generational, social, and cultural boundaries. In discussing with Mayer the role of affect in her work, she referenced the testimony that a young artist had sent to her of her experience writing on the Clothesline at MUAC about her first memory of harassment: “It must have been up for several months already, because it was POLITICS OF ENUNCIATION AND AFFECT   105

full of little pink papers with horror stories that were like mine and those of my friends. . . . I was almost crying as I did it, because I had never had the experience of feeling so accompanied in something that had me fed up every day.”30 Both The Clothesline and Embraces, and the product of their cross-​pollination in works like Actions to Convert Myself into Others, highlight the preservation of individuality and intimacy together with the act of their verbal and visual enunciation and sharing. Moreover, they underscore the primacy of the body and the acts of remembering, critical reflection, and being compassionate in the context of diversity and difference. The materiality and use of space and color in each case is a key element in marking an aesthetic posture that avoids a sacrosanct aura, inviting identification and an atmosphere conducive to participation, where vulnerability and an openness to the other—even embodying the other, giving voice to the other, listening to the other, comforting the other, mourning with the other—is possible, in distinct national and transnational contexts. The archives created over time, and through time and memory, are renewed with each action and installation and their activation, underlining the links between art and activism and producing a dialogue and complicity that enriches both spheres without disguising the discomfort, difficulty, and violence these works continue to call out and denounce. In this respect, the affective turn in these pieces renews a sense of the radical potentiality of the body in transforming social consciousness and models a politics of enunciation in which verbal and corporeal gestures of vulnerability and solidarity suggest new forms of personal interaction in public spaces based on feminist practices of sorority and horizontality. Notes For a broader context in this respect, see Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Andrea Giunta, et al., Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 (Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2017); and my essay in Radical Women: Karen Cordero Reiman, “Corporeal Apparitions/Beyond Appearances: Women and Bodily Discourse in Mexican Art, 1960–1985,” 271–279. 2. The concept of the unrepresentable has been developed in relation to literature on trauma and art, since, as Jill Bennett, has noted, “Trauma itself is classically defined as beyond the scope of language and representation; hence, an imagery of trauma might not readily conform to the logic of representation.” Jill Bennett, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 3. 3. On this subject, see Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano, eds., Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); and Sergio González Rodríguez, The Femicide Machine (Los Angeles: Semiotext[e], 2012). Parallel phenomena on a global level are also undoubtedly responsible for the international echo of the works discussed in this chapter and others addressing this issue, such as Un violador en tu camino (A Rapist in Your Path, 2019) by the Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis. 4. See Fernando Herrera Calderón and Adela Cedillo, eds., Challenging Authoritarianism 1.

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5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

in Mexico: Revolutionary Struggles and the Dirty War, 1964–1982 (New York: Routledge, 2012). A prismatic vision of the cultural and artistic changes in this period and their context can be found in these exhibition catalogues: Olivier Debroise, ed., The Age of Discrepancies: Art and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1968–1997 (Mexico City: Turner/Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2007); Rita Eder, ed., Defying Stability: Artistic Processes in Mexico, 1952–1967 (Mexico City: Turner/Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2014). For a broader interdisciplinary view of the spatial and political dynamics of the period, see George Flaherty, Hotel Mexico: Dwelling on the ’68 Movement (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016). See Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Women Made Visible: Feminist Art and Media in Post-1968 Mexico City (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019); and Julia Antivilo Peña, Mónica Mayer, and María Laura Rosa, “Feminist Art and ‘Artivism’ in Latin America: A Dialogue in Three Voices,” in Fajardo-Hill, Giunta, et al., Radical Women, 37–41. See Gisela Espinosa Damián and Ana Lau Jaivén, eds., Un fantasma recorre el siglo: Luchas feministas en México 1910–2010 (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2011); and Nora Nínive García, Márgara Millán, and Cynthia Pech, eds., Cartografías del feminismo mexicano, 1970–2000 (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México, 2007). Individual pieces by Mayer, such as The Clothesline, and works created by the Polvo de Gallina Negra collective, which she formed with Maris Bustamante, such as ¡MADRES! (1983–1990), were for many years among the few works by Mexican feminist artists that had a persistent visibility. They were included, for instance, in the 2007 anthological exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The 2016 exhibition of Mayer’s work at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) in Mexico City presented a broad vision of her career that showed the interplay of these aspects. Sol Henaro et al., Monica Mayer: Si tiene dudas . . . pregunte: Una exposición retrocolectiva/When in Doubt . . . Ask: A Retrocollective Exhibit (Mexico City: Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, UNAM y Fundación Alumnos47, 2016). Monica Mayer, “De la vida y el arte como feminista/A Personal History of Feminist Art Activism in Mexico,” n.paradoxa online issue nos. 8 and 9, November 1998 and February 1999: 47–58, https://www.ktpress.co.uk/pdf/nparadoxaissue8and9.pdf. Extensive documentation of these “proto-performance” aspects of the Mexican feminist movement can be found in the Ana Victoria Jiménez Archive in the Francisco Xavier Cla­ vigero Library of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. Mayer, “De la vida y el arte como feminista/A Personal History of Feminist Art Activism in Mexico,” 48–50. Mayer, “De la vida y el arte como feminista/A Personal History of Feminist Art Activism in Mexico,” 48. Mayer, “De la vida y el arte como feminista/A Personal History of Feminist Art Activism in Mexico,” 49. Cornelia Butler and Lisa Gabrielle Mark, eds., WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007). The documentation and Mayer’s narration of all the different Clotheslines that she has created and inspired can be found on her blog “De archivos y redes: Un proyecto artístico sobre la integración y reactivación de archivos” at http://www.pintomiraya.com /redes/visita-al-archivo-pinto-mi-raya/el-tendedero.html and at https://www.el-tendedero .pintomiraya.com/, accessed November 20, 2022.

POLITICS OF ENUNCIATION AND AFFECT   107

17. Sol Henaro et al., Monica Mayer: Si tiene dudas . . . pregunte. 18. For documentation on the iterations and activations of The Clothesline in 2016 and after, see http://www.pintomiraya.com/redes/visita-al-archivo-pinto-mi-raya/el-tendedero.html and https://www.el-tendedero.pintomiraya.com/, accessed November 20, 2022. 19. http://www.pregunte.pintomiraya.com/index.php/la-obra-viva/el-tendedero/item /59-el-destendedero-en-la-minifestacion?fbclid=IwAR0Iotw2AvR4ckAKlVOKzIpmZ 4OgaD7NQgAe_LsNdCNkiMVdMQgk0o3C5I, accessed November 29, 2020; http:// tejiendocomplices.blogspot.com/2016/04/nuestra-carta.html, accessed November 29, 2020. 20. For documentation on the activations of the exhibition, see http://pregunte.pintomiraya.com /index.php/eventos-educativos, accessed November 17, 2019. 21. https://pregunte.pintomiraya.com/index.php/eventos-educativos/recorridos-especiales, accessed November 29, 2020. 22. In this respect, Mayer’s development can be contextualized in relation to a Mexican artistic phenomenon of the 1970s and 1980s known as “Los Grupos” (or “Generación de los Grupos”), conceptually focused collectives that introduced interdisciplinary artistic approaches aimed at deinstitutionalizing art. See Dominique Liquois, De los Grupos, los individuos: Artistas plásticos de los grupos metropolitanos (Mexico City: Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, 1985); and Olivier Debroise et al., The Age of Discrepancies. 23. The title of the performance is an ironic takeoff on a much-quoted phrase defining the liberal political philosophy of Benito Juárez, the nineteenth-century Mexican president to whom the monument where the performance took place is dedicated. 24. For additional discussion of this group’s activities, see Araceli Barbosa, Arte feminista en los ochenta en México: Una perspectiva de género (Mexico City: Casa Juan Pablos/Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, 2008), 113–138. 25. For additional information on this group and its activities, see https://www.pintomiraya .com/. 26. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Viking Books, 2014). 27. For additional documentation on the performance Abrazos, see http://www.pintomiraya .com/pmr/component/k2/item/213, accessed November 17, 2019. 28. Aspects of this action also recall performance pieces by the Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo, as well as earlier works by the Cuban American Ana Mendieta and the Chilean Eugenia Vargas Pereira. 29. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, eds., The Affect Theory Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), kindle edition, 1. 30. Personal communication with Mónica Mayer, November 12, 2021.

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DOSSIER C

Colectivo A.M.

Colectivo A.M. is an artists’ collective dedicated to choreographic production, reflection, and practice, made up of eleven artists based in Mexico.1 They have been working both collectively and individually since 2009. Together, they have created a broad range of projects such as Sala tomada (Hall Taken Over, 2010), Mexican Dance (2011), PULPO: Propagación de ondas coreográficas (PULPO: Propagation of Choreographic Waves, 2013), Arrecife (Reef, 2013), the book Recetario coreográfico: Un roadbook (Choreographic cookbook: A roadbook, 2013), La pista de baile (The Dance Floor, 2015, 2017), El banco universal de pasos de baile (The Universal Bank of Dance Steps, 2015), and Sarta Aicah Ranimac (2019), among others. What follows is a collaborative conversational essay about dance in public spaces. Much of the potential of dance is lost when it becomes a spectacle, something to be watched instead of practiced. Thinking of dance as a communal activity, albeit one carried out within an artistic framework, is among the premises of The Dance Floor and The Universal Bank of Dance Steps, two projects carried out by Colectivo A.M. The Dance Floor is a group construction: we invite everyone to dance—to engage their bodies—for four hours and to activate a space capable of trembling and shaking. The Universal Bank2 is both a traveling device where people can donate dance steps and an online platform that makes the steps accessible to anyone who wants to copy them, play with them, and use them on the dance floor. Besides a desire to document movement, the idea of the bank is to invite people to research their own bodies, as a kind of live research station, and make this available in the public domain. 109

To produce this text we recorded thirty-eight minutes of conversation about both of these projects. Each person transcribed eight minutes, which resulted in 900 words, which were then shortened to 250. The five fragments were then put together as follows: — How does The Universal Bank of Dance Steps engage with public space? — What happened in Cuernavaca, at El Chopo (a public museum in Mexico City), and more recently in Los Angeles is totally different in each case. We’d never been in such kinds of public spaces. This is what we were talking about before: you have to own the fact that the project is problematic, and you have to understand how it can lead to beautiful things and how it can be crappy. There are places where it connects with the community and produces something positive. And there are other places where we actually have to leave, because it goes badly or that’s how it’s received, and we have to respect that. This realization meant we had to put the device to the test. A tough question: Is confronting the audience in this project more important for the Colectivo or for the people who generally dwell in a public space? And even before that, what is public space? It’s a generalization, an abstract way to name almost anything, something ambiguous and difficult to grasp—which means it’s also difficult to think about. Strictly speaking, it’s a space that belongs to no one in particular. But it’s not free either, and not everyone has the same freedom or possibility to move through it. It’s regulated, and its use can be criminalized. It falls within the sphere of the state; it isn’t a field in the middle of nowhere where you can go and do whatever you want. Yet communal spaces can occasionally offer alternatives to the state, as in the case of Leimert Park, a very strongly organized community that has its own police force so that the state and its organs of repression can be kept at bay. Leimert Park belongs to a community, with all its complexities. Anyway, sorry, I’ve talked a lot. The thing is that . . . No, sorry. — Okay, go on. — In the best-case scenario, The Dance Floor would produce the necessary conditions for a public space to be constituted according to the rules of the people who occupy it, even if only temporarily. Perhaps “public space” means producing the public inside a space . . . The Dance Floor, at least in L.A., created its own space by means of the public that formed it. But The Universal Bank didn’t; it inserted itself into various spaces that were already very charged, that already had a set of particularities, characteristics, histories, certain types of people . . . This really confronts you with the image of the anthropologist who shows up to take samples, steal the history the culture. If, for instance, we were on a street where lots of different people were passing by, we weren’t invading; 110  Feminist Publics

we weren’t stealing anything there. Yet in Leimert Park, a very closed community, it was like, What are these guys doing here?; we were very foreign. In the Mariachi Plaza, by contrast, our presence was an intrusion but an accepted one—a dance space inserted into another dance space where we were also more comfortable with the internal codes, because of the Latino presence. Getting to this point was very difficult in MacArthur Park, though it’s also mostly Latino. Here the feeling was: “We’re undocumented; why are these people filming us and asking our names?” So the question really became: Which people can really transit across “public space”? For whom is public space really public? — If our presence was just about collecting dance steps, I’d see it much more as related to the question of the anthropological gaze observing an “other.” But during The Dance Floor, you create a space that’s constituted by the object of study, which you are also part of (and it’s not that you’re looking from afar; you’re participating, dancing, being there). That gaze dissolves. —But does that mean a collective dancing body is formed? Or is it a whole bunch of individualities trying to sustain a space? Is there a shared subject within or among all these bodies? — I’d say it comes and goes. — Yes, there are moments of collective subjectivity, which involve an experience of joy or empathy . . . At L.A.’s Dance Floor, I didn’t feel that a loss of identity turned us into a collective subject. There was rather an intersection of individualities and identities that produced a complex nonunified collectivity. The process was very dynamic, something in motion more than something being formed. Indeed, its shape is hard to grasp. During its various and continuous transformations, these assembled bodies reach points of encounter, intersection, and commonality. The individual is always there, but something in common does happen occasionally, and it doesn’t always include everyone: it can take place among . . . three, five, a hundred people. — Yeah, and there are also layers; the convention is “the common” as a totality, but you really have, for instance, a hip-hop dancer looking at an older cumbia dancer, copying one another and thus establishing a “common.” — How can we create the conditions for a group of people to make the effort of sustaining something shared? It’s an essential question, the question that precedes every revolution. Well, one of the questions that enabled this project (La pista de baile/The Dance Floor) was the fact that it took place in the street and was free. . . . In a context like L.A., where everything costs money, the first condition of possibility was that it had to be free. . . . Actually, precisely because the street isn’t public, many people took it as, “Oh, so it’s going to be public-public? It’s in the street and it’s free? I’m going. We’ll see what happens.” Dani3 was Colectivo A.M.   111

FIGURE C.1. Poster for La pista de baile (The Dance Floor) in Los Angeles, California, 2018, LACE, design by Paul Cooley. © Colectivo A.M. Courtesy of Colectivo A.M.

talking about the racialization of urban space. On the street we picked (a small alley in a corner of Hollywood Boulevard), even though it’s a pretty white area, they would not stop you for being black. There’s still a lot of transit, so people who would be criminalized elsewhere don’t face quite as much risk there. That’s why we picked it. At some point we talked about choosing a “neutral” space that could accommodate everyone, and I said that Hollywood Boulevard is the opposite of neutral, which is why more worlds fit there. There are already so many things there that there’s room for more. We didn’t need a sterilized space, but rather a dirty one. — Yeah, things get politicized right away in the street. It means putting your body out there and resisting. Was it more a demonstration or a dance? I think it was both. A couple of people asked me, “What’s happening here?” “A dance,” I said, and one of them replied, “You mean a mini-march?” They connected the idea of blocking the street with the act of protesting. So we wondered whether taking dance out of the theater meant restoring its political power. Is onstage dance the privatization of dance? I’m not sure if I agree. It might be . . . I think 112  Feminist Publics

FIGURE C.2. Photo from La pista de baile (The Dance Floor) at the Museo del Chopo, UNAM, Mexico City, 2017. Photo by Mara Arteaga. © Museo Universitario del Chopo. Courtesy of Museo Universitario del Chopo.

FIGURE C.3. Still from El banco universal de pasos de baile (The Universal Bank of Dance Steps), 2015. © Colectivo A.M. Courtesy of Colectivo A.M.

it is. I’d agree . . . right? Differences are clearer when you dance. We’re sharing a space, and I either can copy a step of yours or I can’t. The street is a place where the “Let’s just try and figure it out, okay?” becomes more visible. One can’t control how those energies work. One suggests things and offers things, but what happens is public; it no longer depends on a single person (or an author, as it does in the theatrical space). The public is that occurrence which effectively restores power to dance, not through control but through celebration and pleasure. — Indigenous groups and communities often experience festivities as a space of resistance—that is, as anarchic spaces where the dimmed lights erase class distinctions and unite us with the same goal: to hang in there together. This is what joyful resistance entails. Marichuy4 once said it just like that. The goal of a party is almost always celebration, but in the case of The Dance Floor, the party is its very own raison d’être. . . . There isn’t a celebration of something, there are bodies reflecting together through dance, showing their intelligence and the value of the decisions each one makes to keep getting through it, dancing continuously for that whole time. As a choreographic apparatus, The Dance Floor is a framework, not a score. What matters is to produce the conditions for something to happen. The apparatus has to be clear and simple if it’s going to work. And that’s what Esthel5 always says is the hardest part. Notes 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

The artists are Magdalena Leite, Aníbal Conde, Esthel Vogrig, Juan Francisco Maldonado, Leonor Maldonado, Zulai Macías, Nuria Fragoso, Nadia Lartigue, Anabella Pareja, Alma Quintana, and Bárbara Foulkes. See https://tirate-un-paso.tumblr.com/. Daniela Lieja is the curator of the project The Dance Floor, presented at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) as part of the Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/ LA, organized by REDCAT (REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater). Marichuy is a Nahua woman, a human rights defender, elected by the Congreso Nacional Indígena (National Indigenous Congress) as the representative Indigenous spokesperson for Mexico’s federal elections in 2018. Member of the Colectivo A.M.

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CHAPTER 4

Performative Resurrections Necropublics and the Work of Guadalupe García-Vásquez Erin L. McCutcheon

In the spring of 1990, the Mexican performance artist Guadalupe GarcíaVásquez (b. 1946) watched as her parents’ bodies were exhumed from el Panteón Civil de Dolores, Mexico City’s largest cemetery. The state of Guerrero had recently secured permission for her father, the poet Juan García Jiménez, to be reinterred in la Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, his place of birth. To move his remains, excavators were forced to also exhume those of his wife, Domitila Vázquez Añorve, buried above him. García-Vásquez, who had personally prepared her mother’s body for burial in 1986, was confronted with the shock not only of seeing her mother’s mummified remains but also that of watching their dismemberment by workers. The remains were placed in a white plastic bag and the artist was permitted a short moment to embrace them before they were taken away from the gravesite. In this chapter, I consider a series of performances created by Guadalupe García-Vásquez in the aftermath of this event and its complex entanglements with issues of heritage, death, and public memory in Mexico. This physical rupture of the cemetery ground, although on a smaller scale, relates to the seismic shifts signaled by the earthquakes that frame the temporal boundaries 115

FIGURE 4.1. Guadalupe García-Vásquez, X/U/MAR, 1990. Performance in El Panteón de Dolores, Mexico City. Courtesy of Guadalupe García-Vásquez.

of this volume and that in 1985 and 2017 made visible the layers of historical trauma upon which modern Mexico is built. The rubble of historical memories unearthed by these shocks crosses border spaces between colonial and contemporary, national and familial, life and death. What might be rescued from the destructive nature of the earthquakes is the potential for reckoning with the past in ways that transform the present. Through her work, García-Vásquez performs a ritualized resurrection of the past to heal personal and collective traumas and make visible an expanded understanding of “the public.” Guadalupe García-Vásquez was a part of the development of feminist approaches to performance art in Mexico during the 1980s, most notably as a founding member of the feminist art collective known as Bio-Arte. Over the past forty years, she has worked to form her own approach to performance, which is tied to her spiritual identities as both a devotee of the Virgin of Guadalupe and an initiate of Santería. She refers to her works as “ritual performance,” embodied public actions rooted in her mixed Indigenous and Afro-descendant heritages and the ritual practices of her ancestors. In this chapter, I examine three of García-Vásquez’s works, X/U/MAR 116  Feminist Publics

(1990), Árbol de la Victoria (Victory Tree, 1992), and the workshop “Presencia africana en México” (“African Presence in Mexico,” 1995), created in the midst of widespread reconsiderations of colonial histories and their repercussions in the present. Foundational narratives of modern Mexico have attempted to reconcile the country’s past in ways that incorporate certain often romanticized Indigenous histories, practices, and representations into definitions of mexicanidad via discourses of indigenismo.1 Meanwhile, Indigenous people continued to live in political, economic, and social precarity. Moreover, official understandings of cultural “mixing” only acknowledged two ancestries, Indigenous and European, rendering the Afro-descendant population politically, socially, and culturally invisible. It was not until 2015 that Afro-Mexicans could self-identify according to race on the census.2 As performances rooted in an Indigenous and Afro-descendant repertoire, García-Vásquez’s works unearth these histories and create spaces for the visibility of these populations. In the process, they provide new ways to conceptualize “the public.” When asked to reflect on her idea of the public in her work, García-Vásquez replied, “I don’t care about the public. . . . I don’t make work for the public in front of me. But I will say this, my voice has an echo with the right public.”3 Who makes up this “right public,” and how does it relate to García-Vásquez’s approach to performance? In my conversations with the artist, she repeatedly spoke about the presence of ancestors, who were invoked through the actions of her ritual performances and also included those that the performances intended to address. Art historians are equipped to analyze the ways in which performances engage the living, but how might they account for their relationship to the dead? How might I, from my perspective as a white, US-born American scholar, acknowledge the presence of a public I cannot see or measure? What are the potential effects of taking the dead “seriously” as a public brought into being through performance as a space of encounter? Michael Warner’s expanded understanding of the public provides a framework within which to discuss the less readily visible “right public” that these performances engage. The dead, as conjured by García-Vásquez, may be identified within Warner’s definition of publics as “queer creatures,” those that resist rigid categorization and, as Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra states in the introduction to this volume, are “continuously appearing and disappearing, mutating, expanding, falling into oblivion, returning from the past.”4 The dead are a particularly elusive public in that they do not exist within traditional understandings of the public sphere. I argue in this chapter that by drawing from her embodied knowledge and repertoire, García-Vásquez’s works expand the reach of the public beyond and outside of linear conceptions of space and Performative Resurrections   117

time. They thus articulate the possibility for the existence of what might be referred to as a “necropublic,” which effectively returns from the past to address the injustices of the present. Necropublic functions as an umbrella concept under which the dead as a public may be considered in a number of forms. This term was first suggested to me by the anthropologist Baird Campbell when discussing García-Vásquez’s works in relation to his scholarship on dissident/diverse activists in Chile and nonlinear constructions of time.5 The term bears a clear relationship to political theorist Achille Mbembe’s framework for “necropolitics.” Mbembe illuminates the ways governments assign differential value to human life, creating a political system in which certain members of the population have been marked as the “living-dead.”6 These are people living under perpetual conditions of precarity who have been deemed expendable in relation to racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, and political hierarchies. Their bodies are devalued and subjected to disproportionate levels of suffering in life, and they often experience premature deaths that are not met with punishment. Necropolitics are no doubt a determinant of the current conditions of death, disappearance, and impunity in Mexico, and scholars have recently utilized Mbembe’s concepts as a means to understand the complexity of femicide in the country. Michelle W. Wright argues that the political meanings of death produced in the aftermath of femicide in Ciudad Juárez reveal a form of necropolitics in which women are both murdered with impunity and blamed for their deaths by those in power.7 Sayak Valencia’s Gore Capitalism deploys necropolitical theory to understand how systemic violence has been reinforced by heteropatriarchal hegemony and transformed into a commodity in the era of neoliberal hyperconsumption.8 Rather than focusing on the necropolitical conditions of the living-dead, I wish instead to consider the public presence of the actual dead and how they might be resurrected to act in the present. In García-Vásquez’s works examined in this chapter, the necropublic is composed of the ancestral dead, in particular her Indigenous and Afro-descendant ancestors.9 This public is invoked through performances that draw from ritual practices interpreted by the artist in ways that destabilize understandings of time and space shaped by the colonial domination of these groups. Theorizations of the uses of the public sphere, even within the framework of the necropolitical, are often rooted in a linear organization of time as past, present, and future. This model becomes somewhat incoherent when considering performances that engage epistemologies that do not view death as a final ending. Working with and through García-Vásquez’s heritage, I offer here a contextually rooted analysis of the origins and meanings 118  Feminist Publics

of performances that blur temporal distinctions to interpellate ancestors into a necropublic. I examine the implications this public has for the writing of art history and the potential effects of its performative resurrection in the world of the living. Unearthing a Repertoire García-Vásquez was born in the heart of Mexico City, on Calle Moneda, near where the stone monolith of Coyolxāuhqui was discovered in 1978. She was training as a guide at the Museo Nacional de Antropología at the time of this discovery and had the opportunity to see it in person. The artist stated she felt an affinity with Coyolxāuhqui as a fellow “rebel daughter” representative of her Indigenous ancestry, feminist consciousness, and often-troubled relationship with her family.10 García-Vásquez has a mixed Spanish, Indigenous, and African heritage.11 During her upbringing, she was aware of her Indigenous roots, but her understanding of her African ancestry was largely incomplete due to internalized racism within her family—likely tied to the national denial of Afro-Mexican histories and culture.12 New Spain was the second-largest importer of enslaved Africans to the Americas from 1580 to 1640, second only to Brazil, and these people were primarily brought to the area today known as Mexico.13 Partly due to the genocide of local Indigenous peoples, Spanish colonizers forced enslaved Africans to work in silver mines, textile mills, and sugar plantations and as domestic servants.14 This labor was most concentrated in the areas of Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Veracruz, and subsequent rebel communities of those escaping enslavement formed in these territories. By the seventeenth century, the free Afro-​descendant population began to outnumber enslaved people.15 Spanish colonial rule was solidified, in part, through miscegenation efforts regulated by the casta system, which prioritized a whitening of the population. African and Afro-descendant peoples were marked as carrying the lowest social and political capital within this system, often depicted as uncivilized or uncontrollable in racist imagery of the period.16 The casta system was dismantled following the War for Independence in 1821; however, this form of racist social organization continued to impact the Afro-Mexicans’ visibility and social status.17 Postrevolutionary rhetoric about the “cosmic race” effectively erased Afro-Mexican identity by defining the nation as a people “Indian in blood and soul; Spanish in language and civilization.”18 Despite García-Vásquez’s family connections to the Costa Chica region of Guerrero, where the majority of Afro-Mexicans live today, it was not until she left Mexico that she experienced Afro-descendant culture. García-Vásquez left Performative Resurrections   119

school and married at the age of sixteen, in part to escape a childhood of physical abuse. She, her husband, and their children relocated to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she began studying landscape painting. Brazil at the time was in the midst of a flourishing moment of artistic activity and an increasingly brutal dictatorship.19 García-Vásquez’s time there opened her eyes to the possibilities of performance art and its connection with ritual practice. In a series of interviews, she described two defining events in this process: first, watching a recording of a performance by her art professor in which he lay naked on top of a red anthill and allowed his body to be excruciatingly stung by ants. GarcíaVásquez stated she was struck by the “exposure and experience and trauma” in art that she had “never seen in Mexico.”20 The second event was also within the art world, albeit unexpectedly, at a New Year’s Eve party at the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM). García-Vásquez recalled watching from the balcony as Afro-Brazilian celebrants danced and sang with large-scale sculptures through the streets to the beach, where they sent them out to sea as offerings. Inspired by what she had witnessed, GarcíaVásquez spontaneously created what she referred to as her first performance. She waded into the sea and threw her wedding ring as an offering to Yemaya and the Virgin of Guadalupe, to whom she dedicated her life in that moment.21 García-Vásquez explained her understanding of the relationship between art, ritual, and Afro-centered performance during this time as follows: On one hand I was being exposed to the MAM. To the avant-garde artists. And on the other hand, it isn’t about only candomblé. It’s macumba. Macumba is a living thing, it is part of everyday aesthetics and practice. . . . You will see cachaça bottles with candles and a black cloth and offerings in a corner here, and a corner there, everywhere. Then, if you go to the beach early in the morning, about 7 o’clock, it will be filled with offerings for Yemaya. Every day . . . To me it was performance, aesthetics, race, installation, life, spirituality. But it is not something that you go to a special place for . . . you are right there, living it.22 García-Vásquez’s initial approach to ritual performance resulted from experiencing these practices as embedded in everyday life. Her time in Brazil was an awakening of an embodied knowledge, what she called a “reclamation,” of her own relatively unknown and yet newly remembered heritages.23 García-Vásquez’s experience is emblematic of what Diana Taylor defines as a “repertoire.”24 Taylor uses this term to acknowledge how performance may be understood as a system of knowledge that exists outside of “Western” 120  Feminist Publics

epistemologies. She argues that Western systems of knowledge have centered around the concept of a stable “archive”—for example, what has been recorded in documents or maps. The primacy of the archive has worked to deny systems of knowledge and memory rooted in oral transmission and the body. For her, Indigenous and Afro-descendant cultural practices in Latin America, those that manifest in “embodied memory—performances, gestures, orality, movement, dance, singing”— and that have been delegitimized through colonialism form a repertoire.25 These “embodied and performed acts generate, record, and transmit knowledge” in ways that challenge the insistence on the existence of an archive.26 Performance is a “retainer of social memory,” maintaining knowledge of practices that may have otherwise been lost and communicating those communal memories to future generations.27 The performative actions García-Vásquez witnessed in Brazil conveyed a repertoire of Afro-descendant practices blending ritual with performance that she had not yet witnessed in Mexico. She located a connection between Afro-descendant and Indigenous forms of ritual performance in their focus on transformation and the capacity to heal. García-Vásquez indicated she had been performing mandas—offerings made to a saint in exchange for healing—to the Virgin of Guadalupe since she was a child.28 The awakening to this newer knowledge that was always present yet hidden, both in her own body and in Mexico more broadly, resulted in García-Vásquez embarking on her own investigation into Indigenous, especially Mexica, and Afro-Mexican cultural practices. García-Vásquez was forced to leave Brazil without her children after a painful divorce. Upon her return to Mexico City in 1976, she began researching Indigenous histories at the Museo Nacional de Antropología and enrolled in the Academy of San Carlos in 1983 to continue her artistic training. There she was introduced to other artists developing new approaches to art making, including collective practice and public performance, that intersected with the local women’s movement.29 She formed the art collective Bio-Arte with the artists Laïta Dubois, Roselle Faure, Nunik Sauret, and Rose van Lengen, and the group participated in notable feminist art events, such as Tlacuilas y Retrateras’ La fiesta de XV años (1984). García-Vásquez created her first public work of ritual performance in Mexico in 1984. As a kind of Last Supper, she invited thirteen artist-women, including the artist Mónica Mayer, to Francisco Moyao’s studio in San Carlos, where this first solo performance, titled Enfrentación/Confrontación, took place.30 García-Vásquez instructed the artists to light candles in a protective circle surrounding her. Clothed in a hospital gown, cap, and mask, GarcíaVásquez proceeded to shave off her pubic hair with a razor and place it in a glass Performative Resurrections   121

jar full of rose petals. She then lay on a table within the circle with her legs open, mimicking a gynecological exam, and two sculptors approached her to insert plaster into her vagina. After the material hardened inside her body, GarcíaVásquez “birthed” the resulting object, and brought it to her chest as if it were a child. The performance worked through a ritualization of the artist’s body to confront and potentially heal the experience of losing her children and its resulting disruption to her sense of identity. Her actions were a means through which to give form to her “loss” and allow it to be worked through.31 García-Vásquez consistently affirms that ritual performances are an “act of becoming . . . of transforming” that contain an ability to heal connected to their spiritual quality.32 As her practice evolved, she began traveling through the Mexican states of Guerrero and Veracruz to understand more about Afro-​ Mexican cultural and spiritual practices and their connections with her heritage. While in the Costa Chica region, she worked with the founders of the grassroots movement now known as México Negro, Padre Glyn Jemmott Nelson and Sergio Peñaloza Pérez.33 México Negro emerged from activism during the 1980s centered on raising the visibility of the local Afro-Mexican community and its reclamation of previously obscured Afro-Mexican cultural practices. Despite emigrating to the United States after the devastating earthquake of 1985, García-Vásquez continued to spend much of her time in Mexico during the 1980s and ’90s, often returning to participate in workshops and festivals that utilized dance, music, oral tradition, and public rituals—which shared similarities with the candomblé traditions she had encountered in Brazil—to celebrate and educate others on the rich history associated with Afro-Mexico. García-Vásquez also continued to study Afro-descendant spiritual practices while living in the United States, eventually starting a PhD on Afro-Mexican performance at NYU in the early 1990s. Around this time, she met Armando Sánchez, a Cuban musician and babalao (high priest) of Santería, who became her mentor and officially initiated her as a santera in 1997, following years of study.34 Santería traditions have circulated throughout Mexico, in particular on its Afro-Caribbean coast, since the late nineteenth century. There has been a rise in converts to Santería from the 1970s onward, owing, in part, to an increase in Cuban migration and the aforementioned efforts to revalorize Afro-descendant cultural heritage across the country.35 García-Vásquez’s initiation into Santería combined with her deepening connections to Mexica pasts through her study of ritual practice with Indigenous shamans prior to and during these years.36 These experiences led her to use her body as a site for ritual, drawing from a repertoire of Indigenous and Afro-descendant performance to bring about moments of healing, not only for herself but for her ancestors, too. 122  Feminist Publics

Invoking the Dead García-Vásquez returned to Mexico City in 1986 to care for her ailing mother. When her mother passed away, the funeral home director honored the artist’s request that she be allowed to prepare her mother’s corpse for burial. She explained that she could sense her mother’s presence in the room and was able to speak to her directly as she attended to her body.37 Four years later, García-Vásquez was informed that her parents’ bodies would be exhumed for her father’s remains to be reinterred in Ometepec. On this day, dressed in white, she watched as workers completed the process of opening the grave and dismembering her mother. García-Vásquez stated that these combined experiences gave her “the sensation that a mummy is really not a dead object, but the presence of dead being alive still.”38 This recognition of the ambiguity between life and death resonates with Indigenous and Afro-descendant epistemologies that often resist linear constructions of time and suggest a plurality of temporalities.39 The layering of past, present, and future collapses stark distinctions between the (symbolic) spaces inhabited by the living and the dead. Many Afro-diasporic religions in the Americas, such as Santería, view ancestors and orishas (ancient ancestors who have been deified) as “material-immaterial beings” capable of moving across layers of space and time.40 Mexica peoples, with whom GarcíaVásquez aligns her heritage, also understand the presence of ancestors who may manifest as “airs” or interact with the living, provided their remains were properly honored in sacred rites.41 These epistemologies, though distinct in terms of their social and cultural locations, share key contours in their appraisal of the presence and significance of the dead among the living, and they have developed a repertoire of ritual performances to make these realities visible. Informed by her understanding of these layered realities, García-Vásquez re-created her mother’s exhumation in a public performance titled X/U/MAR at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California, on March 10, 1990, Mother’s Day in Mexico. Dressed in white, as she was on the day of the exhumation, García-Vásquez filled a plastic bag with sand as a representation of her mother’s remains. She used the bag to trace a ritual circle of energy and then used her mother’s favorite flowers (gladioli) to mark the space. She laid her body facedown inside the circle to invoke her mother’s spirit and invited an art teacher from a local public school to shave her head inside the circle as a sacrificial offering that would help heal the desecration of her mother’s body by dedicating her own body “to the land, the giver of life.”42 She then took off her clothes and went into the ocean, releasing the bag of sand and immersing herself in an act of purification. Once she emerged from the water, she wrapped Performative Resurrections   123

FIGURE 4.2. Guadalupe García-Vásquez, X/U/MAR, 1990. Performance at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California. Courtesy of Guadalupe García-Vásquez.

herself in a darker cloth of mourning and pinned a photograph of her mother to her chest. García-Vásquez stated that she saw a connection between the desecration of her mother’s body and the violent story of Coyolxāuhqui from Mexica mythology. After beheading Coatlicue, her own mother, Coyolxāuhqui was beheaded by her 124  Feminist Publics

brother, Huitzilopochtli. Her body broke into pieces after he threw it from the summit of Coatepec.43 Coyolxāuhqui has taken on a number of contemporary meanings, either as an original victim of femicide or an empowered warrior. García-Vásquez layers these historic and contemporary meanings on top of her own personal history in this work of ritual performance. She links back to Indigenous beliefs in the ability of the ancestors to communicate with the living if their remains were honored in death. Through an emotional restaging of the event of witnessing dismemberment, García-Vásquez claims to have located a ritual and performative means to heal and release that personal and mythical trauma of the past that persists in the present. García-Vásquez performed Árbol de la Victoria in Mexico City in 1992. This year was marked by commemorations of the quincentennial of Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas, a term rightly criticized for its erasure of continued Indigenous presence in the region and the violence these peoples suffered as a result of colonization. For this occasion, she used ritual to address aspects of collective memory linked to these historical traumas. The work consisted of two performances related to an event in 1520 known as La Noche Triste (The Sad Night), in which hundreds of Spaniards were killed by the Mexica in a stunning defeat, after which it is believed that Hernán Cortés wept underneath a tree. García-Vásquez began studying La Noche Triste, reading Indigenous-​ centered accounts and speaking with shamans about their understanding of the event.44 She wanted to do away with the “colonized historical adjective” and rename the tree in a way that “re-created the voice of the woman Indian that night . . . the voice of my ancestors.”45 The photographer Oweena Fogarty, who assisted García-Vásquez in putting the event together, invited the musician Óscar Hernández and the choreographers Ana Uribe and Jesús Rosas to create a “ceremonial” environment through “pre-Hispanic” music and dance.46 García-Vásquez originally planned one performance for October 12 (Día de la Raza) in front of what is believed to be the original tree in the neighborhood of Popotla; however, she had a dream that ultimately changed the performance. In the dream, her ancestors showed her “a big light in el zócalo,” and when she woke, she recognized that she “had to be present there to salute the sun,” a key aspect of Mexica spiritual practice.47 So she and the other performers went to the Zócalo instead, but no one was allowed into the space other than a group of shamans, known as Los Dueños de la Piedra Chalchihuite, who had been holding a “Reencuentro Espiritual y Cultural con las Raíces Ancestrales” for the past three days.48 After hearing about García-Vásquez’s project, the shamans allowed García-Vásquez in to perform alongside them. Together they enacted the Mexica ritual “Nahui-ollin,” calling the spirits and saluting the four directions, and made Performative Resurrections   125

offerings of cempazuchitl (marigold) flowers to “remember the dead and have them present.”49 García-Vásquez then read Indigenous testimonies of the Noche Triste, giving voice to “the ancestral mothers” and using them to proclaim “La Noche de la Victoria” (The Night of Victory). The group then went to Popotla to perform inside the plaza of El Árbol de la Noche Triste, where García-Vásquez was allowed behind the barrier surrounding the tree. This performance was unexpectedly interrupted by a protest march, described by García-Vásquez as numbering in the thousands, that culminated in protesters placing a metal plaque on the plaza gate proclaiming it “El Árbol de la Victoria.”50 The Afro-Mexican choreographer Ana Uribe, who participated in this performance, invited García-Vásquez to give a workshop in 1995 at the Universidad de Xalapa, where Uribe was a professor. The month-long workshop included choreographers and musicians from the university who had Afro-Mexican heritage. García-Vásquez structured the workshop, titled “Presencia africana en México,” around raising participants’ consciousness about their embodied inheritance of a repertoire of performance. They discussed Afro-Mexican histories and spiritual practices that manifested in performative actions: music, dance, oral traditions, and ritual. García-Vásquez introduced them to Afro-​ diasporic religions and the concept of orishas. She drew from the techniques of the Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal and the US artist Suzanne Lacy to situate herself as a facilitator rather than a director and encourage the agency of participants in crafting unique forms of expression as a result of this new knowledge.51 She emphasized that the presence of Africa was felt, that is, experienced as an embodied cultural memory and kept alive through its performance.52 The workshop culminated in two days of outdoor performances in the town of La Pitahaya, on the outskirts of Xalapa, Veracruz, near a forest. Participants chose to perform without anyone from the broader public invited and instead directed their actions toward themselves as a group and to the ancestors that were at the heart of the workshops. To begin each day of performances, they used dancing and chanting to call upon the spiritual energies of their ancestors before going out to perform in an unscripted manner in the forest with a drummer.53 García-Vásquez recalled that ritual practice was essential to create a necessary shift that would allow them to access the presence of these energies as emblematic of the presence of Africa in Mexico. She stated, “The performance really belonged to our transformation. . . . It was to generate and experience ‘the presence.’”54 On the final day, they took a boat to La Isla del Amor, a small island on a nearby river. García-Vásquez stated that the orishas were with the group, resulting in some of the women becoming “possessed.”55 In all of these performances, García-Vásquez utilized a past embodied 126  Feminist Publics

knowledge as a means to resurrect and give form to Indigenous or Afro-​descendant ancestors. The works demonstrate Taylor’s evocation of performance as a “retainer of social memory.” They make visible cultural memories that remained buried by the insistence on an archive, and they work to transmit new forms of knowledge through their reclamation of embodied memory. García-Vásquez utilized ritual in performance in an attempt to heal the often interconnected generational and historical traumas tied to her ancestors. X/U/MAR attempted to heal the desecration of her mother by invoking the mythic memory of violence committed against Indigenous women. These ancestors were later called into place and given an active voice through performance in the reclamation of spaces marked by colonial histories, as in Árbol de la Victoria. García-Vásquez indicated that “Presencia africana en México” was a space for participants to learn from their ancestors, but also for the ancestors to be invited in as copresences, resisting their erasure from consciousness. When asked who these performances were for, García-Vásquez insisted that she did not care about those in attendance watching the performance and instead repeatedly spoke about the presence of a different ancestral instantiation of the public. Her working methods specifically drew from the embodied, inherited, and socially practiced knowledge of her Afro-descendant and Indigenous ancestors. She sought to address a no-longer-living public, be it her mother, historically silenced Indigenous women, or the orishas. Her insistence on the presence of the dead, invoked through forms of performance tied to a repertoire of ritual practice, offers a means to consider a public—what I am proposing we call a necropublic—that operates beyond and outside of received conceptualizations of publics for and in art. Ritual Performance and the Possibility of a Necropublic How might an art historian, especially one not initiated into the practices referenced in García-Vásquez’s performances, analyze these presences? Furthermore, what potentialities does acknowledging the dead as a public offer to the study of art? Warner’s criteria for publics provides a starting point to work through the viability of the necropublic and its implications for art history. He argues that a public is a self-organized relation among strangers through discourse. Membership in a public is constituted by “mere attention,” but that attention is reflexive in the circulation of the discourse that formed the public.56 In this way, the public is an active temporal social space of interaction and exchange. Furthermore, “a public is poetic world making,” meaning that forms of public discourse must both characterize the world in which they circulate and realize that world through address.57 Performative Resurrections   127

The art historian Ella S. Mills argues, in relation to Black British artist-​ women, that artworks may function as “performative sites enacting discourse.”58 Art history has lacked a sufficient discourse for Black British women’s work due to its historical biases. These works must thus “perform the discourse” themselves, actively calling it into being through their gestures and presence.59 Dominant discourses of history and art in Mexico have also excluded self-​ defined Indigenous and Afro-descendant forms of knowledge. García-Vásquez’s ritual performances enact a discourse for and with these ancestral publics. García-Vásquez’s ritual performances orient themselves to strangers in ways that might best align with Warner’s concept of the “counterpublic.”60 Counterpublics are composed of those who maintain an awareness of their subordinate status in society, and they come into being through forms of address that target the spaces they inhabit. Warner uses the example of counterpublic discourse in queer publications as that which is oriented to strangers who recognize themselves as being addressed. García-Vásquez’s discourses operate in the interstices between life and death. The public constituted by her actions consists primarily of named or unnamed members of an indefinite community of Indigenous and Afro-descendant ancestors. Her form of ritual performance, informed by her repertoire of embodied cultural knowledges, “does the discourse”—it is the primary discursive action that enables this necropublic to come into being. García-Vásquez’s performances may be linked to the work of other artists across the Americas who have utilized ritual performance to make the presence of their ancestors felt.61 Tz’utujil artist Benvenuto Chavajay, for example, creates ritual performances that “attempt to transcribe the silences of [his] ancestors through art.”62 This is evident in his 2002 performance El grito (The Scream), in which Chavajay, dressed as an elder from his community, walked through the streets of Guatemala City swinging a matraca—a wooden instrument traditionally played in Semana Santa (Holy Week) processions. Kency Cornejo suggests that the matraca, which also mimics the sound of gunshots, was transformed “into a visual and corporal scream of resistance, of condemnation” through this performance.63 The action conjured the trauma of Chavajay’s Tz’utujil ancestors, inflicted by colonial violence, to provide them with a visceral presence in the everyday. Chavajay recently used the matraca in a performance titled Rijtual [sic] acción performance (Lago Atitlán) (2021). Dressed as the brujo character from the Baile de la Conquista, a traditional dance in Guatemala that narrates the confrontation between the K’iche ruler Tecun Uman and the Spanish colonizer Pedro de Alvarado, Chavajay wielded the matraca on the sacred site of Lago Atitlán to, once again, give form to his ancestors. Chavajay defines performance art, similarly to García-Vásquez, as 128  Feminist Publics

FIGURE 4.3. Benvenuto Chavajay, El grito (The Scream), 2002. Performance in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Courtesy of the artist.

interwoven with ritual, what he refers to as “the rituality of everyday life that we have as native people.”64 He believes that when art is connected to ritual, it has the ability “to heal history.”65 In our conversation, Chavajay also emphasized that he was not concerned with “the people,” those witnessing these events, but rather with the role of his ancestors as witnesses: I do not care about who is watching; the important thing, for me, is to translate the silence of my ancestors. The ancestors did not die. They departed . . . but they left a trail of dust behind them and that is what I am capturing through performance . . . I do it for my ancestors. . . . My obligation as an artist is to capture what they could not say or do. They are with the stones, the trees, the lake. They are here and that is why we call them. The art I make is calling the ancestors to come back and sit with us.66 Chavajay explained that “the ancestors are not human beings” but are “air, smells, and tastes,” related to the Tz’utujil concept of the soul, known as “Rxajaniil,” which is sensory and found in sacred objects.67 In this way, his performances are in dialogue with what he referred to as “the sacred reality” of his Performative Resurrections   129

community, which he sees as deeply connected to Indigenous epistemologies of space and time across the Americas. Crucially, his performances are for the ancestors, but they also function to translate their always present, yet often unseen or unrecognized, silences “for you [non-Indigenous people] who do not have this experience.”68 This shift toward the primacy of the necropublic acknowledges the “right public” these performances seek to address, even if that public is not entirely “knowable” for the historian. Classical approaches to art history, those that proceed from an imperative to “know” the artwork, to decipher it by locating essential “facts,” fail when confronted with the inherent “unknowable” aspects of these performances for the uninitiated. Mills, building from the writings of Jenny Tennant Jackson, highlights the foreclosure this produces in historical methodology: “The classical, knowable approach of the art historian and the non-classical, unknowable intention of the artworks shunt into each other, grating, eventually both retreating, unable to speak to one another.”69 She suggests that the impact of studying the unknowable is to understand its effects on the knowable—in this case, the discourses of art history as they exist today. Chavajay’s and García-Vásquez’s works do not simply recall the memory of their ancestors for us but address themselves directly to them and make their presence perceptible to us all in an attempt to heal. These necropublics expose the limitations of notions of the public that adhere to linear understandings of space and time, life and death. They also provide a space within art history from which to affirm the centrality of the ancestral dead and analyze the effects their resurrections may engender among the living. The Afterlives of the Dead The works discussed in this chapter are connected to an ongoing historical project of reckoning with the dead in Mexico. Since taking office in 2018, the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been seeking to publicly reinterpret colonial events in a strategic attempt to “exalt the country’s Indigenous roots” in anticipation of the five-hundred-year anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlan.70 In 2021, Mexico City’s governor, Claudia Scheinbaum, endorsed the renaming of El Árbol de la Noche Triste, the removal of the monument to Christopher Columbus from El Paseo de la Reforma, and its replacement with a large-scale replica of the Huasteca object La joven de Amajac (1450–1521), intended to honor Indigenous women. A telling controversy erupted around the replacement of the statue of Columbus, which reveals the layering of contemporary and historical traumas

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as related to conditions of death in Mexico. The artist Pedro Reyes was initially selected for the project, and drawing inspiration from Olmec visual culture, he planned to install a statue of an Indigenous woman’s head. The work was heavily criticized by leading cultural figures, who drew attention to the lack of Indigenous voices in its creation and to its continued representation of women as mythic beings rather than named agents of history.71 In the midst of these critiques, the Antimonuments collective, working with families of victims of femicide and disappearance, installed their own monument atop the empty plinth: a figural sculpture of a woman with her fist raised in defiance and the rallying cry of “JUSTICIA” inscribed behind her. They rededicated the space to ”the mothers who fight for justice for their daughters who are victims of femicide and their missing children . . . to honor the invisible Afro-Mexican and Indigenous women who have had to defend their lands, education, the right to life, as well as the women who were erased from history.”72 Antimo­ numenta’s statue may eventually be removed, but their temporary interruption drew together two seemingly disparate contexts of past and present. The action brought to the fore the layering of historic violence committed against Indigenous and Afro-descendant ancestors and their subsequent erasure in contemporary struggles for justice. Symbolic gestures—altering names, replacing statues, installing memorials—­ will likely not heal the traumas of the past or solve the problems of the present. Yet like Antimonumenta’s symbolic disruption, the works discussed in this chapter move beyond memorializing the dead to manifest performatively their presence in the everyday. They connect with the ongoing work of social movements that extend embodied agency to the dead, seen in collective cries of “¡Presente!” offering potential political and artistic afterlives for this necropublic.73 García-Vasquez’s works actualize the slippage between life and death to enact performative actions that unearth the layered and continued presence of ancestors. They are in dialogue with the work of artists who utilize an inherited repertoire to create works that deal with the necropolitical histories of colonialism. Taylor recently acknowledged the artistic connection between performance, politics, and the dead, stating that “even within necropolitics, this politics of death, we find necro-resistance and necro-art, the politics of life fought in and from the space of death itself, affirming the continuing presence of all those whom biopower has deemed expendable.”74 Their resurrections continually intervene in the spaces of art history, furthering the afterlives of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican ancestors in ways that resist their erasure and offer new means for reckoning with the past while imagining our present and future.

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Claudio Lomnitz, Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001). This was only instituted at the national level in 2020. Theodore W. Cohen, Finding Afro-Mexico: Race and Nation after the Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra, “Introduction: Agoraphilia: Notes on the Possibility of the Public,” in this volume, 7. Baird Campbell, “Tiempo al tiempo: Nonlinear Time in Chilean Sexually Dissident/Diverse Activism,” Lesbian and Gay Studies 28, no. 3 (2022): 325–351. Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” Public Culture 15, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 39. Michelle W. Wright, “Necropolitics, Narcopolitics, and Femicide: Gendered Violence on the Mexico-U.S. Border,” Signs 36, no. 3 (Spring 2011): 713. Sayak Valencia, Gore Capitalism, trans. John Pluecker (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext[e], 2018). This public once existed within a necropolitical system in relation to the conditions of coloniality. Scholars have used Mbembe’s work to interpret the effects of settler colonialism and genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Scott Lauria Morgensen, “The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now,” Settler Colonial Studies 1, no. 1 (2011): 52–76. Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. García-Vásquez believes her African heritage comes from her father’s side, but this is difficult to ascertain because of his adoption. Her biological grandfather, Bruno Rosas Radilla, died in the 1920 revolution while her grandmother Margarita Jiménez León was pregnant. Margarita remarried an army captain, Juan García, who agreed to raise her child, Guadalupe’s father, as his own. Author interview with the artist, July 30, 2021. Frank T. Proctor III, “Afro-Mexican Slave Labor in the Obrajes de Paños of New Spain, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” The Americas 60, no. 1 (2003): 34. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, La población negra de Mexico: Estudio etnohistórico (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1989). Wendy E. Philips, “Representations of the Black Body in Mexican Visual Art: Evidence of an African Historical Presence or a Cultural Myth?,” Journal of Black Studies 39, no. 5 (May 2009): 761–785. Magali M. Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003); Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). Katzew, Casta Painting, 37. José Vasconcelos (1922) quoted in Claude Fell, José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila, 1920–1925 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1989), 97. Claudia Calirman, Brazilian Art under Dictatorship: Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio, Cildo Meireles (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012). García-Vásquez was unable to recall her professor’s name. Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. Candomblé is a syncretic Afro-Brazilian religion that draws elements from various West African religions and Roman Catholic practices. It involves the veneration of deities known as orishas. Macumba refers to various

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23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

Afro-Brazilian syncretic religions, practices, and ritual objects common in Rio de Janeiro. It is often associated with “black magic” by nonpractitioners. Kelly E. Hayes, “Black Magic and the Academy: Macumba and Afro-Brazilian ‘Orthodoxies,’” History of Religions 46, no. 4 (2007): 283–315. Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, 20. Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, 21. Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, 21. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. See Julia Antivilo Peña, Entre lo sagrado y lo profano se tejen rebeldías: Arte feminista latinoamericano (Bogotá: Desde abajo, 2015); Karen Cordero Reiman and Inda Saenz, eds. Crítica feminista en la teoría e historia del arte (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2007); Mónica Mayer, Rosa Chillante: Mujeres y performance en México (Mexico City: CONACULTA-FONCA, 2004); Aceves Sepúlveda, Women Made Visible. Little documentation exists of the event aside from one photograph and a drawing created by Roselle Faure during the performance at García-Vásquez’s request. Erin L. McCutcheon, “‘Somos madres ¿y qué más?’: Feminism, Maternal Subjectivity, and Artistic Practice in Mexico City, 1971–91” (PhD diss., Tulane University, 2021). Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. Events organized by Padre Glyn and Peñaloza Pérez during the 1980s led to the official establishment of México Negro in 1997 and its yearly gathering, El Encuentro de Pueblos Negros, intended to bring greater attention to Afro-Mexican communities and also create a space to discuss imperatives for the movement on a national scale. This ongoing work is credited with enabling citizens to officially identify as Afro-Mexican on the national census. Sergio Peñaloza Pérez is García-Vásquez’s cousin by marriage. See Cohen, Finding Afro-Mexico; and Guadalupe García-Vásquez, “MI VIDA/PERFORMANCE/ESPIRITUALIDAD,” Escáner Cultural, May 11, 2012, https://www.revista.escaner.cl/node/6180. García-Vásquez initially connected with Sánchez because of her interest in Afro-Cuban influences on popular music and dance in Mexico. She received a consulta from him, a divination ritual in which a babalao will interpret the orishas’ guidance, in which she was advised to become an initiate. Author’s interview with the artist, June 10, 2022. Most Mexican practitioners of Santería are located in Mexico City and the heavily Afro-​ Mexican-influenced state of Veracruz. See Angela N. Castañeda, “The African Diaspora in Mexico: Santería, Tourism, and Representations of the State,” in The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion, ed. Theodore Louis Trost (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 131–150; Nahayeilli B. Juárez Huet, “Santeria and New Age: Interactions, Limits and Complementarities,” in New Age in Latin America: Popular Variations and Ethnic Appropriations, ed. Renée de la Torre, Cristina Gutiérrez Zúñiga, and Nahayeilli B. Juárez Huet (Boston, MA: Brill, 2016), 178–196. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. See Campbell, “Tiempo al tiempo,” for his application of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s Aymara concept of chi’xi to time and space, what he refers to as “chi’xi temporality.” For a discussion of Mayan cyclical conceptions of memory and time, see Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, “‘Putting Heart’ into History and Memory: Dialogues with Maya-Tseltal philosopher Xuno López Intzin,” Memory Studies 13, no. 5 (2020): 805–819.

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40. Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 6. 41. Jill Leslie McKeever Furst, The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Annabeth Headrick, “The Street of the Dead . . . It Really Was: Mortuary Bundles at Teotihuacan,” Ancient Mesoamerica 10, no. 1 (1999): 69–85. 42. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. 43. Kay Almere Read and Jason J. Gonzalez, Mesoamerican Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs of Mexico and Central America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 154–156. 44. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. 45. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. 46. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. 47. Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. 48. Brochure located in Guadalupe García-Vasquez’s personal archive. 49. Jesús Aranda, “Rituales e imaginación en las celebraciones del V centenario del encuentro de dos mundos,” clipping from an unknown newspaper in García-Vasquez’s personal archive. 50. Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. 51. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. 52. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. 53. Author’s interview with the artist, September 26, 2021. 54. Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. 55. Author’s interview with the artist, July 28, 2021. 56. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 87. 57. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 114. 58. Author in conversation with Ella S. Mills regarding her forthcoming publication, Voices of Art, Belonging and Resistance: In Conversation with Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson and Ingrid Pollard (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2024), November 21, 2022. Griselda Pollock first proposed the terms “artist-women” and “artist-men” at the Contemporary Art Society’s Study Day focusing on “Women in Collections” at the Leeds City Art Gallery (Leeds, UK), October 19, 2017. These terms continue the proposals she and Roszika Parker initiated in Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology from 1981 regarding the secondary status of artists who do not fit the class, race, or gender that defines the social ideal of “the artist.” 59. Ella S. Mills, “Dialectics of Belonging and Strategies of Space: Cultural Memory, B/black Women’s Creativity, and the Folds of British Art History 1985–2011” (PhD diss., University of Leeds, 2016), 98. 60. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 120. 61. Kency Cornejo, “Indigeneity and Decolonial Seeing in Contemporary Art of Guatemala,” FUSE Magazine 36, no. 4 (Fall 2013): 24–31; Kimberly Minor, “Markers of Male Identity in the Material Culture of the Upper Missouri” (presentation, Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology Symposium, Washington, DC, July 21–22, 2016); Patrick A. Polk et al., eds., Axé Bahia: The Power of Art in an Afro-Brazilian Metropolis (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA, 2018). 62. Author’s interview with the artist, October 13, 2021. 63. Cornejo, “Indigeneity and Decolonial Seeing,” 27. 64. Author’s interview with the artist, October 13, 2021. 65. Author’s interview with the artist, October 13, 2021. 66. Author’s interview with the artist, October 13, 2021. 67. Author’s interview with the artist, October 13, 2021.

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68. Author’s interview with the artist, October 13, 2021. 69. Mills, “Dialectics of Belonging and Strategies of Space,” 93. 70. Daniel Hernandez, “Mexico’s New Culture War: Did a Pyramid Light Show ‘Decolonize’ or Rewrite History?,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2021, https://www.latimes.com /entertainment-arts/story/2021-10-16/templo-mayor-pyramid-mexico-city-populism -culture-government-history-aztecs. 71. Valentina Di Liscia, “Criticism Grows around Artist Chosen to Replace Mexico City’s Columbus Monument,” Hyperallergic, September 13, 2021, https://hyperallergic.com/676612 /criticism-grows-around-artist-chosen-to-replace-mexico-city-columbus-monument/. 72. Antimonumenta (@AntimonumentaVivasNosQueremos) “¡LA GLORIETA ES PARA LAS MUJERES QUE LUCHAN!,” Facebook post, September 25, 2021, https://www.facebook.com /131841650918155/posts/d41d8cd9/778438072925173/. 73. Olof Ohlson, “The Political Afterlives of Mexico’s Disappeared,” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 24, no. 4 (2019): 672–689. 74. Diana Taylor, ¡Presente! The Politics of Presence (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2020), 23.

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DOSSIER D

Teatro Ojo Laura Furlan

Since Teatro Ojo1 was established in 2002 in Mexico City, our practice has shifted from being strictly theater-based into other forms of conceiving of and experiencing stage performance. Our projects sit at the crossroads of various disciplines and art forms; this disciplinary ambiguity has allowed us to expand the forms of expression, participation, reception, and critical evaluation of our work. We have created a number of site-specific projects, exploring not just innovative understandings of the stage but also processes of “open dramaturgy.”2 Reality always sets the rules for our creation. Yet our pieces don’t exactly represent reality; they directly confront it. Moreover, we have developed means to relate to our spectators whereby they become coproducers of signs and meanings. Historically, the relations between art and politics have proved to be complex and ever changing; Teatro Ojo seeks to conceive of its own practice through this instability. When the political changes, its relationships with art change, too, so we aim to understand the nature of these transformations and their consequences. We think of theater as a point of convergence of bodies and imaginaries, a site for various expressions of resistance against the time (of capital) that devours us, and a place for sensuality, political potency, and experiments in cohabitation. Teatro Ojo’s productions are therefore conceived of as onstage rehearsals, in which the disassembly of the many layers of our contemporary reality is at the heart of our practice. The excavation of the layers of the real confronts us with multiple realities and multiple temporalities. These layers often

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have an invisible potency and produce relationships that affect us. The latter constitute us, but they can also tear us apart, like the tremors of an earthquake. As part of our commitment to locating our work both on the margins and at the intersection of disciplines and formats, we are interested in broadening the notion of the “audience” into other public domains. By this we mean not only increasing access to a range of spaces devoted to exhibiting and experiencing our work but also offering a starting point for their conception. With each project, we imagine other possible configurations of the relationships between regular theatergoers, passersby, television watchers, museumgoers, and internet surfers. We want to shake up the solid structures of how we have learned to be spectators, participants, and art makers. The idea of “public art” also appears in the projects of Teatro Ojo through our interest in constantly establishing dialogues with public cultural institutions. In this sense, artistic work becomes the terrain in which we pose the questions—and play out the tensions—that emerge in producing pieces with public funding. Deus ex machina “Good afternoon, My name is (. . .) and I’m calling from El Galeón Theater in Mexico City, which is affiliated with the National Institute of Fine Arts. We’re conducting brief interviews to help develop a public art project. We won’t ask you for any personal information. Your voice will be heard in the theater. Would you like to participate?” These words introduced each of the phone calls made as part of Teatro Ojo’s latest project, Deus ex machina (2018). For one month, a call center was set up inside El Galeón Theater, and random people from across all of Mexico were contacted. The calling sessions lasted for four hours every day, and viewers attending these sessions could stay in the theater as long as they wished. They also had the freedom to walk among the desks of the actors/callers/agents; occupy empty spots to listen to previous days’ calls; or sit in the seats in the house, listening to the calls being made onstage in real time. In this brief account, I’ll share some initial reflections about our lived experience of this project. Our first intention was to create a deterritorialized scene that could synchronically spread across the entire country. Physically rooted in a public-funded theater in Mexico City, the exercise sought to materialize voices from the farthest-flung parts of the country. The proposition was not put forward without a sense of angst. Indeed, it was designed to invoke those others who are offstage; to recognize the uniqueness of each of the voices of our contemporaries—​with their diverse range of tones and accents—in this nation-state we call Mexico;

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FIGURE D.1. Teatro Ojo, Deus ex machina, Teatro El Galeón. Centro Cultural del Bosque, Mexico City, 2018. © Teatro Ojo. Courtesy of Teatro Ojo.

FIGURE D.2. Teatro Ojo, Deus ex machina, Teatro El Galeón. Centro Cultural del Bosque, Mexico City, 2018. © Teatro Ojo. Courtesy of Teatro Ojo.

and to rehearse, with every dialed number, the possibility of untangling the threads in the historical knot that binds us all together. If the interview was accepted, the callers would read out from one of forty-​ five cards containing a wide range of questions and mobilizing various opinions, memories, news stories, gossip snippets, dreams, fears, and desires. This is how we embarked on a journey through the layers of an often anachronistic national imaginary. The more than 1,600 successful calls generated a broad range of feelings and communicative possibilities: from indifference, suspicion, and even hostility or aggression to curiosity and a profound yearning for self-​ expression. This is how we explored the potency of anonymity in the discussion of various forms of belonging and the yearning to be heard. What were these people doing before they picked up the phone? What kinds of objects or scenes surrounded them? The theatrical calling machine yielded fragments of answers, many of which resist completion. In the repeated enunciation of what cannot be fully said, we could glimpse that which sustains our everyday lives across a territory ravaged by violence. We also interrupted people’s lives, even if just for a few moments, to dislocate the typical call-center apparatus, which has been overused to the point of ubiquity as a means to sell and extort. Setting up a phone bank inside the machinery of a theater production, we hoped to provoke a tiny blip in the normalization of this practice that could question our modes of existence in our conflicted present. Throughout these semistaged conversations, various commonplaces surfaced again and again, gradually forging a series of leitmotifs. In them, unexpectedly, through hesitant or stammering voices, through background noise, laughter, and equivocation, emerged one of the key questions that gave a name to our project: Will a “god from a machine” ultimately alter the course of our present history? The question is still floating out there, unanswered. For now, we’re left with the voices, still echoing in those of us who gave ourselves over to the strange, hypnotic tune that surfaced in the theater. The recordings of these voices also wait to be heard anew. Notes 1.

The members of Teatro Ojo are Héctor Bourges, Karla Rodríguez, Laura Furlan, Patricio Villareal, Alonso Arrieta, and Fernanda Villegas. 2. We understand “open dramaturgy” not as a concept but as the process of “opening up the script” so that a play or performance reaches its final form at the moment of being performed, that is, in contact with reality, the spectator, and the stage or setting.

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CHAPTER 5

The Ultimate Witnesses Listening to Teresa Margolles’s Counterforensic Archive Carlos Fonseca and Enea Zaramella When everything falls silent, when the gravity of the facts far surpasses our understanding and even our imagination, then there it is—ready, open, stammering, injured, babbling—the language of pain, the pain we share with others. —Cristina Rivera Garza, Grieving

The passersby who, trying to hide from the sweltering heat of Madrid’s 2014 summer, sought shelter in the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo found little if any solace in what they encountered. As they walked into the main gallery, they were greeted by 313 framed covers of Ciudad Juárez’s yellow press newspaper PM, where macabre images of hundreds of corpses were placed side by side alongside bodies of naked women and prostitution ads. Terrifying, this visual archive of death would have seemed nonetheless painfully familiar to those aware of Chihuahua’s recent past and the wave of violence that has struck the region following the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1992. The serialization of death and its pairing with an exploitative sex economy can be contextualized within the femicides the region has suffered since the 1990s, where more than five hundred maquiladoras, or female factory workers, have been murdered or disappeared. “Ciudad Juárez becomes the gateway to a Mexican hell: a subject for extreme tourism and yellow journalism. The world reduced to a crime tabloid article,” wrote Sergio González Rodríguez in The Femicide Machine, in words that resonate with Teresa Margolles’s piece PM 2010 (2012).1 Confronted with the morbid sensationalization of death present 140  

in the covers, and noting how the commodification of the female body goes hand in hand with the commodification of violence in contemporary visual culture, the spectators must have felt uncomfortable, complicit, out of place. How could it be that the image of a mutilated corpse, once a private and removed sight left for forensic scientists to deal with behind closed doors, had become a public scene? And more important, how can our sensus communis have become so atrophied that we are numb to its abject power? Inscribing death at the very heart of the public space of the gallery, the installation asked for the spectator to become once again sensitive when faced with the pain of others. In El testigo (The Witness), the exhibition of which PM 2010 (2012) was a part, Teresa Margolles approaches this question regarding mourning, death, and its representation by removing the image of the corpse from the centrality it is usually given in the yellow press. Against the necropolitical “erotics” of death that we encounter in the tabloid piece, the rest of the exhibition is characterized by the slow disappearance of the human cadaver to which all the pieces nonetheless ultimately refer. In the work The Witness from 2013, the corpse has been replaced by a tree, as the wounded but still living witness of violence. The traces of the bullets in the trunk are the memory remnants of those killed in front of it. In This Property Won’t Be Demolished (2009–2013), the trees give way to buildings that remind us in their ruin of “bodies in decomposition,”2 abandoned and uninhabited. In The Promise (La promesa, 2012), the artist takes this idea further, as it is the rubble and debris of a crumbled social welfare house that is sculpturally reshaped by volunteers inside the gallery space while the testimonies of those who knew the house are heard in the background. Traversing the exhibition, the spectator begins to sense that if the artist has removed the human from the scene, it is to better bear witness to its vulnerability. Subtracting the human corpse from the picture, Margolles instead works with remnants, with “all that’s left” from scenes of murder and violence after the authorities have collected any evidence. “All that’s left,” wrote Cuauhtémoc Medina, “is reworked by the artist with the goal of carrying it, like a body is carried to the grave, into the public terrain of art.”3 The public exhibition space, the gallery or the museum, is seen as the stage where these otherwise silenced “testimonial residues” are given the opportunity and responsibility to bear witness themselves to a history of violence. This is a poetics of witnessing that wishes to go beyond the human: an art of survival that listens to the violent echoes that persist after the death of the subject. In the case of the exhibition El testigo, this “materialist spectrality” was perhaps nowhere more evident than in the last of the installations, Sounds of Death (Sonidos de la muerte, 2008). Along a dark and empty corridor, a dozen loudspeakers had been arranged on The Ultimate Witnesses   141

FIGURE 5.1. Teresa Margolles, El testigo (The Witness), 2013. Color photograph. Image courtesy of Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich.

the floor, each reproducing the soundscape of the places surrounding the dead women’s bodies. The Galerie Peter Kilchmann, which represents Margolles, proposes that “with this work the artist breaks the ‘silence’ of these forgotten and unpunished crimes by providing a ‘voice’ for the forgotten victims entrapped here in sounds of the dark corners where their lifeless bodies were found.”4 However, walking along the narrow corridor, the spectators could sense that the opposite seemed to be the case: the power of the piece rested in its capacity to accentuate the voicelessness of the victims. In what might seem, at first, like indifference, the continuous buzz refused to change despite their deaths: mundane conversations, steps, and public transport could be heard within these recordings of everyday life that at times could be mistaken for the white noise of the air-conditioning. However, this abstraction from the visual and immersion in the aural not only served to displace the visual register of violence that so often gets spectacularized in contemporary media but also allowed the spectator to understand what was missing within this ecology of horror. At the core of these soundscapes lay the underscored silence of the victims’ voices as the paradoxical condition of possibility of true witnessing. As Eyal Weizman states in the exhibition’s catalogue: With their throats or tongues slashed, terrified into silence, or killed in the most brutal of ways[,] the people who have seen the worst of violence can no longer speak. The ultimate witnesses of atrocities, as Primo Levi insisted, are not the survivors whose testimonies can be listened to, recorded, archived, and transmitted. Today there are many viewers but only a few witnesses.5 What Margolles’s soundscapes of death make evident is that, today, witnessing is not solely reliant upon the witness’s subjective experience. If testimony is still possible, it is by paying attention to those remnants that have traditionally been excluded from the state’s necropolitical archive. Those residues hold the traces for building a new model of testimony and a counterarchive. Placing Margolles’s installations in dialogue with recent work by Weizman, head of the research group Forensic Architecture, in this chapter, we study these works in the context of what Weizman calls a forensic aesthetic: the appearance of new public forums upon which material residues are called on to bear witness. Moving away from the subjective voice of the witness, the forensic approach aims to find truth in the remnants of all that’s left. For Margolles, interested as she is in exploring the wave of violence that has recently rocked the north of Mexico and, in particular, border towns like Ciudad Juárez, a forensic approach

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offers a solution in a world in which few witnesses survive, and those that do are often terrified into silence. Turning the gallery space into a public forum, she aims to attend to the stories these remnants have to tell, thus opening the space for a call to justice staged against the narco-state’s corrupt legal machinery. From the Morgue to the Gallery Contemporary history is no longer based on the experiences of survivors, but rather on the vast numbers of the dead. —Sayak Valencia, Gore Capitalism6 Following Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, Giorgio Agamben has recently highlighted the lacuna that lies at the core of testimony. Unearthing the figure of the Muselmann from the witness accounts of Holocaust survivors, he has pointed to the limited experience that testimony must address as its condition of possibility: the fact that the absolute witnesses of the atrocities committed, these Muselmänner that toward the end of their lives were reduced to “staggering corpses” and mute “living dead,” remained silent, dehumanized to the point of being incapable of expressing their pain in language.7 This aporia, the fact that, as Paul Celan would write, “no one bears witness for the witness,” opens testimony to the impossibility against which it must nonetheless articulate its truth.8 Without wishing to question the absolute singularity of the Shoah, this paradox becomes more pressing than ever today, within a “society of enmity” marked by a necropolitical “perpetual war.”9 This is particularly relevant in border spaces like Ciudad Juárez, where the global economy meets its excesses as part of a commodification of death that Valencia has recently referred to as “gore capitalism.”10 Juárez, where the manufacturing assembly industry of the maquiladoras, in conjunction with drug trafficking, has produced a horrifying space of death that deprives citizens of their rights and reduces them to bare life, is a perfect example of the thanatopolitical logic underlying this gore femicide machine: The opaque factory would be, in its extreme, the femicide machine’s antechamber, an exceptional “camp” as described by Agamben. . . . Contemporary biopolitics are executed there in these spaces, and under this power, life—stripped of all rights—becomes the object of exploitation and death experiments.11 At the center of this process of dehumanization stands, frail, naked, and exposed, the human body. A body that, reduced to bare life, is understood 144  Feminist Publics

only with regard to the production of capital and pleasure. Its voice is silenced by the exploitative conditions of a city that is often seen by the United States as a sort of backyard, a “dump-desert city” where “human-machine-beasts, vacant lots and junk survive as a generalized condemnation.”12 The female body has been the primordial target of violence within this “kingdom of rust” where human rights are constantly infringed: between 1993 and 2012, approximately four hundred women were murdered in Ciudad Juárez and a further one hundred disappeared without trace.13 Under the state of exception that marks the border, a change of protagonist occurs within modern biopolitics: the survivor, protagonist of twentieth-century political theory, is replaced today by the missing person, the disappeared, while the camp, as the paradigmatic space of testimony, is replaced by the mass grave as the site of forensic inspection.14 Like the Muselmänner, the disappeared can’t speak. Confronted with their silence, witnessing must take a different path. Margolles’s work has been devoted to finding such paths, exploring ways in which testimony can outlive the victim’s final muteness. It is no surprise, then, that following the silent corpse to the last place where it is made to speak, Margolles was led early in her career to the locus of the state’s necropolitical archive: the morgue. The morgue, where corpses are identified, classified, dissected, and analyzed, is perhaps the biopolitical space par excellence within the narco-state’s monopoly of violence. It is a sort of limbo where human remains are made to speak for one last time, where death is inscribed within the state’s archival machinery, which developed alongside fingerprinting, photographic identification, and DNA profiling. Behind its closed doors, removed from public access, the forensic gaze is projected into the body in ways that come awfully close to the disciplinarian ways of the police and the military. Aware of this, and conscious that the morgue was therefore a political space, Margolles decided to infiltrate it and turn it into her studio or atelier. Margolles started her career as an artist in the early 1990s as part of the collective SEMEFO (an acronym for Mexico’s Servicio Médico Forense, or Forensic Medical Service), the state organization that is responsible for collecting and delivering corpses to the morgue. Trained as a forensic pathologist, she began visiting the morgue in 1993, “after enrolling in a course on forensic medicine designed for doctors and medical students.”15 Despite her not belonging to either group, no one asked questions, signaling the level of corruption and lack of awareness the collective wished to highlight. For Margolles, as well as for the other group members—which included Arturo Angulo, Carlos López, and Mónica Salcido—the morgue was a metonymy for the social body’s disintegration as Mexico entered into the coordinates of global neoliberalism.16 In their

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exploration of what the artist would later call “the life of the corpse,” SEMEFO saw the morgue as a space both of Bataillean transgression as well as an instantiation of the reality of crime, corruption, poverty, and drug addiction they had witnessed in the streets of Mexico City. As the bureaucratic acronym signals, SEMEFO was interested in exploring from the inside one of the state-sponsored spaces that attempt to hide from public view the presence and regulation of death within society. From within the quarters of the morgue, like the body snatchers of the nineteenth century, Margolles and other members of the collective began to unearth and expose those body remnants and corporeal traces that bore witness to the violence the state wished to hide from public view.17 Against official attempts to keep the public sphere cleansed of the stains of death, against the invisibility of death that pervades contemporary society, they wished to bear witness to the death stains that were beginning to smear the social body. Reversing the forensic gaze of the state, in what Georges Bataille would call the anti-sovereign gesture par excellence, they started to exhibit death publicly. And where better to do it than in the hygienic space par excellence, the museum? Where better to denounce this B side of Mexican neoliberalism than in the aseptic space of the gallery? Moving from the morgue to the gallery, Margolles brought into the public space the abject reality that the state wished to keep locked behind closed doors. Among the artworks presented by SEMEFO and later by Margolles are embalmed and sectioned horse carcasses, mare fetuses, tattoos cut from human skin taken from cadavers, a coat of human fat, and a stillborn fetus forever trapped within a concrete block. These works expose and uncover the true nature of the Mexican res public, understood here not only in the Latin sense of the “public affair” or “public thing” but most literally as the “public flesh.” At the turn of the millennium, Margolles exhibited Lengua (Tongue, 2000), a severed tongue with a silver piercing. The embalmed tongue belonged to a recently deceased drug addict and had been obtained by the artist in exchange for the costs of the young man’s funeral, in what constitutes another element of the work’s poignant socioeconomic critique. As Oriana Baddeley states, “Margolles’s tongue is there to speak for the silent.”18 Ironically, the impossibility of the severed tongue’s testimony would mark the way for her future work, opening a path that would slowly begin to deviate from the shock-driven aesthetics of her first works toward a more subtle poetics of witnessing that nonetheless remained faithful to her fascination with human remains and testimonial remnants. Indeed, the work recalls Agamben’s definition of testimony as what is left once death and desubjectivization have set in: “If we now return

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to the testimony, we may say that to bear witness is to place oneself in one’s own language in the position of those who have lost it. . . . The poetic word is the one that is always situated in the position of a remnant and that can, therefore, bear witness.”19 However, if Margolles’s tongue “speaks for the silent,” it is precisely because her work forces us to reconsider what we mean by testimony and by witnessing. Outside the realm of language that for so long determined testimonio, she has found in the morgue a new modality of witnessing that takes the forensic gaze as its basis. If the subject can no longer bear witness to its ruin, it is up to its remnants to testify to a violence that is no longer confined to the closed space of the morgue but now floods the public sphere. From Testimonio to Forensics Renowned for being unapologetic, and equally sincere and unsympathetic to artistic hypocrisy, Margolles’s early pieces with SEMEFO worked by shocking their viewers. In front of a horse carcass, a mare fetus, or a layer of skin, the spectators were both disgusted and terrified. In those early works, Margolles wished to create unembellished, raw stagings or reconstructions of horrific events. The danger is that, as Adriana Cavarero has pointed out in Horrorism, whereas terror frightens but can galvanize, horror can petrify us.20 Horror is the experience of petrification, and therefore a silencing. Cristina Rivera Garza adds: “Bewildered and immobile, the horrified are stripped of their agency, frozen in a scene of everlasting marble statues.”21 Margolles’s reconstructions, because we are removed from danger, transposed into new settings, are terrifying, not horrifying, and, as such, they galvanize us to consider and even speak about the inhumanity of corruption and violence in Mexico’s espousal of neoliberal capitalism, in particular as it takes shape in the north of the country. Displacing objects from the blind spot of the morgue, she turns the gallery into a public forum where spectators are asked to bear witness and speak on behalf of the testimonial residues left behind by violence and terror. Conscious that the boundary distinguishing the horrifying from the terrifying is always tenuous, perhaps concerned that her practice could replicate the spectacularizing logic of the yellow press, in the early 2000s Margolles began moving away from the blatantly shocking aesthetics of her early pieces to more subtle installations that nonetheless posed the same question: How can we bear witness to the horrifying necropolitical reality of Mexico? Aware that death stains the social fabric, the artist began paying attention to those blemished leftovers of violence, the subtle traces that go unnoticed by the state’s archival machinery but that the artist nonetheless makes visible in the gallery space. In Vaporization (Vaporización, 2000), she filled a gallery with dense

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fog composed of vaporized water previously used to wash corpses, while in 32 Years: The Lifting and Removal Where the Murdered Body of the Artist Luis Miguel Suro Fell (32 años: Levantamiento y traslado donde cayó el cuerpo asesinado del artista Luis Miguel Suro, 2006), she transported, re-created, and displayed the floor tiles upon which her friend Luis Miguel Suro was murdered. This forensic practice of removal, displacement, and re-creation was perhaps most evident in the 53rd Venice Biennale exhibition, in which Margolles used the Mexican Pavilion at the Palazzo Rota Ivancich to reflect upon the national crisis, staging seven installations that worked by assembling a public space invisibly permeated by death: a maroon-colored flag welcomed the unsuspecting visitors, who calmly walked around, oblivious that the flag had been soaked in blood and that the janitors who so diligently mopped the floor were in fact relatives of the victims whose blood, mixed with water, they used to clean the palace’s otherwise spotless floors. Only at the end of the visit, when, perhaps tired of seeing so little and understanding even less, the visitors decided to read what was written on the walls, did they realize that death was all around them, staining them with a terrifying violence they thought remote. Subtly working with leftovers—mud, debris, blood—that often go unnoticed, the installation asked not only what happens when we displace death into the global circuits that have indirectly produced it but also what happens when the burden of bearing witness is displaced away from the subjective voice of the witness and into the material and acoustic traces of “all that’s left.” This sort of posthuman witnessing, in which objects are given agency to testify, is a basic principle of the emergent discourse of forensis, which is being developed by Forensic Architecture, based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Made up of architects, scholars, artists, filmmakers, software developers, investigative journalists, archaeologists, lawyers, and scientists, the group explores what they call the transition from the “era of the witness” to the “era of forensics.”22 Given Margolles’s early ties to SEMEFO and her work with human remains, it is not surprising that Weizman, head of the group, has recently paid attention to her work. In fact, the catalogue of Margolles’s El testigo exhibition includes an essay by Weizman, wherein he writes: “When the witness can’t speak, the buildings must. . . . With the absence of the human witnesses, Teresa Margolles’s assemblies animate and lend inanimate objects a certain brutalized agency.”23 As he has written elsewhere: The present forensic sensibility seeks to bypass human testimony, especially that of victims of violence, precisely because the memory of violent events, often complicated by trauma, is seen to be marked by the

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very irrationality, sometimes madness, of the perpetrator, and thus, to a certain extent, to mirror it.24 Weizman’s reconceptualization of the human component of a self manifested in the voice is geared toward the systematic reconstruction of historical truths staged and performed in the public sphere. In the Southern Hemisphere and in Latin America in particular, the kernel of this approach was evident in the widespread appearance, in the 1980s and 1990s, of truth and reconciliation commissions, following the human rights violations inflicted by the military dictatorships that spread throughout the region in the second part of the twentieth century. Following the Latin etymology of the word “forensic”—which stands for “pertaining to the forum”—Weizman sees in these commissions an example of the public forums where an attempt is made to wrestle the official narrative away from the monopoly of the state. Discussed in the light of Weizman’s writings, Margolles’s work can be understood within this broader attempt to reverse the forensic gaze through which the state aims to maintain its necropolitical regime. If, since the nineteenth century, the state emerged as the biopolitical entity in charge of “making live” and “letting die,”25 this monopoly of the forensic gaze must be reexamined today. This counterforensic gesture through which official history is questioned and interrogated in public also explains Margolles’s decision to shift her attention from the violence pervading Mexico City to that which is ubiquitous along the Mexico-US border. It is on the border, at the end of the day, that today’s gore capitalism and necropolitical undercurrents are felt more clearly.26 It is there that the state’s collapse and its reemergence as a narco-state are more evident, accompanied by the concealment of its violent substrata. Against this act of concealment, Margolles’s counterforensic aesthetic works by exposing the remnants that seem to have fallen between the interstices of the narco-state’s necropolitical machinery. By working with “all that’s left” from a crime scene, Margolles operates on the threshold of the state’s archive, just outside of what is legally collected as evidence but nevertheless with materials that might potentially have been incorporated into the archive of an eventual forensic investigation. This is the case of Dance Floors (Pistas de baile, 2016), which was displayed in Madrid’s CentroCentro gallery in 2017, alongside Sounds of Death (Sonidos de la muerte) In it, the spectator is confronted with a series of fourteen color photographs depicting as many transgender sex workers proudly posing in high heels on “what’s left” of demolished nightclub dance floors in central Ciudad Juárez— nightclubs where they used to work before the reurbanization of the city

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center. Confronting the images that compose Dance Floors, we are reminded of Weizman’s words: Terrified into silence, or killed in the most brutal ways, people who have seen the worst of violence can no longer speak. Teresa Margolles has turned the demolished buildings into a sensor, for they can register and respond to influences and changes in their environment. The works in the exhibition focus on the sensations felt by objects.27 Once again, this time through the photographic representations of the social and violent conditions of transgender prostitution, the voiceless subject leaves their testimonial duty to objects and ruins, which carry the ultimate task of the witness. More important, as Elena Rosauro underlines, these remnants are not there merely as objective evidence in a positivist sense but rather as traces that must be performed and reenacted in the public forum of the gallery if the truth behind the historical event is to be grasped.28 As the spectral soundscapes in Sounds of Death, the ghost of the past is only able to speak if it is conjured under the right conditions. Margolles’s talent lies in reconstructing it within the public space of the gallery. The Anti-Museum as Counterarchive A place of refuge, the anti-museum is also to be conceived as a place of unconditional rest and asylum for all the rejects of humanity and the “wretched of the earth.” —Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics Margolles’s installations work by constructing a space of dissonance within the museum’s walls. The museum and the gallery have historically been hygienic and peaceful spaces distant from the cacophony of societal noise and its violent echoes. Bringing the morgue into the museum, her works stain this aseptic space of contemplation, desacralizing rooms that are now pervaded by death. In the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo exhibition, for example, it was the “sounds of death” that slowly corroded the spectator’s attention, revealing the spectral presence of an unexpected necropolis. Within the gallery’s space, something began to appear, a necropolitical logic pulsating behind the deceptive affability and comfort. Her works trace the appearance of the anti-museum that lies hidden within every museum as the nightmare the institution wishes to repress. Displacing the remnants of Mexico’s violence away from their locality and recontextualizing them within distant galleries, Margolles’s installations point 150  Feminist Publics

FIGURE 5.2. Teresa Margolles, Andrea, Pistas de Baile (Andrea, Dance Floors), 2016. © Teresa Margolles. Courtesy of the artist.

to a tension inherent in the institution of the museum. Achille Mbembe’s notion of the anti-museum has opened the way for thinking through such frictions. The anti-museum is, above all, a space of critique that cracks open the ways in which the archive has traditionally belonged to those in power. “The archive is first the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events,” famously stated Foucault, in words that suggest how the archive also determines what remains unsaid, silenced, hushed.29 Collecting the remainders that are denied a space in the state’s archive and the museum’s catalogues, Margolles’s artistic operation is to bring such silences to the fore as topics for discussion. “What else could we talk about?,” we could add—appropriating the title of Margolles’s show at the Venice Biennale—to highlight how spectators are asked to address the testimonial residues they are confronted with. If her works mark the appearance of the anti-museum within the museum’s walls, it is precisely because they stage public forums where the cracks of the state’s archive are laid bare. “Indeed, no archive exists without its cracks. One enters into it is as though through a narrow door, with the hope of penetrating in depth the

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thickness of the event and its cavities,” Mbembe goes on to state, in a call for us to attend to the gaps of the official archive.30 Gathering traces of a disavowed violence, Margolles’s forensic aesthetic resides in her capacity to construct a counterarchive that allows for the collective restoration of historical truth. She understands that beyond consciousness, matter is also a space of inscription, a sensible media that records and archives violence. In front of the photographs of bullet-ridden tree trunks that compose The Witness (2013) or the vandalized and scarred buildings that punctuate This Property Won’t Be Demolished (2009–2013), the spectator begins to sense that Margolles’s insight is to make visible the ubiquity of violence and its traces. As Rubén Gallo has stated, the actual corpse is missing from her work, but its inscription within quotidian archives is carefully recorded and exposed.31 It is in this sense that her practice conjoins the forensic and the aesthetic: Forensics is an aesthetic practice because it depends on both the modes and the means by which reality is sensed and presented publicly. Investigative aesthetics slows down time and intensifies sensibility to space, matter, and image. It also seeks to devise new modes of narration and the articulation of truth claims.32 Weizman’s words, despite having as their referent the legal forums established by the human rights commissions that spread throughout Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, nonetheless allow us to imagine what a forensic aesthetic might look like. What Eichmann’s trial, the investigation of Mengele’s remains, and the exhumations performed by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team have in common with Margolles’s work is that they all force us to think of a new space in between evidence and testimony, science and art, objectivity and subjectivity, the public and the private. In the gap that opens between the cracks of the hegemonic archive, the anti-museum emerges as a public forum where our own aesthetic sensibility to violence is innervated. In a society that has become desensitized to violence as a result of its spectacularization, her work asks that we become once again aestheticized to the subtle way violence scars our daily lives. Whereas the Latin American truth commissions that Weizman has in mind operated within a legal context, Margolles’s art works at the threshold of the legal but is still within the precincts of justice. Instead of aiming for the juridical restitution of justice, the pieces seek something else: in their posthuman witnessing, her installations nonetheless attempt to bear testimony to the precarious humanity of those whose lives have become ungrievable within the coordinates of present-day gore capitalism.33 Today, when the spectacularization of 152  Feminist Publics

death has led to its paradoxical invisibility, it becomes more urgent than ever to resensitize ourselves to its omnipresence. Turning the gallery or museum into a public forum, Margolles seeks to stage a theater where our atrophied sensus communis is reconfigured. Walking through her exhibitions in Madrid or in Venice, the spectator could feel that what was being recast was sensibility itself in its relationship to the violence of the historical event, in ways that remind us of Jacques Rancière’s words: “What the artist does is to weave together a new sensory fabric. . . . Weaving this new fabric means creating a form of common expression or a form of expression of the community—namely, ‘the earth’s song and the cry of humanity.’”34 Like Rancière’s “emancipated spectator,” freed from the constraints that usually structure artistic perception, the addressees of her works are summoned to a communal space that is not only a space of mourning but also one where a new “redistribution of the sensible” is made possible.35 Within that theater, the very definition of humanity is redefined through an aesthetic understanding of the world as a collective archive of impressions. In Margolles’s anti-museum, everything—from tree trunks to bed sheets, from building walls to floors—becomes a sensible medium in which the traces of violence can be inscribed. Confronted with blood-tarnished sheets or bullet-pierced walls, the spectators understand that there is no unblemished position and that they, as gallery attendants, are always already stained by the presence of today’s necropolitical violence. There is no use in attempting to sterilize oneself, precisely because the public sphere itself has been debased by the abject ubiquity of death. Instead, what remains to be done is to pay attention, to recognize the traces of violence that the narco-state wishes to disavow, and to hear in the call of those remnants the echoes of a truth that defies that pronounced by the official archive. Final Echoes It would seem that forensics takes over when, reaching its limits, the voice trembles. In Remnants of Auschwitz, Agamben rescues a story told by Levi of an orphaned, nameless child who appeared as the camps were being liberated, a child the deportees called Hurbinek. Reduced to bare life, paralyzed from the waist down with atrophied legs but nonetheless possessing eyes that flashed terribly alive, he was “a child of death.”36 Deprived of speech, at some point the child nonetheless began to pronounce, or perhaps babble, something: a word no one could understand—mass-klo or matisklo—but that nonetheless seemed to encapsulate, precisely in its nonsense and meaninglessness, the impossibility or lacuna that lies at the very heart of testimony. In Hurbinek’s echolalia we find the descent of language into a realm without language.

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FIGURE 5.3. Teresa Margolles, Sonidos de la muerte (Sounds of Death), 2008. Sound installation. © Teresa Margolles. Courtesy of the artist.

Confronted with the spectral echoes that punctuated the long corridor dedicated to Sounds of Death in the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, attentive spectators underwent a similar experience: the sense of being faced with the terrifying empty core that nonetheless structured the very possibility of witnessing. Desacralizing the gallery space, where silence is often a prerequisite for contemplation, the density of sound flooded the scene, physically connecting the viewer to the circumstances surrounding the ungrieved deaths of these women. Drawn in by sound, the gallery visitor walked among the black loudspeakers as if strolling alongside gravestones, each “sound of death” reactivating the particular experience of a place, replacing a voice that could no longer speak out for itself. Echoes of that cruel silence, the unacknowledged and negligible aural component of “all that’s left,” these soundscapes leaked from the interstices of the official archive or perhaps from within the shelves of an archive yet to come. Like Hurbinek’s echolalia, they signified little if anything, and yet it was in their stubborn lack of meaning and fleetingness that they articulated the possibility of a sensus communis, the basis for a community to come. Between voice and silence, appearance and disappearance, these soundscapes were echoes of places that had survived the deaths inscribed within them. In their ephemerality, they signaled to the spectral ontology of the echo as the meeting place of past and present. For, as the Colombian anthropologist Alejandro Castillejo Cuéllar has suggested in his book Los archivos del dolor (Archives of Pain), “The echo always arises out of the conjunction of sound and place. [It is] the communion between a particular kind of sound with a particular kind of place.”37 Margolles’s artistry lies in her ability to create installation spaces that work as public echo chambers, where “silence and voice interweave into a critical mass of enormous semantic and historic density; where past events, especially violent events, resound in the mind, in the here and now, like a bell.”38 Installed at the threshold of the archive, signaling the archive’s limits as well as its gaps, Margolles’s exhibitions conjure the testimony of those faithful remnants whose voice was hushed for too long but whose presence resounds today as an echo staged against silence. Hearing the echoes of this silence becomes the political gesture of a counterforensic sensibility. Notes 1. Sergio González Rodríguez, The Femicide Machine (Los Angeles: Semiotext[e], 2012), 21. 2. Teresa Margolles, El testigo (Madrid: Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, 2014), 64. 3. Cuauhtémoc Medina, “Espectralidad materialista,” in Teresa Margolles: ¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? (Barcelona: RM Verlag, 2009), 23. 4. Peter Kilchmann, “Teresa Margolles,” https://www.peterkilchmann.com/artists/teresa

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

-margolles/overview/sonidos-de-la-muerte-sounds-of-death-2008, accessed October 24, 2021. Eyal Weizman, “When the Witnesses Can’t Speak, the Buildings Must,” in Margolles, El testigo, 100. Sayak Valencia, Gore Capitalism, trans. John Pluecker (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext[e], 2018), 28. Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2002), 41. Paul Celan, “Ashflory,” in Paul Celan: Selections, trans. Pierre Joris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 104–105. Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, trans. Steve Corcoran (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), 15. Valencia, Gore Capitalism, 10. González Rodríguez, The Femicide Machine, 31–32. González Rodríguez, The Femicide Machine, 22. González Rodríguez, The Femicide Machine, 71. Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman, Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of a Forensic Aesthetics (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012), 45. Rubén Gallo, New Tendencies in Mexican Art: The 1990s (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 117. Julia Banwell, Teresa Margolles and the Aesthetics of Death (London: University of Wales Press, 2015), 2. John F. Fleetwood, The Irish Body Snatchers: A History of Body Snatching in Ireland (Dublin: Tomar, 1998), 10. Oriana Baddeley, “Last Rites from Frida Kahlo to Teresa Margolles: Mexicanness and Visualizing the Politics of Victimhood,” in Ghosts of the Revolution in Mexican Literature and Visual Culture, ed. Erica Segre (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2013), 277. Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, 161. Adriana Cavarero, Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, trans. William McCuaig (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 3. Cristina Rivera Garza, Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country, trans. Sarah Booker (New York: Feminist Press, 2020), 2. Keenan and Weizman, Mengele’s Skull, 12. Weizman, “When the Witnesses Can’t Speak, the Buildings Must,” 101. Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2017), 10. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge: And the Discourse on Language (London: Vintage, 1992), 142. Valencia, Gore Capitalism, 19. Weizman, “When the Witnesses Can’t Speak, the Buildings Must,” 100. Elena Rosauro, “Teresa Margolles,” in De Muerte Presente, ed. René Hirner (Heidenheim: Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, 2016), 54–55. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 (London: Picador, 2010), 15. Mbembe, Necropolitics, 172–173. Gallo, New Tendencies in Mexican Art, 119. Eyal Weizman, “Introduction: Forensis,” in Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth, ed. Forensic Architecture (London: Sternberg Press, 2014), 94.

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33. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso, 2020), 20. 34. Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2011), 56. 35. Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, 56. 36. Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, trans. Stuart Woolf (London: Folio Society, 2000), 191. 37. Alejandro Castillejo Cuéllar, Los archivos del dolor: Ensayos sobre la violencia y el recuerdo en la Sudáfrica contemporánea (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, 2009), 35. 38. Castillejo Cuéllar, Los archivos del dolor, 37–38.

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DOSSIER E

La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote Diego Flores Magón

La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote is an archive, a printing press, and a museum. It opened its doors in 2015 in the building that once housed and printed El Hijo del Ahuizote (1885–1903), a satirical weekly newspaper opposed to the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship. La Casa is devoted to preserving and activating the archive of the Flores Magón brothers (Ricardo, Enrique, and Jesús). Anarchist ideologues of the Mexican Liberal Party, these figures spearheaded the only anticapitalist cohort of the Mexican Revolution. Together with other journalists, lawyers, intellectuals, and politicians, the Flores Magón brothers also founded the anarchist periodical Regeneración (1900–1918), the publication of which was regularly hindered by censorship and persecution both in Mexico and in the United States, where the Flores Magón brothers had to go into exile. To explain the idea behind La Casa, I’ll start by talking about the collection of objects and inanimate things we call “documents” that constitute the archive. The archive is in itself a body; like any other, it can be either alive or dead. The body is necessary for life, but life is different from the body, even superior to it (first ideological conviction). At La Casa, I’d say, we’re interested in the body of the archive as a condition for its life. What kind of life must this body live? “That is its own business,” I’d add, maliciously. As with all forms of life, the question must be kept open. In other words, life invariably contains the dilemmas of freedom, autonomy, uncertainty. A healthy life (second ideological conviction) necessarily jeopardizes the body (sticks its neck out) throughout many different and more or less uncontrollable adventures. Life tosses the body around the world with glorious abandon or holds it in check over long periods 158  

of tedium and discouragement—it wastes its time. More than the specific forms the body takes, once it is granted life what matters is an essential openness— freedom—and the primacy of action in response to things. These convictions are the foundation for everything else. I’d like to express this same position in negative terms. Here the idea behind La Casa can be explained by a sense of horror at the death of the archive. In a word, effort, or resistance: what the project wants is to elude the archive’s thanatic vertigo. These document-remains wish to retreat to the shadows, to a state of calm, the “submerged slowness,” to quote the poet himself.1 The archive is a body that longs for a burial it is constantly denied. In this sense, La Casa finds its first reflection in the archive—the institution traditionally responsible for dealing with document-remains—and thus makes its first major gesture of differentiation: it finds the archive’s administration obsessively concentrating on forensic procedures. Horror at the necrological aspect of the archive—which predominates in traditional archival institutions—has led La Casa to place the archive at the helm; to subvert the cultural expectations projected onto it; to place, yes, a collection of documents at the center of a creative project—without erecting shelves as the supreme act of its establishment or countertops for record-keeping and inspection as a sign of its everyday operations. The archive should not be the deadly, inescapable fate of a collection of documents. In an interview, Pilar del Río, José Saramago’s widow, told me this: “I don’t want those papers” of Saramago’s “to be kept in an archive. . . . No. I want everything in full view, out in the open, breathing; I wish they could even be touched; I wish they didn’t have to end up in urns. . . . I always tell people. . . . touch the books, please, give them life, fill them with your gaze.” The pilgrims’ eyes and hands give life to what would otherwise, motionless, inevitably and incessantly die. Another friend solemnly declared: “That which doesn’t move becomes an obstacle and rots away.” Movement—being handled, in the case of an archive—is of course both literal and metaphorical. The means by which the archive could live dangerously are, certainly, narrative, speculative, symbolic, political. For it to live these lives—which ideally present some kind of threat to the norm—the document must first be redeemed from its bureaucratic, archival captivity. That is La Casa’s goal: redemption. I’ll pursue the metaphor of the body to its natural conclusion. In a line from “Pasado en claro” (“A Draft of Shadows”), Paz tells his grandfather Irineo: “(This that I say is earth thrown over / your name: let it rest softly.)”2 The archive, La Casa’s archive, is the expanded body of my own anarchist grandfather. The documents are the garments he left behind when he died. It seems to me that this body’s perseverance reveals the hopelessness of burying it for good. It La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote   159

FIGURE E.1. Ambulatory Ahuizote and various covers of El Hijo del Ahuizote (1901) in the background, 2014. Photo by Rodrigo Jardón. © Rodrigo Jardón. Courtesy of La Casa de El Hijo de El Ahuizote.

refuses to be forgotten, it never fully disintegrates or vanishes, it’s incessantly invoked, and it reappears in different material and phantasmagorical forms. Given the impossibility of interring this stubborn body (handing over the document​remains to an ossuary-like archival institution, which fritters them away somehow by selling or incinerating them? To what end?), my solution has been to submit, to open, to donate indiscriminately. A renunciation, a separation— partial ones, we might say, but unequivocally oriented toward that ultimately funerary end. I’ll say a few words about the master plans behind my work here. The first is the establishment of a printing press in the heart of the archive. While an archive concentrates and conserves, a press produces and propagates copies, which can (which must) be cheap. This pendulum swing between the precious and the affordable, the singular and the multiple, adds an important dimension to the archive’s possible adventures. It offers the chance to extract documents and relaunch them into a new and riskier life. The second maneuver is the digital repository, soon to be accessible online. This solves the problem of physical custodianship, which has previously dominated to the point of absolutely determining the logic of the archival institution. 160  Feminist Publics

FIGURE E.2.

Ambulatory Ahuizote on Avenida Juárez, 2014. Photo by Diego Flores Magón. © La Casa de El Hijo de El Ahuizote. Courtesy of La Casa de El Hijo de El Ahuizote.

Finally, I’d like to mention a scenario that ties all these threads together. In March 2016, my friend and colleague Daniel González—an artist, etcher, and printer from Los Angeles—was in Mexico. I’d been invited to make an intervention in a display case in one of Mexico City’s metro stations, and we decided to create an iteration (with variations) of our Balazos (Shots), that is, phrases from the archive, in large print, with tiny source attributions, which would serve—they still do—as a way to describe the present: “In our unfortunate country, freedom does not exist”; “Personal attacks joined the regimen of terror developed by tyranny”; “The journalist’s pen was shattered by the tyrant’s club. It was an orgy of cruelty”; and so on. The first time, in the museum, we printed these phrases on loose sheets of paper so that people could take a copy, and we arranged them beside the portraits of contemporary journalists who had been assassinated. For the metro, we opted to use a large-scale movable type and to print the phrases directly onto the wall. We laid out the phrases on the afternoon of our first workday, but we didn’t have time to print or paint the La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote   161

miniature attributions, which were supposed to say “Regeneration, 1904,” and so on. We decided to leave that part for the following day. That night, though, I got a call from the metro people, who said they would have to remove the whole thing: it was a scandal. I explained that the work wasn’t finished, and so they papered over the display cases to cover up the text. They let us finish the next day, on condition that we add the attributions and put the phrases in quotes. Inasmuch as the discourse was historical, with its source attributions and its quotation marks, its subversive power was completely neutralized—a power that, clearly, was still alive but remained latent in the archive. In the midst of this tension between “history” and the discourses in the archive, then, runs the crack where our own political and public activity is inscribed. Notes 1.

The author is referring to the 1926 poem “Galope muerto” (“Dead Gallop”) by Pablo Neruda (editor’s note). See Pablo Neruda, Residence on Earth, trans. Donald Devenish Walsh (New York: New Directions, 2004). 2. Octavio Paz, A Draft of Shadows and Other Poems, trans. Eliot Weinberger (New York: New Directions, 1979).

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CHAPTER 6

Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez and Sarah Abel

Like many Latin American societies whose national projects are founded on myths of mestizaje (mixed-“race” discourses),1 Mexico has long projected and introjected an image of itself as a country devoid of racism. Nonetheless, racial discourses have historically played a central role in the narratives and practices of state-sponsored public art, foregrounding canonical ideas that integrally link racist discourses to national identity. Over the past thirty years, this myth has been progressively challenged by Indigenous and Afro-descendant activists, and scholars have worked to foster understandings of racism not as an archaic or imported ideology but as an integral dimension of the matrix of oppressions that has structured Mexican society since colonial times. Only in the second decade of the twenty-first century, though, has racism begun to be a matter of general public discussion and concern in Mexico. Over this period, a handful of public exhibitions in Mexico City have addressed the subject, usually with the aim of visibilizing the dynamics and origins of racism in Mexico and elsewhere.2 However, in the wake of antiracist protests across the world in 2020, galleries, museums, and artists are beginning to ask with more urgency: What does it mean to incorporate decolonial and antiracist positions into artistic practices?3 165

In this chapter, we add to this discussion through our examination of a series of recent interventions in public spaces that we judge to fall, in different ways, under the criteria of “antiracist” artistic practices. As Sarah Abel argues, racism is both the source and product of “race” thinking, and it has tangible material, structural, and embodied effects on societies and individuals.4 We understand racism as operating in Mexico primarily through what Mónica Moreno Figueroa has called “mestizaje logics”:5 a politics of racist prejudice that aspires to whiteness through mestizaje discourses and practices, operations that on the interpersonal level are interconnected with, and complemented by, forms of institutional and state racism. The mestizo is the flexible, undefined space of those who are not Indigenous, Black, or belonging to other negatively racialized groups, so that those considered as belonging to the hegemonic mestizo racial identity emerge “as the point of reference to speak of the ‘other’ and are considered, by others and themselves, as ‘the’ Mexicans.”6 Like whiteness in the United States and elsewhere, mestizo is often imagined to be a racially unmarked category.7 In fact, those who experience the world from a position of relative privilege are induced to cultivate epistemic blind spots, producing systemic, shared forms of racialized ignorance that normalize and invisibilize racism, even as they, too, are traversed by its violent effects.8 The shape of the exclusions produced by mestizaje logics is defined by the representations generated by what Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez designates “the mestizo gaze,” a privileged, racist point of view that enables the “scopic regime of mestizaje”: assemblages of racialized sensorial representations that stem from the “mestizaje logics” of Mexican racism.9 The function of the mestizo gaze is to actualize the agenda of mestizo politics and the narrative of mestizaje through the production of social, visual, and aural representations. Hence, as a social act of seeing, the mestizo gaze determines who has the social capital to exert the right to see and to be seen in the public sphere, and on what terms.10 Furthermore, location and social identity, as Linda Alcoff explains, are never separate from the place from which one speaks and the person or persons about whom one speaks.11 If, as Sara Ahmed suggests, “whiteness holds through habits,”12 and, as Moreno Figueroa has shown, whiteness is the beacon guiding mestizo logics in Mexico,13 we argue that while the new enthusiasm for “antiracism” appears encouraging, it also presents dilemmas: How can art be used to disrupt not only the symbolic repertoires but also the power dynamics at play in racist scopic regimes? As Stuart Hall pointed out, one approximation to contesting racialized visual regimes can be to try to invert or subvert familiar stereotypes, replacing degrading images with more dignified representations, or else finding ways to make explicit the racist logics at work.14 Such 166   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

approaches, however, tend to operate through the reproduction of racialized difference, leaving the underlying racial logics more or less intact. Moreover, representation is not merely a set of visual codes: it is an act in which someone or something that is absent is presented; it implies an exercise of replacement, of substitution.15 This gesture, then, has political impacts, such that we can ask: Who and what is involved in the social and material processes producing the representation? Who or what is being represented, and in what modes of agency or participation? For whom is the representation produced, and to what ends? And most important: Who are the main beneficiaries in this process, and on what terms? What are the costs for those left outside of those social, political, and economic benefits? What role does the inseparable binary of privilege and its complementary dimension, oppression, play in these contexts? In this chapter, we discuss some tensions in the production of contemporary “antiracist” public art in Mexico, examining a variety of cases that encapsulate different approaches to visibilizing and contesting racist regimes. We focus on art practices that resonate with what Moreno Figueroa and Peter Wade refer to as “grammars of antiracism”: styles of antiracist activity addressing racism and antiracism either explicitly or tacitly. In this way, we analyze artworks that mobilize explicit antiracist grammars and also address examples that correspond to the emergence of “alternative grammars of antiracism,” namely, “struggles that do not always, or comfortably, name racism, [but] can have effects that are structurally antiracist,” particularly when actors are working from nonhegemonic and intersectional standpoints.16 As Moreno Figueroa and Wade point out, the antiracist outcomes of these “alternative grammars” may vary, because although the “explicit naming of racism per se is not necessarily a sign of advancing antiracist work . . . strategic language and awareness of structural racism have distinct advantages for antiracist practice.”17 The first case provides an example of an antiracist grammar attempting to address Mexican racism explicitly, revealing the logics and effects of the mestizo gaze through audiovisual interventions in a conventional gallery space. In the second and third examples, we identify alternative antiracist grammars with forms of “civil imagination”18 and “undercommons” practices19 in the works of individuals and collectives who make aesthetic interventions in public space to visibilize and challenge the violent effects of racist regimes, whether overtly or implicitly. Overall, this chapter reflects on possible ways of envisioning public space as a political site for the enactment of social justice and the evolution of civil imagination. This leads us to further interrogate the potential of antiracist art in public space for creating enduring effects that disrupt mestizaje logics and challenge hegemonic structures of oppression. Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism   167

Holding a Mirror to Racism Our first case study analyzes an explicit antiracist grammar, the exhibition La nación (The Nation, 2019) by Yutsil Cruz (Mexico City, 1982–), an artist and researcher whose work engages with the theme of racism, its imbrication with mestizaje logics, and its intersections with classism and sexism in Mexico. One of the salient themes of Cruz’s artworks is an interest in tracing the connections between, on the one hand, the role of state-sponsored science (in particular anthropology) in the production of hegemonic racial discourses of mestizaje, and on the other, the role of the national media in naturalizing these discourses and reformulating them into a burgeoning postrevolutionary mestizaje aesthetics for popular consumption.20 For Cruz, understanding racism in Mexico requires not only scrutinizing the lofty knowledge production of the country’s scientific elite but also “looking at what’s on the surface—the commonplace (lo común), what gets shared—which we don’t always analyze.”21 This observation highlights what would seem a paradox of Mexican racism: despite saturating mainstream popular culture (telenovelas, films, documentaries, comedy shows, ads, and so on), it is rarely acknowledged as such. In fact, this is a sign of the hegemony of the mestizo gaze: when looking from this position, manifestations of racism—for instance, toward Indigenous or Black populations—do not register as aberrations but as the logical consequence of natural differences between “us” and “them.” One of the aims of Cruz’s art is to manipulate and reframe familiar visual tropes of mestizaje to lay bare their underlying exclusionary logics. Cruz’s 2019 exhibition La nación addressed the particular ways in which racism, sexism, and classism intersect to objectify idealized notions of Indigenous femininity in Mexico’s mestizo imaginaries. Visitors entered the austere, marble-clad hall of the Centro Cultural Tlatelolco’s Juárez Lobby via an imposing stairway, passing under a facsimile of one of the earliest editions of the national flag, which announced the exhibition’s theme. The center of the lobby was occupied by three busts on pedestals, each accompanied by an arrangement of palm fronds, giving the space the air of a formal diplomatic reception. The busts, created by Cruz, represent women who have become synonymous with ideals of “Indigenous” beauty and femininity through Mexican visual culture: Dolores del Río, a Golden Age actress remembered nationally for her role as the beautiful, eponymous Indigenous protagonist of the film María Candelaria (1943, dir. Emilio Fernández Romo); Victoria Dorantes (sometimes called Dorenlas or Dornelas), a working-class woman from Tlaxcala who appeared as an allegory of “The Motherland” in Jorge González Camarena’s painting La patria (1962), which adorned the covers of free school textbooks nationwide

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FIGURE 6.1. Yutsil Cruz, exhibition shots of La nación (The Nation), 2019. Photos by Iván Meza Sordo. Courtesy of Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco, UNAM.

from 1962 to 1972 and 2014 to 2018; and Yalitza Aparicio, a Oaxacan woman of Mixtec ancestry who was Oscar-nominated for her role as Cleo, a domestic maid, in the film Roma (2018, dir. Alfonso Cuarón). Each bust was made with a different set of materials: smooth white porcelain and gold-leaf highlights for Del Río; roughly hewn reddish-brown tzalam wood and an ixtle wig for Dorantes; and porous white cantera stone and acrylic paint for Aparicio. The varying tones and textures, as well as the different economic and cultural values associated with these materials, suggest a hierarchy in the level of esteem and admiration afforded to each woman in the collective imaginary, which in turn reflects their “racial” origins (as a wealthy, white mestiza woman who donned “Indigenous” dress to play the part of María Candelaria, Del Río takes the top spot). All three appear with bright yellow hair, a modification chosen by the artist to offer a satirical commentary on the processes of cultural and racial whitening to which female “Indigenous” bodies are routinely subjected in order to be deemed “desirable” to mestizo audiences and therefore assimilable to a national mestiza culture.22

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The literal objectification of Del Río, Dorantes, and Aparicio found an echo in a three-part video montage displayed simultaneously on three separate screens around the edges of the lobby. The first was a compilation of portrayals of “Indigenous” women in scenes taken from telenovelas, films, and documentaries (including Del Río’s María Candelaria and Aparicio’s Cleo). The second brought together clips of representatives of Indigenous communities in diverse religious and political contexts, from scenes of dignitaries conferring the bastón de mando upon presidents Enrique Peña Nieto and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to interviews with Zapatista insurgents. The third and largest screen showed footage recorded by Cruz during a visit to the upper floor of the Museo Nacional de Antropología (MNA), which is dedicated to “ethnographic” representations of contemporary Indigenous cultures. The recording included long, still shots of the inanimate faces of mannequins, used throughout the MNA’s permanent exhibition to represent women of different Indigenous ethnic groups carrying out “typical” cultural activities. Uniformly, the mannequins have brown skin, black wigs, and wear regional dress. However, the style of sculpture varies, reflecting the curatorial preferences of different administrations: the oldest are waxworks, individually but crudely sculpted, with mask-like painted faces and stoic expressions; the newer mannequins are plastic and have smooth, homogeneous features, from the relatively human-like (with elegantly formed forehead, nose, and lips) to the very abstract (rounded contours for eye sockets and nose, but no mouth). The MNA’s curatorial choices to transition from “realistic” waxworks to featureless mannequins were likely inspired by a concern not to reify racial types through the production of supposedly anthropologically correct bodies, yet the effect is to displace the spectator’s gaze onto the objects adorning the mannequins, which in turn come to stand in as the essence of indigeneity—an alternative form of objectification.23 In Cruz’s video collage, these objectified representations are disrupted by the imposition of hard captions displaying testimonies from female university students from Milpa Alta, describing their personal experiences of being identified as Indigenous in Mexican society.24 The quotes are chosen to produce discordances with the visual material. For instance, images of a mannequin of a child wearing a white T-shirt and woven satchel in a wooden hut are overlaid with the words: “We live in a society where being Indigenous practically represents being uneducated [no tener estudios]. Being Indigenous is not synonymous with not using a cell phone, not studying, or not wearing jeans, or necessarily speaking [an Indigenous] language.” Later, a shot of some naked mannequins piled on the floor, as if waiting to be moved to storage, is accompanied by the words “here [in Milpa Alta] . . . they haven’t been able to put in Oxxos, we’ve 170   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

fought and we’ll continue fighting so that that can’t exist here. About two years ago they wanted to put in some ‘Farmacias Guadalajara’ and all the pharmacies of Tecómitl opposed it, they had meetings, they got together and fought so those pharmacies couldn’t get in here.” The quotes from the Milpa Alta women, which were also printed on the high windows of the Juárez Lobby, highlighted the oppressive experience of indigeneity as an imposed, circumscribed, racialized category, and contrasted this with the vitality of resistance of Indigenous communities to various types of structural violence imposed on them by the state in the name of projects of national “development” and “progress” driven by mestizaje logics. The discursive antiracist strategy pursued by Cruz in La nación is similar to an approach described by Stuart Hall as working on racist stereotypes “through the eye of representation.” According to Hall, the strategy “locates itself within the complexities and ambivalences of representation itself, and tries to contest it from within. . . . Instead of avoiding the [racialized] body, because it has been so caught up in the complexities of power and subordination within representation, this strategy positively takes the body as the principal site of representational strategies, attempting to make the stereotypes work against themselves.”25 Viewed alongside the video montages, for instance, the three busts can be understood as a materialization of the mestizo gaze that constantly and violently forges the contours of what are deemed “acceptable” forms of Indigenous femininity in public space. The satirical tone is conveyed, in part, through the busts’ yellow hair; in Cruz’s words, “It’s a ridiculous blond, that color doesn’t exist, and [the idea was precisely] to take it to the level of the ridiculous.”26 The choice to symbolize Mexico’s whitening logics through hair is significant: it points to the idea that racist practices are not only imposed by the gaze of others but reproduced through personal, everyday decisions about how to style, dress, modify, and present one’s body. In Cruz’s words: “The issue isn’t to say that it’s wrong for you to dye your hair blond, you can dye it blue, black, purple, green, pink if you want. But what I’m interested in is signaling that that aspiration toward a beauty stereotype is Eurocentric, and in Mexico it’s very internalized on the daily, subjective level, . . . particularly among women, it’s very present, and it also has very strong class connotations.”27 However, the decision to represent these habitual and widespread practices through the bodies of these iconic women arguably clouds the intended critique: what is meant as a commentary on systemic societal phenomena could easily be confused with a denunciation of personal behaviors and aspirations. Such accusations have been a staple of the racist comments aimed at Aparicio, in particular, following her Oscar nomination and subsequent appearances on the covers of various Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism   171

international fashion magazines.28 Cruz recognizes and is uncomfortable with the symbolic violence inherent in her decision to render Aparicio, in particular, as white. In the artist’s words: “It was difficult, because making [Aparicio] blond implied whitening her even more than she has already been whitened, but at the same time [my] intention was to signal how [others] have progressively whitened her. . . . I objectified her, but also to signal how she has been continually objectified.”29 As Hall notes, attempts to critique racial stereotypes “through the eye of representation” often produce ambivalent interpretations. La nación’s multilayered critique of mestizaje aesthetics relies on spectators arriving equipped with the necessary epistemic tools to join the dots between the representations of ideological regimes, structural factors, and quotidian practices by which racist ways of looking are internalized and proliferate in resonance with other dynamics of oppression. While the transcribed testimonies of the young women from Milpa Alta offer a contestation of these mestizaje logics, their voices manifest in the exhibition as disembodied, silent traces. Meanwhile, the spectator’s gaze is drawn powerfully back to the objectified representations (the busts, the video montages) of the mestizo gaze itself, a solipsistic, totalizing way of seeing, the essential function of which is to materialize, by producing social representations, the agenda of mestizo politics, exclusively concerned with mestizo desires, needs, and interests.30 Is holding a mirror to racism enough, then, to produce antiracist effects? Perhaps an inherent limitation to artistic works that approach the theme of racism frontally and primarily through visual media is that the interpretive work done by viewers often remains on an intellectual level. Racism remains a spectacle to be looked at and puzzled over, but it is not always clear that spectators will catch sight of themselves in the mirror’s reflection, prompting uncomfortable but necessary questions about their own role as agents, participants, and beneficiaries of these systems of oppression. Meanwhile, for those who are already familiar with the exclusionary effects of mestizaje logics, the question remains: How do we go about challenging these structures or imagining alternative forms of society? Performing Reappearance in the Undercommons Our next case involves an example of public art utilized as an activist tool for social justice that mobilizes alternative antiracist grammars through performance. They thereby render artistic practices as “spaces of appearance”31 and specifically promote a collective envisioning of reappearance in civic space of people who have been forcibly disappeared. This performance resists and 172   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

counters the regimes of erasure created by state violence and mestizaje logics. Buscando a Bruno (Looking for Bruno) by Lukas Avendaño (Tehuantepec, Oa­xa­ca, 1977) makes visible and audible racialized, gendered, and class-oppressed subjectivities and their histories. It also demands reintegrating them into the collective space of the political. The performance—which has been repeated several times in different locations and with slight variations—takes place in a public space: outside a museum, a landmark, or a government building. It begins with a lone trumpeter walking into the crowd, playing a mournful Isthmus Zapotec lament. Some minutes later, Avendaño walks slowly into the performance space, barefoot, with a somber expression,32 his eyes fixed on the horizon, his glossy black hair perfectly braided and tucked into a bun adorned with colorful flowers, and gold-embroidered earrings dangling from his ears. He is bare-chested, partially dressed in a glittery black Tehuana dress, a mourning version of the traditional female costume from the Zapotec Isthmus of the Tehuantepec region. Tightly pressed to his chest, he holds a framed portrait of a young man. The frame is inscribed with the words: “We are still looking for Bruno Avendaño. This is for the people forcibly disappeared in Mexico. #BuscamosaBruno.” Avendaño sits in one of two empty chairs and waits, his hand extended in the air. He remains silent, dignified, serene, yet grave. After a few minutes, another person—a woman, or a man, or a nonbinary-presented person, in some cases also bare-chested and dressed in the formal festive version of the Tehuana garment—walks in and sits in the empty chair next to him. These collaborators can be fellow artists, relatives of the disappeared, or sometimes members of the general public. They hold Avendaño’s hand, and both sit silently, facing the crowd.33 After some time—Avendaño’s naked chest and throat now slightly trembling and revealing that behind the calm façade he is fighting to hold back tears—the two slowly turn their heads to look into each other’s eyes, holding the gaze for a moment that feels long, intimate, and charged with emotion. After a few minutes, the person gets up from their chair and Avendaño stays alone, his hand extended in the air, awaiting the next person to come, sit with him, hold his hand, and look him in the eyes.34 This dynamic usually repeats for around one hour, sometimes less or a bit longer.35 Finally, Avendaño and his last sitting companion stand up and walk slowly away, still holding hands. The trumpet gradually fades out, and the crowd is left on its own, moved, emotional, somber. After the performance, a public talk usually takes place, in which Avendaño introduces himself as a muxe (a nonbinary, Binnizá, or Isthmus Zapotec gender identity) performance artist, poet, professional dancer, and anthropologist from Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism   173

FIGURE 6.2. Lukas Avendaño, Buscando a Bruno (Looking for Bruno), 2018. Photos by Irantzu Casajús Vallés. Courtesy of La Xixa Teatre and Irantzu Casajús Vallés.

the region of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. He also tells the story of his brother, Bruno, who was forcibly disappeared in May 2018 and whose remains were located in a clandestine grave in Mexico in 2020. The conversation is intimate: Avendaño answers questions about Bruno’s forced disappearance and his family’s quest to find him, battling against the constant injustices, inefficacies, violence, death threats, and sometimes open resistance of the state to comply with its duty to find Bruno. In every talk, Avendaño highlights the fact that Bruno’s case of forced disappearance is not an isolated event but part of a systemic issue that affects tens of thousands of people in Mexico and is the result of state violence. Before Bruno’s disappearance, Avendaño had already developed a complex body of work, engaging critiques of racism and racialization from intersectional perspectives. His writings and performances explored issues ranging from decolonial reflections on intersectionality to migration, drawing on the gendered, class-aware, racialized, and ethnic dimensions of his lived experience as a muxe individual who grew up in a peasant family in the Zapotec Isthmus of Tehuantepec.36 Avendaño is aware of how his own positionality as an artist of Zapotec origin transgresses mestizaje logics, which traditionally render Indigenous people as “the subject of empathy, but not as subjects of rights or equal members of the political community of the citizenry.”37 In his words: “In Mexico . . . we are rendered invisible. At best we indigenous people can only aspire to be elementary school teachers, accountants . . . but to be a doctor is too great an aspiration. And, to be an artist! That an indigenous person has the audacity to want to dedicate themself to art is almost a nefarious sin. It is unacceptable, unmentionable.”38 His artistic work has therefore always been concerned with the visibilization of underrepresented subjectivities and the right to speak and be heard, seen, and acknowledged: “I got into art to live life with less pain. That is why I focus my work on themes that are close to me, such as the disappeared of my region, sexuality, and gender because of my sexogenic condition and ethnicity, due to my indigenous ancestry.”39 Nevertheless, when Bruno went missing, Avendaño’s life took a radical turn, as did his work, evolving from art into artivism. Buscando a Bruno was created and deployed as a tool to support his search for legal justice. In his own words, “This action . . . was not born as a performance. It was born out of an act of desperation.”40 During an art residency in Barcelona, Avendaño performed an early version of the “chairs” action outside the Mexican Consulate there and delivered a letter demanding justice for his brother and denouncing irregularities in the management of the case by the Mexican authorities. Eventually, the letter was delivered to 1,618 Mexican institutional representatives across the world. In another iteration, Avendaño and collaborators—often including Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism   175

other people looking for loved ones who had been forcibly disappeared—appear clad in forensic coroner’s suits, as if showing how civilians in Mexico need to literally embody and take over the work the state is obliged to perform yet fails to accomplish. They display banners and paste posters on the outer walls of public state offices bearing the words “Looking for Bruno” and “Where are the missing people going?”41 Avendaño has performed Buscando a Bruno–related actions in several public forums in Mexico and internationally. He is aware and takes advantage of how his privileges as an artist have granted transnational visibility to Bruno’s case. In his interventions, Avendaño “takes up” space and mobilizes affect as politics. Ahmed notes that racist thinking and its colonial archive condition how Indigenous bodies are traditionally seen in the public sphere.42 Indigenous bodies are constructed as sites of otherness through racialized difference and as sites upon which to exert violence. Avendaño’s presence, the uttering of his voice and the visibilization of his demands in the public space, are in themselves an affront that contests the mestizo gaze and logics of Mexican racism. Avendaño’s art purposefully displaces the personal and private to the communal and public on two levels: it relocates the dignified racialized/ classed/gendered body from the intimate sphere of the personal and private to the collective and public; and it brings a denunciation that the systems of racialized, gendered, and class oppression would traditionally silence. By speaking from his lived experience of searching for disappeared kin and as someone whose identity is situated at the intersections of multiple types of oppression, Avendaño portrays himself, on the contrary, as ideally positioned to bear witness to, and denounce, the state’s systemic and violent neglect of the population it is supposed to care for and serve. Simultaneously, by expressing his pain and rage in public, Avendaño turns public space into a shared space, a sort of commons, in the same way that he turned his pain and strength into a search strategy through social justice–​ oriented activist art. The participation in his performances by fellow artists and relatives of the disappeared is occasionally supplemented by random sporadic interventions by the public, who sometimes take a leap from the place of the spectator to enter into the space of the performance, holding Avendaño’s hand and keeping him company while engaging in deep, sustained gazes with him. These are gestures of mutual recognition, of being together as undercommons. As Avendaño puts it: I believe that [the performance] should be an action of accompanying each other as people, because now that we see the situation of the 176   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

country, it seems that it forces us to accompany each other, if we do not want to be left alone . . . in the sense that [some people] do not even get to be denounced as disappeared. Because even to be enunciated as disappeared, you need to do a lot of work, . . . you need to keep enunciating. . . . You are summoned to continue, to not let go of our hands.43 As Ariella Azoulay proposes, the capacity of individuals “to see themselves as equal partners in the political framework within which they [live]” entails an act of political imagination.44 In Avendaño’s participatory performance, state violence is also presented as facing a civil society, embodied in the assembled collaborators, public, and passersby who observe the action and might sometimes spontaneously decide to join and participate. To the extent that this performance is an act that resonates with this idea of political imagination, in Buscando a Bruno the body of the person who was forcibly disappeared “appears” represented in the social body constituted by those who search for them and accompany that search.45 In this way, Avendaño vindicates the rights of those forcibly disappeared in the country and their communities: the oppressively racialized, the precarious, the gender-diverse—“the ‘we’ who cohabit in the space of the undercommons,” as Jack Halberstam articulates Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s seminal notion.46 Avendaño’s invitation to the allies and audiences he engages with is to mobilize dignity, joy, and rage instead of debilitating sadness, as a method of communal persistence and renewal in the struggle for social justice. As he puts it: “May joy sustain us. Because if we are combative, . . . we become the hope of people who have abandoned the case of their relatives and find strength again.”47 Avendaño invokes—and summons—an undercommons to imagine new ways of living together and facing the precariousness of a social context such as Mexico’s, where state violence and the inefficacy of institutions is pervasive, disproportionately affecting people and populations living in oppressive conditions due to the conditions that the racist logics of Mexican mestizaje impose on them. In this sense, Avendaño’s work constitutes an alternative grammar of antiracism, stimulating collective reflection and a political imagination that envisions new forms of social justice. A Riot of Color and an Outpouring of Collective Rage: Depicting the Undercommons Our final example concerns protest art produced by the community of Xoco, Mexico City, which, we argue, has developed alternative antiracist grammars as weapons of defense in response to an existential threat: the progressive Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism   177

gentrification and occupation of their living space by mega building projects. This is not a new phenomenon but has been on the horizon for decades with the gradual advance of Mexico City’s urban sprawl. In colonial times, Xoco was designated a pueblo de indios (a historical administrative term that roughly translates as “Indian neighborhood”), but its roots stretch further back to the period of Teotihuacán. The area used to be farmland, and residents recall being able to drink from the uncontaminated waters of the Churubusco River.48 After the Mexican Revolution, the land was exposed to speculation on the property market.49 By the 1980s, a large part had been sold to the Banco de Comercio (now BBVA Bancomer); the relocation of the Cineteca Nacional, the Instituto Mexicano de la Radio, and the Sociedad de Autores y Compositores de México to the area also contributed to its rapid urbanization. Residents had already been complaining of rising service costs and water shortages when, in 2009, approval was granted to the firms Ideurban and Prudential for the construction of seven megaprojects. These included plans for an ensemble of tower buildings known as “Ciudad Progresiva” (“Progressive City,” now renamed “Mítikah”), comprising a hospital, five living complexes, and a sixty-floor office complex, projected to be the highest tower in Mexico.50 In 2015, the Mítikah project was acquired by the real estate company Fibra Uno (Funo). The project has forged ahead in spite of numerous official complaints and protests launched by residents regarding, among other things, the lack of adequate consultation with and acquisition of consent from the local community; Funo’s failure to obtain environmental impact permits for the development; concerns about the aggravation of water shortages, structural damage to historic buildings, and unsustainable living costs; and the unauthorized felling of fifty-three ancestral trees.51 Over the past eleven years, the community of Xoco has sought to arm itself with political resources, media, and civil support to fight against the existential threat posed by the megaprojects. In April 2017, the community was named in the Official Gazette of Mexico City as an “indigenous or original people/town” (pueblo indígena u originario), in recognition that its roots predate the constitution of the Mexican state and its residents continue to celebrate traditions and cultural rites that date back centuries, for instance, the annual festivities for the community’s patron saint, San Sebastián Mártir (January 20), the Santo Jubileo (Holy Jubilee, April 20), and Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead, November 1–2). The Citizens’ Assembly of the Town of Xoco—the organism that has spearheaded the strategy of contestation over the past decade—has specified that the community prefers the title pueblo originario (original people) to pueblo indígena (Indigenous people), since it more accurately defines

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their composition.52 Nonetheless, this official status has brought the community into political dialogue with representatives of Mexico’s City’s 196 other pueblos and barrios originarios, and with activist networks advocating for the rights of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican citizens.53 Drawing on their own lived experiences, and learning from the tactics developed by these other groups, the Pueblo de Xoco has activated a self-reflexive strategy of contestation. The assembly not only describes the imminent threat of gentrification in terms of the risk of dispossession and economic and ecological damage it presents to current and future generations of residents but also links their struggle to broader narratives about the impending loss of the diversity of Mexico City’s historic cultural identities and traditions, of which Xoco represents one example.54 One of the enduring protest actions carried out by members of the community has been the creation of murals on the outer walls of the Xoco pantheon on Calle Real del Mayorazgo, opposite the side entrance to the Cineteca Nacional.55 The murals encompass a range of different styles, with some parodying well-known artworks (for instance, Edvard Munch’s The Scream) and emulating cubist and monumental styles, and others conveying simple, textual messages (“Mítikah is taking our water”). The overall effect is of a riot of color and an outpouring of collective rage. Among the images, some common motifs spring out: juxtapositions of gray, phallic towers and concrete blocks with fertile green shoots; groups of colorful, abstract bodies surging together against tower blocks or standing united with linked hands; the mythical figures of Tláloc or Quetzalcóatl, or menacing skeletons—evoking death, but also the spirits of the ancestral community enshrined in the pantheon—about to wreak ruin on the developments. Alternative antiracist grammars do not necessarily place racism at the center of their discourses, but they do signal that they are part of a constellation of intersecting oppressions.56 Thus, in these murals, racism is signaled only once explicitly, in Desarrolladores inmobiliarios (Real Estate Developers): a mind map of negative labels and accusations leveled at the developers: “ecocidal, cheating, genocidal, racist, corrupt, greedy, cruel, liars, profiteers . . .” Repeatedly, though, the murals gesture toward oppositions between “civilization” and “barbarism”—which, as Hall pointed out, “since the Enlightenment, is what racial classification has been all about”57—only to invert these categories, identifying the “Ciudad Progresiva” with barbarism, death, and the erasure of culture, and the pueblo with community, vitality, tradition, and inclusivity. The murals incorporate symbols of the cultural practices that constitute Xoco as a pueblo originario, along with recognizable elements of national

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iconography, to portray the community as heir to quintessentially Mexican traditions, defending itself from an unbridled neoliberal capitalist ethic. For example, Asamblea Ciudadana del Pueblo de Xoco (Citizens’ Assembly of the Town of Xoco) features chinelos (bearded costumed dancers), a Mexica jaguar warrior brandishing a macahuitl (wooden club with obsidian spikes), the community’s seventeenth-century Parroquia de San Sebastián, and a Mexican national flag, among other elements. Muerte a la gentrificación en Xoco (Death to Gentrification in Xoco), meanwhile, represents the community spirit of Xoco as a disembodied bronze-skinned face (in the nationalist myth of mestizaje, Mexicans are imagined as La Raza de Bronce, “the bronze race,” a product of the “mixture” of white and brown “races”), covered with a Catrina mask,58 an icon of nationalistic folklore. Bronze-toned roots and leaves sprout from the Catrina, strangling the Mítikah skyscrapers. As a form of antiracist grammar, this approach mobilizes Xoco’s status of pueblo originario to locate the community not at the margins but at the heart of Mexico’s national imaginary, while simultaneously visibilizing the cannibalistic effects of mestizaje logics, which inflict oppression and violence even upon those who conform to the hegemonic category of mestizo whenever they are deemed to stray from whitening ideals and stand in the way of “progress.” At the time of writing, the Xoco protest murals have remained intact for more than two years, presenting a visual expression of the community’s opposition to the Mítikah project and their ongoing demands for recognition as political agents. In neoliberal Mexico, racism, as an aesthetic, organizes what Jacques Rancière calls the regime of emergence of the visible59 that configures the gentrified landscape: subjects outside the canon of racialized class privilege cannot speak, nor are they considered political subjects when they speak. This is the context that the inhabitants of Xoco, and other communities across the country, must navigate. To resist the advancing menace of dispossession and expulsion, they rhetorically maneuver the conditions of appearance of space and time in their genealogy as a community. In this way, they have created a self-reflexive public art strategy that manifests their identity as a pueblo originario, which in turn provides them with visibility as a polity; as guardians and managers of the natural, material, social, and cultural collective resources that are being methodically destroyed and taken away from them; as divested commoners who are joining the undercommons. Conclusions Antiracist art is not just about content; it is about the gaze it cultivates. The cases we have examined reveal a variety of strategies that we have categorized 180   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

FIGURE 6.3. Antonio “Gritón” Ortiz, Desarrolladores inmobiliarios (Real Estate Developers), mural, 2019 (top); Andrés Roberto Díaz Torre, Asamblea Ciudadana del Pueblo de Xoco (Citizens’ Assembly of the Town of Xoco), 2019 (middle); Claudia Silva Ruíz, Muerte a la gentrificación en Xoco (Death to Gentrification in Xoco), 2019 (bottom). Photo by Sarah Abel. Courtesy of Asamblea Ciudadana del Pueblo de Xoco.

as “grammars of antiracism,” following Moreno Figueroa and Wade’s conceptualization.60 These work with different levels of potency to disrupt mestizaje logics and challenge hegemonic structures of oppression. A key element in the effectiveness of the cases we reviewed seems to lie in the difference between artistic approaches focused on reflection (“speaking of ” and “speaking about”)61 and approaches focused on self-reflexivity (“speaking from” and “speaking along with”).62 Speaking of racism and the oppression of “others” from a distanced and depersonalized position, as a phenomenon that is outside the embodied experience of the artist or community—rather than as a web of social relations in which the latter is directly implicated—can work to denaturalize and visibilize the logics of mestizaje and the mestizo gaze, but stop short of providing the tools to dismantle these structures. Conversely, artistic practices that activate inclusive, diverse, and participatory collective discussions, mobilized from communicative registers that are enunciated from first-person lived experiences, may produce more far-reaching effects and resonances. By involving the active and affective participation of broad and diverse audiences, they can produce a seminal stage of an assembly formation that could eventually/potentially lead to an undercommons assemblage. Artistic practices that base their enunciation on reflexive, visual displays without a self-reflexive component can provide useful information on racism if the receiving subjects have the necessary tools to decode the information provided, but they are less likely to produce morphological changes that alter the structures sustaining the systems of oppression and privilege that make racist practices possible. On the other hand, practices that operate from registers of artivism—that is, situated, self-reflexive, and based on direct action—have greater scope to produce transcendent and far-reaching impacts in terms of their power to sabotage the hegemonic structures of oppression, ideally through exercises of dismantling one’s own privilege and oppression. Moreover, in the context of the cases we have explored, effective antiracism resembles the realization of a critical self-awareness of the privileges and oppressions at play, and the deployment of specific and tangible actions accordingly. Rather than operating from perspectives that reinforce narratives of “solidarity,” “empathy,” “allyship,” and similar tropes, the envisioning of an undercommons can promote an emancipatory political imagination. Undercommonality is understood here as an awareness of points of convergence across differences that encourage the development of mutuality and collaboration. Awareness of antagonism is a critical element for creating undercommonalities, and awareness of one’s own privileges and oppressions is key to acting effectively in terms of grammars of antiracism. 182   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

Finally, the cases we have analyzed in this chapter reveal that there is an alternative to the position of the mestizo gaze and to the visual regime of exclusionary citizenship that it offers. This position is related to what Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez proposes to call the “civic gaze,” an “alternative form of social envisioning and scopic formation” that encourages “the collective critique and resistance of state violence from a site of visual enunciation that enables the possibility of [imagining] more inclusive, polyphonic forms of belonging to the polity.”63 To be effective, as Ortega Domínguez points out, this formation needs to be produced from collective, horizontal, rhizomatic, flexible, ongoing, open-ended engagements, involving an array of actors with different intersectional positions who operate as active agents in the production of discourses and practices aimed at advancing social justice.64 Notes 1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

We use quotation marks around the term “race” to denote that we understand it not as a biological essence or taxonomic concept, but as the product of a set of interrelated worldviews with multiple meanings and effects, spanning aspects from the sociocultural to the biologic. For example, Teoría del color, at the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in 2015; Imágenes para ver-te, at the Museo de la Ciudad de México in 2016; and Africame­ ricanos, at Centro de la Imagen in 2018. For example, Graciela de la Torre et al., “El museo, dentro, fuera y más allá | Foro,” online roundtable discussion, “Objetos enjaulados, voces silenciadas” conference, Cátedra Internacional Inés Amor and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, May 24, 2021, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPcJsPtbMF8. See Sarah Abel, Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body after the Genome (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022), 10–11. Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa, “Distributed Intensities: Whiteness, Mestizaje and the Logics of Mexican Racism,” Ethnicities 10, no. 3 (2010): 387–401. Moreno Figueroa, “Distributed Intensities,” 391. Ruth Frankenberg, “The Mirage of an Unmarked Whiteness,” in The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness, ed. Birgit Brander Rasmussen et al. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 72–96. On “race” and the cultivation of epistemic blind spots, see Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, eds., Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007); Sarah Abel, “Linked Descendants: Genetic-Genealogical Practices and the Refusal of Ignorance around Slavery,” Science, Technology, and Human Values 47, no. 4 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439211021656. Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez, “Unveiling the Mestizo Gaze: Visual Citizenship and Mediatised Regimes of Racialised Representation in Contemporary Mexico” (PhD thesis, Loughborough University, 2018); Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez, “The Mestizo Gaze: Visualizing Racism, Citizenship, and Rights in Neoliberal Mexico,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 45, no. 14 (2022): 2609–2630. Ortega Domínguez, “Unveiling the Mestizo Gaze.” Linda Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” Cultural Critique, no. 20 (Winter 1991–1992): 5–32.

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12. Sara Ahmed, “A Phenomenology of Whiteness,” Feminist Theory 8, no. 2 (2007): 156. 13. Moreno Figueroa, “Distributed Intensities.” 14. Stuart Hall, “The Spectacle of the ‘Other,’” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall, Jessica Evans, and Sean Nixon (London: SAGE/Open University Press, 1997), 223–290. 15. See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016); Jacques Derrida, Peter Caws, and Mary Ann Caws, “Sending: On Representation,” Social Research 49, no. 2 (1982): 294–326; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 271–313. 16. Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Peter Wade, “Inflections of Anti-Racism in Latin America,” online talk, CEDLA Lecture Series, April 9, 2021, https://www.cedla.nl/090421. 17. Moreno Figueroa and Wade, “Inflections of Anti-Racism in Latin America.” The concept of grammars of antiracism is elaborated further in Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Peter Wade, eds., Against Racism: Organizing for Social Change in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022), 1–8. 18. Ariella Azoulay, Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography, trans. Louise Bethlehem (London and New York: Verso, 2015). 19. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Wivenhoe, New York, Port Watson: Minor Compositions, 2013). 20. These issues are addressed in Cruz’s exhibitions Indio mex (2012), Mestizo mex (2014), and El México desconocido (2018), among others. Some of Cruz’s works can be consulted on Cruz’s Vimeo page (https://vimeo.com/user36933817) and Instagram (https://www .instagram.com/yutsil/). 21. Yutsil Cruz, interview with Sarah Abel, March 15, 2021. 22. These whitening processes are rooted in early twentieth-century eugenic ideals that form the basis of mestizaje discourses. See Apen Ruiz, “La india bonita: Nación, raza y género en el México revolucionario,” Debate Feminista 24 (2001): 142–162; Karina Sámano Verdura, “De las indígenas necias y salvajes a las indias bonitas: Prolegómenos a la construcción de un estereotipo de las mujeres indígenas en el desarrollo de la antropología en México, 1890–1921,” Signos históricos 12, no. 23 (2010): 90–133. 23. For further discussion on the racial connotations of mannequin uses in museums, see Marzia Varutti, “Materializing the Past: Mannequins, History and Memory in Museums; Insights from the Northern European and East-Asian Contexts,” Nordisk Museologi 1 (2017): 5–20. 24. The quotes were taken from research interviews conducted by the anthropologist Jahel López Guerrero (UNAM) for her project “Mujeres indígenas jóvenes: El derecho sentido a ocupar el espacio público en la Ciudad de México.” 25. Hall, “The Spectacle of the ‘Other,’” 274. 26. Yutsil Cruz, interview with Sarah Abel, March 15, 2021. 27. Yutsil Cruz, interview with Sarah Abel, March 15, 2021. 28. Darío Brooks, “Oscar 2019: ‘Yalitza se vuelve objeto de lo peor que tiene este país,’ cómo los ataques a la actriz de ‘Roma’ exponen el racismo enquistado en México,” BBC News Mundo, February 23, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-47339295. 29. Yutsil Cruz, interview with Sarah Abel, March 15, 2021. 30. Ortega Domínguez, “Unveiling the Mestizo Gaze.” 31. Lozano de la Pola proposes this conceptualization, drawing on Hannah Arendt’s notion of “spaces of appearance.” Riansares Lozano de la Pola, “¿Dónde está Bruno Avendaño? La práctica artística como ‘espacio de aparición,’” El Ornitorrinco Tachado: Revista de Artes

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32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48.

Visuales 8 (2018): 29–39; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). We are following Avendaño’s explicitly preferred self-referential pronoun usage in online interviews and videos (he/they). As Avendaño has expressed: “It is true that there are those who are beginning to claim the feminine pronoun: ‘yo, como la muxe.’ But it sounds strange to me, since in the Zapotec language there is no distinction between the feminine and the masculine. This is a cultural imposition from other languages that permeates us and requires us to determine a gender. Let everyone, when talking to me or referring to me, choose the one that dictates their criteria.” Sandra Vicente, “‘Quiero pensar que con el arte puedo convertir la impotencia de la desaparición de mi hermano en algo alegre,’” Catalunya Plural, June 28, 2018, sec. Actualidad, https://catalunyaplural.cat/es/quiero-pensar-que-con-el -arte-puedo-convertir-la-impotencia-de-la-desaparicion-de-mi-hermano-en-algo-alegre/. The “twin” Tehuana image created in the performance evokes Las dos Fridas, Kahlo’s famous 1939 painting. It also echoes Las Yeguas del Apocalypsis’s 1989 queer and performative version of Kahlo’s painting, also titled Las dos Fridas. See Lozano de la Pola, “¿Dónde está Bruno Avendaño?” The eye-to-eye gazing aspect of the performance also resonates with Marina Abramovic’s exhibition The Artist Is Present (2010). This is the general structure of Buscando a Bruno. In iterations of the performance, Avendaño usually introduces slight variations, depending on the context. Most of the performances and subsequent public talks have been recorded or photographed and are available online. See Avendaño’s Instagram and Facebook pages, which he uses to showcase his work. See also Antonio Prieto Stambaugh, “‘RepresentaXión’ de un muxe: La identidad performática de Lukas Avendaño,” Latin American Theatre Review 48, no. 1 (2014): 31–53. Ortega Domínguez, “Unveiling the Mestizo Gaze.” Vicente, “Quiero pensar que con el arte.” Lukas Avendaño, Miguel Rubio, and Ileana Diéguez, “Resistir el presente, imaginar futuros, crear desde las circunstancias,” roundtable discussion, Mexico City, February 6, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at0iqgDp-AA&t=81s. Avendaño, Rubio, and Diéguez, “Resistir el presente.” This iteration has been staged in different locations and contexts: for example, outside the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office of the People of Oaxaca, a state government institution, in 2020, and as a flash mob at the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City in March 2021, in collaboration with the collective Hasta Encontrarles CDMX and participants who are searching for loved ones who have been forcibly disappeared. Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality (London: Routledge, 2000). Avendaño, Rubio, and Diéguez, “Resistir el presente.” Azoulay, Civil Imagination, 22. Avendaño’s search-in-community for his disappeared brother resonates with other performative interventions for social justice in public spaces, such as those carried out by the Bordando Feminicidios collective in Mexico, Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos in Chile, and the Madres de la Candelaria in Colombia, among other groups across Latin America. See Lozano de la Pola, “¿Dónde está Bruno Avendaño?” Harney and Moten, The Undercommons, 16. Vicente, “Quiero pensar que con el arte.” Cecilia Nava, “Xoco, el pueblo desplazado por la Torre Mítikah,” El Sol de México, May 19,

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49. 50. 51.

52.

53.

54.

55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

2019, https://www.elsoldemexico.com.mx/metropoli/cdmx/xoco-el-pueblo-desplazado-por -la-torre-mitikah-3640740.html. Bernardo Bátiz V., “Xoco,” La Jornada, February 4, 2012, sec. Opinión, https://www.jornada .com.mx/2012/02/04/opinion/032a1cap. Shareni Guzmán, “Temen que el pueblo de Xoco se esfume,” El Universal, December 10, 2012, sec. Metrópoli, https://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/ciudad/114558.html. Notimex, “¿Cuál es la historia de Mítikah, su construcción y permisos?,” El Economista, May 9, 2019, sec. Política, https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/politica/Cual-es-la-historia-de -Mitikah-su-construccion-y-permisos-20190509-0037.html. Asamblea Ciudadana del Pueblo de Xoco, “Declaración general del Pueblo de Xoco,” Facebook, August 1, 2021, https://www.facebook.com/AsambleaXoco/photos/pcb.815111869204923 /815111789204931/. The Asamblea Ciudadana del Pueblo de Xoco Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com /AsambleaXoco) features regular updates on assembly members’ participation in online conferences on these issues, for instance, a forum on the “Proposal for Constitutional Reform on the Rights of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples,” June 27, 2021, organized by the Instituto Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas. See, for instance, Alianza para la Reconstitución de los Pueblos Originarios, “Programa General de Reordenamiento Territorial,” Facebook, July 15, 2021, https://www.facebook.com /watch/live/?v=1240864039698307&ref=watch_permalink. Photos of the murals can be found in the images section of the Asamblea Ciudadana del Pueblo de Xoco Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/AsambleaXoco). Moreno Figueroa and Wade, Against Racism, 6. Stuart Hall, The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation, ed. Kobena Mercer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 64. La Catrina has been represented in various instances of Mexican public art, from its origins in the lithographs of José Guadalupe Posada as La Calavera Garbancera in the late nineteenth century, and Diego Rivera’s mural Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central in the mid-twentieth century (1947), to the Day of the Dead altars created in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries by state cultural agencies in civic public spaces. Rancière, Dissensus, 36. Moreno Figueroa and Wade, Against Racism, 1–8. Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez, “Looking into the Eye of the Process: Intercultural Art Activism Trans*/lations and Intersex/tions in the Global South,” Agenda 28, no. 4 (2014): 86–93. Ortega Domínguez, “Unveiling the Mestizo Gaze,” 250. Ortega Domínguez, “Unveiling the Mestizo Gaze.”

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DOSSIER F

Aeromoto

We often say that Aeromoto is a sugar cube lying on the floor of a bar. We could say instead that Aeromoto is a free public library founded by four friends, but we don’t, because we know that every definition limits its object. Aeromoto is a library, it’s true, but it’s also much more than that. We prefer to say this: Aeromoto is a cactus, and poetry is the shortest distance between two people, or it eliminates distance, like two mouths that eat one another. Aeromoto emerged as an intimate space from which to combat certain aspects of reality we’re opposed to, such as the unchecked capitalism that governs people’s lives, or as a way to resist the outrageous haste that reigns over and regulates us. Let’s take a moment to consider the clock. In this day and age, who isn’t at the mercy of time: the need to get to work, the 6:00 p.m. meeting, the pressing deadlines that summon and bind us? Through books, Aeromoto wants to propose a slow time, a time without any hurry or urgency. We firmly believe that books are the best way to pass the time. In fact, we’d even go so far as to say that it’s impossible to waste time if you’re reading. Let us correct that: some books are a waste of time. The sooner you can figure that out, the better. In any case, though, if there’s any hurry at all, it’s because there’s an incredible number of beautiful books out there. One of the most deep-seated fictions our civilization holds to is that of private property. We have created vast armies of police to protect and safeguard it. As Virgil says in the Aeneid, “Roman, remember by your strength to rule Earth’s peoples.” The consequences for humanity are centuries of public and private law that stamped into our brains the notion of property above all else.

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FIGURE F.1. Aeromoto’s logo since the library moved its headquarters to the historic center of Mexico City. The colonial architecture of the building is located above the temple of Tezcatlipoca. Alluding to this and paying homage to the Mexica people, Aeromoto incorporated Aztec motifs into its graphic identity. Photo by Mauricio Marcín. Courtesy of Aeromoto.

This is ultimately only an appearance that state power, with its monopoly on force, makes us believe in. Aeromoto resists the belief in private property and takes a different stance: the idea of a common good, shared property. Aeromoto’s initial archive (approximately two thousand volumes) was drawn from the collections of the four of us who founded the library. Tired of seeing our books sitting unused on the shelves and bookcases at home, we decided to make them accessible to a public that was still an abstract, shapeless entity at the time. Our books would no longer belong to us; they would belong, instead, to anyone who wished to make use of them. The books can now be consulted at the library free of charge, and they can also be taken home on loan with a prior subscription. These subscriptions or memberships are the means by which Aeromoto supports itself financially. As long as there are users who want to keep Aeromoto going, Aeromoto can continue to exist. The money raised via these memberships is used to pay the rent, utilities, and little else. This is why we often say that Aeromoto is a shared effort or nothing at all. In many ways, Aeromoto operates just like a traditional library, but our collection is very specific. We generally collect current publications, specifically works related to visual art and contemporary culture. Our archive gathers, in particular, the output of small, independent presses. These small presses almost always operate under precarious circumstances and with a scarcity of resources that we can only respect. They make books that almost no other library collects because they don’t fulfill the catalogue quotas that traditional collections demand. Many of the books at Aeromoto don’t even have an ISBN number and aren’t registered anywhere; they are modest volumes we often compare to rivulets that converge in a wider, mightier river. In the current of this river, our ideas and our interests, our affections and desires, leap forth. 188   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

Various other aspects also distinguish Aeromoto from a traditional library. As part of our everyday work, we organize book-related events and gatherings. We know that books can be enjoyed alone, but we also see them as tools that foster socialization and community. Every week, on a more or less regular basis, we make presentations of books, poetry collections, fanzines, magazines, and other kinds of printed matter. These presentations can be as traditional as a talk with an author or as experimental as the participants can possibly imagine. Over the course of Aeromoto’s three-year existence, we have held over ninety events. We also have two very special book-acquisition programs: Curated Panels and Infinite Pedagogies. Curated Panels involves inviting unruly curators, artists, editors, and friends to suggest lists of books for Aeromoto to buy and incorporate into our collection. One of the motives behind acquiring books in this way is that we don’t want to hog the discourse. It’s better to have more people thinking than fewer. In this way, others choose, and Aeromoto acquires. We’ve invited people affiliated with cultural production from across Latin America

FIGURE F.2. Aeromoto visitors explore the “Fanzinoteca” archive, a project commissioned by the Chopo Museum and curated by Enrique Arriaga that brings together editorial production related to the Mexican fanzine from the 1980s to date. It contains books by publishers such as ¡Joc Doc! and Anal Magazine as well as the work of authors who produced publications related to the punk scene and the defense of sexual diversity. Photo by Mauricio Marcín. Courtesy of Aeromoto.

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FIGURE F.3. Session of Beauty Salons, bilingual (English-Spanish) poetry readings coordinated by Kit Schluter. Photo by Mauricio Marcín. Courtesy of Aeromoto.

because we’re interested in connecting with realities that resemble ours: that is, colonized, precarious, marked by a shared language and boundless imagination. Infinite Pedagogies replicates the same model, but the book recommenders are people affiliated with learning and teaching, both formal and informal. Speaking of pedagogy (please excuse the digression), let’s not forget that, as tradition has it, the words “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here” were engraved at the entrance to Plato’s Academy. That’s how prohibitive learning was—and remains. During the same period, one of Plato’s contemporaries, a beautiful madman named Epicurus, founded a garden school on the outskirts of Athens. Anyone who wanted could enter the school: the garden had no gate. Aeromoto believes that this world needs more gateless gardens and fewer schools that discredit those who aren’t in the know. To make sure that the Aeromoto collection always has something new, we’ve come up with a program whereby friends loan their books to Aeromoto for a three-month period. During that time, the books are made available to the public and then returned to the people who loaned them. We call this idea Resident Books, and it’s been very helpful in ensuring that Aeromoto is always full of new books without having to spend a single penny.

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We like to drink, and we like poetry, and we think they make a magnificent pair. This simple idea gave rise to the sessions called Ethylic Poetry, which take place once a month. We get drunk and read poetry—always with a different kind of alcohol: we drink Brazilian cachaça and we read and write concrete poetry; we drink mezcal and read Mexican poetry; or we drink absinthe, whiskey, vodka, pisco. There’s an incredible amount of alcohol in the world and an infinite amount of poetry to be poured into it. All of these activities have helped forge a community both changeable and loyal, which revolves around the library. Aeromoto might sound grandiloquent, but it’s a small library and a small exercise in micropolitics, and it will continue to be just that: we refuse to grow too much or too fast. We think that instead of fighting for the growth of a country or a community (as economists and politicians do), we must fight for the very opposite: for decrease, and for a better distribution of resources. The world isn’t an unlimited space; our house is a finite one. Today, advocating for the existence of limits can horrify people, but we dare to do so nonetheless. We believe that our world needs limits that yield a kind and pleasant coexistence. Limits on wealth, on the production of objects, on excessive consumption. We perceive ourselves as a form of existence conscious of its limitations and its fragility. Like every living creature in this world, we know we are finite and will someday cease to be. We hope the effects of our presence will have mysterious echoes. Perhaps Aeromoto will survive in the form of a whisper that will say: things belong to no one, transformations of matter belong to no one, everything exists to be used by everyone, that which dies out with use can cause conflict, conflicts can be resolved with words and touch, we must act with tenderness and care. Aeromoto was founded in 2014 by Maru Calva, Macarena Hernández, Mauricio Marcín, and Jerónimo Rüedi. It is located at Seminario 12, Centro Histórico, in Mexico City.

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CHAPTER 7

Menos Días Aquí and Bordamos por la Paz Grief, Social Protest, and Grassroots Memorialization in Mexico’s War on Drugs Adriana Ortega Orozco

The Mexican war on drugs has, since its beginning in 2006, unleashed a wave of violence that, according to some estimates, has claimed around 300,000 lives and left 50,000 missing—and counting.1 Civil society organizations have undertaken several initiatives to commemorate the victims through artistic memorial practices in public spaces.2 This chapter analyzes the emergence of two cases of nongovernmental forms of ritual memorialization, in both physical and online contexts. Drawing upon the concept of “grassroots memorials,”3 I discuss, first, how these grassroots practices establish a strong link between commemoration and social protest. Second, I analyze how each grassroots memorial focused in its own way on the individual identification of the victims—not only as a form of remembrance but also as a political act, preventing victims’ voices from being silenced. In particular, I aim to understand why civil society groups have generally not accepted the government’s involvement in the creation of “official” memorials in urban spaces as satisfactory means of symbolic reparation. Third, I reflect on participants’ emerging aspirations for community building in grassroots movements. New communities form around

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a political cause based on shared affective elements and interactions, though each has its own intrinsic rhythms and procedures. My analysis reveals that, through the creation of memorial communities, nongovernmental forms of memorialization create threads of continuity and persistence that go beyond ephemeral or quasi-spontaneous expressions of grief. The cases I discuss here thus indicate a need to expand the definition of the grassroots memorial to include other, more long-lasting forms of memorialization. Grassroots Memorials The historian Peter Jan Margry and the sociologist Cristina Sánchez-Carretero coined the term “grassroots memorials” to capture various ritual forms of memorialization, mourning, and protest that appear, frequently in an improvised manner, in public spaces as a response to deaths considered particularly “unjust” or traumatic.4 Despite the heterogeneous practices of memorialization they observe across sites—from memorabilia related to the death of Lady Diana, to mementos left after the Columbine massacre, to memorials following the Madrid train bombings in March 2004—the authors emphasize these memorials’ shared “hybrid” nature: “on the one hand as monuments of mourning and, on the other, as foci of protest and resentment, instrumentalized to articulate social or political disaffection.”5 Moreover, a common trait among the presented cases was their nonofficial character as memorializations of death performed in public space, capable of precipitating new grassroots actions in the social or political sphere. In these memorials, participants took action “not only to commemorate or to protest, but also to find an answer, to seek an understanding of what has happened, to ask for responsibilities, or to demand changes.”6 Drawing upon this concept, I explore two Mexican case studies: the blog Menos Días Aquí and the activities of the global embroiderer network Bordamos por la Paz. These memorial practices are part of—and to a certain extent representative of—a myriad of civil society reactions to the official government narrative surrounding the Mexican war on drugs between 2006 and 2018. This official narrative, cemented through multiple public declarations since the first months of 2010, can be summarized as follows: Former Mexican president Felipe Calderón’s unprecedented deployment of the military in various regions was a necessary means to dismantle the drug cartels and capture the nation’s “enemies.”7 The rising death toll among civilians with no involvement in criminal activities can be considered “collateral damage.”8 Civil society organizations in Mexico and abroad quickly condemned this official narrative and drew attention to the fact that repeated civilian casualties

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were far from isolated cases of collateral damage. As the violence escalated in Mexico, the government failed to provide exact figures of casualties of the conflict, their identity, or the circumstances surrounding those deaths.9 In this context, Menos Días Aquí and Bordamos por la Paz, the two cases discussed below, confront this official narrative through grassroots memorials, attempting to recast the war on drugs and its public discourse in different terms. To do so, both deploy artistic-collaborative techniques and mobilize a conceptual framework flexible enough to adapt to diverse geographies and sociocultural settings. Both combine memorialization and social protest at the heart of their practice. The first case, Menos Días Aquí (Fewer Days Here), is a civilian-led blog launched in 2010 by the group Nuestra Aparente Rendición (Our Apparent Surrender). Menos Días Aquí serves as an online repository of the national death toll, archiving details and circumstances of those violently killed using information collected from various national media. From its launch in September 2010 to July 2016, the website posted a balance of 58,611 deaths.10 Menos Días Aquí, which started as an open call by the writer and activist Lolita Bosch, has a direct precedent in the project 100 Days in the Republic of Death, in which the artist Mayra Barraza counted the victims of violence in El Salvador over one hundred days in 2006 and presented them in a blog, hoping to “recall all the dead.”11 Menos Días Aquí is similar in format to Barraza’s project, yet also exhibits several important differences. Contrary to the Salvadorian blog, in which the artist was the only person counting, Menos Días Aquí was defined as a collaborative effort from the beginning, in which volunteers pass the baton of counting and tracing the victims for the duration of one week. This activity can be supported by anyone interested in volunteering, from virtually any location in the world, as long as they have internet access. From its inception, Menos Días Aquí was conceived of as an open call to establish a public repository that would gather, insofar as possible, what the government was unable or unwilling to register in detail, in a central database accessible to the population. Yet Menos Días Aquí’s ambitions go beyond merely keeping track of the death toll in the form of a numerical database. Instead, the project participants made it their priority to “humanize the victims” and to “respectfully keep the memory of all our dead”12—the very thing they accused the government of failing to take responsibility for. To accomplish this, volunteers pledge to describe as accurately as possible the facts surrounding individuals’ violent deaths, displaying their names and establishing a factual narrative that could hint at the lives of the people who have been assassinated. 194   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

FIGURE 7.1. Handkerchiefs denouncing femicide hung in front of Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral, 2011. © Bordamos por la Paz photographic archive. Courtesy of Bordamos por la Paz, Mexico.

The deaths are therefore not only counted but powerfully narrated through short texts. By inviting participants to collect, process, and explicate the details of the deaths, Menos Días Aquí creates a community of citizens based on the shared unsettling experience of confronting the violence in minute, documentary detail and dividing the task of counting among themselves. According to the project coordinators, more than four hundred volunteers have participated in this project.13 My second case, the global network Bordamos por la Paz (We Embroider for Peace), is an initiative launched by the Mexican artists’ collective Fuentes Rojas (Red Fountains) in 2011 in Mexico City and replicated in several cities since MENOS DÍAS AQUÍ AND BORDAMOS POR LA PAZ   195

then, both nationally and internationally.14 Drawing on several previous initiatives around the world that use knitting or embroidery as a means of mourning and social protest, Bordamos por la Paz participates in a phenomenon that the writer Betsy Greer15 defines as “craftivism,” a term combining the words “craft” and “activism.” Bordamos por la Paz consists of civil groups gathering in public locations to embroider onto white handkerchiefs the names of the dead and disappeared. These groups are formed mostly by activists and relatives or friends of the victims, but since they gather in open spaces and often in public squares, passersby in the street are invited to join the embroidery process, opening a pathway to include people of all ages and those not directly affected by loss. Embroidery has often been seen as a women-only activity in Mexico and elsewhere, but while most of the participants of Bordamos por la Paz are indeed women, men are also involved. Embroidery is accessible across different socioeconomic settings, since a high skill level in embroidery techniques is not required and the materials are low-cost: threads, needles, and handkerchiefs. Despite their simplicity, the choices surrounding the use of these materials carry strong symbolism. The white handkerchief is a polyvalent object: commonly, it is a receptacle for tears, but depending on the context, a handkerchief lifted in one hand can evoke a farewell as well as an invitation to a truce in the midst of conflict. Embroiderers also conceive of their gatherings as a way to “stitch together a torn social tissue”16 by promoting dialogue. The color of the chosen threads also carries a certain symbolism, even if the choice of color varies from group to group. For example, in Mexico City, red thread was used to represent the blood of victims. Later, in Nuevo León, other groups began embroidering the names of disappeared people with green thread, evincing the hope of eventually finding them, and the collective Bordando Feminicidios (Embroidering Feminicides) used violet and pink thread to embroider the names of women assassinated across the country. The use of embroidered handkerchiefs in Bordamos por la Paz plays out on two levels: individual and collective. The initial idea of its promoters was to dedicate one handkerchief per victim, allowing each embroiderer to relate one story at a time. The list of names and the narratives embroidered by different collectives originate very often in the Menos Días Aquí database, but they are also drawn from sources such as investigative journalists’ reports and names and stories provided by relatives of the victims.17 If one handkerchief makes an individual case visible, the gathering and display of many handkerchiefs becomes a collective memorial. Since the first open calls to participate in the project, Fuentes Rojas have stated that one of 196   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

FIGURE 7.2. “A woman was murdered by armed men from moving vehicles. She was killed in front of her son and two brothers. Stop the violence, no more bloodsheding [sic], Nuevo León, 11/10/2012.” Handkerchief © Bordamos por la Paz photographic archive. Courtesy of Bordamos por la Paz, Mexico.

their aims is to gather a considerable number of embroidered handkerchiefs in order to display them in public spaces all over the country. Arguably the most prominent public displays to date took place on December 1, 2012, the last day of Felipe Calderón’s administration. To Name or Not to Name? Two Approaches to Memorialization In both case studies, victims’ identities were at the heart of the activists’ efforts. However, one central concern is whether naming the victim indeed grants them an identity and confronts the complexities of memorialization. The hope is that giving the anonymous, frequently mutilated victims a name is closely linked to “rehumanizing” them. Yet this task is extremely difficult due to an unavoidable lack of information. Counters depend on media reports to establish their records, which frequently do not provide sufficient detail in that regard. Furthermore, fragmented or decomposed corpses often prevent identification. For both counters and embroiderers, the recollection of names and stories preserves the memory of the fallen in a clearer and more tangible way. Grassroots commitment to memorializing with a high level of detail contrasts sharply with the position of subsequent Mexican governments, which have consistently neglected counting and, above all, accurately naming the MENOS DÍAS AQUÍ AND BORDAMOS POR LA PAZ   197

victims. As Irene Stengs suggests, grassroots initiatives often insist that the registration of names is a necessary means of symbolic reparation to “prolong the social presence of the deceased.”18 While Menos Días Aquí counters are aware that not all cases of violent death are reported by the media, their primary aspiration is not accuracy or completeness but to render visible the deaths that they can trace. In this spirit, the journalist and “counter” Cordelia Rizzo describes Menos Días Aquí as a “virtual cemetery that collects obituaries of the often invisible victims . . . of this escalation of violence in the country called a ‘war against organized crime.’”19 In a similar tone, Alfredo López Casanova, founder of Bordamos por la Paz, declared: “When Calderón came out with the stupidity about civilian deaths being collateral damage, and that even though innocent lives were lost it was still worth fighting drug cartels—meaning that human lives didn’t really matter—we proposed the urgency to name the dead by their full name and reconstruct their story.”20 These two initiatives also contributed to creating public spaces—one online or virtual, the other offline and itinerant—enabling the performance of the identification process and the collective mourning of the dead. The Menos Días Aquí website states: “We want to give [the dead] names and faces. Stop the banalization of death.”21 Menos Días Aquí participants refused to engage in the official Manichean rhetoric of a “noble” war fought by defenders of the nation against criminal groups. In view of victims’ anonymity and the corresponding attempt by Menos Días Aquí to name them regardless of their role in the conflict (whether as innocent victims, state officials, or cartel members), participants count deaths by violence “from all sides.”22 This dual act of counting and restoring humanity without distinction renders the polarized governmental narrative about the conflict more complicated. The embroidery groups chose a similarly inclusive approach. Regarding Bordamos por la Paz, Regina Méndez, a member of Fuentes Rojas, declared: “The initial group discussion was whether or not we had to embroider the names and stories of the military, police, and criminals killed. We decided that their names should not be forgotten; they are indispensable in the search for community, in the reconstruction of public space. Every death speaks of one of us, as it is through the presence of people in public spaces that a ‘we’ can exist. At the same time, to denounce the death of one of us is what makes people get together. . . . Who embroiders today for peace becomes a part of a vital network built by art from a corner of society.”23 Through these declarations, it becomes clearer how participants in these memorialization practices have decided to identify themselves with all the dead and the disappeared, creating a community that defines its identity against or in 198   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

opposition to the official, hegemonic discourse of “collateral damage.” As Irene Stengs notes, this is a characteristic of grassroots memorial practices: “Through the ritual, the participants present themselves to the outside world as a moral community, implicitly excluding the evil ones from this community.”24 This trait is reminiscent of the words of the political theorist Chantal Mouffe: In the field of collective identities, we are always dealing with the creation of a “we” which can exist only by the demarcation of a “they.” This does not mean of course that such a relation is necessarily one of friend/enemy, i.e. an antagonistic one. But we should acknowledge that, in certain conditions, there is always the possibility that this we/they relation can become antagonistic, i.e., that it can turn into a relation of friend/enemy.25 For Mouffe, “the political” is the ever-present possibility of antagonism. In this regard, the two initiatives discussed here have taken different approaches toward the Mexican government. Both projects have opted to put the administration at arm’s length, insisting that their activities are completely independent. Yet Menos Días Aquí claims to have tried not to open a confrontational front by pointing fingers, and focuses instead on trying to return dignity to the victims.26 Their website states in bold letters: “Our role is not to point to the guilty, but rather to preserve the memory of all our dead.”27 They imagine a future in which the repository of names, despite its shortcomings, can inform further research or be useful in the event of the hypothetical establishment of a Truth Commission for the victims of the war on drugs.28 In contrast, the groups associated with Bordamos por la Paz have adopted a more aggressive stance, exerting more pressure to denounce the bloody legacy of Calderón’s administration through urban interventions, installations, and performances. For example, on December 1, 2012, Bordamos por la Paz displayed a large number of handkerchiefs strung together on clotheslines as part of an intervention held in several cities worldwide. The installations symbolically evoked the Spanish idiom “sacar los trapitos al sol” (to dry the rags in the sun), referring to airing intimate, uncomfortable problems in public. This action registers various public concerns simultaneously: while hanging the handkerchiefs is a public expression of intimate grief, the sum of those individual stories represented by lines and lines of handkerchiefs evokes the government’s failure to protect human lives in the country. In Mexico City, a participant declared: “We want to carpet the Zócalo to say farewell to Calderón and remind him of what he has done to us with his war.”29 The ephemeral MENOS DÍAS AQUÍ AND BORDAMOS POR LA PAZ   199

FIGURE 7.3. Girl embroiders in front of the Latin American Tower, Mexico City, 2011. © Bordamos por la Paz photographic archive. Courtesy of Bordamos por la Paz, Mexico.

installation thus attempted to keep Calderon’s government’s legacy of violence in the public eye and, by choosing a strategic date for its display, influence the agenda of the next administration. Following Mouffe’s thoughts about “the political,” the we/they relation turns into friend/enemy only when “the ‘they’ is perceived as putting into question the identity of the ‘we’ and as threatening its existence. From that moment on, . . . any form of we/they relation, whether religious, ethnic, economic or other, becomes the locus of an antagonism.”30 In the case of the relationship between Bordamos por la Paz and the Mexican government, this moment of tension became more flagrant with the construction of an official memorial. Decided by and conceived under Calderón’s administration, the so-called Memorial to Victims of Violence in Mexico, located in Mexico City, was inaugurated in 2013 by then newly appointed President Enrique Peña Nieto.31 The background of its creation was a series of meetings known as the “Dialogues of Chapultepec,” which took place in June 2011 between the federal government and representatives of the civil rights group Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), led by the poet Javier Sicilia. The main outcome of those encounters was the decision to draft a Victims’ Law that included, among other things, concrete actions to grant symbolic reparations to the victims. Relatives of the killed and the disappeared insisted on a change in the Mexican government’s narrative surrounding what it once considered “collateral damage.” Therefore, as a means of symbolic reparation, the relatives asked the federal government to create a memorial to the victims that would include a documentation and education center. Only a few social activists and victims actually participated in the conception and construction of the memorial, mostly centered around Isabel Miranda de Wallace, president of the victims’ association Alto al Secuestro (Stop Kidnappings) and a prominent figure close to the panista administration.32 The project quickly lost general support. By the end of 2012, most of the same civil society organizations that had demanded the creation of the memorial had forcefully rejected it, for two reasons: first, they objected to the fact that it was supposed to be built next to a military base (on land previously belonging to the Campo Marte); second, since its conception, neither the architects nor the government had given thought to the creation of the documentation center or the inclusion of the names of the dead and missing on the monument, as requested by civil society representatives in 2011. Instead, the structure contains sixty-four rusted steel panels, bearing quotes from famous writers that invite visitors to reflect on peace, memory, and mourning. Built with US$2.4m (£1.6m) of funds

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confiscated from drug traffickers and built around four reflecting pools,33 the project was conceived by architects Julio Gaeta and Luby Springall as a space that exists in a state of complete openness to the city and the people. In this manner, the project plays the double role of public space and memorial. Violence is suggested in two dimensions: the void and the built. On one hand, the void proposed in the project is the space created between the steel walls and the trees. The void evokes the non-presence and the absence of the victims. On the other hand, the surfaces of the steel walls, rusty or mirroring, show that we can be contained or lost, and that we can add or multiply ourselves. Thus, if we see violence as destruction, building these seventy walls acts as an antidote to violence. The walls appear among the trees, setting off a dialogue between nature and architecture: forest of trees and forest of walls.34 Considering the importance that several groups and initiatives placed on the proper identification of fallen victims, it comes as no surprise that several organizations condemned this official initiative as too “vague” and as a failed attempt to fulfill the memorial’s promise of symbolic reparation. The poet Javier Sicilia declared: “We [the victims] are talking about a memorial, I think they [the government] have not understood it or do not want to understand it. It was not a monument we wanted; a memorial is a work of memory, a rescue of stories after a catastrophe, or in this case within a catastrophe, which this war is.”35 The Memory Commission of the MPJD stated that a previous step to the construction of the Memorial to Victims of Violence in Mexico should have been to establish a registry of all the victims, stating the circumstances under which they died or disappeared. Since this work was so blatantly lacking, the Memorial was for the MPJD “a mass grave . . . that bets on oblivion.”36 Shortly before the inauguration of the official memorial during their global action on December 1, 2012, activists of Bordamos por la Paz in Mexico City declared in solidarity that the embroidery installations displayed across the country were “the true memorial to the victims of the war against organized crime.”37 To date, proper identification and naming of the victims still represents a disconnect between different narratives of the conflict. The confrontation between these two narratives echoes the chapter of Orwicz and Greeley in this volume, as their study highlights, to use Carolina Robledo Silvestre’s words, the “overwhelming tendency (of official memorials) to conceive of aesthetic memorialization in terms of a fixed, static object, rather than a dynamic process aimed at transforming social and political conditions.”38 202   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

Emotional Communities: Experiencing Grief at Different Speeds Beyond offering platforms to express collective grief, grassroots memorials aim to create awareness among their participants and a broader audience. Both Menos Días Aquí and Bordamos por la Paz go beyond the immediate social environment of the deceased, that is, their relatives or friends. Instead, they involve people not directly linked to the victim in what has been called “grief of the second degree.”39 To instill such awareness in individuals not directly affected by the commemorated losses, the two initiatives rely on the emotional investment of the participant in the activity. In fact, both the counters and the embroiderers have reported experiencing a wide range of emotions while accomplishing their task. Despite their different mourning practices, the two grassroots memorials thus share a call for empathy and identification through similar emotive evocations. Yet the range of emotions experienced by the participants differs considerably between the two memorial practices, and in each case the emotions are shaped by the intrinsic “rhythm” of the task: both projects face different challenges in creating a memorial in the “present tense,” as the conflict is still ongoing, and it is virtually impossible for both counters and embroiderers to keep pace with the mortality rate. Menos Días Aquí tries to keep an account of violent deaths almost in “real time.” The resulting sense of urgency shapes the participants’ experience and, according to some, renders it difficult to bear. A single counter can count around two hundred or three hundred killings per week. Counters report the overall experience of counting to be extremely taxing and to have reached a kind of saturation at the beginning of the second half of their counting period, overwhelmed by the constant flow of information and the sordid stories behind each case. The writer and counter Jorge Harmodio reflects on his counting experience in these terms: The counter barely had time to name them [the dead], if at all, and maybe indicate some shallow characteristic, with the impersonality of “red-top” journalism. Portraits? There is no time: the narrative quality fails in view of the numerical quantity. Twenty-two dead in a single day. The headless man in Tijuana that kept a rosary and a joke red nose in his pocket. The 8-year-old girl murdered in the Sierra de Choix.40 Despite the impossibility of the task’s giving each of the several hundred stories the same (let alone sufficient) weight or time for reflection, many counters report that they particularly remember certain cases that “stuck” with them. MENOS DÍAS AQUÍ AND BORDAMOS POR LA PAZ   203

Alejandro Vélez, one of the first volunteer counters and later coordinator of the project, wrote that every volunteer has a murder that touched his or her core and refuses to leave their psyche even weeks after leaving the work of counting. In my case, it was a little girl who was murdered in front of her twin sister by a gunman who intended to kill the man who shared a flat with her father. . . . Some volunteers have nightmares. In order to lift the weight of death, most of them try to systematize the daily count.41 Counters must overcome a wide range of challenging emotions for the sake of completing their task: anger, impotence, dejection, indignation, opposition, and resignation. In a 2016 study, Jamie-Leigh Ruse analyzed the experience of counters as a twofold combination of engagement and detachment. According to her findings, the tension between these two attitudes “allows participants to complete the count without losing the ability to empathize with individual victims.”42 Counters describe Menos Días Aquí as a truly horrifying, yet educative and transformative, experience—producing a synoptic view of the multiple facets of violence in different contexts at both local and national levels. According to Ruse, the counters gain a more granular knowledge of the conflict that reveals more than just names or numbers, since it allows “for insights into power structures within Mexican society to be observed, and for critical observations about the nature of the violence to be made.”43 This rise of a critical spirit through the act of counting is clearly illustrated in the way the historian and counter Kenya Bello sums up her experience: “This witness only has questions for now. She wants to think that the key to the answers we need lies in the questions.”44 In contrast, the project Bordamos por la Paz, which does not try to keep up with the count of violent deaths in real time, does not share this sense of temporal urgency and “overload.” As a craft, embroidering requires time and fits into what Sarah Corbett defines as “slow activism,” giving more time to the embroiderer to “reflect on an issue.”45 The completion of a single handkerchief takes around three hours, during which the participant has an opportunity to relate to the story of the deceased for whom they are embroidering in an immersive way that works with the emotion. According to Regina Méndez, one of the promoters of the initiative: “Embroidering gives us time to see the other, transforming the feeling of horror toward death in a moment of gathering and dialogue.”46 While counters in Menos Días Aquí achieve their task mainly in a solitary mode, the emotional involvement of the embroiderer comes directly 204   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

from the interaction between their inner monologue and the dialogue established in the group. Elia Andrade, a member of Fuentes Rojas, describes the process as follows: “In every stitch, every breath, every emotion, every chat; what we’re interested in is empathy. We appeal to emotions that are completely different from those of power or violence. Yes, it’s a peaceful protest, but it’s also hard-hitting.”47 Despite the differences between Menos Días Aquí and Bordamos por la Paz in terms of their intrinsic rhythm or the actual setting in which counting and embroidering take place, both experiences draw heavily on a mobilization of emotion that shapes their modus operandi beyond their context or platform of expression. In her book The Cultural Politics of Emotion, the scholar Sara Ahmed argues that emotions are not merely individual psychological states but cultural practices embedded in a socially mediated process.48 In terms of grief as an emotion, “each life is painted in order to transform a number into a being, one who has been lost to someone; so the person who is lost is not only missing, but also missed.”49 Through the creation of these memorials, victims and activists find a way to make grief public, creating a narrative of mourning as emotions make their way into the public sphere.50 It is the work of emotion that leads me to claim that cases like Menos Días Aquí and Bordamos por la Paz need to be understood simultaneously as memorials and as communities. This proposition becomes clearer by further exploring the definitions of both notions. Erika Doss defines memorials as “bodies of feeling, cultural entities whose social, cultural, and political meanings are determined by the emotional states of their audiences.”51 The historian Barbara H. Rosenwein, in turn, defines emotional communities as “groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value—or devalue—the same or related emotions.”52 The members of those communities share a similar (but not identical) emotional relationship toward an event, thus making it possible to unite—physically or virtually—individuals whose differences would not have allowed such a rapprochement. Michael Tomlinson, who visited an installation of the handkerchiefs of Bordamos por la Paz in Wales in 2016, recalls: Hung out like washing above one corner of the gallery are handkerchiefs, embroidered with messages remembering the dead and disappeared of Mexico. Visitors are encouraged to contribute to this work by doing simple running stitch along already-marked handkerchiefs in the two sewing chairs below. It is an immersive process, more so for the writing, which suggests stories that are almost too awful to contemplate and are MENOS DÍAS AQUÍ AND BORDAMOS POR LA PAZ   205

unthinkable here in Britain. I am soon lost in a task that is only a few letters long. How much more then must this act of devotion, of willful remembrance, mean to the people who have experienced the appalling violence, bereavements and unknowingness? It is their voices that give a more sophisticated shape to the works here in this exhibition.53 The fact that these grassroots initiatives appeal to both those who are directly affected by the violence and loss and those who are not, together with those who live in Mexico and those who do not, produces, in the words of Katia Olalde, a “questioning that places the emphasis on our interdependence with people we do not know or with whom we do not have . . . anything to do. The question that arises here is not ‘will the same thing happen to me?,’ but ‘what does it mean to be part of a society (or, if you will, of a world) in which these things happen without consequences?’”54 In a similar vein, Judith Butler suggests that grief reveals the ways in which humans are related and interconnected. For her, the understanding of mourning and loss in the midst of violence leads the individual to recognize his or her vulnerability before the other, understood as a position of strength rather than a weakness. Interdependence and vulnerability become, then, the basis of reimagining—instead of destroying—the possibility of community and a tool for resistance rather than passivity.55 From this position, both Menos Días Aquí and Bordamos por la Paz base their proposal on the fact that after the performative ritual of the task, a felt and shared awareness of the violence cannot be ignored, and the participants might feel a moral obligation to take action about these lost lives. The accent on interconnectedness is very pertinent. It is clear that these memorials are historically situated. Yet it is exactly because these memorials are not linked to a physical public space that they are capable of unfolding in what I will describe as distributed (virtual, national, or even transnational) public spheres. These public spheres operate in autonomous ways but also, as a whole, form a system. They use the same principles and assure the means of their reproducibility by building distributed emotional communities or nodes capable of communicating with each other.56 According to James Bohman, this existence inside the nodes of cosmopolitan actors, capable of transnational communication, is a crucial factor that enables the distributed public sphere to become “potentially global in scope.”57 Beyond the possibilities for online connectivity in our world, connection between individuals also happens through emotion, and this could explain why experiences of memorialization very quickly transcended the frame of the

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nation. As mentioned above, Menos Días Aquí started as an open call from abroad; the writer Lolita Bosch proposed the project while living in Spain, and she was quickly supported by the writer Jorge Harmodio, living in Paris. The initiative therefore developed from abroad toward Mexico. “At first, most counters were Mexicans living in other countries such as Spain or France. Over time, and with the wider dissemination of the existence of the blog, people from different states of the country have also participated,”58 testifies Alicia González, one of Menos Días Aquí’s coordinators. Conversely, the Bordamos por la Paz initiative spread from Mexico City to other important Mexican urban centers such as Guadalajara, and then to other cities worldwide, like Barcelona, Tokyo, Phoenix, and Córdoba (Argentina). “In general, the groups are supported by civil society organizations, but are not in themselves Civil Associations, nor are they affiliated with any political party, although some of its members are.”59 Rosenwein argues that emotional communities are built according to a nonhierarchical, horizontal model, for these communities are often highly diverse.60 The very porous boundaries of emotional communities easily allow the inclusion of new members. In the case of Menos Días Aquí, each volunteer that joins the list of counters becomes a new member of the community. In Bordamos por la Paz, each group of embroiderers defines its own rules: some embroider regularly or sporadically in public squares, while others disseminate their work in a more selective way or, even if they have stopped gathering, continue to exhibit their material locally or globally. Almost all of the groups have a Facebook page or a blog to showcase and promote their activities and communicate with other groups around the globe. The groups also mail embroidered handkerchiefs in support of local exhibition and intervention initiatives in various cities. The profusion of these communities makes it almost impossible to map the network, but such mapping is not necessary, since these distributed practices and experiences cannot and should not be located only through their geographical dispersion. As distributed public art and public spaces, they instead need to be understood in terms of a “distributed aesthetic,” dealing “simultaneously with the dispersed and the situated.”61 The grassroots nature and flexible frame of action of these memorialization practices actively promote building distributed communities that sustain memory through multinodal and shared forms of experience and exchange. By giving their participants an immersive task—counting, stitching—and their audiences the product of those tasks, the two projects create the conditions to place themselves above the overflow of media information and images of violence in Mexico and to explore empathy as a means of promoting social and political change.

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Conclusion My analysis shows that the definition of grassroots memorials coined by Margry and Sánchez-Carretero is applicable to the dynamics of nonofficial memorialization practices such as Menos Días Aquí and Bordamos por la Paz in their combination of visible grief and social protest in the public arena. These cases also indicate that a more complex definition of grassroots memorials might be needed: the practices employed by the two initiatives correspond to public rituals that stabilize, grow, and gain global traction over time. In contrast, the cases compiled by Margry and Sánchez-Carretero62 are more ephemeral in nature, appearing as “spontaneous shrines”63 or “temporary memorials”64 for a short period of time, mostly limited to the immediate aftermath of a tragic or unjust event. My study shows that Menos Días Aquí and Bordamos por la Paz are far from ephemeral. Both involve patterns of repetitive tasks that explicitly inject their agendas into social spaces and strive to make the memory of the dead endure in relatively stable, interconnected, and publicly visible ways. What is more, both projects only envision an end to their ongoing practices in a future context of conflict resolution. One embroiderer declared: “It takes a lot of effort to thread the memory while we are in the midst of an armed conflict and the end is not foreseeable. It demands a lot of perseverance to keep going and not give up.”65 Through their persistent engagement, these “bottom-up” memorialization practices try to prevent denial and repetition in the future. In this vein, the Menos Días Aquí website features the journalist Diego Osorno’s statement: “One day the dead of the so-called war on drugs will become true.”66 At a minimum, these practices are driven by the hope that in the near future they will also shape official forms of commemoration and force officials to redefine their position on, and narration of, this infamous war. Notes 1. The National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) counts 278,899 murdered between December 1, 2006, and December 1, 2018. This period corresponds to the mandates of former presidents Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) and Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018), with 122,246, and 156,437 killings, respectively. INEGI, “Defunciones por homicidio,” http://www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/olap/proyectos/bd/continuas/mortalidad /defuncioneshom.asp?s=est, accessed October 25, 2021. Regarding the disappeared: the National Registry of Data of Missing or Disappeared Persons (RNPDNO) reports 48,908 people who have disappeared from December 1, 2006, to December 1, 2018, and have not been found. Secretaría de Gobernación/Comisión Nacional de Búsqueda, “Versión pública RNPDNO (Registro Nacional de Personas Desaparecidas o No Localizadas),” https:// versionpublicarnpdno.segob.gob.mx/, accessed October 25, 2021. 2. “Civil society” is a contested notion, often criticized for its liberal and moralist roots. Civil society refers here to uncoerced associational activity distinct from the institutions of the

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3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18.

19.

state. This definition of the term is being used because the cases studied are civic groups able to assert themselves against the repressive formal institutions of the state. One of the most forceful attempts at interconnecting artistic practices and the political category of public space is Rosalyn Deutsche’s Evictions. She sees public art as capable of creating public spaces, understood as spaces where we assume political identities. Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 289. In this sense, a public space is not necessarily a physical setting or a preordained space, but rather a space where “the meanings of images and the identity of the subjects are radically open, contingent and incomplete” and in constant agonistic debate (303). Peter Jan Margry and Cristina Sánchez-Carretero, eds., Grassroots Memorials: The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011). Margry and Sánchez-Carretero, Grassroots Memorials, 2. Margry and Sánchez-Carretero, Grassroots Memorials, 2. Margry and Sánchez-Carretero, Grassroots Memorials, 3. For an analysis of the evolution of the connotations and usages of the notion of “war” by Calderón’s administration, see Carlos Illades and Teresa Santiago, Estado de guerra: De la guerra sucia a la narcoguerra (Mexico City: Era, 2014), 42. “Collateral damage” is often used in military terminology as incidental or inadvertent wounding or killing of innocent civilians or damage to other unintended targets. Inexact figures are one of the great problems that civil society faces as it develops memorialization strategies. INEGI’s database does not specify how many deaths are related to organized crime, and the figures from the RNPDNO are based on reports from victims’ family members. Menos Días Aquí, 2010, http://menosdiasaqui.blogspot.mx. Mayra Barraza, 100 días en la República de la Muerte, 2006. Menos Días Aquí. Irene Bosch, email to author, July 18, 2014. The movement quickly spread to various cities in Mexico and beyond. Groups of embroiderers started to gather around the world in such cities as Barcelona, Tokyo, Paris, London, Buenos Aires, and elsewhere. Betsy Greer, ed., Craftivism: The Art of Craft and Activism (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2014). Ivelin Meza, quoted in Francesca Gargallo Celentani, “Bordados de paz y memoria: Acciones de disenso ante la violencia,” in Bordados de Paz, memoria y justicia: Un proceso de visibilización, ed. Porfirio Torres Postof, María Eugenia Camacho, and Alfredo López Casanova (Guadalajara: Grafisma, 2014), 82. Martha Patricia Montero, “‘Bordar por la paz’: La herida en un pañuelo,” Sinembargo, December 5, 2012, http://www.sinembargo.mx/05-12-2012/449678. Irene Stengs, “Spontaneous Shrines,” in Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience, ed. Clifton D. Bryant and Dennis L. Peck (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2009), 894. Cordelia Rizzo, “Presentación de NAR en Monterrey,” Nuestra Aparente Rendición (NAR), June 8, 2012, http://nuestraaparenterendicion.com/index.php/com-gmapfp-css/campanas /item/1307-cordelia-rizzo-presentaci%C3%B3n-de-nar-en-monterrey. Lolita Bosch has also described Menos Días Aquí as a “virtual cemetery.” Lolita Bosch, “México en nuestra atención,” Nuestra Aparente Rendición, August 29, 2011, http://nuestraaparenterendicion.com /index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=474:méxico-en-nuestra-atención-de-lolita­ -bosch&Itemid=115.

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20. Alfredo López Casanova, quoted in Gargallo Celentani, “Bordados de paz y memoria,” 63. 21. Menos Días Aquí. 22. Jorge Harmodio, “Guerra NN: Guía rápida para contadores perplejos,” September 19, 2010, http://menosdiasaqui.blogspot.com.es/2010/09/guia-rapida-para-contadores-perplejos .html. 23. Regina Méndez, quoted in Gargallo Celentani, “Bordados de paz y memoria,” 57–60. 24. Stengs, “Spontaneous Shrines,” 894. 25. Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 15. 26. Menos Días Aquí. 27. Menos Días Aquí. 28. Alejandro Vélez, “Menos Días Aquí: Civilian Casualties, the Archive, and Naming Violent Murders in Mexico,” E-Misférica 9, nos. 1 and 2 (Summer 2012), http://institutohemisferico .com/hemi/fr/e-misferica-91/velez#sthash.ZbYTBOJZ.dpuf. After creating a Truth Commission exclusively for the Ayotzinapa case in 2018, President Andrés López Obrador established in 2021 a Commission for Truth and Justice to investigate violations of human rights that occurred only during the so-called Dirty War, namely, between 1965 and 1990. Víctor Ballinas, “Publica AMLO decreto que crea comisión para la verdad y la justicia,” La Jornada, October 7, 2021, https://estatico.jornada.com.mx/2021/10/07/politica/010n1pol. 29. Sanjuana Martínez, “Madres de desaparecidos bordan pañuelos como una forma de resistir y aliviar el dolor,” La Jornada, September 2, 2012, http://www.jornada.unam.mx /2012/09/02/politica/017n1pol. 30. Mouffe, On the Political, 16. 31. Please refer to the contribution by Michael Orwicz and Robin Greeley in this volume, “Conceptualizing the Public,” to study more examples of official memorialization initiatives promoted by the Mexican government. 32. Miranda de Wallace was a National Action Party’s (PAN) candidate in the 2012 election for mayor in Mexico City. 33. A reflecting pool consists of a shallow pool of water, undisturbed by fountain jets, providing a reflective surface. 34. Gaeta Springall Architects, “Memorial to Victims of Violence in Mexico,” Landezine, June 5, 2015, http://www.landezine.com/index.php/2015/06/memorial-to-victims-of -violence-in-mexico-by-gaeta-springall-architects/. 35. “Pedimos un memorial, no un monumento: Sicilia,” Aristegui Noticias, July 31, 2012, http://aristeguinoticias.com/3107/mexico/monumento-es-acto-administrativo -pedimos-un-memorial-sicilia/. 36. Arturo Ascensión, “Memorial de víctimas, ¿una fosa común o un espacio para la reconciliación?,” Expansión, October 24, 2012, http://expansion.mx/nacional/2012/10/24/memorial­-de-victimas-una-fosa-comun-o-un-espacio-para-la-reconciliacion. For the architect and visual artist Arturo Ortiz-Struck, the Memorial to Victims of Violence in Mexico can be understood as a source of impotence, frustration, and terror, since it symbolizes “the state indifference, the institutional inability to apply the law and the social impossibility of access to justice.” Arturo Ortiz-Struck, “Un memorial ajeno a las víctimas,” Nexos, November 1, 2013, http://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=15546. 37. “Embroidery Movement Keeps the ‘Disappeared’ in Public Eye,” Borderland Beat, November 13, 2012, http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2012/11/embroidery-movement-keep -disappeared-in.html. 38. See Carolina Robledo Silvestre, “Un memorial sin memoria: Exclusión y autoritarismo en el México actual,” Alter/Nativas Latin American Cultural Studies Journal, no. 5 (Autumn 2015), http://alternativas.osu.edu/es/issues/autumn-5-2015/essays/robledo.html.

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39. Margry and Sánchez-Carretero, Grassroots Memorials, 2. 40. Jorge Harmodio, “La noche de un día difícil,” Menos Días Aquí (blog), September 13, 2010, http://menosdiasaqui.blogspot.com/2010/09/la-noche-de-un-dia-dificil.html. 41. Vélez, “Menos Días Aquí: Civilian Casualties, the Archive, and Naming Violent Murders in Mexico.” 42. Jamie-Leigh Ruse, “Experiences of Engagement and Detachment When Counting the Dead for Menos Días Aquí, a Civilian-Led Count of the Dead of Mexico’s Drugs War,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, March 23, 2016, 13, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325 .2016.1148018. 43. Ruse, “Experiences of Engagement,” 16. 44. Kenya Bello, “Ninguna guerra en nuestro nombre,” Menos Días Aquí (blog), October 18, 2010, http://menosdiasaqui.blogspot.com/2010/10/ninguna-guerra-en-nuestro-nombre .html. 45. Sarah Corbett, A Little Book of Craftivism (London: Cicada, 2013), 20. 46. Regina Méndez, quoted in Gargallo Celentani, “Bordados de paz y memoria,” 57–58. 47. Lauren Cocking, “The Activists Using Embroidery to Protest Mexico’s Murder Epidemic,” Broadly (blog), July 3, 2018, https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/wjbw59 /fuentes-rojas-embroidery-protest-mexico-murder. 48. Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 1–14. 49. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 157–158. 50. Paul Connerton, The Spirit of Mourning: History, Memory and the Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 51–82. 51. Erika Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 46. 52. Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 2. 53. Michael Tomlinson, “Stitched Voices,” New Welsh Review (Winter 2016), http://www .newwelshreview.com. 54. Katia Olalde Rico, “Bordando por la paz y la memoria: Acciones colaborativas en espacios públicos en el contexto de la ‘guerra contra el narcotráfico’ en México,” in Pasados presentes: Debates por las memorias en el arte público en América Latina, ed. Teresa Espantoso Rodríguez, Carmen Cecilia Muñoz, and Carlos Mario Recio (Cali, Colombia: GEAP-​Latinoamérica, 2015), 88. 55. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso, 2020), 19–53. 56. Vaidehi Joshi, “Many Nodes, One Distributed System,” Medium (blog), January 2, 2019, https://medium.com/baseds/many-nodes-one-distributed-system-9921f85205c4. Distributed systems have been studied in computer science since the 1980s. 57. James Bohman, “Expanding Dialogue: The Internet, the Public Sphere and Prospects for Transnational Democracy,” in The Idea of the Public Sphere: A Reader, ed. Jostein Gripsrud et al. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 260. 58. “Un blog ciudadano pone rostro a los muertos de la lucha contra el narco,” Expansión, September 6, 2011, http://expansion.mx/nacional/2011/09/06/un-blog-ciudadano -pone-rostro-a-los-muertos-de-la-lucha-contra-el-narco. 59. Cordelia Rizzo, “La red que se teje fuerte: 4 años de Bordar por la Paz,” Hysteria!, May 15, 2015, http://hysteria.mx/laredquesetejefuerte/. 60. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, 24–25.

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61. Anna Munster and Lovink Geert, “Theses on Distributed Aesthetics: Or, What a Network Is Not,” Fibreculture Journal, no. 7 (January 1, 2005). 62. Margry and Sánchez-Carretero, Grassroots Memorials, 2011. 63. Jack Santino, Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 64. Erika Doss, The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials: Towards a Theory of Temporary Memorials, Merteens Ethnology Cahier 3 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 5–6. 65. Teresa Sordo Vilchis, “Memoria y verdad,” Nuestra Aparente Rendición, November 9, 2013, http://nuestraaparenterendicion.com/index.php/biblioteca/ensayos-y-articulos /item/2054-memoria-y-verdad. 66. “Menos Días Aquí.” After six years of activity (2010–2016), the Menos Días Aquí project decided to put its activities on hold. Yet it still works as an archive through its open access website.

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DOSSIER G

Antimonuments

The Brigade for Memory

“What if we stuck the number 43 somewhere?” was the question that got us thinking about the need to make a forceful demand, to carry out a powerful act of protest. Several months had passed since the enforced disappearance of the forty-three students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. Their faces and the number 43 had become the most meaningful emblems in the call for their return, alive, and in the struggle for truth and justice in the aftermath of the tragic events in Iguala in September 2014. A heterogeneous group of activists, all committed to this struggle, came up with the idea of erecting a monumental number 43 in Mexico City. It had to be a spectacular sculptural form that would represent the historic occurrence and become a permanent visual scream. It also had to be placed in a strategic, high-traffic location: Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City’s most important boulevard and a route for protest marches and demonstrations, lined with some of the city’s better-known historical monuments. The plan posed many challenges. This initial experience led to the installation of five subsequent antimonuments. Crucially, each project was approved by the affected communities— for example, in the case of Ayotzinapa, by the mothers and fathers of the disappeared students. From the very beginning, this group had supported the proposal of engaging in a new form of protest, one that relied on collaboration to design, produce, fund, and install an antimonument; it couldn’t have been otherwise. In this way, an anonymous network of contributors came into being, all lending their skills and capabilities to carry out the joint actions. Anonymity was a necessary condition not only because of the project’s inherent risks but 213

also because of the social nature of the collective demand: it was an action that would belong to everyone who might wish to be part of it. Scores of massacres and oppressive acts have occurred in Mexico in the past decades. Many yield painful statistics; such numbers exceed their status as mere mathematical signs to evoke tragic events and social affronts met with impunity. To name a few: forty-three students detained and disappeared by state-sponsored terrorism; forty-nine children dead in a fire as a result of the negligence of the ABC Day Care in Hermosillo, Sonora, in June 2009; sixty-five miners buried alive in a coal mining “accident” in Pasta de Conchos, Coahuila, in 2006, as a consequence of atrocious working conditions (the indifference of the mining company meant that their bodies were never recovered); the 1968 student massacre at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in Tlatelolco, the perpetrators of which have never been punished; eleven women murdered in Mexico every day, adding to the thousands of missing women and victims of gender-based violence, all ignored by one government after another; seventy-two migrants from Central America massacred in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, in 2010 . . . and the toll only rises. In each and every case, impunity has prevailed. In the absence of truth and justice, the atrocious acts continue apace and endure as a living memory. And these examples are hardly isolated events. Hence the need for the antimonuments to incorporate the plus sign (+): a reminder to include all victims, all those who have been violently taken from us, every woman and every man we are missing. Unlike traditional monuments and memorials installed by the different governments without public consultation, by definition antimonuments do not refer to past events that we must remember. Indeed, they don’t commemorate anything at all. On the contrary, they are sculptures that speak for a specific and active social demand. They are located in a public space built and reclaimed by social movements as a site for dialogue between the citizens and entities of power—and as a means of exercising the right to occupy it. As active social agents, their purpose is to leave a forceful statement about unpunished historical events—namely, those that are not included in remote and bronze-laden official history. They are trails, tracks, and signals of something that should never have happened to begin with. They are a permanent demand, a materialization of the cry “¡Ni perdón ni olvido!” (Neither forgive nor forget!). Memory, truth, and justice make up the triad behind these collective actions, for which the community’s backup is an indispensable condition. None have relied on government funds or the support of political parties for their installation. They belong to the other side of history, the side of independent social and political groups and organizations, of every woman or man filled with indignation and 214   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

shock who has closed ranks around the organizations motivated by the same tragic events that unite them, such as the Pasta de Conchos Family Organization or the relatives of the ABC Nursery victims. Everything counts: from discreet fund-raising through sales of small replicas of the antimonument to the tasks and commitments shouldered by participants—whether to guarantee safe conditions during the installation or to immediately circulate information, ensuring that the antimonument stays in place. These contributions have allowed the successful execution of these actions, which we will briefly describe below. The placement of antimonuments has always occurred during demonstrations and days of remembrance, and collective camouflage has been essential. During the event, the antimonuments are brought, covered by a cloth, to the significant place of choice (e.g., in front of the relevant government office, the stock exchange, a densely traveled area, or the Zócalo in Mexico City) in a small vehicle. Most people have no idea of what is about to happen (although, after six successful installations, the surprise has abated a bit). Then the antimonument is uncovered, and hundreds of hands help move and position it on platforms that have been carefully prepared to ensure the structure’s safety and stability. Some people set up a security barrier; others help prepare the materials; others clean the site or plant flowers afterward; still others keep watch after the antimonument has been installed. Photographs and press releases immediately flood social media. At all times, there are no individual actors or agents; together, we are all creating a space devoted to memory and to the right to truth and justice. In this way, we have built a route of historical memory in the heart of Mexico City that reconfigures public space and that, most important, installs in this same space alternative narratives about the recent past coming directly from the voices of aggrieved communities. Yet these are also open narratives, because all of the events to which they refer are open and ongoing cases. The forty-three are still missing, the bodies of the miners have not been recovered, women continue to be victims of violence, and those responsible for each tragic event remain unpunished. Subsequently, antimonuments become places and spaces of living memory (memoria viva), where other acts and events can occur. Family members and communities gather there. Their care and maintenance are collective activities, too. The sculptures get under the skin of everyday passersby and citizens; they inform and protest in a singular way, by positing and reiterating the permanent demands for public slogans that speak historical truth. Moreover, they construct public space through the social bonds and fraternal relationships that their presence promotes. ANTIMONUMENTS: THE BRIGADE FOR MEMORY   215

FIGURE G.1. Female antimonument against femicides and gender violence. Placed on March 8, 2019, on Avenida Juárez, Mexico City. Photo by Alfredo López Casanova. Courtesy of Brigada Antimonumentos.

Antimonument +72 installed on August 22, 2020, on Reforma Avenue in front of the United States embassy in Mexico City. Photo by Cristina Hijar. Courtesy of Brigada Antimonumentos.

FIGURE G.2.

This form of protest and denunciation is rapidly gaining traction in Mexico and beyond: for example, among the families of David and Miguel, two young men who were kidnapped and forcibly disappeared. In 2018, David’s family installed an antimonument on Paseo de la Reforma; so did the families of the twelve young people killed in a failed police operation at the News Divine nightclub. In 2019, an antimonument in the form of the number 12 was placed first in the Zócalo and then in front of the municipal headquarters of the district where the tragedy occurred; the district mayor, one of the unpunished culprits, ordered their removal. The number 56 was installed in Guatemala (and taken down by the authorities) for the girls who had been locked inside the Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asunción orphanage during the 2017 fire that killed them. In September 2019, the numbers 43+1 were installed in Formosa, Argentina, dedicated to the Argentine chef Federico Tobares who was forcibly disappeared in Jalisco, Mexico, in 2013. Other antimonuments for the forty-three missing students have appeared in Paris, France, as well as in Chilpancingo and Zihuatanejo, in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Moreover, several female antimonuments have been installed in Mexican cities as a response to the rising gender violence and femicides. The latest antimonument was installed amid the Covid-19 global pandemic, in August 2020. It is dedicated to the seventy-two migrants from Central America who were killed ten years ago in San Fernando, Tamaulipas. This event is significant for those who travel through Mexico searching for a better future but fall victim to kidnappings and murders, perpetrated either by the state’s security forces or by organized crime. As long as there is no truth or justice, as long as the perpetrators of such pain go free and unpunished, as long as violence and state terrorism by omission (or by commission) are allowed to prevail, the antimonuments will remain.1 Note 1.

The book Antimonumentos: Memoria, verdad y justicia (Antimonuments: Memory, truth and justice) (Mexico City: Heinrich Böll Siftung Foundation, 2020), edited by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Foundation, is available for free download at https://mx.boell.org /es/2020/11/30/antimonumentos.

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CHAPTER 8

Conceptualizing the Public Femicide, Memorialization, and Human Rights Law Michael R. Orwicz and Robin Adèle Greeley

In conceptualizing the “public” in Mexico, the Campo Algodonero memorial in Ciudad Juárez stands at the intersection of international human rights law, state-civil society partnerships, and aesthetics in the public realm.1 In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (hereafter, the IACtHR) ordered the Mexican state to construct a public “monument” as part of a comprehensive program of reparations in the landmark human rights case, González y Otras v. México,2 commonly known as the Campo Algodonero (or Cotton Field) case. The IACtHR found the Mexican state guilty of neglecting its obligation under international human rights law to prevent the brutal murders in 2001 of three young women in Ciudad Juárez by failing to act with due diligence in investigating and prosecuting perpetrators and by contravening the rights of the victims’ next of kin. Part of a wave of femicides and other forms of gender-based violence that have continued to afflict women in Ciudad Juárez since the 1990s, the Campo Algodonero murders marked a pivotal turn in the IACtHR’s rulings regarding the nature of reparations in cases of gender violence and the symbolic role of public memorialization in their realization. The monument that resulted from the IACtHR’s decision purportedly serves 218  

FIGURE 8.1. Verónica Leiton, Flor de Arena, Campo Algodonero Memorial Park, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, 2012. Photo by Rosa-Linda Fregoso. Courtesy of Rosa-Linda Fregoso.

“to commemorate,” in the IACtHR’s words, “the women victims of gender-based murder in Ciudad Juárez,” and in particular the three young women, Claudia Ivette González, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, and Laura Berenice Ramos, at the heart of the case.3 At the same time, it is meant “as a reminder of the context of violence which [the murdered women] experienced” and to call attention to the Mexican state’s violation of fundamental protections of rights and justice enshrined in both the American Convention on Human Rights and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará) that specifically recognizes gender violence as an effect of women’s traditionally subordinate position.4 The IACtHR’s ordering of the Campo Algodonero memorial, we argue, signals not only its assiduous use of a gender-based perspective that set a precedent in prosecuting human rights violations but also its recognition of the immense potential of public memorialization in mandating symbolic reparations more generally. Yet since its inauguration in 2011, the Campo Algodonero memorial has been a site not of public commemoration but of vociferous contestation by the Conceptualizing the Public   219

principal audience for which it was intended: the families and representatives of the murdered women. This has occurred for two principal reasons. For victims’ families and their supporters, the memorial merely diverts attention from the Mexican state’s failure to address structural conditions that give rise to systemic violence and discrimination against women.5 But it is also a failure to envision how the aesthetics of memorialization, and artistic practices more generally, can operate as an effective medium of symbolic reparations and a means of promoting social justice and societal transformation. This failure stems, we argue, from the unresolved tensions among the various publics—differentiated at local, regional, national, and international levels, as well as in gendered, sociocultural, and legal terms—which the reparations (especially the symbolic reparation of the Campo Algodonero memorial itself ) were designed to address. The memorial is the focal point around which revolve several key concepts of “public” operating in relation to the juridical conception of symbolic reparations. We will treat five: 1. The IACtHR’s recognition that gender violence affects women differently than men, and that reparations needed to be structured accordingly. Relatedly, the IACtHR also distinguished between the systemic, systematic, and structural levels of the violations, as they imply different concepts of the publics to whom reparations are extended and different models as to what reparations should accomplish. 2. A reconceptualization of the disparate publics to which the state is beholden before the law: that is, the victims themselves, the national citizenry, and the international human rights community. 3. The question of who constitutes the “public” that symbolic reparations address. Whereas the international human rights community lauded the IACtHR’s decision in Campo Algodonero as a landmark, the families of the victims saw the symbolic reparations emerging from the decision as largely inadequate. 4. Aesthetic constructions of the public, especially in the memorial’s focal point: a large bronze statue titled Flor de Arena. The sculpture, we argue, configures its viewing public as passive spectators rather than as active, participatory actors. 5. The public space of memorialization itself, particularly as this revolves around the issue of visibility. These various notions of “public” are elucidated, in all their conflictedness, through the Campo Algodonero memorial itself, such that the memorial

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highlights unresolved frictions and differences among juridical, civic, aesthetic, and governmental models of the “public.” Before we go into our argument, we want to stake out the context within which we are working. On the one hand, the Campo Algodonero memorial must be seen within the historical landscape of Mexico’s “innumerable monuments” erected in the service of official versions of national culture from the late nineteenth century onward.6 Beginning with Porfirio Díaz’s presidential decree of 1877 mandating the placement of statues of Mexican heroes along the length of the Paseo de la Reforma (Mexico City’s grandiose central artery), the Mexican state has systematically endorsed monumental public sculpture as a principal form of “instilling the official brand of nationalism that has been called the country’s religion.” Monuments, writes Rita Eder, have consistently “entrusted the [Mexican] nation’s heroes with a mission: that of stressing the successful and harmonious continuity of the system.”7 The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) upended both the Porfiriato and its cultural politics, introducing a national populist aesthetics that communicated the struggles and aspirations of the popular classes as the foundational expression of a new, postrevolutionary national identity. Yet by the 1930s, that “revolutionary nationalism” had been institutionalized as “official culture,” stripped of its tumultuous radicalism and brought to heel under an increasingly authoritarian centralized state.8 State-sponsored public monuments again became crucial markers of an official ideology, now aimed at channeling—and neutralizing—popular power.9 Although often riven with tensions and contradictions, this process of institutionalization depended heavily on public monuments both as aesthetic spectacles and as the locus of codified public rituals performed by state officials in the name of the nation. Public monuments offered the Mexican state a ubiquitous, highly visible means of staking its claim to speak for the Mexican people. The Campo Algodonero memorial would perforce be framed by this historical context. On the other hand, we are concerned here with a very specific but increasingly prevalent aspect of public art in the Americas more broadly: memorials and other commemorative practices generated out of the IACtHR rulings concerning the obligation of member states to adhere to the American Convention on Human Rights and, in consequence, to make reparations to the victims of human rights violations that occur within their national boundaries.10 In determining such obligations, the IACtHR regularly mandates comprehensive programs of state-sponsored reparations that take both monetary and nonmonetary forms.11 A key aspect of the latter, broadly understood as “symbolic reparations,” addresses victims’ demands for truth, justice, accountability,

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recognition, and redignification.12 Symbolic reparations aim to assuage the wrongs done to victims, especially in instances of materially irreparable harm, through such measures as public apologies and recognition of the state’s dereliction, establishing the truth and preserving historical memory, and a range of symbolic acts—monuments, memorials, and other forms of public commemoration—that honor the victims’ memory.13 Symbolic reparations are generally associated with the reparatory category of “satisfaction,” conceptualized primarily as restorative, aimed at reestablishing the reputation, dignity, and rights of individuals who have suffered violence.14 Generally intended to repair the victims themselves, they are rarely conceptualized in terms of broader social transformation, that is, as having the capacity to reshape the structural conditions that underpin human rights violations. Yet the Campo Algodonero case is one of the few in which the IACtHR has framed symbolic reparations—including memorials—as transformative.15 As we discuss below, the IACtHR’s ruling specifically insisted that the Mexican state address structural problems of violence against women to change the social relations that promote gender discrimination. In foregrounding symbolic reparations as it did, the IACtHR recognized that commemorative practices could play a decisive role in moving toward social change. Nevertheless, effectively linking the restorative and transformative potentials of symbolic reparations still remains more an aspiration than a normative juridical practice.16 Like all acts of remembrance, we argue, whether a memorial functions to enable or impede social transformation depends not simply on its overt aim but on the method through which its meaning is produced, that is, the processes and contexts in which meaning is generated and into which it is inserted. And— crucially—it depends on the memorial’s ability to promote constant renovation of meaning by actively engaging its audiences in constructive dialogue. Here, the aesthetic becomes a fundamental means of inviting collective participation, encouraging its audiences “to explore contested memories of the past,” promote critical thinking and debate, and facilitate learning through an ongoing exchange aimed at advancing social reconstruction.17 Located in the field where the bodies of the murdered women were found, the Campo Algodonero memorial is a rambling strip of pavement surrounded by a pink-tinged concrete wall situated well away from the city center, bounded on one side by a hotel, office blocks, and private parking lots, and on the other by two major highways that restrict public access. In addition to two commemorative plaques, the walled and gated memorial includes, at its far end, a monumental bronze statue, mounted on a high pedestal, of a young woman 222   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

representing “[all] the women victims of gender-based murder in Ciudad Juárez, who include the victims in this case.”18 Shown emerging from a gigantic “flor de arena,” a desert sand flower, the idealized female figure leans back to gaze toward the heavens, arms outstretched in a graceful expansive gesture. Water flows from her heart down her body to cover the fifteen flowers on her dress, each signifying one hundred victims of gender-based murder. This liquid flow, argues the statue’s artist, Verónica Leiton, symbolizes “cleansing away the victims’ pain.” As the figure rises, phoenix-like, her youthful body gradually becomes more lissome, graceful, and delicate—a metaphor, the artist notes, for “moving from intense suffering toward peace.” The shawl encircling her body, floating around and upward, is inscribed with the names of women killed, such that each Alicia, María, Elena inscribed represents all the Alicias, Marías, Elenas, and others who have been murdered. Leiton describes the statue as one of “hope and reconciliation,” but as we’ll see, this desire for reconciliation involves articulating a number of different, even antagonistic, concepts of public.19 The Public Context of International Human Rights Law By putting forward a specifically gender-based perspective on the harms suffered by the victims, the IACtHR’s judgment in the Campo Algodonero case innovatively demarcated the subject of human rights jurisprudence in two arenas: (1) gender, and (2) the reach of reparations, including symbolic. In this section, we will elucidate these issues and then examine how they are reflected in the memorial. Gender The case focused on the abduction, sexual abuse, mutilation, and murder of three young women, Claudia Ivette González (aged twenty), Esmeralda Herrera Monreal (aged fifteen), and Laura Berenice Ramos (aged seventeen), and the failure of the Mexican state to act with due diligence in investigating the femicides and in prosecuting and punishing those responsible. But in contextualizing these crimes, the IACtHR also underscored the exceedingly high rates of violence against women that had occurred in Ciudad Juárez since the early 1990s and found a significant pattern: (1) “the coefficients for murder of women doubled compared to those of men, and the homicide rate for women in Ciudad Juárez is disproportionately higher than for other border cities with similar circumstances”; (2) the victims were most often young (fifteen to twenty-five years old), and the violence they endured was extreme; and (3) the authorities’ response to the crimes was consistently deficient and characterized by systematic impunity.20 More than 285 women and girls had been reported Conceptualizing the Public   223

brutally killed in Ciudad Juárez between 1993 and 2003. By 2007, the number had jumped to 499, and from 2008 to November 2017, femicides in the town had more than tripled, reaching 1,720. Set against the more than 47,178 women in Mexico killed between 1985 and 2014 because of their gender, Ciudad Juárez nevertheless remained the “epicenter of femicide” and was classified as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. In 2010, the year following the IACtHR’s verdict, Ciudad Juárez was reclassified, this time as the world’s most dangerous city.21 Between 2008 and 2013, when the Mexican government was supposedly implementing the IACtHR’s mandate to develop legal, judicial, and institutional procedures as “guarantees of non-repetition,” 890 women were murdered in the state of Chihuahua, compared to the 447 who were killed during the fourteen years between 1993 and 2007.22 The court judged these murders to be gender-based not only because they specifically targeted women and girls but also because they resulted from a well-documented “pattern of gender-related violence,” influenced by what the Mexican state itself acknowledged as “a culture of gender-based discrimination.”23 The state readily conceded that “one of the structural factors that have led to situations of violence against women in Ciudad Juárez is the change in family roles, as a result of women working” in the maquiladora industry, a social change that came up against “traditional patriarchal attitudes and mentalities . . . influenced by a culture of discrimination against women based on the erroneous idea that women are inferior.”24 Nevertheless, the Mexican state vigorously contested its obligation to change the misogynist culture that denied the victims and their relatives access to protection, due process, and judicial guarantees, claiming that “a culture deeply rooted in stereotypes, based on the underlying assumption that women are inferior, cannot be changed overnight. Changing cultural patterns is a difficult task for any government.”25 In considering discrimination against women as systemic, the IACtHR invoked the precedent of the 1994 Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (known as the Convention of Belém do Pará) and boldly reinterpreted the category of gender as the guiding principle of evaluation in the case.26 That is, in place of the normative concept of “victim” as a juridically undifferentiated subject, the IACtHR specifically recognized “the different impact that violence has on women and on men,” and adopted this gender perspective as a key legal foundation on which to interpret the victims’ rights and the state’s obligations.27 It clearly affirmed gender as an essential consideration in assessing the actions that states must take to protect the rights of women and to comply with International Human Rights obligations to repair injustices and award reparations accordingly. 224   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

Human rights lawyers, advocates for women’s rights, feminist lawyers, scholars, and activists uniformly lauded this as a major turning point in human rights jurisprudence. Specifically praised as unprecedented was the IACtHR’s innovative position that states must repair gender discrimination. “For the first time,” note the human rights law scholars Ruth Rubio-Marín and Clara Sandoval, “the Court, in the Cotton Field decision, articulated the need to provide reparations that do justice to women.”28 Thus, in its Campo Algodonero decision, the IACtHR recognized how different segments of a population are affected by different forms of violence and concretized, along gender lines, what had previously been a more generic, nongendered concept of the publics or populations to whom reparations should be awarded. This has had numerous repercussions. By identifying and particularizing the scope of violations in gendered terms, the Campo Algodonero decision set a legal precedent that would affect how future cases would be conceived. Expanding Reparations to Address Structural Issues In awarding gender-based reparations, the IACtHR moved from addressing systemic violations suffered by individual victims to considering the systematic nature of the violations, whose repeated patterns and commonalities are anchored in broader structural causes.29 In this way, the IACtHR considerably expanded its normative practice of awarding reparations to individual plaintiffs, thereby broadening the reach of publics to whom reparations could be extended to address not only the immediate victims and their families but also society at large. The court argued that the murders (i.e., the systemic violations) of the three young women occurred because they were women and therefore could not be separated from the wider patterns of structural discrimination that affect all women. With this argument, the IACtHR recognized the inadequacy—and indeed the potential injustice—of implementing the normative “restitutive” model of reparations: The Court recalls that the concept of “integral reparation” (restitutio in integrum) entails the re-establishment of the previous situation and the elimination of the effects produced by the violation, as well as the payment of compensation for the damage caused. However, bearing in mind the context of structural discrimination in which the facts of this case occurred, which was acknowledged by the State. . . . The reparations must be designed to change this situation, so that their effect is not only

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of restitution, but also of rectification. In this regard, re-establishment of the same structural context of violence and discrimination is not acceptable.30 Thus, the court’s judgment explicitly linked the reparations for the families of the three murdered women to a set of measures aimed at transforming the structural conditions of discrimination against women in Mexico. In this way, it effectively expanded the publics addressed in its decision to a much more extensive social arena, significantly shifting the whole concept and reach of reparations within human rights law regarding gender discrimination. The Campo Algodonero memorial emblematizes these publics. As the legal scholar Juana Acosta states, “This [was] not the first time the Court [had] ordered monuments. . . . The difference, in this case, is that the monument [had to] demonstrate that the women were victims of gender-based violence.”31 This was clearly spelled out in the IACtHR’s decision, which legislated that the monument represent all victims of gender violence in Ciudad Juárez, and that public authorities consult “the opinion of civil society,” including that of the victims’ families, in determining the monument’s material form.32 The memorial was meant to promote a transformative concept of reparations of the sort championed by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Truth, Justice and Reparation, Pablo de Greiff: “three [expansive] goals, namely, recognition, civic trust, and social solidarity—three goals that are intimately related to justice.”33 Thus the IACtHR envisioned the memorial—and the symbolic reparations more generally—as forging a link between the individual and the larger society, between repairing victims and changing social conditions that engender violence, between restorative and transformative reparations. Internationalizing the Public Unveiling the monument became a focal point for yet another concept of “public” embedded in the IACtHR’s decision: that of the international human rights community.34 The IACtHR mandated that during the opening ceremony, the Mexican state publicly acknowledge not only its failure to protect the victims’ rights but also its disregard of its international obligation to protect human rights more broadly, a judgment that placed the memorial physically and symbolically at the heart of the tension between the sovereignty of the nation-state and the international regional governance of the IACtHR.35 As the social geographer Manuel Castells has argued, the increasing integration of nation-states into global networks means that states are not so much sovereign governmental entities as they are increasingly beholden to various 226   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

“forms of global governance,” including international institutions like the IACtHR .36 Yet the Mexican state clings to a rhetoric of sovereignty that actively pits the national against the international. As is well known, the Mexican state has a long history of fostering a nationalist discourse that positions itself as the benevolent “caretaker” of Mexico’s citizens, even as it has often been accused of perpetuating a social order that has continually marginalized popular demands. On the one hand, this paternalistic state nationalism is enshrined in such institutions as the 1917 Constitution, in the extreme presidentialism of the federal government, and in innumerable state-sponsored cultural manifestations of so-called revolutionary nationalism.37 Public monuments have played a significant role in shoring up this official culture of national sovereignty—a state of affairs with deep repercussions for the Campo Algodonero memorial. On the other hand, Mexico’s brand of nationalism is elaborated through an ideology of vigorous opposition to encroachment by national and international entities beyond its borders, most specifically the United States. The Mexican state maintains a strong rhetoric of national sovereignty and internal control despite its enthusiastic turn toward neoliberalism from 1982 onward, its purported adherence to international institutions such as the Inter-American Human Rights System, and the country’s deep involvement with globalization. The Mexican state’s resistance to the IACtHR’s international authority can be characterized as bureaucratic foot-dragging rather than blatant refusal. Although outwardly compliant with the IACtHR’s ruling, manufacturing an enormous body of documents to demonstrate its purportedly extensive compliance with the IACtHR’s decision, the Mexican state never developed an adequate institutional approach to preventing gender violence, nor did it pursue with any effectiveness the transformative measures mandated by the IACtHR.38 Impunity continues to be the norm, and state officials who obstructed justice in the Campo Algodonero case have never been sanctioned. Thus, the Campo Algodonero memorial can be understood as part of a state strategy to instrumentalize aesthetics in order to downplay massive gender violence by presenting it as “past,” isolated and aberrant, rather than ongoing and systematic. The Publics Addressed by Symbolic Reparations So we see that the court intended the reparations—including the memorial— not just to repair but also to transform structural conditions fostering discrimination against women. But we also see that, in Mexico, gender violence has not diminished but grown, raising another complexity regarding definitions of publics. Whereas legal scholars and human rights activists lauded the Campo Conceptualizing the Public   227

Algodonero case for its groundbreaking gendered perspective, the victims’ families and supporters regarded the issue of court-mandated reparations from a very different point of view. For them, it was not a landmark so much as a failure of justice. The memorial represents that failure on two levels. First, the state did not deliver the justice that the victims’ families demanded.39 Neither the perpetrators of the crimes nor the authorities who failed to investigate the murders have been punished. “In this, as in many other cases of femicide, the authorities fabricated culprits, did not adequately communicate and integrate the official records, and the state functionaries acted irresponsibly in searching for proof,” affirmed the legal specialist María del Carmen Herrera García.40 Not until 2016 was anyone successfully prosecuted for the murder of Esmeralda Herrera Monreal. However, the case was so riddled with irregularities that the accused was released for lack of evidence.41 The other two murders have still not been resolved. As of 2015, the Mexican state had also failed to standardize its protocols and investigative procedures regarding gender violence, nor had it created the IACtHR-mandated website databank documenting women disappeared in Chihuahua since 1993. Despite having devised in 2004 the so-called Forty-Point Program of Action for the “prosecution and enforcement of justice and promotion of respect for women’s human rights,” and, in 2012, instituted a community center to provide legal, medical, and psychological help, notes the human rights law scholar Caroline Bettinger-López, the victims’ families and representatives allege that these were undertaken not with sincerity but “with the sole purpose of falsely demonstrating compliance with the court’s ruling.”42 Second is the memorial itself, which is the symbolic public image of these failures. In 2010, the Mexican state launched a national competition for the design of the statue at the heart of the memorial.43 The process called for consultation with the victims’ families and other civil society groups, to be followed by a national call for artists’ proposals, selection of the winner, and the unveiling, seven months later, of the monument itself. Citing Ciudad Juárez’s mayor, José Reyes Ferriz, the Ministry of the Interior reiterated that the memorial “should be something that represents what we Juarenses feel and the recognition of the errors committed in the past, that are real, the pain they caused us, but at the same time the commitment that this never happen again in Ciudad Juárez.”44 Nevertheless, the state’s dereliction of duty was evident throughout the process of producing and publicly presenting the monument. Although the IACtHR explicitly required “open, public” consultation with the victims’ representatives regarding the form of the statue, the state appears to have made little effort to carry this out.45 Leiton herself notes that while she had long contemplated some 228   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

artistic response to the Ciudad Juárez femicides, her winning entry was pulled together in haste, apparently without extended discussion with the victims’ families.46 The state’s negligence was further evident at both the memorial’s inauguration in 2011 and the statue’s unveiling in 2012.47 At the 2011 inauguration, a group of midranking governmental functionaries (not the president, whose presence the families had demanded) gave perfunctory apologies. Broadcast via a predominantly admiring mass media and orchestrated in line with long-codified official protocols, the speeches were tightly scripted to avoid interaction with the audience. The victims’ families and supporters clearly understood the state’s apology as simulated compliance.48 Outraged, the families boycotted the inauguration ceremony and harshly criticized the project.49 Audience members, including families of other murdered women, volubly heckled and booed the speakers throughout, such that the state representative, Deputy Secretary of Judicial Matters and Human Rights of the Ministry of the Interior Felipe Zamora Castro, had to shout the state’s official apology.50 Clamoring for “justicia,” the families demanded that instead of building expensive “mausoleums,” the government investigate the disappearances and murders of their loved ones.51 At the ceremonial unveiling of Flor de Arena, held the following year, the families again bitterly denounced the statue.52 The entire event was suspended after just twelve minutes because irate audience members shouted down the principal speaker, Minister of the Interior Alejandro Poiré Romero. The governor of Chihuahua, César Duarte, was unable to speak at all because of the protests.53 Aesthetic Constructions of the Public The families’ outrage brings us to another key aspect: the memorial complex’s aesthetic construction of the public, which centers around three vectors: stereotype, the form of the monument, and the problem of visibility. We will treat the first two in this section, and the third in a subsequent section. First, we look at the site’s focal point: the statue Flor de Arena. In designing the monument, Leiton “envisioned an homage to 1,500 women and girls, which would convey the idea of transformation and transmutation.”54 Inspired by the natural salt formations known as “desert flowers” found in the region, the artist created a graceful female figure emerging out of a large “desert rose,” her dress inlaid with roses representing all the murdered victims of femicide in Ciudad Juárez.55 Deliberately refusing any “crude” visual vocabulary of pain, Leiton sought instead to represent “a female image who projects calm and reflection, wearing the gaze of liberation.” Water flowing from the figure’s heart into the pool below is meant to symbolize not pain but “the transmutation of women’s weeping into a commemorative elegy for the victims of our city.”56 Conceptualizing the Public   229

It is clear that Leiton sincerely meant Flor de Arena as a tribute to the victims and their families.57 Yet despite her intended reverence for the female body, Flor de Arena threatens to recall familiar stereotypes—ideal beauty, youthfulness, “delicate femininity,” identification with nature—which tend to essentialize women’s social identities as their physical bodies.58 In spite of the artist’s wish to evoke the transcendence of suffering, the statue reiterates the formulaic language of “beauty,” “sensuality,” and “femininity” that, as the IACtHR recognized, is the common currency of repressive masculinist culture. These stereotypes, it asserted, cut across all levels of society, including the police, the judiciary, and state administrators responsible for protecting the rights of women. Indeed, the IACtHR specifically addressed both the structural problem of derogatory stereotypes and the specific “discriminatory and dilatory” attitude of government authorities toward the victims and their families, stating that “the creation and use of stereotypes becomes one of the causes and consequences of gender-based violence against women.”59 Representations such as these are part of a larger patriarchal ideology that insists that women remain subservient and in the traditional domestic sphere, when in fact their economic and social status has radically changed. As noted above, during the trial, the Mexican state fully recognized that labor conditions in Ciudad Juárez had increasingly pulled women into the work force, resulting in a wide range of social tensions.60 Yet in spite of the artist’s laudable aim to dignify the victims, the statue neither acknowledges these tensions nor draws the spectator into any critical consideration of gender stereotypes. In this context, the sculpture not only falls short of promoting the transformative goals set out in the IACtHR’s decision; it also unwittingly reinforces negative stereotypes that constitute the context for violence against women. Second, Flor de Arena adopts the conventional monument form—the traditional statue of the “hero on a pedestal”—replicating all the problems inherent in this outmoded representational model. Towering over the spectator, the statue literalizes an already-given meaning through the human form. Resolutely static, it relegates the spectator to a position of passive contemplation of its preconstructed meaning, rather than an active participant in the generation of meanings. This model of spectator passivity has long been superseded both in contemporary art and in popular memorialization practices. These latter, as we discuss below, have been extraordinarily inventive in generating performative aesthetics that posit new, antihierarchical modes of engagement with the human body and new activations of the spectator in relation to the artwork.61 Yet Flor de Arena ignores these alternatives. Leiton’s reiteration of this traditional sculptural trope historically embeds it in the narrative conventions 230   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

of the national monument form. The Holocaust memorial scholar James Young has harshly criticized this anachronistic model. State-sponsored monuments like this, he argues, are routinely erected as “self-aggrandizing locus[es] for national memory. . . . Traditionally, state-sponsored memory of a national past aims to affirm the righteousness of a nation’s birth,” its history, and its national heroes.62 While the victors of history, he notes, have long erected monuments to remember their triumphs, and victims have built memorials to recall their martyrdom, almost never does a nation call upon itself to remember the victims of crimes it has perpetrated. Monuments tend to naturalize the ideologies of the nation through mimetic reference to those heroes who “sacrificed” themselves for those national causes. While Flor de Arena clearly does not claim the murdered women of Ciudad Juárez as martyrs of the Mexican nation, its conventional form nevertheless unwittingly slides into a long history of state-sponsored monuments that affirm the nation’s virtues rather than confronting its crimes. Although Leiton intended the elegant upward gesture of the statue to represent the families’ ability to overcome the tragedy, the statue’s form and context ultimately undermine this admirable goal. Ostensibly aimed at commemorating the victims of the Mexican state’s failure to protect women, the monument actually functions to dissociate the state from those very failures. Flor de Arena’s very form, compounded with its iconographic emphasis on rebirth and renewal, contradicts and overpowers any references to the state’s culpability, thus suggesting symbolically that the state does indeed—and has in the past—adhered to international human rights principles. State-sponsored public monuments are by definition claims upon the past that function to contain, fix, and secure history in the state’s image. Nowhere is this more evident than in today’s Mexico, where they have long served as powerful nexus points for the intersection of national identity, political culture, and official cultural policy.63 Too often, argues Young, these traditional memorial forms serve “either [to] console viewers [and] redeem such tragic events, or [to] indulge in a facile kind of Wiedergutmachung or purport to mend the memory of a murdered people. Instead of searing memory into public consciousness, conventional memorials seal memory off from awareness altogether.”64 That is to say, such monuments leave little room for public dialogue, reflection, or questioning the past, and even less for countermemories that self-consciously challenge the ideological premises concerning what exactly is being remembered and memorialized. It is instructive to compare the aesthetic conceptualization of the public in Flor de Arena with that of the Pink Crosses movement to visibilize femicide. Conceptualizing the Public   231

Although entirely independent of any IACtHR-mandated reparations, improvised memorials of pink crosses—both at Campo Algodonero and across Mexico—have come to represent a widespread, ongoing grassroots form of memorializing victims of femicide while also channeling popular rage against Mexico’s misogynist culture and the state’s inefficacy in bringing perpetrators to justice.65 In its use of crosses and processions, the movement clearly makes reference to Catholicism. But it also draws on the language and lessons of contemporary art—everything from minimalism’s antimimetic abstraction and serial repetition to performance, installation, and, above all, the notion of active viewer participation. In this way, the Pink Crosses movement strategically exploits the aesthetic act’s singular capacity to disrupt codified norms of perception, thus opening up new meanings and redefining our potential for transformative action. In opposition to Flor de Arena, it conceptualizes aesthetic memorialization not in terms of a fixed, static object but as a dynamic process, aimed at transforming social and political conditions. The movement’s “public” is understood not as passive onlookers to an already-given meaning, but as active coparticipants who create meaning. Appropriating popular religious iconography, the Pink Crosses movement refuses the state’s exhortation to bury the past and “move on.” Family members, feminist activists, and concerned citizens erect ad hoc rows of pink crosses in strategic locations, everywhere from plazas in front of government buildings, to downtown Ciudad Juárez, to the field directly outside the Campo Algodonero memorial itself. Emblazoned with the names of individual women—including “no identificada” (not identified)—the crosses collectivize personal memory in relation to a mobile and flexible political critique of the state. Whereas Flor de Arena’s iconography points metonymically to all of the women victims of Ciudad Juárez, every woman’s name on a pink cross provides victims’ relatives with a personal recognition and, at the same time, a collective acknowledgment. The materiality of the crosses therefore functions not to instill a sense of monumentality, permanence, or distance from the viewer; rather, it serves as a nexus point through which the public can actively engage. The Pink Crosses movement not only embodies meanings that are continually renewed by new participants, new actions, and new locations; it also expresses its contemporaneity in a deep distrust of conventional monument forms in light of their long history of co-optation by the Mexican state.66 Emblematizing Young’s notion of the countermonument, the crosses aim “not to console but to provoke; not to remain fixed but to change; not to be everlasting but to disappear; not to be ignored by passersby but to demand interaction; . . . not to accept graciously the burden of memory but to throw it back at the [state’s] feet.”67 232   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

Pink Cross activists thus reject the traditional monument’s propensity to reify memory and reiterate dominant hierarchies of power. Instead, they produce performative works that initiate what Young argues (in another context) is “a dynamic relationship between artist, work, and viewer, in which none emerges singularly dominant.” In its egalitarian conception, the countermemorial would not just commemorate the feminist, antimisogynist impetus “but enact it, breaking down the hierarchical relationship between art object and its audience.”68 This further resonates with Young’s argument that memorialization should be centered not on consensus about the past but on continual struggles over memory. The Public Space of Memorialization This brings us to our third concept of the public aesthetically embodied in the Campo Algodonero memorial—the public space of memorialization—which hinges on the problem of visibility. Public space, as Jürgen Habermas evocatively asserted, is intimately connected to the constitution of the modern public sphere—a critical space of political discussion regarding the common good, where the state is held accountable to its citizens.69 Elaborating on Habermas, David Harvey notes the “identity . . . forged between the proper shaping of urban public space and the proper functioning of democratic governance in the public sphere,” in which public space can act as a space of political negotiation to “allo[w] private grief to be parlayed into a public statement.”70 Ostensibly, this was the aim of the Campo Algodonero monument as a public marker of reconciliation between the Mexican state and the victims’ families. But the Campo Algodonero memorial suffers from the problem of invisibility—a deliberate spatial peripheralization that favors a “cynicism of forgetting.”71 Flor de Arena is not a stand-alone monument. Rather, it is the culminating point of a long and rambling complex, a “park” for want of a better term, built on the site where the bodies of the three murdered women were found. Yet the “park” is isolated, situated at the edge of the maquiladoras that are themselves located away from the city center—the space of international business and trade—which significantly minimizes the monument’s visibility in the urban landscape of Ciudad Juárez.72 Erected by the municipal government, the memorial complex is bounded on one side by a hotel and on the other by two busy highways.73 There is no parking allotted to the memorial, nor is it easily accessible on foot. “It is as if the government didn’t want people to go there,” remarks Juárez resident Itzel Aguilera.74 The site, Leiton told us, is “badly planned [and] unwelcoming: there’s no greenery, no water. The monument has been made invisible: it is isolated off Conceptualizing the Public   233

[from the city] and abandoned.” She complained that the government had erected a wall, such that the monument is not visible from the road. Additionally, she commented, all maintenance of the site stopped long ago, leaving it abandoned, derelict, and dangerous to visit.75 In official meetings with the Ministry of the Interior, both the activist collective of Ciudad Juárez feminist groups, Red Mesa de Mujeres, and an UNAM Human Rights professor, Gloria Ramírez, reiterated that the site has been poorly planned and that the design of the memorial impedes access.76 In addition to its physical marginalization, the memorial also suffers from a lack of national presence. There has been no educational programming, nor is there an official internet presence, despite demands for such. And notwithstanding offers for a national exhibition in Mexico City concerning the memorial and its statue, these were never realized.77 This relationship between the site of memory and the social ordering of the city has, according to the architectural historians Salvador Salazar Gutiérrez

FIGURE 8.2. Campo Algodonero Memorial Park, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, 2012. Photo by RosaLinda Fregoso. Courtesy of Rosa-Linda Fregoso.

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FIGURE 8.3. Pink Crosses memorial in honor of the eight victims found in 2001, Campo Algodonero, Ciudad Juárez. © Sean Sprague. Photo courtesy of Alamy Stock Photo.

and Héctor Rivero Peña, given rise to two opposing projects of remembering. The first is what they call a “cynicism of forgetting”: a state-sponsored politics of forgetting that has minimized the atrocity of the femicides to a decontextualized, isolated event.78 This is evident not only in the remote, isolated positioning of the monument but also in the official state responses to the femicides, which, notes the sociologist Julia Monárrez Fragoso, have “trivializ[ed] their deaths as necessary consequences of economic progress and the beautification of the city’s image.”79 Equally, the state has promoted a politics of “putting the past behind us” and “moving on.” In this model, the femicides of Ciudad Juárez are not the result of a systemic discrimination against women but isolated events that are often characterized as the victims’ own fault, meaning that the young women somehow brought the violence on themselves because of their refusal to behave according to social norms.80 The second project of memory is what Salazar and Rivero, following Paul Ricoeur, term “reflexive remembrance” (rememoración reflexiva), a conscious practice of actively bringing into the present the memory of the past.81 This, they argue, involves not only “a process of reflection on the event, but also a Conceptualizing the Public   235

pragmatic process, because to remember is ‘to do something.’”82 This act of reflexive remembering—evident in current popular practices of memorialization such as the Pink Crosses movement, as well as public protests and demonstrations surrounding the memorial—brings together memory-​experience with a self-critical awareness of the larger structural context of violence against women. Against the state’s designs to bury the past, Campo Algodonero has continually been used by the victims’ families and activists as a site of angry protests against the government, demanding justice.83 Conclusion: Publics of Memory Official public memory, embodied in the physical space of the Campo Algodonero memorial and its fulcrum, Flor de Arena, declares the events of Campo Algodonero resolved. The history of the events themselves, consigned to two deteriorating bronze plaques affixed to the walls nearest the memorial’s entrance—one lists the victims’ names; the other sums up the IACtHR’s verdict—is formally detached from the monumental statue that centers attention on the opposite end. While the memorial complex works to visualize the state’s will to demarcate the past from the future, Flor de Arena’s phoenix-like figure of rebirth and renewal equally serves to give aesthetic form to the state’s blind determination to “move on.” It is precisely in contesting this hegemonic narrative of forgetting that the unofficial acts of memorialization by victims and their supporters gain their political resilience and tactical strength. Popular performative acts—marches, street graphics, pink crosses, and spontaneous memorials—continue to invoke memories of the victims in a refusal to forget and “move on,” thereby revitalizing and collectivizing memory through ongoing dialogue with the past. These two opposing attitudes toward public memory are evident in two emblematic images. The first documents the official—overwhelmingly male— presence of the state at the unveiling of the Campo Algodonero monument.84 Here, public memory is starkly defined by those who control it, in a public space that is equally demarcated as hierarchical and exclusionary. The second image references the unofficial popular practices improvised by victims themselves and their supporters. The latter have continually activated public space through performative invocations of memory that underscore the systemic nature of violence against women, such that the Campo Algodonero femicides can neither be ignored nor considered as isolated incidents. Against the state’s construction of the public of memory via hierarchies of power and oblivion, popular acts of memorialization unceasingly renovate and democratize the public of memory. 236   Antimonuments and the Undercommons

Notes 1.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

We dedicate this essay to Marco Abarca, whose dazzling intellectual brilliance and humanity are sorely missed. We thank Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, Yolanda Sierra, Doris Sommer, Enrique Sandoval, Viviana Krsticevic, and our fellow members of the Symbolic Reparations Research Project for their invaluable comments, critiques, and research help. We also thank the National Endowment for the Humanities; the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute’s Public Discourse Project; and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University, for their generous support. González et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico (Preliminary Objection, Merits, Reparations, and Costs), Judgment, Inter-American Court of Human Rights (ser. C) No. 205, November 16, 2009 (hereafter Campo Algodonero), http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos /seriec_205_ing.pdf. Campo Algodonero. Campo Algodonero, para. 471; para. 29. On the Convention of Belém do Pará, see note 26 below. Gloria Muñoz Ramírez, “Monumento en el campo algodonero, símbolo de las ‘culpas del Estado’ en los feminicidios,” La Jornada, December 4, 2011, http://www.jornada.unam.mx /2011/12/04/politica/006n1pol. Rita Eder, “The Icons of Power and Popular Art,” in Mexican Monuments: Strange Encounters, ed. Helen Escobedo (New York: Abbeville Press, 1989), 64. Eder, “The Icons of Power and Popular Art,” 65–66. See Roger Bartra, Oficio mexicano (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1993), especially 31–44. On this complex, often contradictory process, see Robin Adèle Greeley, “Muralism and the State in Post-Revolution Mexico, 1920–1970,” in Mexican Muralism: A Critical History, ed. Alejandro Anreus, Robin Adèle Greeley, and Leonard Folgarait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 13–36. American Convention on Human Rights, Article 63, 1, https://www.cidh.oas.org/basicos /english/basic3.american%20convention.htm; Inter-American Court of Human Rights, http://www.corteidh.or.cr/index.php/en. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights forms one branch of the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS), the other of which is the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. International law recognizes the right of victims of human rights violations to receive the following categories of reparations: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, measures of satisfaction, and guarantees of nonrepetition. See Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law, G.A. Res. 60/147, U.N. Doc A/RES/60/147, March 21, 2006. See also Thomas Antkowiak, “Remedial Approaches to Human Rights Violations: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights and Beyond,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 2 (2008): 362; Gina Donoso, “Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ Reparation Judgments: Strengths and Challenges for a Comprehensive Approach,” Revista IIDH 49 (2009): 29–68, http://www.corteidh.or.cr /tablas/r24577.pdf. See Carlos Martín Beristain, Diálogos sobre la reparación: Experiencias en el sistema interamericano de derechos humanos (San José, CR: Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, 2008), 2:11; Pablo de Greiff, “Justice and Reparations,” in Pablo de Greiff, ed., The Handbook of Reparations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 451–477. See Robin Adèle Greeley, Michael R. Orwicz, José Luis Falconi, Ana María Reyes, Fernando J. Rosenberg, and Lisa Laplante, “Repairing Symbolic Reparations: Assessing the

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Effectiveness of Memorialization in the Inter-American System of Human Rights,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 14, no. 1 (March 2020): 165–192. 14. Basic Principles, Sec. IX; Frédéric Mégret, “Of Shrines, Memorials, and Museums: Using the International Criminal Court’s Victim Reparation and Assistance Regime to Promote Transitional Justice,” Buffalo Human Rights Law Review 16 (January 2010): 34; Beristain, Diálogos sobre la reparación, 11. 15. Generally, the transformative is the focus of “guarantees of nonrepetition,” a category of integral reparations usually viewed as distinct from “measures of satisfaction” and not considered under the designation “symbolic.” Guarantees of nonrepetition are aimed at ensuring the wider societal prevention of reoccurrences of the violence by, for example, shoring up judiciary independence, standardizing police and judicial procedures, amending legislation, investigating facts, and punishing those responsible. 16. Greeley et al., “Repairing Symbolic Reparations,” 167–169. This is evident in the IACtHR’s reluctance, in recent years, to continue its previous practice of mandating complex forms of symbolic reparations such as memorials. Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, “Symbolic Reparation in the Americas,” unpublished talk given at the Symbolic Reparations in the Americas Roundtable, Georgetown University Law School (March 28, 2018). Elsa Meany (CEJIL) notes that the legal focus of reparations has been overwhelmingly concentrated on those material forms of reparation that are overtly “measurable.” Meany, unpublished, untitled talk given at the Symbolic Reparations in the Americas Roundtable, Georgetown University Law School (March 28, 2018). 17. Judy Barsalou and Victoria Baxter, “The Urge to Remember: The Role of Memorials in Social Reconstruction and Transitional Justice,” in Stabilization and Reconstruction, Series No. 5, United States Institute of Peace, January 2007, 2, https://www.usip.org/publications/2007/01 /urge-remember-role-memorials-social-reconstruction-and-transitional-justice. 18. Campo Algodonero, para. 471. The statue, made of silicon bronze, measures four meters in height and is set on a pedestal two meters in height. 19. Verónica Leiton, interview with the authors, July 6, 2015. 20. Campo Algodonero, para 117; Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos; CIDH), Situation of Women’s Rights in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico: The Right Not to Be the Subject of Violence and Discrimination (March 7, 2003), para. 33, http://www.cidh.org/annualrep/2002sp/cap.vi.juarez.htm. 21. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Alternative Report on Violence against Women in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, Ninth Periodic Report of Mexico, submitted to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, June 11, 2018, 3–5, https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CEDAW /Shared%20Documents/MEX/INT_CEDAW_NGO_MEX_31432_E.pdf. 22. CEDAW, Alternative Report, June 11, 2018, 6. See also Luis E. Cervera Gómez and Julia Monárrez Fregoso, “Spatial and Temporal Behavior of Three Paradigmatic Cases of Violence in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico: Feminicide, Homicide and Involuntary Disappearances of Girls and Women (1993–2013),” report presented to Mr. Christof Heyns, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, April 26, 2013, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4007.7289, https://www.academia.edu/32034794 /Spatial_and_temporal_behavior_of_three_paradigmatic_cases_of_violence_in_Ciudad _Juarez_Chihuahua_México_feminicide_homicide_and_involuntary_disappearances_of _girls_and_women_1993_2013_Report_presented_to_Mr_Christof_Heyns_Special _Rapporteur_on_extrajudicial_summary_or_arbitrary_executions. 23. Campo Algodonero, para. 2; para. 129.

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24. Campo Algodonero, paras. 129–133. 25. Campo Algodonero, para. 132. 26. The Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women, known as the Convention of Belém do Pará after the Brazilian city where it was adopted in 1994 by the Organization of American States, establishes, for the first time, legal and policy mechanisms to protect women’s human rights. It states in its preamble that “violence against women constitutes a violation of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and impairs or nullifies the observance, enjoyment and experience of such rights and freedoms.” It defines violence against women as “any act or conduct, based on gender, which causes death or physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, whether in the public or the private sphere” (Article 1; our emphasis), https://www.oas.org /en/mesecvi/docs/BelemDoPara-ENGLISH.pdf, accessed August 20, 2018. 27. Campo Algodonero, para. 451. 28. Ruth Rubio-Marín and Clara Sandoval, “Engendering the Reparations Jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: The Promise of the Cotton Field Judgment,” Human Rights Quarterly 33, no. 4 (November 2011): 1063. 29. We thank our fellow Symbolic Reparations Research Project member, the human rights lawyer Marco Abarca, for this conceptual insight. Systemic violations are the standard arena of scrutiny for all human rights courts, including the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Court rulings regarding systemic violations tend to be limited to issuing judgments against the state regarding specific violations of the rights of the victims and their families. In the Campo Algodonero case, these included the right to life, to humane treatment, to dignity, and to personal liberty (Campo Algodonero, para. 602). Likewise, the scope of reparations for systemic violations tends to center on the particular victims and their families. Where violations are systematic, human rights courts may pinpoint similar patterns or common denominators in the violations, such as ethnicity, race, religion, age, and, as in the case of Campo Algodonero, gender violence. Identifying violations as systematic expands the constituencies addressed by the courts’ decisions and extends the reparations beyond the particular victims and families in the case to broader populations or institutions affected by the violations. In Campo Algodonero, the IACtHR achieved this by specifying that its adjudication included “all gender-based murders in Ciudad Juárez.” The IACtHR then linked these systematic violations to structural discrimination, noting that “the reparations must be designed to change this situation, so that their effect is not only of restitution, but also of rectification. In this regard, reestablishment of the same structural context of violence and discrimination is not acceptable.” Campo Algodonero, para. 450. 30. Campo Algodonero, para. 450. 31. Juana Acosta López, “The Cotton Field Case: Gender Perspective and Feminist Theories in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights Jurisprudence,” International Law, Revista Colombiana de Derecho Internacional, no. 21 (July–December 2012): 38. 32. Campo Algodonero, para. 471; para. 472. 33. Pablo de Greiff, “Justice and Reparation,” in The Handbook of Reparations, ed. Pablo de Greiff (Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online-Oxford University Press, 2006), 451. 34. By “international human rights community,” we mean not only the context of international human rights law but also those NGOs, activists, scholars, and nations committed to upholding human rights around the world. 35. Campo Algodonero, para. 35; para. 471. 36. Manuel Castells, “The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance,” Annals of the AAPSS 616 (March 2008): 80. 37. The 1917 Constitution’s Article 27 decreed that all “lands and waters” and subsoil mineral

Conceptualizing the Public   239

resources (most famously Mexico’s rich oil deposits) belong to the “nation,” and that only the “nation,” via “the federal Government,” has the right to regulate them “in the public interest.” The interconnection between land, citizens (especially rural), and the caretaker state has a long, complicated history. The consequences of Article 27 were—and continue to be—multiple and complex, not least regarding concepts of citizenship in relation to the nation-state. In 1992, Article 27 was modified under President Carlos Salinas such that collectively held ejido lands could be sold off into the private sector—a neoliberal maneuver that, in addition to the 1994 implementation of NAFTA, sparked the Zapatista uprising. On “revolutionary nationalism” and its cultural manifestations, see Greeley, “Muralism and the State in Post-Revolution Mexico, 1920–1970,” 13–36. 38. Primer informe del Estado Mexicano sobre las medidas adoptadas para dar cumplimiento a la sentencia dictada por la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos en el caso “González Banda [sic] y Otras vs. México (Campo Algodonero),” 2 010, http://www.campoalgodonero.org .mx/documentos/primer-informe-del-estado-mexicano-medidas-adoptadas-cumplimiento​ -sentencia-dictada-corte, accessed July 15, 2017, but no longer available. See also Subcomisión de Coordinación y Enlace para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia contra las Mujeres en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, XXXVII sesión ordinaria, August 23, 2013, https://www.gob .mx/cms/uploads/attachment/file/88160/Versi_n_estenografica_37.pdf; Caroline BettingerLópez, “The Challenge of Domestic Implementation of International Human Rights Law in the Cotton Field Case,” CUNY Law Review 15, no. 2 (2012): 315–334. 39. Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, former assistant executive secretary for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and a key member of the commission team that presented the case to the IACtHR, notes that, in the eyes of the victims’ families, by far the most important reparation was justice. Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, interview with Robin Greeley and Michael Orwicz, Washington, DC, May 8, 2020. 40. Rubén Villalpando, “Incumple el Estado 50% de resolutivos de la CIDH por el caso Campo Algodonero,” La Jornada, August 29, 2015, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2015/08/29 /estados/027n2est. 41. Rubén Villalpando, “Tras 15 años, sentencian a feminicida del campo algodonero en Juárez,” La Jornada, October 6, 2016, https://jornadabc.mx/tijuana/06-10-2016/tras-15-anos​ -sentencian-feminicida-del-campo-algodonero-en-juarez. Villalpando notes the irregularities in attempts both to convict Eduardo Chávez Marín and to investigate the other unresolved murders. Chávez Marín was later released for lack of proof. “Libre feminicida de campo algodonero,” Canal 44 Noticias, March 14, 2018, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=MRJ5T7C4Gaw. 42. Bettinger-López, “The Challenge of Domestic Implementation of International Human Rights Law in the Cotton Field Case,” 331. On the Mexican state’s lack of compliance with Inter-​ American Human Rights System, the Mexican Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, and United Nations recommendations for the protection of women, see also Academia Mexicana de Derechos Humanos, Cátedra UNESCO de Derechos Humanos de la UNAM, and Federación Mexicana de Universitarias, A.C., “Informe alterno al séptimo y octavo informe del Estado: Una mirada desde sociedad civil” (Mexico City, 2011), https://www2.ohchr.org /english/bodies/cedaW/docs/ngos/AMDH_CUDH_UNAM_MFUW_Mexico52_sp.pdf. 43. Rosa-Linda Fregoso states that Verónica Leiton’s entry was chosen against ten other competitors. Rosa-Linda Fregoso, “For the Women of Ciudad Juárez,” Feminist Wire, December 3, 2012, https://thefeministwire.com/2012/12/for-the-women-of-ciudad-juarez/. 44. Secretaría de Gobernación–CONAVIM, “Noticias: A [sic] concurso nacional, monumento del campo algodonero,” January 29, 2010, https://www.conavim-portal.segob.gob.mx /Portal/sintesis/sintesis2912010_1.pdf; website no longer available.

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45. Campo Algodonero, para. 472. Records from the state organization Comisión Nacional para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia contra las Mujeres (CONAVIM) note that the design for Flor de Arena was “chosen by relatives of women victims of femicide” but does not explicitly mention the families of the particular victims in the Campo Algodonero case. CONAVIM, Informe de Actividades 2011–2012 (CONAVIM-SEGOB, 2012): 28. 46. Leiton, interview with the authors, July 6, 2015. Leiton stated that she only heard about the memorial competition while she was traveling in Chile, just before the deadline for submissions. Although she knew the families involved, Leiton did not have time to consult them before entering her proposal for the competition. Not until the inauguration itself was Leiton able to explain the symbolism of the statue to the victims’ families. 47. Because Leiton’s Flor de Arena was not ready by the 2011 inauguration of the memorial, it was unveiled at a separate public event in 2012. On the state’s dereliction continuing to the present, see Villalpando, “Incumple el Estado 50% de resolutivos de la CIDH por el caso Campo Algodonero,” La Jornada, August 29, 2015, https://www.jornada.com.mx /2015/08/29/estados/027n2est. 48. “Aclare ya asesinatos en Juárez, exigen a Peña Nieto,” Cimacnoticias, February 1, 2013, https:// cimacnoticias.com.mx/noticia/aclare-ya-asesinatos-en-juarez-exigen-a-pena-nieto/#gsc .tab=0. On the widespread public criticism that the Mexican state (no matter what political party is in power) goes to great lengths to “simulate” a commitment to human rights, see Jesús G. Alcántara, “¿Un retorno a la simulación en derechos humanos?,” El Universal, February 6, 2013, reprinted by the Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, http://cmdpdh.org/2013/03/un-retorno-a-la-simulacion-en-derechos-humanos/; Humberto Francisco Guerrero Rosales, “México y los Derechos Humanos: Entre la simulación y la autocomplacencia,” Animal político, October 16, 2015, https://www.animalpolitico.com /res-publica/mexico-y-los-derechos-humanos-entre-la-simulacion-y-la-autocomplacencia/. 49. “Estado pide perdón por feminicidios,” El Universal, November 8, 2011, http://www.eluniversal .com.mx/nacion/190591.html. 50. “Víctimas abuchean a autoridades durante inauguración de monumento contra feminicidios en Cd. Juárez,” Grillonautas television broadcast, November 8, 2011, http://www.metatube .com/en/videos/84275/Victimas-abuchean-a-autoridades-durante-inauguracion -contrafeminicidios-en-Cd-Juarez/. 51. Mauricio Rodríguez, “Víctimas abuchean a autoridades por inauguración de monumento en Juárez,” Proceso, November 7, 2011, https://www.proceso.com.mx/287406/victimas -abuchean-a-autoridades-por-inauguracion-de-monumento-en-juarez; “Estado pide perdón por feminicidios,” El Universal, November 8, 2011, http://www.eluniversal.com.mx /nacion/190591.html. 52. Leiton, interview with the authors, July 6, 2015. See also “Estado pide perdón por feminicidios,” El Universal, November 8, 2011, http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/190591.html. 53. Rubén Villalpando, “Increpan a Poiré madres de asesinadas en Juárez; indaguen los casos, le exigen,” La Jornada, August 31, 2012, http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/08/31 /politica/015n2pol. 54. Leiton, cited in Fregoso, “For the Women of Ciudad Juárez.” Leiton has a history of integrating her professional artistic skills with feminist activism, including the Ciudad Juárez arts collective Antígona, which produced performative acts in solidarity with victims of femicide. Leiton, interview with the authors, July 6, 2015. 55. Leiton, interview with the authors, July 6, 2015. 56. Leiton, interview with the authors, July 6, 2015; Leiton, cited in Fregoso, “For the Women of Ciudad Juárez.” 57. Leiton hoped the Campo Algodonero memorial would become a site of “alternative

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truth-telling and memory, empowering and unifying the community in the struggle for justice and social change.” Leiton, cited in Kathleen Staudt and Zulma Y. Méndez, Courage, Resistance, and Women in Ciudad Juárez: Challenges to Militarization (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015), 67–69. 58. Leiton, interview with the authors, July 6, 2015. 59. Campo Algodonero, para. 151; para. 401. 60. Campo Algodonero, para. 129. At the trial, the Mexican state appointed Juan Manuel Gómez-Robledo Verduzco as its agent, and Patricia González Rodríguez, Joel Antonio Hernández García, María Carmen Oñate Muñoz, Alejandro Negrín Muñoz, and Armando Vivanco Castellanos as its deputy agents. Campo Algodonero, para. 5. A list of the numerous representatives of the Mexican state present at the April 28–29, 2009, public hearing can be found in Campo Algodonero, para. 12, note 8. 61. Consistently at the heart of such practices is the “restoration of the social bond through a collective elaboration of meaning.” Claire Bishop, “Viewers as Producers,” in Participation, ed. Claire Bishop (London: Whitechapel, and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 12; see her essay and the book more generally. See also Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Reinaldo Laddaga, Estética de la emergencia (Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo Editora, 2010); Doris Sommer, The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); Felipe Cala Buendía, Cultural Producers and Social Change in Latin America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). On participatory forms of popular memorialization in Mexico, see Rosa-Linda Fregoso, “The Art of Witness,” Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures 2, no. 1 (Fall 2017): 118–136. 62. James E. Young, “The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 2 (Winter 1992): 270. 63. On this point, see Mary Coffey’s superb analysis of Roger Bartra’s argument regarding Mexico’s “official culture.” Mary K. Coffey, How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture: Murals, Museums, and the Mexican State (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 4–5. 64. Young, “The Counter-Monument,” 272. 65. On the pink crosses, see Fregoso, “The Art of Witness,” 118–136; Alice Driver, More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015), esp. chapter 3. 66. On the Mexican state’s co-optation and institutionalization of public art forms, see Coffey, How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture. 67. Young, “The Counter-Monument,” 277. We have somewhat amplified the range of Young’s original words, from “town” to “state.” 68. Young, “The Counter-Monument,” 279. 69. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991). In their analysis of Habermas, Setha Low and Neil Smith remark that “an understanding of public space is an imperative for understanding the public sphere.” Low and Smith, eds., The Politics of Public Space (New York: Routledge, 2006), 6. For an elaboration and critique of Habermas’s theory in relation to public art and public space, see Deutsche, Evictions, especially 287–290. 70. David Harvey, “The Political Economy of Public Space,” in The Politics of Public Space, ed. Setha Low and Neil Smith (New York: Routledge, 2006), 31. 71. Salvador Salazar Gutiérrez and Héctor Rivero Peña, “Ciudad dramatizada: La erosión de la memoria y el dominio de la eventualidad en el scenario de Ciudad Juárez, México,” Espiral: Estudios sobre estado y sociedad 21, no. 59 (January–April 2014): 89.

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72. Salazar and Rivero, “Ciudad dramatizada,” 89. On the connection between violence, femicide, and global industrialization in Ciudad Juárez, see Julia E. Monárrez Fragoso, “Feminicide: Impunity for the Perpetrators and Injustice for the Victims,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South, ed. Kerry Carrington et al. (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 916–917. 73. The memorial complex was erected by Ciudad Juárez’s Instituto Municipal de Investigación y Planeación. Comisión Nacional para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia contra las Mujeres (CONAVIM, Secretaría de Gobernación), “A [sic] concurso nacional, monumento del campo algodonero,” January 29, 2010, http://www.conavim-portal.segob.gob.mx/Portal/sintesis /sintesis2912010_1.pdf. 74. Cited in Driver, More or Less Dead, 158. 75. Leiton, interview with the authors, July 6, 2015. 76. Subcomisión de Coordinación y Enlace para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia contra las Mujeres en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, XXXVII sesión ordinaria, 20. 77. Gloria Ramírez, a member of the planning committee for the Museo Memorial del ’68, an important memorial museum in Mexico City, had indicated that the museum would be eager to host an exhibition in Mexico City concerning the Campo Algodonero memorial— something the representatives of the victims had also solicited during the court process. Both Ramírez and the Red Mesa de las Mujeres criticized the state for its lack of attention both to educational programming and to disseminating information—both via the internet and via other means—about the memorial. Subcomisión de Coordinación y Enlace para Prevenir y Erradicar la Violencia contra las Mujeres en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, XXXVII sesión ordinaria, 20. 78. Salazar and Rivero, “Ciudad dramatizada,” 89. Not until September 2017 did the Chihuahua state legislature reform the state’s penal code to designate femicide a crime. See http://www .congresochihuahua2.gob.mx/biblioteca/decretos/archivosDecretos/6357.pdf, accessed November 11, 2022. 79. Julia Monárrez Fragoso, “Ciudad Juárez: Surviving; Superfluous Lives and the Banality of Death,” Alter/Nativas, no. 3 (2014): 1. 80. Monárrez, “Ciudad Juárez,” 2. See also Julia Estela Monárrez Fragoso, “The Victims of the Ciudad Juárez Feminicide: Sexually Fetishized Commodities,” in Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010): 59–69. 81. Salazar and Rivero, “Ciudad dramatizada,” 90. 82. Salazar and Rivero, “Ciudad dramatizada,” 90. 83. “Caravana contra violencia llega a Ciudad Juárez, la más peligrosa de México,” El Día, June 10, 2011, https://eldia.com.do/caravana-contra-violencia-llega-a-ciudad-juarez-la-mas -peligrosa​-de-mexico/, accessed November 11, 2022; “Recuerdan a sus hijas y exigen justicia a 15 años del Campo Algodonero,” La Opción de Chihuahua, November 8, 2016, http://laopcion.com.mx​/noticia/157209/recuerdan-a-sus-hijas-y-exigen-justicia-a-15-anos -del-campo-algodonero. 84. Bárbara Vázquez, “Memorial de la discordia,” muyjuarense.com, August 30, 2012, https:// muyjuarense.com/2012/08/30/memorial-de-la-discordia/.

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CHAPTER 9

On Affordable Housing Reflections on the (A)political Evolution of the Territory Arturo Ortiz-Struck

Introduction In this chapter, I analyze the process of producing affordable housing in Mexico between 2000 and 2018.1 I relate Giorgio Agamben’s homo sacer to the kind of subject produced by affordable housing in the outskirts of some of the country’s main cities.2 I then question the possibility and meaning of “the political” in mass-scale affordable housing developments primarily driven by financial profit. I begin by describing the origins of the affordable housing model, as well as the financial instruments through which it has been implemented. I then examine the kind of urban design produced by this model and the forms of life it generates, particularly in relation to the presence or absence of certain rights. I also review how the model’s financial success relates to technical abstractions that do not take into consideration the human dimension of the inhabitants, as an example of what Slavoj Žižek calls objective violence.3 This leads me to draw connections between the location of the housing developments; the social vulnerability created there; and the architecture’s arrangement and emplacement, the latter of which physically interferes with the potential for exercising one’s rights and duties as a citizen. In the section “On Space,” I 247

develop firsthand accounts of three housing developments where violence is rife, using Georges Perec’s exercises of street observation as a model. Finally, I describe how affordable housing environments can lead to the production of new forms of artistic expression. In doing so, I share my artistic approach to given territories. I write from a heterogeneous practice that involves my work and research as a practicing architect, urban consultant, and university lecturer. Mainly, however, I speak from a spatial artistic imagination that has motivated and organized all this activity. On Financial Conditions In the 1980s, Latin America was marked by economic stagnation, inflation, and overindebtedness. Mexico was not exempt from this situation.4 As a result, the country’s model of economic development was profoundly reformed with the purported aim of reversing instability: “import substitution” was brought to an end, state intervention in the economy was reduced, and a turn toward free trade was initiated with the entry into the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT).5 A realignment of the political class and the different interest groups around it went hand in hand with the evolution of this economic model. Seeking a substantial reduction of its deficit, Mexico fell in line at the end of the decade with the so-called Washington consensus and began a process of fiscal restructuring: public spending was reduced and brought under control, the debt was renegotiated, tax policy was redesigned, and banking and most public enterprises not associated with strategic energy sources were privatized, among other changes.6 This strategy was consolidated with the entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. The form of production that has been championed ever since is founded on services. In this context, public institutions and large consortia developed a new real estate model directed at the formal economy, which attended to the demand for affordable housing on the part of the impoverished middle classes.7 Under the new urban design parameters, the internal rate of return was held constant while everything else was understood as a variable, including the quality of life in the housing developments; preexisting infrastructure, location in relation to other urban areas, and new inhabitants’ ability to exercise their citizenship effectively were not always taken into account. It goes without saying that sustainable development criteria were rarely considered. During the 1990s, state institutions of social and economic development (charged with providing housing for workers), real estate companies, and financial institutions transformed laws and regulations that, directly or indirectly, favored the new model of housing production. The 248   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

reform of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and the transformation of the tenancy of ejidos facilitated the regularization of rural plots to turn them into urban land.8 The process was strengthened with the 1983 and 1999 reforms to Article 115, which consolidated municipal authority in the determination of urban plans.9 In addition, fiscal decentralization in 1996 granted fiscal resources to municipalities without political cost so they could finance their development initiatives.10 The municipalities had the autonomy to define their urban plans but lacked information and incentives to develop orderly cities. The 2002 reform to the Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers (Infonavit) Law accelerated the production of housing. It converted Infonavit into a financial entity and left the construction of residential developments to private initiative.11 As a result, extensive portions of the land were left adrift in the market. The structural transformations achieved a successful economic mix, in which real estate companies could acquire rustic plots of land at a low cost, modify the agricultural land for urban use, create development plans in collaboration with the municipalities, and construct enormous residential developments made up of thousands of small, identical, single-family houses, disconnected from other urban spaces. These residential developments include no other land uses aside from housing, except for a few schools built for legal reasons. The developments offer 34- to 60-square-meter residences characterized by poor construction quality and located on land that is ill suited for such placement, lacking decent infrastructure and spaces of public access adequate for social exchange. In addition, their location depends on the economic feasibility of the land, as a result of which they tend to be isolated in the middle of nowhere. The habitability of the houses in these residential developments is so unfavorable that more than a hundred thousand houses financed by Infonavit have been abandoned.12 The Ministry of the Interior has indicated that the official figure for abandoned housing units was five million in 2014.13 In conjunction with this, new agreements on housing production set up financial services aimed at formally employed members of the middle classes, to whom mortgages with very high interest rates are offered, creating an unfavorable situation for consumers. The extension of these credits is accompanied by other financial services that are not included in the interest rate offered but are nonetheless obligatory, effectively raising the rate by at least four percentage points. Costo Anual Total (Total Annual Cost, or CAT) is an index that serves to calculate the percentage costs that make up not only the interest rate but also everything else that ultimately has to be repaid.14 Consumers are offered mortgages through a strategy whereby their ability to repay the loan is recognized, but neither the interest rate nor the financial On Affordable Housing   249

clauses are clearly explained to them. A family that gets housing in this way makes a down payment, sometimes through Infonavit, and thereafter must make monthly payments with a CAT between 12 and 21 percent. The stipulations for repayment of the mortgage are very demanding. For example, if an individual stops making payments after receiving three months of unemployment insurance, the system takes his or her house away in a process that lasts around a year, during which time the financial institution sells the debt at a very low price to international businesses specializing in debt collection, like Pendulum and Scrap II, without giving the homeowner the opportunity to buy his or her own debt.15 It does not matter if the homeowner made timely payments for fifteen years, nor does it matter if the family is prepared to pay off the remaining debt by selling the house, given that its value tends to be less than the debt in the early years of the mortgage. Debt collectors use intimidation strategies such as phone calls at inappropriate hours and making the debt public to neighbors, to the people who served as their references for the bank, and even at the debtor’s place of work. In 2011, I ran an exercise with a credit simulator on the website of the company Casas GEO. It showed that a house selling for $739,608 Mexican pesos (around US$60,000 in 2011) requires a down payment of 24 percent, which is normally provided by Infonavit and amounts to $189,256 MXN (around US$15,000). That leaves a balance of $604,352 MXN, to be paid in monthly installments with an annual interest rate of 14.66 percent, which amounts to $7,400 MXN (around US$650) per month for the next thirty years. If we calculate the total amount to be repaid over the lifetime of the mortgage, the result is $2,644,000 MXN (US$226,000)—that is, almost four times (385.57%) its original value. Furthermore, due to the number of abandoned houses, the secondary market is characterized by an oversupply of housing, such that the best-case scenario is for a house to retain its original value, thus preventing families from making any profit from their investment. The housing table in INEGI’s Encuesta Intercensal 2015 shows that 30.82 percent of housing was acquired through purchase, 33.42 percent was built on contract, 24.07 percent was self-built, and the remainder was acquired through inheritance, donation, or some other unspecified channel.16 Of the houses acquired through purchase, 70.33 percent went through institutions oriented toward affordable housing, and 25.43 percent went through private financial institutions (which includes housing of all kinds); the remaining 4.22 percent was unspecified.17 These figures give us a sense of the economic impact of the housing production model in the country. During the presidency of Vicente Fox (2000–2006), 4.6 million mortgages were issued, 67 percent for the construction of new houses, of which 3,082,000 250   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

were built between 2001 and 2006.18 During Felipe Calderón’s presidency (2006–2012), according to his administration’s Sexto Informe de Gobierno, 8,132,900 new houses were sold between 2007 and 2012.19 At the end of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term (2012–2018), and according to his administration’s Sexto Informe de Gobierno, 3,076,331 new affordable houses were produced.20 In sum, at least, 14,291,231 units of affordable housing were built from 2001 to December 2018. That number can be analyzed in various ways: in terms of the financial success of the housing production model; in terms of the fabrication of multiple peripheries disconnected from infrastructure and population centers; or in terms of government action aimed at displacing properties, each of which houses an average of 3.7 persons, toward urban peripheries.21 In other words, there was an attempt to place 52,877,554 people into peripheral residential developments—that is, 41.96 percent of the population of the entire country.22 The financial schemes and the facilities that are offered by real estate companies, finance organizations, and banks are counterproductive in regard to economic development, since they capture practically all surplus value. The size of production in the housing finance market, at the end of 2015, reached 20 percent of the portfolio of total credit in the country.23 On Urban Conditions The location of affordable housing developments in Mexico is determined by the cost of land. As a result, they are normally found at a distance from cities, causing them to assume the form of islands in the middle of nowhere. Such isolation is exacerbated by the fences and walls that turn them into complexes that are closed in on themselves, creating an environment within which there is nothing but houses. Although a city gets its meaning from precisely the mixture of uses and functions that lend variety and everyday life to a neighborhood, in these developments defined solely by residential use there is no reason to go out into the streets; there is nothing to do in them. This implies a de facto annihilation of public space, which I understand as a space capable of privileging diversity under egalitarian conditions. Similarly, thanks to the way in which they lay out houses, it is clear that the real estate development companies aim to put the greatest possible number of units on each plot of land. This is why sidewalks are quite limited, almost nonexistent; the streets are narrow; and the houses seem to pile up, one after another, for dozens and dozens of acres. Because the urban concept in these closed sites is defined by the notion of “private property,” their inhabitants end up installing gates and controlling entry points on each street, in effect privatizing the site even further. On Affordable Housing   251

FIGURE 9.1. Arturo Ortiz-Struck, Intersticios (Interstices), 2016. Digital print on cotton. © Arturo Ortiz-Struck. Courtesy of the artist.

The houses also have gates and spikes along their perimeters. Neighbors often change their houses, painting them, adding a second floor, turning them into stores or restaurants. Nevertheless, as we can see in figure 9.1, the complexes are still characterized by a general homogeneity: the architectural structure of the houses, the serial repetition of window designs, the rhythm of the water tanks and lampposts—all seem to overshadow the particularities of each house. The absence of difference in these complexes poses a problem insofar as lived meanings emerge from comparison, since here the boundary separating one from the next is blurred. It seems impossible to distinguish oneself from everyone else. The same models are reproduced throughout the country in identical form: that is to say, the same houses and the same urban designs are built with no regard for the specific environment of each region. This sort of residential development is located far from people’s workplaces in the city, so the head of household has to spend several hours each day just getting to and from his or her place of work, as well as up to 25 percent of the household income on his or her commute.24 When both parents leave for work, the children remain alone at home or on the streets of the complexes for long periods of time, which has given rise to serious problems of childhood safety. For young people who live in developments that do not have a high school, there 252   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

is little hope for job opportunities because there is no quality work nearby, and the cost of commuting to a workplace would represent more money than they would be able to earn. Many young people in this situation neither study nor work.25 In this way, these residential developments have become a sort of urban extension of voluntary confinement. On Violence The affordable housing production system is ruled by technical abstractions that are established on the basis of the mortgage system, the repayment system, the construction system, the sales system, and myriad other technical and financial models against which families have to struggle to acquire a house. These family houses do not provide a stable economic foothold, since they do not accrue surplus value. By way of these “systems,” a faceless violence is exercised, one that is very diffuse and hard to discern because it is enforced by institutions. It is impossible to identify a culprit: not the bank, not the location of the complex, not the characteristics of the house itself, not the municipality nor the real estate company. All of them are responsible, but there is no identifiable guilty party. The system would indicate that the only one responsible for living in one of these sets of houses is the buyer, who was probably pushed by necessity into buying a house in one of these residential developments—this being one of the most important economic decisions of his or her life. However, it seems more likely to suggest that the housing production system in Mexico exercises what Slavoj Žižek calls systemic violence: This violence is no longer attributable to concrete individuals and their “evil” intentions, but is purely “objective,” systemic, anonymous. Here we encounter the Lacanian difference between reality and the Real: “reality” is the social reality of the actual people involved in interaction and in the productive processes, while the Real is the inexorable “abstract,” spectral logic of capital that determines what goes on in social reality.26 The conditions of sale, mortgage, location, housing type, and construction quality make up a system that operates as an abstract machine that does violence to people’s lives but as an invisible violence that is difficult to signify. Paradoxically, the state presents affordable housing as an institutional success, a key part of social programs oriented toward well-being and economic stimulus.27 The official view is dissociated from the spatial evidence, because instead of creating settings capable of generating social well-being and a strengthening of families’ assets, individuals’ quality of life, physical safety, and estate security are all made On Affordable Housing   253

more vulnerable. While housing consumers contend with a triumphalist official discourse, they actually inhabit physical surroundings defined by distance and normative indeterminacy. Objective violence driven by financial gain thus permeates the most intimate forms of daily life among millions of people in Mexico. On Architectural Conditions The houses within the complexes have an architectural plan that consists of a space dedicated to the living room, dining room, and kitchen, and one or two bedrooms in the back or two bedrooms on the second floor, depending on the type of house. The reduced dimensions of the houses make it impossible to use standard-size furnishings, so residents are forced to buy smaller furniture that lacks ergonomic dimensions. As a result of the distribution of the spaces inside the houses and the generic dimensions of 2.70 × 2.70 meters for the bedrooms and the living room, the minimum dimensions allowed by the authorities, it is almost impossible to spread one’s arms and turn around without bumping into something.28 The structure, finishings, and craftsmanship are included in the cost of construction, so the building quality is low: homeowners frequently report cracks, water and drainage leaks, and moisture in the walls and roofs, as well as the poor quality of doors and windows. One can also hear what is happening in the neighbors’ houses at all times. In general, the imperfections are not structural, nor do they make the houses physically vulnerable. Nevertheless, some houses have been built on former riverbeds or on poor-quality land and have compromised structural security. The sea of houses that can be seen from the highways does not, at first glance, disclose what happens there. An aesthetic aspect of serial repetition blankets these houses with a thin veneer of modernity. On Interstices There are vast expanses of emptiness between a given housing complex and even the hint of a city. There are also empty spaces between one urban development and another, which are neither determined nor planned and appear between built areas, between one neighborhood and another, between one housing complex and the next, or between a residential area and irregular settlements. These interstices are the sites of many of the violent events occurring in the country’s cities. They are physical spaces where anything can happen, since systems of surveillance and control focus inward on the complexes and not toward areas that lie beyond their perimeters. Interstices are ideal places for unexpected events: a fight between adolescents, selling illegal products, killing someone, or disposing of a body. These sites have amassed thousands of horror stories, along 254   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

with police files on murders, disappearances, sexual assaults, and other forms of torture.29 There are common-use spaces in the developments that no one occupies or that are dominated by one group at the expense of others. Millions of houses have also been abandoned, extending the interstices further inward. Urban interstices are a result of a technical abstraction, a financial logic that fails to attend to the location of housing developments and their connectivity to other urban settings. It is an externality without responsible parties. On Citizenship We can compare the social housing model to the definition of homo sacer that Giorgio Agamben draws from the ancient Romans. The concept refers to citizens who are unable to exercise their own citizenship. It is not that someone has taken it from them; it is rather that the requirements for exercising it do not exist. The philosopher explains how, throughout history, states and rulers have tried to establish an exception clause, whereby people’s lives have been susceptible to being organized in such a way that their very humanity is suspended. This reaches the limit of the imagination in the figure of the Muselmann that Agamben delineates with precision in Lo que queda de Auschwitz (Remnants of Auschwitz), pointing to the juridical impossibility of distinguishing between “man and non-man.”30 The concentration camp is in this sense the extreme expression of the state of exception and involves, in the first instance, utilizing juridical grounds for legally suspending rights. This constitutes, in my view, the essence of biopower: the exercise of power through the administration of bodies. Nothing is more to the point than this definition when we see how the technical abstractions that have given shape to the affordable housing model in this century resolve a principle of need, the circumstance of which is demographic and financial, as if it were a simple matter of providing technical access to well-being. Individuals’ lives do not factor into a milieu of human development but serve only as the rationale that justifies the administration of bodies within a territory. The placement of millions of people on the peripheries of the country does not offer an adequate situation for life’s potential to unfold under conditions of equality. In the large housing complexes, there are no public ministries, clinics, recreation areas for sports, service offices, or establishments that would permit effective contact between the citizen and the state, between life and law. These developments have been converted into institutionally driven and normatively authorized spaces, where public spaces are generated as extensive, uninspiring roadways with no solid points of reference, in thousands of atomized housing sets throughout the country, where political action is—even On Affordable Housing   255

physically—​complicated or virtually impossible. Paradoxically, the main urban expression that has arisen from the presumed strengthening of democratic institutions in Mexico is characterized by disarticulating the life of the political through the organization of space. On Space With the aim of describing the spaces produced by this kind of affordable housing, I wrote three free adaptations of “The Street,” a chapter in Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces, in which the writer undertakes an exercise in observation and writing wherein he describes a street in detail.31 With this frame of reference, I identified the locations of three violent acts that had recently occurred in housing complexes in Mexico City. I then visited each place to carry out the same exercise in observation and writing. The result reveals the political sterility of the unchecked production of housing that I have detailed above. Here I present a synthesis of the three descriptions with the aim of showing the circumstances of space in relation to the possibilities of public action. First Scene Upon arriving, I walk a few meters to the door of the elementary school where the murder of a twenty-four-year-old man occurred on January 20, 2016. I identify the site by a wooden cross, painted in white, that has been placed near the door. I feel the penetrating stare of someone on the other side of the street; I do not turn around, but I know I am being watched. Then I realize that someone is approaching me, asking what I’m doing here. I answer, “I came to see the place where the murder happened.”32 Another neighbor approaches while the first one is asking me if I’m a police officer. I tell him that I’m not, that I’m documenting the places where people are murdered. I assure them that I’ve accomplished my mission, that I don’t want to bother anyone; I give them my telephone number so that they know I’m telling the truth, which has worked for me on other occasions. I ask where the exit of the housing complex is; they point it out gruffly, and I start walking. As I’m leaving, a motorcycle taxi passes me, and I ask for a ride. I realize that it’s impossible to act freely without friends or acquaintances in the site, even though I was just engaging in an exercise in observation. The motorcycle drops me off at the exit to the development of La Trinidad. I recognize the smell of grass and pavement, which arrives discreetly, perceptible only because there isn’t much to smell. Actually, the place where I’m standing is mostly sterile. Nevertheless, there’s an underlying odor of garbage from the bags strewn about on the grass next to the curb. There are diapers, plastic bottles, broken glass, bits of toys. I think I can smell urine coming from the grass, but 256   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

perhaps I can’t make out what I’m smelling anymore. The smells are faint enough that they don’t bother me, but if they were stronger, they’d turn my stomach. I can hear that someone is playing reggaeton in the distance. At the same time, I’m noticing the obsessively rhythmic posts that hold up the metal gate of the plot next to La Trinidad. The repetition in form and distance makes me turn back to face the houses, and I recognize the infinite lines of identical water tanks, the same windows, the repetitive façades whose physical patterns have been slightly altered by individual interventions. One house has vertical fencing, the one next door has painted them blue; another one has no balustrade, and the one next to it has a newly added second floor. Another one is yellow, and the one next to it is purple. The one behind it has a different water tank, and the one after that has broken fencing. Its state reflects the urge to get out of there. The poles for the electric lines create a sequence every twelve meters. This infrastructure, abstracted from everything, effectively deals with the supply of electricity. At each concrete post, in addition to the drooping cables, there are lamps that extend from the post over the street. As they recede down the avenue into La Trinidad they extend to the point of creating an endless line of posts with lamps and electric cables. Along the streets there is also a line of cypresses that disappears in the distance, and on the median of the access road, called Paseo de los Arcángeles, a line of agaves forms a diluted rhythm amid untended grass that has been dried out by the sun. I see a post with a security camera that may or may not be working, and I can’t imagine who would control it, from how far away, from which police station, or how long it would take the police to get to La Trinidad. I don’t imagine there’s anyone behind it; all I see is that it’s here on the access road, on the tallest post, gray, with a ladder alongside it, but I don’t see any more of them inside the complex. More so than the cameras, the obsessive bars covering doors and windows bespeak a systemic insecurity and a fear that’s materialized in ironwork enclosures in front of the windows, broken glass on the sidewalk, barbed wire all around. It occurs to me that everyone here lives in fear. Second Scene I’m parked on Real del Monte Street, facing west, right on the corner of Real de Chihuahua Avenue in the Ara 3 complex in the municipality of San Vicente Chicoloapan. I’m here because on November 9, 2016, I read a news report that an unidentified male corpse had been discovered on this corner with claw marks on its body.33 It seems that differences between neighbors are expressed from façade to façade, though I get the sense that these differences are relatively minor. On Affordable Housing   257

The possible architectural modifications are so precarious that, in general, the transformations all look a lot like one another, and the distinctions only operate within the complex. These houses’ distance from other urban areas ultimately erases the distinction that each individual expresses in his or her house—at least for an external observer. Given the single use of the land, no one who doesn’t live here has any reason to visit. In a sense, the urban configuration becomes a way of making singularity invisible. There is no place for neighbors to gather; the narrow sidewalks are poorly built, and cars are parked on some of them. The streets are also narrow, without vegetation or shade. This makes it physically impossible to be in a shared space outside of one’s house. Although many residents have opened various kinds of businesses, their size prevents them from becoming spaces for community activity or from facilitating the flow of people and opinions. There are simply no places that would facilitate dialogue. A store selling groceries and quesadillas from one of the houses is open. I notice some movement inside it. People are working there. In the distance, I hear people talking. A whistle catches my attention; I can hear the foliage of a tree rustling in the wind. It’s a monotonous sound that encompasses everything else like a sort of frame. I try to concentrate on the sounds, but I can’t really make out anything. A small, white, curly-haired dog walks east down Real del Monte Street. People say that dogs always mind their own business, and in this case, that seems to be true. I don’t recall having seen other dogs or animals, I don’t see any birds or flies, I don’t hear any roosters, nor do I see any cats or mice. The woman at the store where they sell quesadillas shows me the exact spot where the body was found, right where I parked my car, to the right of a green house; underneath a generously shady tree; on the yellow grass behind a fence made of sticks, pipes, and tires; amid scattered garbage, right where the vacant lot opens out onto the thousands of houses in the Ara 3 complex. The woman tells me that she realized what had happened when the police showed up, that rumors had been circulating all week, but that she didn’t know what to believe. It seems that no one saw anything until they found the body and the news was reported in a local paper. She mentioned that it’s getting more and more dangerous here, that it feels like being in the middle of nowhere, waiting for something to happen, losing hope. Third Scene I came to visit the site where a family was murdered for no apparent reason on October 25, 2016, while walking down the sidewalk on Laurel Street.34 Newspaper reports are confusing because they locate the events on Laurel Street, 258   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

whereas the photos show a location on Ahuehuete Extension Avenue, some forty meters from the aforementioned street. I’m on the corner of the two roadways. The houses are not arrayed along the avenue but rather on closed streets known as private drives. The avenue leads up to the point of access for each one, but there are no houses facing the avenue. The private drives are small, closed communities with one narrow street. There are no sidewalks or walkways. Each one must have around thirty houses, and they all have distinctive names. On my way here I was able to read the names of some of them: Laredo, Tivoli, Monte Albere, Nogal, Pamplona, Paris, Modena. Each one has a security booth and green fencing with a certain ornamentation. At each entrance there are planters with trimmed bushes and architectural details such as an arch over the pedestrian entrance. The houses have a balcony over the main façade, and practically all the doors and windows have protective metal bars over them. In Mexico City, we’re accustomed to public political demonstrations. People go out into the streets to protest, avenues are blocked off, demonstrations are held outside government offices, and social groups make themselves seen. But if, like almost all buyers of this kind of housing, the inhabitants of Valle del Real Sección Sexta go out to protest en masse, only the neighbors will know. If they block a street in the middle of nowhere, no one is affected by it. If they mobilize and take a federal highway, grenadiers show up and send them packing with their truncheons. If they organize to march on the center of the city, they will need money to cover transportation, lose a day’s work, and need to reach an agreement about where to go to complain and to whom. I have the sense that no one takes responsibility for construction defects. The municipalities say that those are the state or federal institutions’ problems. The states say that these are federal or local matters. The federal government asserts that they are matters of local urban development. The municipalities normally claim that they haven’t received the real estate company’s residential housing development for bureaucratic reasons.35 Infonavit says it’s a matter for the real estate developer.36 The latter sold the house with a bridge loan, insulating itself from all responsibility.37 Infonavit or whoever offers credit and financial services only loaned the money, and it’s not up to them to solve practical matters. No one walks around here. There is nothing to do. The only people I see park their car behind mine and go into a local convenience store. The solitude that is produced in the space enables me to sit down and write without being bothered by anyone. No one sees me or has seen me. I am, I believe, invisible amid fences and private drives, which are themselves in the middle of vacant lots and large

On Affordable Housing   259

expanses of land. I hear the rustling of the leaves in the trees, a car passing, formless noises. They are scarcely audible, giving me a sensation of emptiness. On My Artistic Approach My practice focuses on developing alternative approaches to urban spaces and territories. Often the professional architectural environment is enmeshed in a rigid political framework (party agendas, urban regulations, and laws) that is strong enough to prevent alternative approaches to the production of city spaces and forestall political demands regarding the fabric of urban space. It is my understanding that art making is a political act of the foremost importance, not because it can transform anything in a practical sense but because it allows others to approach reality through enhanced sensory experiences. My art grows from visiting precarious contexts over decades, traveling around them as if in a situationist dérive and making written and photographic registers of each site. Then I produce objects, ideas, maps, and various other forms of expression reflecting my experience in the field. The art I produced over the last two decades tells the story of territories as they are affected by a development model that seeks economic growth at the cost of people’s subjective experience and has spread precarity across Mexico. Each art piece is conceived as a note, a marker, or a comment on current or past events; they are fragments of the larger context I am trying to grasp. They are shaped by everyday dynamics and made with the materials at hand. In countless visits to the large housing complexes on the outskirts of Mexico’s main cities, I have sensed an ambiguity between the obsessive order and the anomic void. From this perception of ambiguity, I have elaborated a range of visual exercises, where I seek to reveal the absence of law in everyday life within these urban environments. Auschwitz-Huehuetoca (2012) is a piece that arose from the appraisal of Google Earth satellite images, where the obsessive repetition of identical houses is shown as an automated production system, in which people are conceived of as sheer parts of a productive engine without considering their humanity. I compared these images with aerial photographs of concentration camps; terrifyingly, urban design configurations turn out to be very similar. The photographic montage of a satellite view of a housing complex in the Municipality of Huehuetoca, on the outskirts of Mexico City in the state of Hidalgo, together with an aerial photograph of the Auschwitz concentration camp, leave no doubt about their affinities nor about the technical and ideological abstractions guiding those who designed both environments. Auschwitz-Huehuetoca questions the logic of urban organization and its consequences, portraying an obsessively orderly model of urban repetition that, 260   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

FIGURE 9.2. Arturo Ortiz-Struck, Auschwitz-Huehuetoca, 2012. Digital print on cotton. © Arturo Ortiz-Struck. Courtesy of the artist.

paradoxically, produces a lawless space. The work reflects, too, on how technical abstractions of urban and architectural solutions produce environments of the most abject precarity. Within the parameters established to design concentration camps or housing complexes, the architects and urban planners fulfilled their mission with complete efficiency and purported rationality but remained consciously or unconsciously oblivious of the consequences of this presumed efficiency on people’s lives. As I discussed above, “technical abstractions” can define disciplines such as architecture, urban planning, and design. A series of pieces called Espacio abstraído (Abstracted Space, 2010–2021) seeks to further invite reflection on this notion. It consists of paintings developed using different techniques in two or three dimensions, which produce perspectives of imaginary spaces that do not respond to anything more than the technical efficiency of the design. In these exercises, I emulate a design practice distanced from the human, which urban designers of housing complexes carry out on a massive scale. This results in paintings of spatial perspectives that produce optical games. I like to think of them as a metaphor for the mirage of modernity that these urban ensembles produce. From my urban tours and stays in some housing complexes, but also from the archiving of newspaper articles and inspired by Imre Kertész’s description of a concentration camp in his book Fateless,38 I made a work using the social media platform Twitter titled #detrasdelabarda (#behindthewall, 2015). In it, I described the experience of living in environments where the law is impossible to exercise and rights are impossible to access, particularly after the occurrence On Affordable Housing   261

FIGURE 9.3. Arturo Ortiz-Struck, Espacio abstraído (Abstracted Space), 2010. Digital print. © Arturo Ortiz-Struck. Courtesy of the artist.

of specific crimes. The sequence of posts conveys the accounts shared by different individuals after a multiple murder that occurred in the space between two sets of houses, in what I previously called an interstice.39 After doing interviews and talking to people, I discovered that many inhabitants of both sets of houses saw, heard, and realized what happened in real time, but they decided to keep silent. The whole event was imbued with ambiguity: journalistic reports spoke about the murder of a single man, but the statements of witnesses suggest that three people were murdered, two women and a man. In essence, it is a piece that reflects that everyone realized what happened but nobody said anything; that the newspapers reported badly on the event; and that nobody knows if there were criminal files or judicial investigations, or if those responsible were arrested and if justice was done. The only thing that is known is that a crime happened in a specific space and that the police and the forensic office arrived, collected the bodies, and left. This experience led me to do an additional methodical search on Google Earth to locate how many housing complexes presented this kind of urban disconnection. As a result I found that thousands of urban voids were produced by the mass development of housing complexes. The piece Intersticios (Interstices, 2015–2016) is a video displaying a collection of aerial photographs precisely of those voids and often portraying housing complexes as islands in the middle of nowhere. The video makes the similarities between these urban configurations immediately perceptible and, again, reminiscent of the machinery of mass destruction of human lives. This is a system oriented toward erasing 262   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

both the political paralysis and economic and legal vulnerability it produces and the ways in which it works against the very existence of a sense of public participation and visibility. The artworks can be read independently of one another, but taken together, they reveal that the mass-scale production of social housing continues to serve the interests of financial institutions while reproducing the social aspiration toward private property ownership, despite the precariousness it generates. In my practice, I ask how people can exercise their rights effectively in these contexts. What conception of the human underpins this negation of access to a public realm? What will happen with the spatial and social voids produced by an urban model that negates access to public spaces for some of the most precarious sectors of the population? If art in itself won’t provide the answers, it can make perceptible how housing discourses shape the experience of everyday life and the destinies of urban spaces for many generations to come. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

A period that corresponds to the presidencies of Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón, and Enrique Peña Nieto. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). Slavoj Žižek, “SOS Violence,” in Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (New York: Picador, 2008), 9–39. Jocelyn Sims and Jessie Romero, “Latin American Debt Crisis of the 1980s,” Federal Reserve History, November 22, 2013, https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays /latin-american-debt-crisis. Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, Juan Carlos Rivas Valdivia, and Jesús Santamaría, Mexico: Economic Growth, Exports and Industrial Performance after NAFTA (Mexico City: United Nations and CEPAL, 2005), 10. John Williamson, The Washington Consensus as Policy Prescription for Development (Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2004), 1–22; Mo­reno-Brid, Rivas Valdivia, and Santamaría, Mexico: Economic Growth Exports and Industrial Performance after NAFTA, 12. Affordable housing is aimed at sectors of the middle class if we take the socioeconomic levels of the Asociación Mexicana de Agencias de Inteligencia de Mercado y Opinión Pública (AMAI, or Mexican Association of Market Intelligence and Public Opinion) into consideration. These levels can be contrasted with the Encuesta Nacional de Ingreso y Gasto de los Hogares 2018 (ENIGH, or National Survey of Household Income and Expenses), carried out by INEGI. The socioeconomic levels of C, C−, and D+ correspond to the market for affordable housing. These socioeconomic segments coincide with the seventh, eighth, and ninth deciles, that is, the three most favored after the tenth. Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, Encuesta Nacional de Ingreso y Gasto de los Hogares 2018 (Mexico City: INEGI, 2016), https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/enigh/nc/2018/. Guillermo Olivera Lozano, “La reforma al artículo 27 y la incorporación de las tierras ejidales al mercado legal de suelo urbano en México,” Scripta nova 194, no. 33 (2005), http://www .ub.es/geocrit/sn/sn-194-33.htm.

On Affordable Housing   263

9. Decree by which Article 115 of the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico was reformed, Diario Oficial de la Federación (Mexico City: Secretaría de Gobernación), February 3, 1983; Decree by which Article 115 of the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico was declared reformed and appended, Diario Oficial de la Federación (Mexico City: Secretaría de Gobernación), December 23, 1999. 10. Javier Pérez Torres and Ignacio González Hernández, La descentralización fiscal en México (Santiago de Chile: United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 1998). 11. Instituto del Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores (Infonavit), Informe anual de actividades 2002 (Mexico City: Infonavit, 2003). 12. Suzzete Alcántara and Horacio Jiménez, “Hay más de 100 mil viviendas abandonadas: Infonavit,” El Universal (Mexico City), November 22, 2016. 13. Roberto González Amador, “En el abandono, 5 millones de viviendas en el país: Hacienda,” La Jornada (Mexico City), January 17, 2014. 14. Banco de México, “Circular 21/2009: Disposiciones de carácter general que establecen la metodología de cálculo, fórmula, componentes y supuestos del Costo Anual Total (CAT),” Diario Oficial de la Federación, September 4, 2009, 87–93. 15. Enrique Méndez, “Venden a extranjeros cartera vencida a 5 y 10% de su valor,” La Jornada (Mexico City), January 7, 2017; “Infonavit: Despojo y sospechas,” La Jornada (Mexico City), January 7, 2011. 16. “Tabulado de Vivienda, hoja 17: Estimadores de las viviendas particulares habitadas propias y su distribución porcentual según forma de adquisición por entidad federativa y número de cuartos,” in Encuesta Intercensal 2015 (Mexico City: INEGI, 2015). 17. This is my calculation, based on “Tabulado de Vivienda, hoja 18: Estimadores de las viviendas particulares habitadas propias compradas, mandadas a construir o construidas por la dueña(o) y su distribución porcentual según la condición de financiamiento para la adquisición o construcción por entidad federativa,” in Encuesta Intercensal 2015. 18. Alicia Ziccardi Contigliani, Cómo viven los mexicanos: Análisis regional de las condiciones de habitabilidad de la vivienda (Mexico City: UNAM–Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, 2015), 68. 19. Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, Sexto Informe de Gobierno: Anexo Estadístico (Mexico City: Gobierno de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Presidencia de la República, 2012), 34. 20. Infonavit alone assigned 2,114,596 loans for new houses. Enrique Peña Nieto, Sexto Informe de Gobierno (Mexico City: Gobierno de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, Presidencia de la República, 2018), 281. 21. Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, Encuesta Nacional de los Hogares 2018 (Mexico City: INEGI, 2016), https://www.inegi.org.mx/temas/estructura/. 22. The percentage is calculated on the basis of a 2020 census carried out by INEGI, which recorded a population of 126,014,024 in Mexico. Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, En México somos 126,014,024 habitantes: Censo de población y vivienda 2020, comunicado de prensa num. 24/21, January 25, 2021, https://www.inegi.org.mx /contenidos/saladeprensa/boletines/2021/EstSociodemo/ResultCenso2020_Nal.pdf. 23. Banco de México, Indicadores básicos de créditos a la vivienda: Datos a diciembre de 2015 (Mexico City: Banco de México, 2016), 5. 24. UN-Hábitat, Reporte nacional de movilidad urbana en México 2014–2015 (Mexico City: Oficina de Coordinación Nacional del Programa en México, Grupo Mexicano de Parlamentarios para el Hábitat, 2016), 20. 25. Ana Langner, “22% de los jóvenes en México son ‘ninis’: OCDE,” El Economista (Mexico City), October 5, 2016.

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26. Žižek, Violence, 13. 27. The different press releases put out by Infonavit evince a triumphalist discourse that systematically conveys the success of this housing strategy. Take, for example, the title of the report “Infonavit rebasa proyección 2017: Otorgó 533 mil créditos” (Infonavit surpasses 2017 projection: It granted 533,000 credits), Excélsior, January 11, 2018, https://www.excelsior. com.mx/nacional/2018/01/11/1212744. 28. Comisión Nacional de Vivienda, Código de edificación de vivienda 2010 (Mexico City: Comisión Nacional de Vivienda, 2011), 93. 29. Arturo Ortiz-Struck, “Huecos de impunidad,” Nexos 449 (May 2015): 86–87; paraphrased from the original source. 30. Giorgio Agamben, Lo que queda de Auschwitz: El archivo y el testigo, Homo Sacer III, trans. Antonio Gimeno Cuspinera (Valencia, Spain: Pre-Textos, 2009), 48. 31. Georges Perec, “The Street,” in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, ed. and trans. John Sturrock (New York: Penguin, 1997), 46–56. 32. “Balean a ciclista en Zumpango,” El Universal (Mexico City), January 20, 2016. 33. “Encuentran un cadáver con desgarres en el cuerpo en Chicoloapan,” Reporteros en Movimiento (Mexico City), November 9, 2016. 34. “Asesinan a familia en Tecámac, entre ellos un bebé,” Excélsior (Mexico City), November 25, 2016. 35. Various news reports indicate that some municipalities will not receive affordable housing developments for bureaucratic reasons. For a recent example, see Viviana Estrella, “Desa­ rrolladores en Querétaro podrían ser sancionados: Solamente 122 fraccionamientos están entregados, de un total de 387,” El Economista (Mexico City), June 26, 2017. 36. Various news reports indicate that Infonavit absolves itself of responsibility for homeowners’ complaints. For example, see “Infonavit se deslinda de casas en zona de riesgo,” El Sol de San Juan del Río (San Juan del Río), August 20, 2017. 37. Various news reports indicate how real estate developers absolve themselves of responsibility for problems subsequent to the delivery of the home. For example, see Miguel Balderas, “Denuncian deficiencias en casas y servicios en Colmas de la Piedad,” Noticias (Querétaro), May 10, 2016. 38. Imre Kertész, Fateless, trans. Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992), 105–107. 39. The work can be accessed here: @arturortiz.

On Affordable Housing   265

DOSSIER H

Brigada Tlayacapan Gabriela Carrillo

In 2017, two major earthquakes (measuring 8.2 and 7.1 on the Richter scale) shook Mexico within just ten days. The second, with an unusual epicenter in the state of Puebla, hit just a couple of hours after the annual drill conducted in honor of the 1985 earthquake, thirty-two years before, which had claimed many lives and buildings in Mexico City. This new earthquake, lesser in intensity but greater in duration, didn’t take the city quite so severely by surprise. Still, and unlike the earlier disaster, Mexico City’s neighboring states—Puebla, Mexico State, Morelos, Veracruz, Chiapas, and Oaxaca—suffered serious damage, especially in self-built dwellings and very old houses built using traditional methods. These painful and unexpected events led to the creation of the Brigada Tlayacapan, the aim of which was to help rebuild the town of Tlayacapan, Morelos. The brigade consisted of fifteen students; three construction workers; three advisers from the architecture department at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM); and Reina, a long-standing resident of Tlaya­ capan, with her sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. For more than eight months, we devoted almost all of our weekends to the project, which was supported in one way or another by UNAM’s Department of Architecture, ReconstruirMX, Home Depot, and PienZa Sostenible. The initial motivation to come together was prompted by the sense of being able, as people involved in the construction sector, to carry out our everyday actions on a major scale. Tlayacapan was devastated by the earthquake. The convent, considered a World Heritage Site, was severely damaged, as were the town’s twenty-four chap­els and many homes. The wreckage was not only physical. There was 266  

anguish, uncertainty, and—most of all—anger. All kinds of structures collapsed: adobe, stone, cement block. Some were very old, others quite new. In the midst of this sweeping crisis, we focused our efforts on the listed houses, over eighty in number.1 The people who had been affected didn’t always believe it was important to maintain this historical patrimony. They wondered what they’d done to deserve this “divine punishment.” Their town had been reduced to rubble. The public safety department conducted an initial census, marking damaged buildings with a large red dot; these were the structures designated for demolition, as if the problem at issue were some kind of epidemic. Various families’ homes were marked for demolition, despite the prohibitions imposed by the historic classification of the buildings. As a result, we decided it was crucial to work directly with the families, to hear their concerns, and to understand their many different needs, which the passage of time and changing ways of life have gradually transformed. For example, some had need of a garage; others needed a second story to accommodate another offshoot of the many families that generally inhabit a single property. Or, quite simply, they needed to feel safe in their own homes. We carried out straightforward but significant interventions in over twenty residences: installing electricity; dismantling high-risk structures; removing plaster; setting up hydraulic installations, sanitary services, and drainage systems; and building roofs out of tile and wood, as well as temporary structures that would serve as interim housing. At the same time, we spent hours listening to the victims, asking them how they wanted to live or how they used to live before the disaster, what their everyday lives were like, and what they lacked. In our tiny way (but always hoping it would be significant), we tried to support them throughout the long and painful reconstruction process, as well as learn from their local knowledge. This promised to be a slow and necessarily careful form of reconstruction, capable of acknowledging the place itself, its cultural roots, and its present. We aimed to respond to what was still standing. During this period, we wandered through Tlayacapan many times and for many hours, traversing public and private spaces. This was how we ended up sharing the most intimate experiences of families whose homes had been damaged. Working with them, we tried respectfully to observe the local imaginary and forge a space of recognition in the hope of understanding how communities live, how they interact with one another, and what kinds of ghosts haunt them—their cultural legacy having been declared an “asset” by the government and international organizations. In the process, we confronted a place where political parties, poorly conceived economics, and a certain idea of “modernity” have caused local memory to deteriorate. Yet after September 19, the day of Brigada Tlayacapan   267

the earthquake, we had the opportunity to ask ourselves how we could become allies and collaborators, working together to arrest a gradual decline that the natural disaster had only made more obvious. As months passed, human relationships grew closer; each family’s project represented an opportunity for the students to confront the real-life practices of architectural work. Every student “adopted” a family and worked with them directly on a reconstruction project that envisioned all the possibilities and spaces the family could hope to have. Money wasn’t important; neither was reality. We developed ideal visions of domestic living through discussion of how the house should be inhabited, where light should come in, how the house should interact with the space around it—with the tree, say, that had been growing beside it for so long. Together, we reconsidered and reflected on myriad architectural questions and the ways in which housing and spatial issues shape communities. During these conversations, we got to know the abandoned river, the mountain called Tlatoani, and the fields. We gathered straw to incorporate into the adobe mixture and consulted local experts (of which there were not many left) on the adobe technique. We also asked lots of questions and sought to share this knowledge with our immediate community. Our projects had two objectives: first, to invite residents to preserve their adobe homes, all distinguished by spatial virtues that a contemporary social dwelling would struggle to replicate, which meant it was essential to reinforce them; and second, to offer our own ways of seeing, conditioned by a concrete-infested metropolis and thus prone to expressing astonishment at the natural local beauty of Tlayacapan. For this reason, we designed lofts in almost all the houses, which would not only grant their inhabitants greater privacy (three or four families often share the same space) but also allow them to look out at the landscape: at the mountains or the sixteenth-century Augustinian ex-convent. We wanted to do away with neglected rooftop terraces and fill them with people and life. Thousands of developers work by selling the government two or three prototypes that they then replicate all over the country. Such prototypes ignore factors such as the individual weather conditions of each place and the irregular arrangement of plots that weren’t laid out in an urban grid but rather divided up according to the number of family members—plots that are remnants of the colonial era. Unlike those developers, we came up with a system that, first and foremost, recognized self-built homes as an everyday practice and a feature of Mexico’s economic reality. We proposed a simple, easy-to-install wooden structure, calculated to withstand earthquakes; reinforcing the existing adobe walls; and avoiding the misuse of heavy concrete structures that only damage 268   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

the system in the end. The straightforward wooden graft would simultaneously bolster what was already there and allow residents to build a habitable roof area. In Tlayacapan, the river in which people used to swim and socialize is now a garbage dump. It has become a forgotten site, rife with vandalism and drug addiction. The Brigada decided to recover a miniscule fragment of this space in the heart of the main square by cleaning up, moving earth, and laying sewage pipes. We also reconnected it to the main square, so that the community could once again inhabit and enjoy it. In the plaza, we constructed a temporary pavilion, endorsed and partially supported by UNAM with a donation of 720 adobe bricks. The decision to build a pavilion sought to reengage the collective memory of a town that had let go of its traditional relationships to public and natural spaces. The construction system for the pavilion was a hybrid structure made of steel, adobe, and wood, and this structure was used as the stage for one of the performances in Tlayacapan’s annual festival, called El Moretón (The Bruise). With the aid of a mobile Ecocinema screen, the pavilion was also used to project the documentary El patio de mi casa (No Place Like Home), directed by Carlos Hagerman, as well as the short film Abuela Grillo (Grandmother Cricket), by Denis Chapon. Both films address fundamental issues related to traditions, construction systems, and the importance of preserving and returning to the memory of a site. In itself, the pavilion is a manifesto displayed in the main square, a kind of monument-that-isn’t. Perhaps it’s just a reminder that it harbors a space of opportunity, a void space that nevertheless gestures toward a construction system in which people have stopped believing. Beyond restoring or supporting the construction and reconstruction of historical dwellings in Tlayacapan, our Brigada participated in a process of learning about and acknowledging a place along with its own community. We came to understand that reconstruction doesn’t necessarily mean building a wall but opening a window. Two years after the earthquake, of those sixty-four traditional houses damaged in Tlayacapan, 40 percent were demolished by their inhabitants in order to build new concrete-block houses; another 40 percent were “renewed,” reducing the height of their walls and replacing the tile-and-wood system with concrete slabs and rebar structures; and the final 20 percent haven’t had the money or support to repair the damage to their homes. No house was built according to the system our brigade had proposed. The local master builders wouldn’t guarantee the “safety” of the system, despite the fact that it was supported by engineering calculations and that INAH had formally endorsed these kinds of respectful interventions into patrimonial buildings. Reina, the matriarch and owner of Brigada Tlayacapan   269

the house I “adopted,” made a confession to me one time after I returned to see her: “We didn’t build the loft out of wood. We were afraid it wouldn’t hold up. It’s our lives we’re talking about.” Frustrated and tearful, I reminded her of all the time I’d invested in her project without expecting anything in return, the documents bearing my professional credentials that I’d submitted to the town and INAH to receive a building permit, all the calculations done by my structural engineer, my own fondness for her and her entire family. Did we fail? Did we fail? Today, I don’t think so. We probably didn’t have the impact or achieve the results we’d hoped for. And yet, at least for me, we opened a door, developed an important means to acknowledge the reality of our country, the place where we work, the people who inhabit it. I had the opportunity to meet people who are able to offer their time and energy in exchange for nothing and who are in search of a common good—something that our capitalist universe can’t possibly recognize. There is now a special research and degree seminar at UNAM called EstudioRX that focuses on issues of severe vulnerability in Mexico, developing projects that seek to understand these quandaries—working not just to solve crises but also to address their underlying causes. The Brigada’s work has just begun. Note 1.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), founded in 1939, is the federal government organization that guarantees the investigation, conservation, protection, and dissemination of Mexico’s prehistoric, archaeological, anthropological, historical, and paleontological patrimony. Its creation has been essential to the work of preserving our cultural heritage.

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CHAPTER 10

Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda The Poetics of Dust, Dissent, and Migration Erica Segre El polvo se transforma en mosquitos y desencadena contra nosotros la tercera plaga de Egipto.1 —José Emilio Pacheco

The Poetics of Dust and Displacement From Alfonso Reyes’s Visión de Anáhuac (Vision of Anáhuac, 1917) and Palinodia del polvo (Recantation of Dust, 1940), in which the classical topos is transposed and reconfigured in a contemporary landscape, via Mariano Azuela, Juan Rulfo, and Rosario Castellanos, to José Emilio Pacheco and Mario Bellatin; from Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Mariana Yampolsky to Paul Leduc, Helen Escobedo, Felipe Ehrenberg, Gerardo Suter, Francis Alÿs, and Teresa Margolles, the epigrammatic mote (the particle of disintegration and endurance; the cumulus of historical and prehistorical deposits; the grain collating trajectories of foundation, loss, decline, desertification, and pollution) has been correlated to a point of discursive saturation. The conversions effected by drainage, drought, depopulation, violence, and agricultural industrialization provide the backdrops, the intermedial imagery and cognitive mappings, but it is the discursive level that has witnessed an atomization of the notion of exodus and displacement itself. No longer a mnemonic device or rim of invasion, polvo (dust) has become a measure of mobile indeterminacy. It has given way to a recent descriptive phenomenon, an acceptable nomenclature for the migratory 271

subject: as migratory dust particles, these collective shifts seem to neutralize the politicized terrain of the frontera (border) and its identitarian politics in favor of such impersonal material dispersals. This atomization of both the corporeal and the boundaries of material geographies, recognizing the mobilization and diffusion of spatial recognition, may offer an ambivalent revision of the relation between identity and environment. This may be construed as negative in its witnessing and affirmative in its recalibration of the units by which disintegration is made manifest as a strategy of revitalization at its grassroots minutiae. So in dust there is both the imprimatur of invisibility, evidenced violation, and pauperization—and the premise of a volatilized material engagement. In this chapter, I discuss the significations of dust and the recuperation of dust as a point of mobile inception in the context of contemporary art that socializes dust as a spatial and subjective phenomenon of perceptual diffusion and geographical alteration. Dust understood as dirt, sand, or powder; as granular composite or atom of attrition; as organic or synthetic particle; or as unstable biomass, effects in its semantic imprecisions and complexities a diffused materiality through which it is strange to itself; and its presence in the discourse of art prompts a shifting of ground toward “extranjerías situacionales, extravios” (situationist estrangements, goings astray) and “maneras de extrañarse” (ways of alienating/displacing oneself ).2 Polvo/riento and Desengaño (Dust/y and Disillusion) In a suggestive contribution to the debate on aesthetics, violence, and necropolitics in Mexico, David Theo Goldberg conceptualized “remolinos de polvo” (dust whirlwinds) in relation to a perceptual saturation and existential malaise twinned with desengaño (disillusion) as a condition of contemporaneity marked by migratory pathos. For Goldberg, precariousness and the spatiotemporal collapse of the disintegrating dust whirlwind are treated as an ontological disposition in which dwelling in dust and traversing it serve a corrosive intellectual effect. Drawing on the vanitas trope as well as the taxonomy of contamination, of invasive dirt and the corporeal allusions to disease and defilement, or the forensic dispersal of reduced material humano (human matter) and the clouds of invisible particles of industrial dystopia, Goldberg shapes an irradiated subjectivity volatilized and undifferentiated, desdibujada (blurred/erased): The dissolution of contemporary subjectivity represented by microbial molecules of dust is exacerbated in late modernity by the proliferation of geographies of walking: displaced subjects driven to cross great distances to escape wars, the effects of natural disasters so dramatically

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disruptive and of economic difficulties, genocidal threats and catastrophic political expulsions. The people of dust turned into literature and metaphor of the whirlwinds that fall from bombed buildings and of long and dirty paths, climatic storms and fading fields of dreams, found in the filthy lustre of mines plagued by death and foreign-owned factories that exploit their workers, between the projected promises (and premises) of late modernity and its hopes, now profoundly undone and severed.3 The convulsive dissolution and reformulation of this borderless activity homogenizes as well as congregates, but—and this is Goldberg’s disenchanted hermeneutics of residue—discerns imprecisely how atomized identities prompt a dislocated sentience that may nevertheless have the capacity to mobilize contestation. While his perspective is not site or context specific, the universality of des/esperanza (hope/lessness) associated with “el polvo como una condición socio-natural de la vida y sus limitaciones” (dust as a socio-natural condition of life and its limitations)4 affords us a wide spectrum of conjecture in relation to the poetics of dust and migration in Mexican writing and visual culture, and what might be termed the politics of the mote and the beam. You may recall the proverbial exhortation from the Sermon on the Mount (in the New Testament) relating to sight, others, truth, and judgment (for a pictorial interpretation, see Domenico Fetti’s Parable of the Mote and the Beam, ca. 1619). The wording is nuanced by the carpenter’s workshop, the taller where artifacts are made and where specks, splinters, and wood shavings cover surfaces in dust and hang like coarse-grained vapor in the air: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but consider not the beam that is in thine own eye? . . . Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3–5, King James Bible) This reflexive ethical interrogation is transferred with every grain of reflective dust in contemporary works to question the relational collateral damage of installation and land art, the efficacy of discrepant enactments, and the persistent self-pity of the transitory and transient in divulgatory projects—projects that shift the ground momentarily only to see it ossify into palatable discourse. Dust in the eye, an irritation that is difficult to scratch and assuage but is so insupportable as to cause a frantic intervention; an inhaling of suffocating dust that prompts a convulsive reaction; a glass-crunching infiltration of sand on Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda    273

teeth and tongue, ingesting a perforating shard sensing an invisible occupation, a taste of disquiet. In dust-inspired performative works such as Francis Alÿs’s video series Tornado, atoms of dust intermingle with the film grain itself. Shot on location in the agricultural fields of the state of Mexico through a recursive immersive experience, the work was filmed over a decade (from 2000 to 2010) of running after remolinos (whirlwinds) with a hand-held camera with which the artist films in the tug and pull of wind funnels. Overtaken by fluctuating walls of dirt particles, the artist collapses into the dust spiral in a blur of gasping dislocation in an apparent wasteland, tierra de nadie (no-man’s-land). This is the unfurled, drought-blighted landscape jolted from inertia by a violent dirt storm. The torbellino (dust vortex)—internecine and recessive in its spiraling interior, one may hear the abrasive rushing of its vortices—drawing into its funnel web the most iconic tropes of disintegration, coalescence, and evanescence of the narrative of the Mexican Revolution, that “blanca humareda” (white smoke cloud): His smile returned to following the spirals of rifle smoke and the dust cloud of each demolished house and of each collapsing roof. And he thought that he had discovered a symbol of the revolution in those clouds of smoke and in those clouds of dust that were ascending fraternally, embracing, merging and fading into nothing.5 As in Azuela’s skeptical and valedictory work Los de abajo (The Underdogs, 1915), the apprehension of a moving social phenomenon involves an absurdly inflated representational mission that can only guess at a diffuse and opaque margin of visibility, where things are glimpsed in a process of dynamic erasure and subtraction. Such dust-blanketed collectivities need not, as we shall see, foreshadow the futility of struggle in either a pietistic or nihilistic symbolism that disintegrates human exertion in the face of the gravitational pull of systemic force fields. Dust as demolition, forensic dirt, landfill waste, as material and metaphor, grounds notions of the civic and of social justice through the moral interface with the soiled and adulterated in Teresa Margolles’s La promesa (The Promise, 2012). An archly spectacular work of self-ironizing deconstruction and reproduction, it centers on town planning, populist architecture, and criminality in the midst of cross-fires through the communicative displacement of detritus dirt. This absurdly savage salvage project requires the dismantling, transportation, and demolition of a popular dwelling acquired from a semi-evacuated neighborhood of Ciudad Juárez, where ghostliness adheres to abandonment, 274   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

FIGURE 10.1. Francis Alÿs, Tornado, 2000–2010, Milpa Alta, Mexico, 31'14". Still of the recorded live action. © Francis Alÿs. Courtesy of the artist.

desertification, and dereliction.6 Crushed into smithereens rather than infinitesimal dust powder (pulverizado) as originally envisaged by Margolles, due to environmental concerns regarding air quality when the complex biomaterial would be relocated and spread inside the confined space of the art gallery, the defiled house was re-erected by way of improvisation as garbage midden and funereal mound through shifting deposits of dust and dirt. Here hazardous puffball effects threatened to release contaminant spores whenever the undifferentiated matter was put by hand into boundaries and mud-pack structures by volunteers in a climate-controlled “empty lot” of the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City. According to Margolles, in conversation with María Inés Rodríguez, “lo que aparentemente es una abstracción y algo sólido e inmovible se convierte en algo delicado cuando empieza a ser tocado, raspado” (something that is apparently abstract and something solid and immovable becomes something delicate when it begins to be touched, scraped).7 The undifferentiated facilitates rather than impedes identification; the dust literally and figuratively moves. The haptic encounter with this other kind of nontransferable place makes palpable the absenteeism of flight, death, Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda    275

FIGURE 10.2. Teresa Margolles, La promesa (The Promise), exhibition view of the solo show Mundos, MAC Montreal, 2017. © Teresa Margolles. Courtesy of the artist.

and forced migration by voiding the frame of the ruin itself. By comparison, Elsa Medina’s photographic series (in color) on the widespread motif of demolition (derrumbe) finds aesthetic correlations in the reframing of fragments, fractured surfaces, and rubble: demolición as ornamental space through a triptych and reassembly of photogenic parts. One might call it a pacification of dust and residue, the trite conceit made image-conscious and well-lit. Yet earlier photojournalistic work on the brink of the “fosa común” (mass grave) produced by the 1985 earthquake in Mexico or trailing behind migrating bodies (1997–1999) in Tijuana or focalizing “flotsam” of the dispossessed in Ciudad Juárez dirt tracks (2004)8 suggested a mobilization of affective detritus less amenable to the perhaps involuntarily taming installations of the practiced curatorial eye. Whether these works by Alÿs and Margolles should be related through the lens of the less deceived, the abusados desabusados (disabused abused) in Mexican parlance, is a relevant question. Their interplay with the prism of desengaño (vanitas motif ) in the public sphere conveys a degree of ambivalence regarding a more or less affirmative belief in socially engaged art as an environmental as well as political condition of being taken in flagrante. “In flagrante” pertains to being caught in a compromising position, in an interrogative moment of blame or delinquency. By extension, the parable coined 276   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

by Fetti can help situate evaluations of the political effects of the works. It will depend on whether we associate either of these multimedia productions with the problem of the mote and the beam. In the case of the Belgian-born Alÿs (Antwerp, 1959), scruples as to the expansive pretensions of Western land art when transposed to territories of disenfranchised populations and mass interments surface quite unambiguously in his participatory project orchestrated in Peru’s coastal desert in the aftermath of the fall of Alberto Fujimori’s dictatorship (1990–2000) and while the country was still in a state of civil conflict, internal occupation, and militarization of the highlands. Before discussing Alÿs’s discrepant humor, one would do well to attend to the performances and installations of the peripatetic British artist Andy Goldsworthy, doyen of land art that involved what he dubbed “dust throws.” Both on-site (locations in Australia [Rain Shadow, 1991] and California [Breath of Earth, 1994] as well as onstage in Scotland [Ballet Atlantique, 1995]), some of these performative uses of dust were executed by him alone, while others were collective endeavors requiring volunteers. Throwing handfuls of dust collected from the deposits underfoot, Goldsworthy launched himself upward, letting the dust dispersal momentarily cast a shadow below in full sunlight: the performance was photographed cleanly by collaborators so that the “throw” appears as a visible arrested motion, with dust suspended in midair.9 The sublimation of the dust cloud was also rendered as a coordinated and choreographed collective “throw away” act, the joyous abandon of which requires a well-timed leap in a semicircle by motivated volunteers. As onlookers, we do not witness what happens when the flung sand or dust falls back down, less like a theatrical curtain call and more like a messy saturation of nostrils, eyes, and visual field. Nor can we testify as to when the inevitable diffusion of dust radiates randomly, a chance act that is misdirected with unintended effects of collateral damage or environmental contagion. This kind of telluric dramaturgy, however conceptually pleasing as a lyrical conceit in which the finish of the photographic image and its perspective are seldom endangered, this precariousness as part of an organic contingency rather than a human emergency is deliberately interjected by the work of Alÿs. His attempt with a cast of five hundred extras to “deromanticize land art” needs to be taken with a pinch of its own displaced dust dune: Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains), a collaboration with Cuauhtémoc Medina and Rafael Ortega, conceived in 2000 and executed two years later, is a documented mass performance in which a huge sand dune on the outskirts of Lima was intended to shift location. Ironically, Alÿs sought to actualize the disproportionate pointlessness of this monumental folly, reminiscent of the more spectacular Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda    277

FIGURE 10.3. Francis Alÿs, Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains), 2002, Lima, Peru. Documentation of live action developed in collaboration with Cuauhtémoc Medina and Rafael Ortega. © Francis Alÿs. Courtesy of the artist.

dimension of land art. We can also view this mass mobilization of dust as the humorous offshoot of grandiose relational schemes.10 The principle behind the impressive effort to move a sand dune by means of shoveling manpower was “Maximum effort. Minimal result.” While the dune was made to move by several inches during the course of that day, the aphoristic ending for this redeployment of dust was, in Alÿs’s estimation, deflationary: “The most apparently minimal change was effected, and only by means of the most massive of collective efforts.” Although the action had been documented in photographs and video, according to the artist, “[It] was completely transitory. The next day, no one could recognize that the huge sand dune had been moved.”11 Humorously, some images of the action were printed and circulated as microcosmical postcards (perhaps in keeping with the smallness of dust particles). In the crisis-ridden 1980s, Felipe Ehrenberg’s illustration for Augusto Monterroso’s mock fable “La fe y las montañas” (“Faith and the Mountains”) had visualized simulated postcards of mountain ranges, overlapping and infringing the boundaries of their respective cross-sections and framing views, with trail 278   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

marks pointing to the changing cartography effected by acts of willful faith.12 In Monterroso’s advisory rereading, mass mobilization of unswerving belief creates, paradoxically, inexpedient and revisionist mappings that end up making “O ye of little faith” seem a more sustainable recommendation: But when Faith began to spread and people found the idea of moving mountains amusing, the latter could not stay put, and each time it became more difficult to find them in the place in which one had left them the night before, something which of course created more problems than it solved. Then the good people decided to abandon Faith and now mountains tend to stay in their place.13 The power to move mountains is in practice an unsettling premise of displacement and change, and the status quo prevails, with mountains as familiar landmarks on the sociopolitical landscape. They do not move after all. Ehrenberg and Monterroso’s recontextualization of La oveja negra y demás fábulas (The Black Sheep and Other Fables), first published in 1969, in the aftermath of the Tlatelolco massacre of protesting students perpetrated by the Mexican government under the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), accrues further levels of parodic inversion relating to Cold War ideologies. Ehrenberg went on during the inception of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to query through bilocated on-site installations (Tercera llamada [Final Call], 1994)14 the blurring of border binaries when the arc of travel seemed one-directional, given instead that dust carries a dirty secret, generated by economic dustbowls inbound: “No ven cada gigantesco grano que se acumula en las dunas que crecen en aquella tierra de nadie (EUA), fronteriza sólo a sus propios costados, pues ya las fronteras están marcando sus propias fronteras.”15 Alÿs approaches the postmillennium task with comparable self-deprecating irony and anti-solemnity (he had, after all, participated in the transnational in InSite 1997, which aimed to “discover and renew the public spaces of the Tijuana/San Diego region”) but treats dust as if it was imbricated in the very language of skepticism, with its unstable aggregations composing the impoverished mettle of art. In public performances such as Zapatos magnéticos (Magnetic Shoes, 1994), Alÿs had thematized the phenomenon of walking, or caminatas, as pure impression and accretion through a displacement that articulated identity as perpetual slippage but also as deferral. This is a walkabout conceptualized as an averting of will, a salutary reactivating of dust motes: “Mientras continúe caminando, no elijo, no pierdo, no hago, no conozco, no caigo, no pinto, no escondo, no engaño, mientras continúe caminando, no repetiré, no recordaré.”16 Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda    279

It seems, perhaps, that in Alÿs’s When Faith Moves Mountains, the illegible legacy of moving dust is more durable than the thing that produced its incidence: the work’s dispersal, like a reciprocation of motes in the eye producing new sightlines, radiating and scattering beyond the radius of its inception and formation. The strategy of cross-contamination in Margolles, the disintegration effected in transit from the border to the capital, might be seen as a rather more earnest riposte to art’s reconversion of experiential material beyond site specificity. In her case, this occurs through a quite solemn and ritualistic manipulation of that exclusionary substance, an accretion of dirt. This “entropic and formless material” is moved, impressed, and reshaped through a contemplative concentration and physical intervention that is tantamount to acts of critical self-contamination.17 Dust Cloud and the “Pulverulent” The opening of Juan Rulfo’s short story “El hombre” (“The Man”) situates the passage of a man obliquely through the track left by a body in the sand. Anticipatory signs of his ignominy, left by a misshapen foot, plot traces back to his murderous wake and to other, unrecognizable human remains: “Los pies del hombre se hundieron en la arena, dejando una huella sin forma, como si fuera la pezuña de algún animal.”18 Rather than the proverbial feet of clay, the silent culpability of dust and its cautionary tales seems to prevail in Rulfo’s exhaustive correlation of terrains of dust and human agency. In his “película ANTI” (ANTI-film), as he termed La fórmula secreta (The Secret Formula, 1964), shot by the experimental director Rubén Gámez in the purgatorial “badlands” near Ozumba, Mexico State, “tierra arisca” (hostile ground) and dessicated peasantry coalesce physically in a transposition of dust on skin.19 The phenomenon of dust spirals (and dry lightning) in barren fields provides the mutable form that disintegrates structural divisions between environment and subjective dwelling: Cola de relámpago, remolino de muertos, Con el vuelo que llevan, poco les durará el esfuerzo. Tal vez acaben deshechos en espuma o se los trague este aire lleno de cenizas, Y hasta pueden perderse . . . Al fin y al cabo ya son puro escombro.20

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The detritus of such corrosive dispersal offers a disturbed poeticization of poverty as material residue. The premise of Gámez’s censored film is that of an intravenous addiction to Coca-Cola, a transfusion in the campesino (peasant) body that forges both contagion and dependence, visualizing crawling bodies of the constrained and the trodden underfoot. The cinematography charts their inescapable inertia, their ritual blinding, counterpointed by the mobilized particles of their landless purchase revolving through and beyond them.21 In Rosario Castellanos’s early poem “Trayectoria del polvo” (“Trajectory of Dust,” 1948), personification of dust as a domain of being rather than sight is embedded in a notion of cosmic insignificance and aimless wandering. Dirt and defilement grow as her poetry progresses toward acerbic prose. In the imagery of the desert and its shifting sands (“estelas en el polvo sepultadas” [stelae buried in dust]),22 of invisible minutiae of domestic life lived under the sign of dust and in a battle against dirt (“que el polvo no se esconda en los rincones” [let not dust hide in corners]),23 we find an evocation of elsewhere transported by the redolence of dust. The amorphous territory of the Empty Quarter is frequently reprised in her poems, but with the note falling on vagrancy rather than nomadism; on errancy rather than isolationism; on the inherently exilic condition rather than the merely ostracized beyond the gates of the literary citadel (see “Monólogo de la extranjera” [Monologue of the stranger], “Agonía fuera del muro” [Agony outside the walls]). There, beyond the metaphysical high ground, desertification and personal disintegration meet in a cultural practice, ninguneo,24 a process that ushers in “la tierra de en medio” (the middle ground, the title of her 1972 collection) where, as in a medieval mappa mundi, the creatures of the dust are designated: the compromised, the extranjerizados (alienated), diagnosed fuereños (foreigners) now committed to the practice of “afuerando” (outsidering) for a living. Dust is what produces the migratory severance, the zones of drought corralling a harvest of loss and dissolution. Rulfo’s receding silhouettes and Castellanos’s rootless vencidos (the defeated) consolidate the trajectory of dust across the border and its deserts. The tragic sublimity of those anointed by the dust of war and the mugre (filth) of poverty emerges from the testimonies of migrating communities during the still unfurling civil war. From 1916 may be traced the geological formation of a lapidary view of Mexican refugees pursuing an espejismo (illusion)—both those turned to dust by looking back and those turned to dust by being regarded as a microbial pestilence from across the border: Te estrujaba el corazón ver aquella multitud desatinada y delirante ir rumbo al sueño del puente, moviéndose como un gran animal torpe, por

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su tamaño, por su pesantez. Caravanas de espectros escuálidos, vestidos con harapos, que marchaban sonámbulos tras de una ilusión pertinaz de dicha, de salvación, de vida. Se les apelotinaba en grupos compactos, como de reses, arriados hacia las oficinas de migración, donde los gringos los veían como apestados. Así, precisamente, nos llamaban en los periódicos. Éramos la degradación, la descomposición, la pudridera, la gusanera.25 When we finally turn to Alfonso Reyes, master of the classical topos in all its declensions, we discover how the “polvareda,” “el desquite del tiempo contra el mundo de las formas” (the vengeance of time against the world of forms), as he calls it in “Tolvanera” (“Dust Storm,” 1939), has turned the mutability of dust into something akin to resistance, resistance to the symbolic impetus behind its perennial evocation.26 In this poem, the ambience of volatilized dust and “disgregación de montes” (disintegration of mountains) serves to unsheathe the molecular impersonality of the physical world, an invisibility that is taken to be a more tenacious presence. As a mordant critic of mexicanadas and other essentialisms in public life and art, in Reyes’s philosophical meditation Pali­ nodia del polvo, he conjures a dystopian vision of the nation. The pollution perpetrated by the modernizing one-party system is euphemistically invoked as a falling away from the famed transparency of the air in the altiplano (high plateau), as the once sublime Valley of Mexico, now a “tromba de basura” (cyclone of rubbish), fades into opacity and incoherence, and the soil permeates the air as dirt whirlwinds: “Corren sobre él como fuegos fatuos los remolinillos de tierra” (Over it run the whirlwinds of earth like will-o’-the-wisps).27 The airborne contaminants become this vindictive dust, exacting a heavy price and tribute for human folly and the shipwreck of empire: Mordemos con asco las arenillas. Y el polvo se agarra en la garganta . . . quiere asfixiarnos y quiere estrangularnos. Subterráneos alaridos llegan solapados en la polvareda. . . . Llegan descargas invisibles, ataque artero y sin defensa; lenta dinamita microbiana; átomos en sublevación y en despecho contra toda forma organizada. . . . Último estado de la materia . . . se reduce primero a la estatuaria mineral, para estallar finalmente en esta disgregación diminuta de todo lo que existe. Microscopía de las cosas, camino de la nada; aniquilamiento sin gloria; desmoronamiento de inercias, “entropía”; venganza y venganza del polvo, lo más bajo del mundo.28

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This passage is a virtuosic invocation of dust’s power of dissemination and seemingly conforms to the compendium of vanitas motifs. Yet it becomes clear as we read on how the modern theory of relativity has prompted a creative rethinking in relation to atomization. The author rescaled to an insect in a future of multiple derrumbes (collapses/landslides), prospecting in the residues of human defilement, the dust “cansado de la planta humana, que urbaniza por donde pasa, apretando el polvo contra el suelo” (tired of the human footprint that urbanizes wherever its passes, pressing dust against the ground), will not simply fulfill the biblical catastrophe of dust and insects or see consumerism “cuidadosamente envuelto en polvo” (carefully enveloped in dust).29 Polvo is an unstable amalgam and, according to Reyes, not so much constitutive as capable of recuperation without restoration. The discovery of the liberating indeterminacy and yet tenacity of dust is not a moment of bitter desengaño (disenchantment) but a release afforded by the scientific infraction of customary associations: “que toda materia produce contaminación pulverulenta, que todo se liga por suciedad” (that all matter produces pulverulent contamination, that everything is bound by dirt).30 From the witness of minute particles stems the conjecture of the atomic nature of reality, inferred and invisible to the naked eye. For Reyes, dust is the catalyst for the intuitive referencing of the material world. The divisibility of dust performs a creative epiphany for physics and bestows “su aptitud para los sistemas dispersos o coloidales y su disposición para la catálisis” (its aptitude for dispersive or colloidal systems and its disposition for catalysis). Contemporary physics has shown the granular structure of space and the myriad variable microscopic, molecular, and subatomic interactions that prompt the emergence of temporal phenomena. The theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has reclaimed the pre-Socratic naturalism of Democritus’s “endless dance of atoms,”31 eulogized by the classicist in Reyes as “Demócrito, el captador de arenas” (Democritus, detector of sands) but also surely referenced in his exultant “todo ese enjambre de polvillo que llena el aire” (all of that swarming of dust particles that fills the air).32 When returning to the original curiosity of this chapter about the applicability of dust to migratory subjects, we might indeed contend that in dust there is both the imprimatur of invisibility, evidenced violation, and pauperization, and the premise of a volatilized material engagement that perhaps only exists for us through the interaction with a discrepancy that is not our own. “Lo pulverulento” may hold the very modality of interaction that Cristina Rivera Garza has described as “prácticas de la desapropiación” (practices of disappropriation) in relation to necroescrituras (necrowritings) and the “necropsia en vivo” (live necropsy)33 of posttestimonial artists such as Margolles. Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda    283

Polvo, Disapproprietorial Practices, and the Legacy of “Relingos” The conjoining of “proprietorial” and “to disappropriate” effects a verbal infelicity that turns the neologism into that unpalatable grit from which something may accrue, not unlike Margolles’s escombros (debris) from her peripatetic Frontera (Border) project (Ciudad Juárez, Kassel, Bolzano, 2010–2011). This project may not be either readily assimilated or resymbolized without a perceptual contortion in which sentience, or sense, is momentarily disturbed.34 The monumentality of a compressed cube of site-specific detritus inscribed “1 tonelada de escombro de varilla, Calle Mariscal, Ciudad Juárez, 2010” (1 ton of concrete and steel debris) surely operates less like a visual synonym and more like an interrogation of the proprietorial. Black box–like, its stackable qualities are correlated with something inchoate, not found in the actual but forcing us to imagine, rather than look to the other side, of any symptomatic Muro baleado (Wall with Bullet Holes; Culiacán, 2009).35 “Disapproprietorial” is as unnatural on the palate as any airborne contaminant, but it does seem to expose the problem of extracting, exporting, and redesignating estranged materials in art, including through verbalization and exegesis, an extractive displacement in effect that may seek to disperse habits of ownership by a deferral of intention and an “outsourcing” of experience to transnational locales of multiple contact and transference. Margolles was surely playing dangerously with the spatial instability we have associated with dust when she coordinated performances of Camiseta (T-Shirt) in the streets of Ciudad Juárez, Kassel, and Bolzano. These involved a volunteer walking in public as a moral billboard with the protest slogan in white on a black T-shirt: “Quanto può sopportare una città?” (How much can a city endure?). Is this, then, a salutary form of universality through self-implication, or an activism that regards the mass-mediatic branding, “New York, Tokyo, Paris, London . . . ,” with a sardonic sense of being willingly appropriated and misappropriated through such mobilization of the beam-and-mote parable we have discussed? With this question in mind, it is an interesting dislocation to look at gestures of artistic emancipation and new foundation in the Mexican context that sought both to disrupt narratives of conceptual symbolism and to seek out, like Leonardo, “crumbling walls to aid his visual fantasies.”36 In José Clemente Orozco’s mural panel Destruction of the Old Order (1926), in the ex-convent of San Ildefonso in the colonial center of Mexico City, there is a dominant, recessive mound of rubble, blocking in the horizon and higher registers of the composition in a material, iconoclastic fall of frames of reference. The dominant barefoot campesino (peasant) figures seen from behind create an afterimage of a detail from Giotto’s Annunciation of the Shepherds (ca. 1306). This fresco in the Arena Chapel in Padua coins the device of figures 284   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

reversed, overlooked in order to stimulate a psychological production of spatial inference. Thus there appears to be a carrying over of the “invisible veil” effect that may rationalize contiguities, making the dissimilar readable. The medley of architectural debris in Orozco’s postrevolutionary meditation on new functions of the broken, perhaps substituting the formulas of classical art, may usher in an attempt to leap over a divide to capture the quotient of dust that presages a formless apprehension of being there. To be present at the advent as well as at the end marks a basic transitoriness more than a transition. The destruction of forms rendered as a faceted reshaping of chaotic matter renders pictorially an anxiety about reconstituting the building blocks of vernacular contemporaneity, the tension between the physiognomic particular and universal modularity. When Alÿs in the early 1990s combined his performance-based Paseos (Walks) with a magnetic dog mounted on wheels to attract the residue from the city streets, he chose to run it concurrently with a collaboration involving rotulistas, sign painters, through which he recuperated the literal reproduction vocation of figurative images in the urban environment.37 By requiring, in an open-ended way, such painters to “replicate” and enlarge his images through an artisanal masificación (mass production), he resorted to figurative communication to limit if not reduce the “actual gap existing between a general public and a more elitist contemporary art scene, without denying or diminishing the eventual contemporaneity of the content.”38 When in 2002 Raúl Zamudio dismissed polemics about authenticity and innovation in the catalogue that accompanied Axis Mexico: Common Objects and Cosmopolitan Actions (San Diego Museum of Art), as evincing an internal hegemony as much as an international position that was prescriptive and essentialist, his concluding remarks about “post-identity” took globalization to be a matter of artistic exchange predicated on Mexico’s “unique geo-cultural nexus.” In this exhibition, which also featured Alÿs’s anti-authoritarian video installation Cuentos patrióticos (Patriotic Tales, 1997), the emphasis falls on the free movement of people, goods, ideas, and art practices as a vision of productive (and reproductive) interactions: Contemporary Mexican art evinces an overall de-centered quality articulated from numerous geographical loci via a multi-temporal web of connections that engenders and is engendered by flux, circulation, and movement.39 Yet Alÿs’s provocative parable of sheep being herded round a central point in the metropolitan space for rallies and other populist choreographed spectacles seemed to look both backward and forward. It paid tribute to the Situationist Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda    285

International’s recharting of power relations imbricated in official geography through in situ exposés, but it also afforded an ironic perspective on contemporary “circulation and movement.” It is as if that assertive mobility performed as a supplementary effect by artworks was being exposed as a “puro cuento” (sheer fiction) of self-deluding art articulated as nothing more than mere interference in the Zócalo (main square, or Plaza de la Constitución), the very symbolic space of pro-independence rituals and political marches. Unwittingly co-opted or tacitly acquiescent “alternative” art making, with its emphasis on Yo y mi circunstancia: Movilidad en el arte contemporáneo mexicano (1999–2000) and Creación en movimiento (Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, 1998), revealing period titles of collective exhibitions, serves rather to forge an internal circuit through Ortega y Gasset. His phenomenology of subjective reference (“Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia” [I am myself and my circumstance]) creates an introspective and individualistic turn rather than serving to rethread the social fabric, or tejido social. Instead of the provocative anomalies of bodies in flux or actions of desidentificación (de-identification), what materializes through such interventions or interpositions is an inarticulate “exterioridad” (exteriority). According to the curator Cuauhtémoc Medina’s polemic of 1995, this involved ill-judged appropriations of the supposed commonplaces of the collective or everyday cultures “de un hablante que se encuentra extrañado de su propia lengua, tanto o más que de los parlamentos que oye a su alrededor” (of a speaker who finds himself estranged from his own language as much if not more than from the discourse he hears around him).40 This ushering in of dissent “by numbers,” where we color in predesignated contours, was subjected to further criticism when art production’s aesthetic of dislocation in the late 1990s was construed not as maladjustment but as an actual adequation to the economic model of the maquiladora system (assembly plants) of border states: The profile of the artist in the 1990s seems to correspond less to that of producer of goods and more to that of supplier of services (organizing workshops, offering lectures, working by commission, etc.). The Mexican artist no longer is engaged in developing works that respond to the immediate needs of his surroundings and by so doing reinforcing a local structure for art making. Now artists work using a format that allows them to respond by giving priority to requests issuing from Austin, Castellón, or São Paulo. Artists consequently operate like “maquiladoras” (border assembly plants), assembling materials and images that derive from realities not their own. . . . The artists execute a displacement of codes that are continually recontextualized and resignified, where 286   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

the interactions with real spaces in the works become fictions and the realization of fictions become spaces of real experiences.41 The transnational competency of art according to this skeptical view would effectively dismantle its apparent presence in situ, disclosing a covert distancing, a remoteness from the habitual populace of the disenfranchised operating on the rim of self-oblivion in frontier deserts; the proletarian neighborhoods in lawless yet central fringes, such as Tepito; or the informal spaces of collective dwelling in cascading peripheries such as Iztapalapa or Iztacalco, and lost vecindades (proletarian neighborhoods), such as Colonia Nezahualcoyotl. All these industrialized zones are subject to environmental catastrophes, corruption, and criminality but also provide resurgent and discrepant spaces for countercultural activities defined by nonart. Yet the poeticization of evanescence as an inherent property of any attachment to material circumstance in art grated on the conscience if not necessarily on the visual consciousness, as many artists aspired to do more than simply “poner su granito de arena” (add their two cents’ worth) in publicized view. Artistic interventions in the fractured terrain left by the earthquake of 1985 had undeniably intensified critical art at the height of neoliberal privatizations. Saúl Villa and Lorena Wolffer crystallized such opposition in a series of giant billboard appropriations known as La belleza está en la calle (Beauty Is in the Streets). This took the form of “spectacular” largescale questions that are as obtrusive in post-2010 Mexico as they were then: “(i) ¿dónde empieza lo público? (ii) ¿quién controla lo público? (iii) esto no es un anuncio, es un espacio público.”42 It is in the equivocal transactions between “espacios tomados” (appropriated spaces) and “espacios sobrantes” (surplus spaces) that the conceptualization of the relingos43 emerges to connect the personification of dust with the operations of creative media and the practices of supervivencia (survival). For the architects José Gabriel Amozurrutia and Willi Rául López: To speak of relingos is to speak of residual spaces, urban remnants that have prevailed without acquiring any planned use. The mystery that the relingo harbors by not having any use may often afford a housing solution for someone who is homeless . . . : for the street hawker, the vagabond, and even for those seeking a rubbish dump. As a consequence, they are spaces with poor visual appeal. The “relingo” is the empty space that has no legal owner: it is a corner of the city in which everything that has no place enters.44

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The notion of peculiarly overlooked alternate spaces, “infrautilizados” (underused), estranged from utilitarian or profitable criteria of planning and development, omitted, neglected, and without determined limits, emerges from the concerns of Carlos González Lobo and his group at UNAM’s Faculty of Architecture. When faced with these incoherent pieces of real estate of often dubious or contested ownership, left behind in the wake of demolitions and new constructions, they redeployed a colonial term for an unused parcel of (contestable) land. The relingo paradigm resonates by conflating architecture and conceptual art, tethering the false vacuum of dust with the radical contestation of property: it echoes with Gordon Matta-Clark’s prospecting of microplots and untenable slivers of land in the mid-1970s to expose the arbitrariness of ownable space and its demarcation.45 For Ana Gilardi, coordinator of a provocative multipart testimonial book, Memoria de un relingo (Memory of a Relingo, 2013), relingo does not hold just squatter or fly-tipping potential, or offer that tangible gap, wasted empty plots, from which to unseat invasive planning and property development where dirt and dust gravitate. ​It may instead refer to an equivocal space of institutional discipline belonging to the national system of penitentiaries, such as the treatment and rehabilitation centers known as the Comunidades Especializadas de Atención para Adolescentes (Special Communities for the Rehabilitation of Minors) catering to youth “en conflicto con la ley” (in conflict with the law). The photographs rec­ord the grids, the barred windows and reinforced doors, the barbed-wire fencing, the guards, as well as the therapeutic workshops, the amateur exhibitions, and the inmates’ own management of “being seen by others,” making an explicit correlation between this kind of relingo and Marc Augé’s “nonlieux” (non-places).46 In the discursive extrapolations of the book, a distinction is made between hueco and hoyo, between a metaphorical rendition of a hollow and a dark hole, as if a binary could be developed to separate kinds of vacuum, kinds of empty, from gap to crack. Hueco (hollow), on the one hand, is associated with the comforting idea of a concave refuge, which may be filled humanely, and hoyo (hole/pit), on the other, is associated with the horrifying crevasse “de una realidad excluyente” (of a reality that excludes), which cannot avoid the “riesgo de abismarse” (danger of falling into an abyss) run by adolescents when they regain their freedom on the streets.47 But the defective feature of the relingo, this unhabituated habitable yet inhospitable place, is underscored in both instances, providing a trope for an interrogation: Where precisely can this elsewhere be, although it has been delimited in creative practice based on territoriality? When one factors in the crosscurrents of accumulation, dispossession, and debt that

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followed the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, it appears to disintegrate into a missing link, an impossible barely chartable gap. With the openly cosmopolitan sculptor and installation artist Helen Escobedo, we see how an interest in mobilizing spectating in the 1990s coincided with her own residencies abroad. These exploited themes of dystopian borders, intimations of ecological catastrophe, and collective sepulturas at home, where the utilization of actual quarried soil and volcanic ash formed part of the plasticity of plangent materials for Escobedo’s chamber scenes. Two works from the aptly titled Estar y no estar: 15 instalaciones (To Be and Not to Be: 15 Installations) exhibition at the MUCA (2000) demonstrated the prevalence of posthumous architectures. In El cuarto hundido (allá por Amecameca) (The Sunken Room [Somewhere Near Amecameca]), the allusion to collapse and burial was enacted by the literal volcanic ash partially enveloping the furnishings of an empty room re-creating the popular dwellings along the evacuation route in the immediate environs of an erupting volcano. The second diorama, of a civic and environmental fall, eschewed poetic ambiguity with fifteen humanoid forms trussed in petates (natural fiber mats traditionally used for the rituals of life and death) lined up in serial mounds covered in earth and dry leaves, turning the vernacular trope of the petate nation of the 1920s into an exhumation of “los petateados” (the killed/shrouded ones), while borrowing the title of José Gorostiza’s monument to valediction: Muerte sin fin—en este valle de lágrimas en donde de aquellos 3 millones de habitantes tan sólo quedan 20 millones de sobrevivientes (Death without End—in This Valley of Tears Where of Those 3 Million Inhabitants Only 20 Million Survivors Remain).48 The presence of dust here is understood in extremis as a final trespass, the ultimate despojo (dispossession); a violation by microbial hordes. When Álvaro Enrigue, in the self-ironizing fiction Hipotermia (Hypothermia, 2005), conjured a characteristic move for nomadic-minded intellectuals freewheeling from residency to residency across multiple frontiers, he deliberately situated the eponymous mudanza (move) to the deep US North during a post-apocalyptic ash fall, reframing the emergency caused by the eruption and ongoing fumaroles of the previously dormant Popocatépetl volcano (from 1994 to major events in 2000 and 2005). There were palpable deposits of ash everywhere, masks to prevent inhaling harmful particles, an unusual chromatic uniformity conjoining fissures in a spectrum of gray. The inorganic and the organic coalesced as new configurations of pollutants carpeted urban districts indiscriminately and, most resonantly for artistic escapees, caused a cataclysmic scenario prompting a remapping of “rutas de evacuación” (evacuation routes). From the smudged window of the narrator’s sensibility maladjusted

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FIGURE 10.4. Miguel Fernández de Castro’s concept book El desplazamiento (The Displacement) (Guadalajara, Mexico: Taller de Ediciones Económicas, 2012), 169. © Miguel Fernández de Castro. Courtesy of the artist.

in bilocation, volcanic ash effects a classic Pompeii reflective trope, as if Pliny the Younger were reborn to commemorate the composition of residues that any writerly act of recollection aggregates: Eran los últimos días de agosto y yo tenía la irritante tendencia a pensar a toda hora en las tormentas de ceniza volcánica que tapizaron de un polvo recio y gris la Ciudad de México durante la última primavera que pasé ahí. En esos días, los de la mudanza del Distrito Federal al Distrito de Columbia, pensaba que las cenizas eran algún tipo de mensaje impeliéndome a partir. Ahora sé que eran más bien admonitorias, pero lo sé mientras escribo, mientras dibujo un panorama limitado y orgánico que nada tiene que ver con el fujo descoyuntado De la realidad. Contar es dibujar con el dedo en la ceniza.49

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This crossing is inflected by a sense of contingency and a tracery of precarious imprints. The further parable of emplacement, of an hijo pródigo (prodigal son) still at large, is corroborated by the ash stain, admonitory or penitential, and this return to the domain of dust motifs is described through the airborne volatilized mountain and an ill-defined interiority. For the Italo-Mexican poet Fabio Morábito in his book Lotes baldíos (Vacant Lots, 1995), living in “una colonia suburbana / una ciudad perdida” (a suburban district / a lost city) proved to be an artistic initiation, a premise not of inauthenticity and adulteration but an afuera (outside) where things are stilled and unfunctional, “donde no sucede nada” (where nothing happens) and “un número de teléfono / se despinta, nadie compra” (a phone number fades, no one buys).50 He evokes a new arcadia, acting as the myopic alter ego of the classical Piedmontese landscapist Eugenio Landesio, who had taught José María Velasco how to Italianize the native grain, sublimating the geography of the Valle de México. Morábito finds “ráfagas de tiempo y poesía” (gusts of time and poetry) in the despised dustlands, a metaphysical lote baldío in which “ser solo botellas rotas / latas rendidas de lluvia” (to be nothing but broken bottles / cans yielding to rain).51 He tempts us with a prelapsarian idea of rubbish, an unstable entirety based on found beauty and disowned things: “Quedémonos un poco / en esta prehistoria / esta tierra de nadie / donde el muro es de todos” (Let’s linger awhile / in this prehistory / in this no-man’s-land / where the wall belongs to all).52 It is from this place where being disowned or dispossessed means being released into an absorbent rather than a porous receptivity, “compacta como un imán / vacía como una esponja” (compact like a magnet / empty like a sponge),53 becoming adherent rather than adhering to place, dogma, property, self. How different the lote baldío (empty lot) appears, as the possibility of a disapproprietorial sensibility, however, when restored to its forensic noir predestination: those void zones captured by the photographer Julián Cardona in his reportage of carnage, disappearances, disjecta, dereliction, and evacuated clothing strewn across the deserts and curfewed streets of the North, from Basurero de ropa de inmigrantes en el desierto de Sonora (Rubbish Pile of Immigrant Clothing in the Sonoran Desert, 2004) to Fosa común (Mass Grave) in Ciudad Juárez (2009).54 A tension may be discerned in the morphology of the desert that serves not only as a traversal plain, with charted and less charted tracks, but also as a meditative outbound gesture in art, a displacement of the topic and the object, or perhaps of relationality itself. There is in addition the idea of urban-​industrial dust as a measure of socialization by congestion, water shortage, environmental degradation, and the consumption of cheap material—and, most pointedly, the domestication of vivencia (living) by an eternity of irresistible, Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda    291

nonbiodegradable plastic. Plastic dust materializes as a synthetic substitute for the telluric clay powders of modernist formalism in art and photography. It provides Daniel Manrique (founder of Tepito Arte Acá and the Centro Cultural de Barrio in Tepito) with unlikely nesting sites for communality, expressed as a paean to be performed in chorus to honor those locales of the unaesthetic, of artlessness and of mutant humanoid fauna that may not be easily recuperated even by the cult of the pseudo-vulgar in contemporary art: Plástico polvo. Salitre de plástico. Espacio de plástico. Espacio desierto, desierto de plástico. Espacio de plástico. Desierto que fue lago. Lago de plástico. Ciudad que fue lago. Ciudad de plástico. Ciudad barrio de barro de plástico. Arrabal ciudad de salitre de plástico: ciudad Nezahualcoyotl. Ciudad desierta con multitudes ausentes sumergidas en sí mismas en su conciencia y voluntad de plástico. . . . Es Neza, somos Neza. . . . Retomando la energía expresiva de la pintura mural . . . y la rebeldía de los años 70 y 80 de los grupos que romperían una vez más con el arte decorativo, superficial, complaciente y comercial. El colectivo Neza Arte Nel se re­afir­ma en su autonegación (Nel: no), no pero sí realiza un mural colectivo tan inmerso como la misma inmensidad de los ajolotes pintados y con la densidad de color como es la densidad del sol que tatema la densidad gris del ambiente.55 Manrique had argued in favor of intimidad (intimacy) rather than privacidad (privacy) when conceiving of the public space of the barrio as asymmetrical yet integral. Resistant to the “mono-funcional” and the barda (fence), it encompassed a spatiality of excess and intrusion that, for Manrique, in a way illuminated his bittersweet tribute to the immanence of plastic dust and its composite proletarian buildings: “vivienda-patio-calle; taller-comercio; vivienda-taller; patio-taller y un poco comercio; calle-comercio y taller” (dwelling-patio-street; workshop-store; dwelling-workshop; patio-workshop and some retail; streetstore and workshop).56 How could the deliberately defaced wall art of Nace el amor en la basura (Love Grows in Rubbish) (combining graphics and collage) by the group Neza Arte Nel enact what Merleau-Ponty understood (in L’oeil et l’esprit, 1964) as embodied seeing? Merleau-Ponty used an analogy for this kind of holistic sentience that was based on a conceit relating to the symbolization of the immaculate conception in Western art: “come l’acqua madre nel cristallo, l’indivisa comunione del senziente e del sentito” (like the mother liquor in crystal, the undivided communion of sentient being and object of sentience).57 This liquidity of communion operates in the higher registers of art, on a metaphysical 292   Migrant Poetics and Capitalist Landscapes

plane and not in the less-than-immaculate street painting mingling with the attrition of dust and other chance collisions. A depository of uncertain interactive networks, the desert may seem a less reassuring paradigm for art’s capacity to create impact, especially when we consider the claim that dense interactions may be knowable in the strange world of quantum gravity,58 while grains of dust continue to hold our attention on the ground as if they made the invisible connections savorable. Miguel Fernández de Castro’s concept book El desplazamiento (The Displacement, 2012) offers an optically dispersive viewing over vast, monotonous, and perhaps featureless terrains. He constructs, via a visual archive of mostly borrowed geological shots (seen in juxtaposition), an allusive but imprecise documentation of outposts and other grainy imagistic transfers. These images, while not topographical, speak of efforts to settle on an “estructura desedimentada, la estructura que se desplaza” (de-sedimented structure; a structure that shifts). Rather than identifying the “gente de polvo” (people of dust), he refracts something other than their traces; he vaporizes, as it were, their discrete passages: “El territorio desértico es indeterminado y sus límites se extienden. En otras palabras, es una estructura desedimentada. Entonces, es como si la ausencia tuviera una dimensión” (The desertified territory is indeterminate, and its limits are expanding. In other words, it is a de-sedimented structure. So it is as if absence had acquired a dimension).59 It is a shifting, indeterminate system of movable dust. From the zone of the interdune, sand blast, and grain flowage dominated by the gray tones of Fernández de Castro’s images, we can measure the distance that separates his work from the portrayal of nomadism evidenced by an archaeological salvage of accoutrements, such as Gabriel Orozco’s photographic installation in situ, Blue Sandals (1996). Used blue flip-flops are rearranged upside down in the sand to show the texture of wear on the soles in another kind of Mexican wave.60 Exhibited as part of the traveling exhibition Yo y mi circunstancia, this photographic piece prompted the curator’s text by Guillermo Santamarina, who sought to capture an identitarian impasse tinged with a melancholic recognition of the absurd certainties of old: “a more overflowing, more volatile Mexicanness, more complexly contradictory and undefinable than what it has been for many centuries.”61 How clearly situated within a cartography of familiar vanitas motifs this work appears to be in retrospect, almost providing a map for such extractive encounters with place understood as deracination and even futility. Orozco’s discarded makers of tracks in desert sand concentrate our attention on vacated bodies, on missing migrants leaving indelible resonance in their stead. Yet the sand drawings of the Native American peoples of the frontier, an early form of graphia without any kinship to the “sands of Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda    293

time” trope and its mournful conception of ephemerality, were not regarded as signatures of evanescence but as evidence of being materially in place through an integration that one might like to imagine as granular.62 Probably a rite of passage that may have involved rubbing sand on the body, this transfer ritual emphasized communication through the “pulverulento” rather than through objective contemplation of conjectured “objetos que no viajan nunca . . . se detienen en una eternidad hecha de instantes paralelos que entretejen la nada y la costumbre” (objects that never travel . . . arrested in an eternity made up of parallel instants that interweave nothingness and habit).63 If absence has a dimension, as Fernández de Castro suggests, it may need to be understood as an enabling of communality. How fitting to discard one’s own binocular perception, allowing a cognitive jarring to thrust it all askew (as in the disjunct neurological vision produced by schizophrenia). To let the many fallen ones and downtrodden leave a final vestige, a vestige of that which may never be left behind, a last look, letting it acquire a density or espesor of granularity. Some mortuary rituals throw sand in the cadaver’s eyes. Rather than an image environment made up of formal schemes, this provides a “de-sedimented” ambit of temporal slippages and transfers instead, of contacts and disseminations. Could one not argue that a poetics of dust is something like a fragile semblance of this implicated yet unsedimented transit in which the granular motif offers a deep and impersonal structure for saying that we are more keenly displaced by ourselves and by the displacement of others than we can apprehend in the slip face of sand dunes? That the elliptical framings of dust in Mexican literature and visual culture make a virtue of the undifferentiated by turning it into an ungroundable place that yet forms a film over everything? Obvious and problematic, this notional dust may also, perhaps, be conceived of as that persistent, ethical afterthought, the fleck that you can never quite dislodge. In the history of modern art and photography, dust has served as an interceptor of aesthetic crisis and human-made disaster, in a provocative correlation of conceptual practice and documentary realism. From Duchamp and Man Ray’s Breeding Dust (1920), to the dust blizzards and drifts of Arthur Rothstein’s series for the Farm Security Administration (1936–1937) marking the Dust Bowl as an ecopolitical expulsion and wasteland, to forensic sites of pulverization and contamination of nuclear disaster and post-Holocaust forensics—these dust-​related motifs provide a haunting paratext for Xavier Ribas’s photographic installation Nomads (2008) on the material aftermath of the violent expropriation of a gypsy settlement in Barcelona.64 In the context of spatial contestation that composes the premise for any revitalization of the notion of public environment, the

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sound of dust speaks of an interior, conceptual domain as time lapse and fugitive identity. In Mexican literature and visual culture, the sonority and tactility of dust acquires an exteriority, an abrasive disquisition on the particularity of subjects and the agglomerative potential of contingent acts under a state of emergency. We find in Abraham Cruzvillegas’s installation The Writing of Disaster (2006)65 an assemblage of black acrylic placard-sized cardboard squares and rectangles. These surfaces carry words scrawled in chalk along with numbers arranged as in an impromptu mural hopscotch. They assemble artifacts of basic protest, carriers of slogans. The apparent rubbing out of aphorisms, slogans, and units leaves a new menu against a portentous cloud of chalk blur: from the blur, “POLVO” (dust) is clearly discernible. Dust is that visual ellipsis that helps conflate immanence, mobility, and action in art practice. It leans toward the migratory condition as a prerequisite (an essential motility). Dust diffuses the phenomenon of displacement as an ethical dilemma when confronted by entrenched systems and epistemologies. In dust we trust . . . Notes 1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

José Emilio Pacheco, La edad de las tinieblas (Mexico City: Era, 2009), 16, 28. “Dust transforms itself into mosquitoes and unleashes against us the third plague of Egypt.” All translations are by the author. Néstor García Canclini and Andrea Giunta, “Extranjerías y otros extrañamientos/Alienations and Other Estrangements,” in Extranjerías/Alienations, ed. Néstor García Canclini and Andrea Giunta (Mexico City: MUAC, 2012), 8, 20. David Theo Goldberg, “Epistemologías del desengaño: Topologías de lo extra/ordinario,” in Estética y violencia: Necropolítica, militarización y vidas lloradas, ed. Helena Chávez MacGregor (Mexico City: MUAC, 2012), 27. Goldberg, “Epistemologías del desengaño,” 22. Mariano Azuela, Los de abajo, ed. Jorge Rufinelli (Madrid: UNESCO/Colección Archivos, 1988), 69–72. Teresa Margolles, La promesa (Mexico City: MUAC/UNAM, 2012), 16. Margolles, La promesa, 20. For a thematic range, see Julián Cardona’s exhibition Herencia de sangre (2012). Andy Goldsworthy, Stone (London: Penguin/Viking, 1994), 56–57, and Wood (London: Penguin/Viking, 1996), 14, 16–17. Francis Alÿs, When Faith Moves Mountains (Madrid: Turner, 2005). Francis Alÿs, Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains), video accessed March 23, 2017, www.francisalys.com/when-faith-moves-mountains/. Augusto Monterroso, La oveja negra y demás fábulas (Mexico City: Martín Casillas Editores, 1981), 30. Monterroso, La oveja negra y demás fábulas, 31. Sally Yard, ed., InSite 94: Una exposición binacional de arte-instalación en sitios específicos (San Diego: San Diego Installation Gallery, 1995); D. Vanessa Kam, Felipe Ehrenberg: A Neologist’s Art and Archive (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Libraries, 2004), 18.

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15. Felipe Ehrenberg, Préterito imperfecto=Past Imperfect (Mexico City: MACG/INBA, 1993), 67. “They don’t see each gigantic grain that accumulates in the dunes that grow in that no-man’s-land (USA), borderland only within its own sides, given that now the border areas are marking their own borders.” 16. Issa Ma. Benítez, “Guía de viaje: Arte, nomadismo y los límites de la identidad,” Curare, no. 15 (1999): 53–63, quoted passage on 57. “Whilst I continue walking, I don’t choose, don’t lose, don’t do, don’t know, don’t fall, don’t paint, don’t conceal, don’t deceive, whilst I keep on walking, I will not repeat, will not remember.” 17. João Ribas, “On Dirt,” in Entry Points: The Vera List Center Field Guide on Art and Social Justice No. 1, ed. Carin Kuoni and Chelsea Haines (New York: Vera List Center/New School, 2015), 23–35, quoted passage on 29. 18. Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo y El llano en llamas (Barcelona: Planeta, 1983), 136. “The man’s feet sank into the sand, leaving behind a shapeless track, akin to the claw of some animal.” 19. Juan Rulfo, cited in Dylan Brennan, “Sobre La fórmula secreta,” in Rubén Gámez: La fórmula secreta, ed. Damián Ortega (Mexico City: Antítesis/CONACULTA/UNAM, 2014), 23–25, quoted passages on 23. See the anonymous period review that comments on the stasis of bodies as earthworks (reproduced on p. 119): “tendidos entre las dunas inhóspitas” (lying between inhospitable sand dunes). 20. Juan Rulfo, “La fórmula secreta,” cited in Ortega, ed., Rubén Gámez: La fórmula secreta, 26–30, quote on 29. “Lightning tail / whirlwind of the dead / so airborne / little of their exertions will endure. / Perhaps they’ll end up dissolved in foam / or swallowed by this ash-filled air / and may even lose their bearings . . . / In the end they already are nothing but rubble.” 21. In Rulfo’s short stories and photographs of crumbling rurality and internal migration, the landless and the uprooted are often still in situ, “owners” of mounds of barren ground and custodians of a sterile agrarian legacy of the Mexican Revolution. Their hypothetical agency and ostensible mobility have been readily eclipsed by the merest particle of volatilized matter. 22. Rosario Castellanos, Meditación en el umbral (Mexico City: FCE, 1985), 119. 23. Castellanos, Meditación en el umbral, 189. 24. Ningunear refers to making someone ninguno, a nobody. It is a process of negating and ignoring others, of humiliating and invisibilizing—of treating them “like dirt.” 25. Ignacio Solares, “Modos de ser: México y EU; Los quemados del puente,” Revista de la Universidad de México 135 (May 2015): 98. “It was heart-wrenching seeing that misguided and delirious multitude heading in the direction of the dream bridge, moving like a large clumsy animal, due to its size, the weight of its volume. Caravans of squalid spectres, dressed in rags, that were sleep-walking after a tenacious illusion of happiness, of salvation, of life. They were driven together in compact groups, like cattle, herded toward the migration offices, where the Yankees looked at them as if they carried the plague. And this is precisely what we were called in the press. We were degradation incarnate, decomposition, putrefaction, food for worms.” 26. Alfonso Reyes, Obras completas, vol. 10: Constancia poética (Mexico City: FCE, 1996), 189. 27. Alfonso Reyes, Antología general (Madrid: Alianza, 1986), 97–98. 28. Reyes, Antología general, 97. “With disgust we bite the tiny grains of sand. And the dust clings to one’s throat . . . tries to suffocate and strangle us. Subterranean screams reach us overlaid by the dust clouds. . . . Invisible discharges reach us, arterial attack, impossible to defend against; slow microbial dynamite; atoms insurgent and hostile to any organized form. . . . Last stage of matter . . . reduced first to mineral statuary, to then finally explode into this diminutive disintegration of all that exists. Microscopy of things, road to nothingness; annihilation without glory; collapsing of inertias, “entropy”; vengeance, and again vengeance of dust, the lowest aspect of the world.”

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29. Reyes, Antología general, 98. 30. Reyes, Antología general, 99. 31. Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, trans. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2016), 8. 32. Reyes, Antología general, 99–100. 33. Cristina Rivera Garza, Los muertos indóciles: Necroescrituras y desapropiación (Mexico City: Tusquets, 2013), 46. 34. Teresa Margolles, Frontera (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther, 2011), 16–19. 35. Margolles, Frontera, 24–27. 36. Ernst H. Gombrich, Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art (London: Phaidon, 1965), 7. 37. Gilbert Vicario, “What Makes Art Mexican?,” in Made in Mexico, ed. Gilbert Vicario (Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, 2004), 17. 38. Gianni Romano, “Francis Alÿs: Streets and Gallery Walls,” Flash Art 33, no. 210 (2000): 70–73. 39. Raúl Zamudio, “The Labyrinth of Attitude/El laberinto de la inconformidad,” in Axis Mexico: Common Objects and Cosmopolitan Actions, ed. Betti-Sue Hertz (San Diego: San Diego Museum of Art, 2002), 59. 40. Daniel Montero, El cubo de Rubik: Arte mexicano en los años 90 (Mexico City: Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, 2013), 167–168. 41. Alberto López Cuenca, “El desarraigo como virtud: México y la deslocalización del arte en los años 90,” Revista de Occidente (Madrid, Spain), no. 285 (2005), 7–22. 42. Alma B. Sánchez, La intervención artística de la Ciudad de México (Mexico City: CONACULTA/INBA/CENART, 2003), 143–144. “(i) At what point does it become public? (ii) Who controls public space? (iii) This isn’t an advertisement, it is a public space.” 43. “Relingos” is a term that has acquired a certain currency in discourses about private-public domains as it refers to ambiguous, surplus, and nonutilitarian urban spaces and empty lots. Characterized by ill-defined borders and proprietorial fencing, it is peripheral yet often in the very midst of the metropolitan sprawl. 44. José Gabriel Amozurrutia Cortés and Willi Raúl López Flores, “Casa de artes y oficios para sordos,” thesis UNAM, 2008), 21. With thanks to Mara Polgovsky for sharing this material. 45. See Gordon Matta-Clark’s Reality Properties: Fake Estates project (1974). 46. Ana Gilardi, ed., Memoria de un relingo (Mexico City: CONACULTA/INBA/DGTPA, 2013), 15. In Spanish, the term is “no lugares,” which has a stronger emphasis on active negation. 47. Gilardi, Memoria de un relingo, 93. 48. Helen Escobedo, Estar y no estar: 15 instalaciones (Mexico City: MUCA/UNAM, 2000), 70, 82. 49. Álvaro Enrigue, Hipotermia (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2005), 47. “These were the final days of August and I had the irritating tendency to think constantly about the storms of volcanic ash that carpeted Mexico City with dense gray dust during the last spring I spent there. During those days, days of removal from the Federal District to the District of Columbia, I thought that the ashes were some kind of message urging me to leave. Now I realize that they were rather more admonitory, but I know this while I write, while I draw a circumscribed and organic panorama that has nothing to do with the disjointed flux of reality. To relate a narrative is to draw with a finger in the ash.” 50. Fabio Morábito, Terraines vagues/Lotes baldíos (Quebec and Mexico City: Les Écrits des Forges/Editorial Aldus, 2001), 38, 12. 51. Morábito, Terraines vagues/Lotes baldíos, 18, 14. 52. Morábito, Terraines vagues/Lotes baldíos, 18.

Polvo/Polvoriento/Polvareda    297

53. Morábito, Terraines vagues/Lotes baldíos, 38. 54. Julián Cardona, Herencia de sangre (Mexico City: Galería José María Velasco/INBA/CONACULTA, 2014), 42, 18–19. 55. Daniel Manrique, “Neza Arte Nel” pamphlet insert in Trazo urbano: Gráfica contemporánea desde México, ed. Alejandro Villalbazo (Mexico City: INBA/Museo de la Ciudad de México/ La Pintadera, 2013). “Plastic dust. Plastic saltpeter. Plastic space. Desert space, plastic desert. Plastic space. Desert that once was a lake. Plastic lake. City that once was a lake. City of plastic. City barrio of plastic clay. Slum quarter of plastic saltpeter: Nezahualcoyotl City. Deserted city with absent multitudes immersed in themselves, in their plastic consciousness, their desire for plastic. . . . This is Neza, we are Neza. . . . Reclaiming the expressive energy of mural painting . . . and the rebel spirit of the 1970s and ’80s of the groups that would again break away from decorative, superficial, complacent, and commercial art. The collective Neza Arte Nel reasserts itself in its very autonegation (Nel: no), no but yes, still developing a collective mural as immersive as the immensity of the painted axolotols and with the density of color akin to sunlight baking the gray density of the environment.” 56. Daniel Manrique, cited in Alma B. Sánchez, La intervención artística de la Ciudad de México (Mexico City: CONACULTA/INBA/CENART, 2003), 69. 57. Merleau-Ponty, cited in Remo Bodei, La vita delle cose (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2011), 92. 58. Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems, 233. 59. Miguel Fernández de Castro, El desplazamiento (Guadalajara: Taller de Ediciones Económicas, 2012), 169. 60. This work is part of a photographic installation on the motif of sandals in desert terrain, Sandals’ Tale, using sixteen close-up color images. It was included in Guillermo Santamarina et al., Yo y mi circunstancia/Moi et ma circonstance/I and My Circumstance: Movilidad en el arte contemporáneo mexicano (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1999–2000), 78–79. 61. Santamarina et al., “Yo y mi circunstancia,” 14–15, quoted passage on 15. 62. Marie Areti Hers, “Northern New Spain and the Ancient Interweaving of Images,” in The Art of the Missions of New Spain, 1600–1821, ed. Clara Bargellini and Michael K. Komanecky (Mexico City: Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso/UNAM/CNCA, 2009), 33–40, esp. 33. 63. Álvaro Mutis, Historia natural de las cosas: 50 fotógrafos (Mexico City: FCE, 1985), 17. An interesting overlaying of sand, skin, and grounded space is ritualized in Silvia Gruner’s early Super 8 video performance Arena (Sand, 1986). 64. See David Campany’s exhibition catalogue A Handful of Dust: From the Cosmic to the Domestic (Paris: Le Bal, and London: MACK, 2016). I had the pleasure of visiting the exhibition when it traveled to the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 2017. My companion on this memorable occasion was Eugenio Polgovsky, who had been present when an early version of this chapter was first delivered at a conference in Leeds. His films and playful observations inspired the poetic hinterland for this chapter. 65. Caroline Bourgeois, ed., Abraham Cruzvillegas (Arles, France: Actes Sud/Altadis, 2007), 8–9, 12–13.

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Acknowledgments

The making of this book brought us face-to-face with both the relentless challenges and the edifying moments that collective practice can engender. The project began as a collaboration between the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, and the departments of History of Art and Philosophy, Universidad Iberoamericana, in Mexico City. Supported by the British Academy’s Newton Mobility Grant, this initial partnership led to the creation of an international research cluster on the theme of “Art, Democracy, and Public Space in Contemporary Mexico,” which met in New York, Mexico City, and Cambridge, UK. Following those discussions, participating researchers and artists, together with newly invited scholars and artists’ collectives, developed the articles and dossiers that feature in this volume. Each text went through a process of editing and revision over a period of several years. Several of the contributors wrote in Spanish, so translating their texts became an opportunity to make their work accessible to English-speaking audiences. We are grateful to Christopher Frage for his initial translation of chapters by Ana María Torres and Arturo Ortiz-Struck and to Robin Myers for translating the initial version of the chapter by Natalia de la Rosa and Julio García Murillo as well as most of the artists’ dossiers. Kieron Corless provided editorial advice and critical insights, while Daniela Rico Straffon accompanied every part of the editorial process, commenting on texts, polishing translations, and liaising with authors. Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, Birkbeck College, University of London, and the Leverhulme Trust provided Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra with the time and resources to devote a number of years to reading each chapter and commenting on subsequent drafts, thus enabling the often slow and dialogical construction of knowledge that collaborative projects like this one give rise to. The anonymous reviewers gave careful suggestions that allowed us not only to enhance the quality of each chapter but also to diversify the range of subjects and media covered in the book. Thanks in particular to Kerry E. Webb, our commissioning editor at the University of Texas Press, both for leading this process during a time of personal hardship and for embracing the ways in which this collection challenges the conventions of the edited volume: first, by conceiving of the book as a curated dialogue between scholars and as a 299

gathering of living artists’ voices; second, by addressing a wide array of media and formats, including dance, architecture, graffiti, performance, human rights and digital activism, critical forensics, feminist art, and the creation of public archives and libraries; third, by engaging with Spanish-speaking scholars and artists who are rarely published in translation; and finally, by incorporating several chapters written in collaboration, allowing for a reflection on collectivity that is, in itself, collective. We are particularly grateful to the artists, activists, and estates that allowed us to share their work, including Aeromoto, Asamblea Ciudadana del Pueblo de Xoco, Lukas Avendaño, Francis Alÿs, Brigada Antimonumentos, Brigada Tlayacapan, Bordamos por la Paz, Aldo Brum González, Irantzu Casajús Vallés, Yutsil Cruz, Campamento Visual Itinerante, Colectivo A.M., Grupo Germen, Guadalupe García-Vásquez, Miguel Fernández de Castro, Lourdes Hernández-Fuentes, Mónica Mayer, Pinto mi Raya, Iván Meza Sordo, Jessica Natividad Torres Barrera, Teatro La Xixa, Teatro Ojo, Teresa Margolles, Arturo OrtizStruck, and Ignacio Rosaslanda. During the process of securing image publication rights, we received assistance and pointers from Julien Devaux, Lucy Foster, Sofía Mariscal, Cristina Paoli, and many others. All efforts have been made to contact image copyright holders; any errors or omissions will be amended in subsequent editions. Erica Segre (1963–2021) was a supportive and inspiring companion in the creation of this book. Her love for Mexican art permeates each and every page. We remember her with affection and dedicate this publication to her memory.

300  Acknowledgments

Contributors

Sarah Abelis a cultural anthropologist and British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre of Latin American Studies (CLAS). Her research focuses broadly on the dynamics of race, racism, and antiracism in American societies, and her current project examines how cultural and political meanings are constructed around skin color at the intersections of art, activism, and scientific production in contemporary Mexico. Her monograph Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body after the Genome was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2022. Aeromotois a community library in Mexico City. Antimonuments is an interdisciplinary collective that understands itself as a “brigade for memory.” Since 2014, it has conceived and placed a series of “antimonuments” across Mexico City to protest human rights violations and demand justice and truth. Brigada Tlayacapanis an interdisciplinary group of architects, construction workers, and local residents from Tlayacapan, Morelos, involved in reconstructing Tlayacapan in the aftermath of the 2017 earthquake while trying as well to preserve the city’s traditional construction methods. Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante (CAI)is an annual gathering of filmmakers and Indigenous communities founded in 2011. Its avowed aim is to “shake off the stench of auteur cinema” by creating and circulating community cinema. La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizoteis an archive, a printing press, and a museum. It opened its doors in 2015 in the building that once housed and printed El Hijo del Ahuizote (1885–1903), a satirical weekly newspaper opposed to the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship. La Casa is devoted to preserving and activating the archive of the Flores Magón brothers, the anarchist ideologues of the Mexican

301

Liberal Party who spearheaded the only anticapitalist branch of the Mexican Revolution. Colectivo A.M.is an artists’ collective dedicated to choreographic production, reflection, and practice composed of eleven artists based in Mexico. They have been working both collectively and individually since 2009. Karen Cordero Reimanis a US-born art historian, curator, and writer based in Mexico City since the mid-1980s. She has been a professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) and was a founding member of Curare, a Critical Space for the Arts, an independent research center in Mexico City. She is the author of many publications on the art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on the relationship between the so-called fine arts and popular arts in Mexico; the historiography of art and art criticism; body, gender, and sexual identity in Mexican art; and museological and curatorial discourses. She has also worked as curator, adviser, and researcher in a number of museums. Currently she works as an independent researcher and curator, as well as on personal creative projects that relate to art, literature, and history. Carlos Fonseca is a Costa Rican–Puerto Rican writer and academic. He is the author of the novels Colonel Lágrimas (Restless Books, 2016), Natural History (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), and Austral (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023)—all translated by Megan McDowell. He is also the author of the book of essays La lucidez del miope (Editorial Germinal, 2017), for which he was awarded the National Prize of Literature in Costa Rica, as well as of the monograph The Literature of Catastrophe: Nature, Disaster and Revolution in Latin America (Bloomsbury, 2020). He is an assistant professor in Latin American literature and culture and a fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Grupo Germenis a collective of graffiti artists originally from Guadalajara but now present in various cities across Mexico. They approach “new muralism” as a means both to embellish impoverished neighborhoods on the peripheries of major cities and to strengthen community ties weakened by violence and insecurity. Robin Adèle Greeley teaches at the University of Connecticut, where she focuses on art and politics in modern and contemporary Latin America. She is an affiliate faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and 302  Contributors

has also taught at Stanford and Harvard. From 2009 to 2012, she codirected the Artforum speaker series on art and politics in contemporary Latin America at Harvard University. A founding member of the Symbolic Reparations Research Project (www.symbolicreparations.org) and cochair of the Research Program on Arts & Human Rights, Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut (https://humanrights.uconn.edu/areas-of-focus​/arts/), she is currently engaged in analyzing policies and practices of aesthetic memorialization in symbolic reparations for victims of human rights violations in the Americas. Erin L. McCutcheonis an art historian whose research and writing focus on the postmodern and contemporary histories of Latin American art and feminist artistic practices. She completed a PhD in art history and Latin American studies at Tulane University in 2021 and is currently an assistant professor of arts of the Americas at the University of Rhode Island. Her research has appeared in Artelogie, ERRATA#, H-ART, Nierika, OnCurating, and the catalogue for Si tiene dudas . . . pregunte: Una exposición retrocolectiva de Mónica Mayer, for which she served as a curatorial research assistant. Her current book project examines the intersections between art, the women’s movement, and motherhood in post-1968 Mexico City and has been supported by the Institute for Citizens and Scholars. Julio García Murillo is an art historian and curator based in Mexico City. His work focuses on the relationships between artistic and curatorial research. He holds a BA in philosophy (Universidad La Salle, ULSA) and an MA in art history/curatorial studies (UNAM). He is a member of Los Yacuzis: Grupo de Estudios Sub-Críticos and Museum of Modern Mars. Some of his recent curatorial projects include El derecho ajeno/Das Recht des Anderen (Instituto Cultural de México en Austria, 2018; cocurator); Notas para una educación (económico-)sentimental (Museo Universitario del Chopo, 2017–2018); El retorno del realismo: Siqueiros y la neovanguardia (Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, 2017); and Melquiades Herrera: Reportaje plástico de un teorema cultural (Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo [MUAC], 2018; with Los Yacuzis: Grupo de Estudios Sub-Críticos). Currently, he is deputy director of public programs at MUAC. Abeyamí Ortegais an anthropologist and media scholar working on visual culture, social justice, and critical race and gender studies with a focus on antiracist practices, art activism, and communicative processes from critical transfeminist perspectives. A postdoctoral research associate at the University Contributors  303

of Manchester, she has taught at the University of Cambridge and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, among other institutions of higher education. She holds a PhD from the Institute for Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University London; was an associate PhD student at the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge; and holds degrees in anthropology and Mesoamerican studies (ENAH; UNAM). Adriana Ortega Orozco holds a PhD in history from the Institut des Hautes Études de l’Amérique Latine, Université Paris 3–Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her publications deal with early twentieth-century Mexican art, the reception of the First World War by Mexican elites, and Mexican cinema. She is a former rResearch associate in the History Section at MIT (2015) and a member of the Centre de Recherche et Documentation sur les Amériques (CREDA). She has also worked in several diplomatic missions in Paris and for the Directorate of Education of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). Arturo Ortiz-Struck is an architect. He holds an MA in knowledge analysis, theory, and history from UNAM. He is a former member of the National System of Art Creators (FONCA) in the disciplines of architecture (2007–2010) and visual arts (2011–2014). He has lectured at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and Taubman College for Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He currently directs the Territorial Workshop, a space for the development of art and architecture projects, where he collaborates with various architects, urban planners, artists, and designers, working on a diversity of projects related to art, architecture, and territory. Ortiz-Struck is also a visual artist; his latest solo exhibition was entitled Devastated Territories (Mexico City, 2019). Michael R. Orwiczis an associate professor of art history at the University of Connecticut. He specializes in visual culture and human rights and has published and lectured widely on the role of photography in human rights. He has also published on capitalist imperialism and the notion of spectacle, theories of nationalism and representation, and the social history of art. A founding member of the Symbolic Reparations Research Project (www.symbolicreparations​ .org) and cochair of the Research Program on Arts & Human Rights, Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut (https://humanrights.uconn.edu​ /areas-of-focus/arts/), he is currently engaged in analyzing policies and practices of aesthetic memorialization in symbolic reparations for victims of human rights violations in the Americas. 304  Contributors

Mara Polgovsky Ezcurrais a senior lecturer in contemporary art at Birkbeck, University of London. She received her PhD at the University of Cambridge and then held a junior research fellowship at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Her research focuses on contemporary Latin American art and intellectual history, with an emphasis on the politics of aesthetics and the study of embodiment, presence, interactivity, liveness, and agency in artistic practice. Her books include Touched Bodies: The Performative Turn in Latin American Art (Rutgers University Press, 2019), the forthcoming essay collection Marcos Kurtycz: Corporeality Unbound (Fauna-Jumex, 2023), and the edited volumes Eugenio Polgovsky: La poética de lo real/Poetics of the Real (Tecolote Films–Ambulante Ediciones, 2020) and Sabotage Art: Politics and Iconoclasm in Contemporary Latin America (I. B. Tauris, 2016 and 2022). She has curated a number of research-led exhibitions and has been honored with the College Art Association’s Art Journal award and a Leverhulme research fellowship. Polgovsky Ezcurra is also a documentary filmmaker. Natalia de la Rosais a Mexican art historian and curator. She holds a PhD in art history from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and specializes in modern art and visual culture, muralism and public art, cinema, architecture, and theory. She was an associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City (2014–2016); a postdoctoral associate at Duke University (2016–2018); and a postdoctoral fellow at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM (2020–2022). She also cofounded and collaborates with Los Yacuzis: Grupo de Estudios Sub-Críticos and Despatriarcalizar el Archivo, both of which are collectives of artists, cultural theorists, and curators that produce editorial, pedagogical, curatorial, and artistic projects. She coordinates the Museo Comunitario y Club de Lectura de Sierra Hermosa (Sierra Hermosa Community Museum and Reading Club) in Zacatecas, Mexico. Erica Segrewas a senior lecturer in Latin American studies, teaching in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Centre of Latin American Studies (CLAS), University of Cambridge, and a senior fellow of Trinity College. She specialized in nineteenth-century Latin-American literature and thought and twentieth-century and contemporary visual culture (photography, art, and film). She lectured and published extensively in these areas in Britain and abroad. She authored Intersected Identities: Strategies of Visualization in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Mexican Culture (Berghahn, 2007) and was a contributing editor of Ghosts of the Revolution in Mexican Literature and Visual Culture: Revisitations in Modern and Contemporary Creative Media Contributors  305

(Peter Lang, 2013) and México Noir: Rethinking the Dark in Contemporary Writing and Visual Culture (Art, Film, Photography) (Peter Lang, 2019). With Simon Carnell, she was also an award-winning cotranslator from the Italian of thirteen books of fiction, nonfiction, and science. Teatro Ojois an artistic group formed in 2002 in Mexico City, where the members currently reside and work. Their practice has shifted from traditional theater to other ways of thinking about and conceiving of performance, including urban interventions, site-specific art, performance art, and open dramaturgy, among others. Ana María Torres Arroyois a professor in the History of Art Department of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and belongs to the National System of Researchers. She is a specialist in public art and in the aesthetic-­ political dynamics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in Mexico. Her research interests include critical memory studies; new historiographies; and the use of images in the formation of political, social, and cultural identities. She has written books on a number of Mexican painters and various articles on muralism, cultural politics, abstract art, and international exhibitions. She is currently leading a dissemination project on muralism in Mexico City’s historic center; coordinates the Study Group on Public Art–Mexico (GEAP–Latin America); and is cofounder of the visual culture studies network Abya Yala. Enea Zaramella is an unaffiliated scholar in Latin American literature and culture. He received his PhD at Princeton University with research on the relationship between literature and the aural, namely, the cultural and historical interpretation of sonic environments and listening practices. After being affiliated with various institutions in the UK (the University of Warwick, the University of Leicester, and the University of Birmingham), he is currently focusing on a permaculture project in Northern Italy.

306  Contributors

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures. Abel, Sarah, 22–23, 30nn76–77, 166 Abrazos (Embraces) (Pinto mi Raya), 89, 90, 102–103, 103, 104, 105, 106 Acciones para convertirme en los otros (Actions to Convert Myself into Others) (Salgado), 104, 104–105, 106 Acha, Juan, 38, 57n65; “El muralismo en el proceso revolucionario de América Latina” (“Muralism in Latin America’s Revolutionary Process”), 43; and new muralism, 18, 34, 43, 50; and non-objectualism, 47–48, 53; on David Alfaro Siqueiros, 43 Acosta, Juana, 226 Aeromoto, 23, 187–191, 188, 189, 190 aesthetics, 37, 46, 94, 254, 276, 286; and collectivity/ community, 83, 84–85, 207, 222; critiques of, 9, 49, 172; and dissidence, 17, 63, 76; dust and, 272, 294; feminist, 89, 94; forensic/counterforensic, 143, 149, 152; investigative, 152; live/lived, 120, 158–159, 175–176, 274; and memorialization, 17, 202, 218, 220, 232; of mestizaje, 168, 172; of muralism, 18, 35, 38, 42, 47, 50; and necropolitics, 272; participatory, 89, 106, 222; performative, 19, 120, 230–231; politics and, 28n24, 34–35, 53, 75, 89, 100–101; public art and, 9, 34, 42, 218, 221; public conception and, 229, 232, 233; of racism and antiracism, 167, 189; regimes of, 23, 30n78, 57n59, 86; of shock, 146, 147; and sociability, 63, 75; state manipulation of, 221, 227, 236; theories of, 36, 43–44; and violence, 152, 272 affect, 12, 23–24, 50; and cultural critique, 15, 276; and feminist art, 19, 90, 91, 96, 101, 105–106; and participation, 105, 182; politics of, 91, 176, 192–193 Afro-descendant heritage, 165; and ancestors, 20, 118, 119, 126–127, 128, 131; and ancestral relationships, 117, 123, 126, 127, 128, 131; and candomblé, 120, 122, 132n22; and cultural memory, 121, 126; and dance, 120, 121, 122, 126, 133n34; and macumba, 120, 132n22; and orishas, 123, 126, 127, 132n22, 133n34; and ritual, 121, 122,

126, 132n22, 133n34; and Santería, 116, 122, 123, 133n35. See also García-Vásquez, Guadalupe; racism Afro-Mexican heritage, 21, 126, 186n53; cultural practices and, 121, 122; and lack of visibility, 119, 131; and legal status, 117, 133n33, 179; México Negro and, 122, 133n33; “Presencia africana en México” (“African Presence in Mexico”) and, 117, 127; Ana Uribe and, 125, 126; and visibility, 117, 122, 131, 133n33. See also García-Vásquez, Guadalupe; racism Agamben, Giorgio, 144, 147, 153, 247, 255; Lo que queda de Auschwitz (Remnants of Auschwitz), 153, 155 agoraphobia, 8, 12–14, 16, 18, 26; Rosalyn Deutsche and, 11, 13–14, 29n52, 208n2 Aguilera, Itzel, 234 Aguirre Rivero, Ángel, 73, 80n35 Ahmed, Sara, 166, 176; The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 205 Alemán, Miguel, 46 Alÿs, Francis, 26, 271, 276–277; Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains), 277, 278, 279–280; Cuentos patrióticos (Patriotic Tales), 285–286; Paseos (Walks), 285; Tornado, 273–274, 275; Zapatos magnéticos (Magnetic Shoes), 279, 296n16 American Convention on Human Rights, 219, 221 Amozurrutia, José Gabriel, 287 ancestors, 116, 122; Afro-descendant, 20, 118, 119, 126–127, 128, 131; Indigenous, 118, 119, 125–126, 127, 128–130, 131; presence of, 117, 123, 125, 127, 128, 129, 131. See also García-Vásquez, Guadalupe; necropublics Andrade, Elia, 204–205 Andrea, Pistas de Baile (Andrea, Dance Floors) (Margolles), 151 Annunciation of the Shepherds (Giotto), 284–285 anthropology, 47, 152, 168, 175; and cultural history, 55n34, 110, 270n1; and the gaze, 111, 170. See also Campbell, Baird; Castillejo Cuéllar, Alejandro; Genovés, Santiago

307

antimonuments, 7, 24, 62–63, 213–217. See also Colectivo Antimonumentos antiracism: alternative, 167, 172–180; and artistic practice, 165–166, 167–168; explicit, 167, 168–172; grammars of, 22, 167, 172–173, 177–178, 179, 181–182; types of, 22, 165–166, 167, 171, 182. See also mestizaje logics; racism Aparicio, Yalitza, 169, 170, 172 El Árbol de la Noche Triste, 126, 130. See also Árbol de la Victoria (Victory Tree) (García-Vásquez) Árbol de la Victoria (Victory Tree) (García-Vásquez), 117, 125–126, 127 architecture, 188, 252, 255, 258, 260, 261; and destruction, 4, 5, 274, 284, 285, 289; and memorials, 201–202, 210n36, 235; monumental, 13, 18; rebuilding, 266–270; traditional adobe, 267, 268–269. See also Auschwitz-Huehuetoca (Ortiz-Struck); Brigada Tlayacapan; Forensic Architecture; housing developments; Intersticios (Interstices) (photograph) (Ortiz-Struck); Intersticios (Interstices) (video) (Ortiz-Struck); La promesa (The Promise) (Margolles); relingos; urban planning/design archives, 93, 176; as bodies, 158, 159–160; challenging, 121, 127, 151, 152, 153, 155; counterforensic, 22, 140, 143, 149, 152, 155; independent, 7, 212n66; libraries as, 188, 189; of memory, 90, 102, 106, 153; visual, 72, 293. See also La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote archives, state, 147–148, 155, 162; the anti-museum and, 151–152, 153; necropolitical, 143, 145, 149 Archivo nuevo mural mexicano tamaño doble carta (New Mexican Tabloid-Size Mural Archive) (Ehrenberg), 38–40, 39, 42, 53 Los archivos del dolor (Archives of Pain) (Castillejo Cuéllar), 155 Arendt, Hannah, 23, 30n66, 184n31. See also spaces of appearance Argentina, 44, 98, 152; art actions in, 90, 185n45, 207, 217 Ariadne: A Social Art Network, 96, 97 artist collectives, 6, 8, 41, 49, 167; Ariadne: A Social Art Network, 96, 97; Asco, 41, 55n36; Bio-Arte, 116, 121; feminist, 94, 101, 107n8; Grupo Germen, 18, 58–61, 60, 61; Los Grupos, 41, 48, 57n69, 108n22, 292; SEMEFO (Servicio Médico Forense/Forensic Medical Service), 21, 145–146, 147, 148; work in Ayotzinapa, 62, 63, 68–70, 78n3. See also Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante (CAI); Colectivo A.M.; Colectivo Antimonumentos; collective artistic action; Pinto mi Raya; Teatro Ojo

308  Index

Asamblea Ciudadana del Pueblo de Xoco (Citizens’ Assembly of the Town of Xoco) (Díaz Torre), 180, 181 Asco, 41, 55n36 assembly, public, 12, 24–25, 66, 111, 177, 182; public space and, 24, 25, 62, 112, 198, 214, 255–256 audiences, 96, 110, 170, 207; broadened, 137, 182, 202–203; changing meaning for, 205, 222; contestation from, 24, 220, 229; involvement of, 10–11, 21, 139n2, 177, 182, 222 Augé, Marc, 288 Auschwitz-Huehuetoca (Ortiz-Struck), 260–261, 261 authoritarianism, 2, 3, 9, 16, 44–45, 221; art against, 72, 285–286 Avendaño, Bruno, 22–23, 173, 175, 176 Avendaño, Lukas, 185n45; Buscando a Bruno (Looking for Bruno), 22–23, 173–177, 174, 185n35, 185n41 Axis Mexico: Common Objects and Cosmopolitan Actions (exhibition), 285 Ayotzinapa, 18, 64, 74, 76, 77, 80n37; Colectivo Antimonumentos and, 213–214 Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, 18–19, 62–63, 64, 71, 72, 73, 76; murals on other political topics, 70–74; mural tradition, general, 69, 74, 75, 76–77, 78n3; student disappearance, 62, 67–68, 75–76, 78n8, 210n28; student disappearance in murals at, 70, 73, 74; student disappearance memorials elsewhere, 69–70, 77, 77, 213–214, 215, 217. See also disappearance, enforced; teachers’ colleges, rural Azoulay, Ariella, 177 Aztecs. See Mexica people Azuela, Mariano, 26, 271; Los de abajo (The Underdogs), 274 Baddeley, Oriana, 146 Balazos (Shots) (La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote), 161 El banco universal de pasos de baile (The Universal Bank of Dance Steps) (Colectivo A.M.), 109, 110–111, 113 Barraza, Mayra: 100 Days in the Republic of Death, 194 Basurero de ropa de inmigrantes en el desierto de Sonora (Rubbish Pile of Immigrant Clothing in the Sonoran Desert) (Cardona), 291 Bataille, Georges, 146 Belkin, Arnold, 42 Bellatin, Mario, 26, 271 La belleza está en la calle (Beauty Is in the Streets) (Villa and Wolffer), 287 Bello, Kenya, 204

Benjamin, Walter, 73, 74–75, 80n31, 81n41 Bettinger-López, Caroline, 228 Bio-Arte, 116, 121. See also García-Vásquez, Guadalupe Blackness, 128, 166, 168. See also racism bodies, 118, 136, 177; archives as, 158, 159–160; as artistic subject, 20, 89–90, 91, 92, 94, 106; and biopower, 131, 255; collective, 10, 75, 111; as commodity, 141, 145; and dance, 109, 111, 112, 114; Indigenous, 169–170, 176; political, 5, 20, 24, 70, 89; racialized, 171–172, 176; as targets of violence, 96, 145 (see also femicide; gender violence). See also corporeality; embodiment Bonilla, Rodolfo A., 63, 64 Bordamos por la Paz, 193, 194–197, 195, 197, 198, 200, 202, 205, 207–208; beyond Mexico City, 195–196, 199, 205, 207, 209n14; and the Calderón government, 199, 201; participant response, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208 Bordando Feminicidios, 185n45, 196 borders, 145, 271–272, 273, 281, 286, 289; cities on, 22, 29n45, 143–144, 145, 223 (see also Ciudad Juárez); North American Free Trade Agreement and, 279, 295n15; as spaces, 116, 144, 297n41; Frontera (Border) (Margolles), 280, 283–284. See also United States-Mexico border Bosch, Lolita, 194, 206, 209n19 “Botana Cultural: Sátira” (“Cultural Snacks: Satire”) (series, Herrera), 49–50 Bourke, Joanna, 12 Brazil, 90, 119, 126, 191, 239n26; Afro-Brazilian culture, 120, 132n22; Guadalupe García-Vásquez in, 120–121, 122 Brigada Tlayacapan, 25–26, 266–270 The Brigade for Memory. See Colectivo Antimonumentos Brown, Wendy, 8, 13 Buscando a Bruno (Looking for Bruno) (L. Avendaño), 22–23, 173–177, 174, 185n35, 185n41 Bustamante, Maris, 101, 107n8; Receta del grupo Polvo de Gallina Negra para causarle el mal de ojo a los violadores o el respeto al derecho del cuerpo ajeno es la paz (The Black Hen Powder Group’s Recipe for Giving the Evil Eye to Rapists, or, Peace Is Respecting the Rights of Others’ Bodies), 101, 108n23 Butler, Judith, 24, 206 Cabañas, Lucio, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 80n30 Calderón, Felipe, 67, 73, 197, 199, 201, 251; “collateral damage” statement, 193–194, 198, 201, 209n8; war on drugs of, 6, 23, 81n51, 193, 198, 208n1

Camiseta (T-Shirt) (Margolles), 284 Camnitzer, Luis, 53 Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante, 82–86, 83; Ka Niula Yanni (Mujeres activas/Active Women), 85; Salva, 85 Campbell, Baird, 118, 133n39 Campo Algodonero, 218, 232, 235, 236, 237. See also González y Otras v. México; Memorial del Campo Algodonero Campo Algodonero case. See González y Otras v. México Campo Algodonero memorial. See Flor de Arena (Leiton); Memorial del Campo Algodonero Campos, Javier “El Cienfuegos,” 72, 78n3 candomblé, 120, 122, 132n22 capitalism, 5, 34, 37, 158, 270; gore, 7, 118, 144, 149, 153; neoliberal, 49, 147, 180; as pervasive, 70, 78n4, 187, 253; production in, 36, 43, 145; as repressive, 24, 80n30, 136 Cárdenas, Lázaro, 65, 78n9 Cardona, Julián: Basurero de ropa de inmigrantes en el desierto de Sonora (Rubbish Pile of Immigrant Clothing in the Sonoran Desert), 291; Fosa común (Mass Grave), 291 Carroll, Amy Sara, 49 La Casa de El Hijo del Ahuizote, 22, 158–162; Ambulatory Ahuizote, 160, 161; Balazos (Shots), 161; and Regeneración, 158, 161 Castellanos, Rosario, 26, 271, 281; “Trayectoria del polvo” (“Trajectory of Dust”), 281 Castells, Manuel, 226–227 Castillejo Cuéllar, Alejandro: Los archivos del dolor (Archives of Pain), 155 Castoriadis, Cornelius, 17 Cavarero, Adriana: Horrorism, 147 Celan, Paul, 144 censorship, 67, 69, 70, 81n51, 158, 280–281 El Centro Regional de Ejercicios Culturales, 38, 39–40 Chavajay, Benvenuto, 128–130; El grito (The Scream), 129; Rijtual acción performance (Lago Atitlán), 128 Chávez Morado, José, 5, 35 Chicago, Judy, 20, 96 Chicano art, 41, 55n34 Chicanos en el Pentágono (Chicanos in the Pentagon) (exhibition, Grupo Proceso Pentágono), 41 Chile, 106n3, 108n28, 118, 185n45, 241n46 cinema. See film citizenship, 8, 58, 183, 240n37; and architecture, 247, 248, 255–256 Ciudad Juárez, 22, 149–150, 284, 291; as border

Index  309

space, 22, 143–144, 145, 274–275, 276, 284; femicide and, 24, 118, 140, 145, 223–224, 235–236 (see also Flor de Arena (Leiton); González y Otras v. México (Campo Algodonero); Memorial del Campo Algodonero; Pink Crosses); maquiladoras and, 140, 144, 233, 286; Red Mesa de Mujeres in, 198, 207n77 civil society, 6, 177, 218; definition, 27n15, 208n2; and grassroots memorials, 193–194, 196, 207, 209n9; and official memorials, 192, 201, 218, 226, 228 The Clothesline. See El tendedero (The Clothesline) (Mayer) Coca-Cola, 44, 45, 49, 281 Coen, Arnaldo, 46–47 Colectivo A.M., 20, 109–114, 112, 113; El banco universal de pasos de baile (The Universal Bank of Dance Steps), 109, 110–111, 113; La pista de baile (The Dance Floor), 20, 109, 110–112, 112, 113, 114 Colectivo Antimonumentos (Antimonuments Collective), 24, 131, 213–217; Antimonument +43, 213, 214, 215; Antimonument +72, 214, 216, 217; Female antimonument, 216, 217 Collage íntimo (Intimate Collage) (series, Mayer), 94 collective artistic action, 10, 15, 53, 84, 214; feminist, 90, 92, 99; murals as, 19, 46, 62, 68–69, 70, 72, 78n3; performance and, 90, 277, 278 collective memory, 121, 125, 152, 232, 236, 269; and memorialization, 74, 197, 232; and mourning, 198, 202, 289; murals and, 19, 69, 70–72, 74–75 collectivity, 7, 10, 23, 26, 274; of artistic mural practice, 36, 40, 41; and artistic practice, general, 26, 83, 92, 99, 182 (see also artist collectives; collective artistic action); and authorship, 17, 78n3, 85, 93, 98–99, 178; of bodies, 10, 75, 111; and creation, 15, 19, 43, 83; and exhibition, 94, 100, 103, 250; of experience, 7, 10, 20, 62, 111, 179; and identity, 59, 199; of the imaginary, 72, 169; of participation, 17, 62, 70, 98, 99, 222; of performance, 102, 105, 109, 111, 242; and politics, 53, 62, 91, 99, 131, 172–173, 180; retrocollectivity, 98–99, 100, 102–103; and struggle, 6, 80n29, 116; and theater, 21, 153; transformation and, 6, 72, 177. See also grassroots memorials collectivity and community, 3, 59, 60–61, 64, 286, 287; civic action/decision making, 25, 59–60, 69, 83, 86; ejidos and, 66, 240n37, 249; and inclusion, 83, 176; Indigenous, 19, 84, 114 colonial era, 188, 268, 284, 288; histories of, 117, 127, 130, 131; oppressions of, 118, 165; racial categories of, 21, 119, 176, 178; traumas of, 116, 119, 128, 132n9

310  Index

coloniality, 63, 75, 78n4, 121. See also decolonization Columbus, Christopher, 125, 130–131 commemoration, 1, 24, 34, 125, 290; grassroots, 23–24, 192, 193, 203, 233 (see also grassroots memorials); official, 208, 219–220, 221, 222–223, 229–230, 231. See also memorials; monuments the commons, 5, 13, 18, 176; and commoning, 3, 7, 27n3, 29n52. See also the undercommons communism, 80n31; and education, 64, 66, 71; Che Guevara, 69, 71, 72, 73; Vladimir Lenin, 71, 72; Mao Zedong, 71, 72; Karl Marx, 71, 72; Mexican Communist Party, 49, 70; muralism and, 34, 70, 71, 72, 73. See also Marxism communities, 6, 13, 19, 101, 153; activism within, 42, 65, 69, 179–180, 181; Afro-Mexican, 119, 122, 128, 133n33; and architecture, 25, 258, 259, 268, 269; building, 7–8, 23, 189, 191, 192–193, 198–199; cohesion of, 18, 60, 61, 62, 267; and collectivity, 59, 60, 64, 69, 83–86; definitions of, 15, 21, 75–76; grassroots, 23–24, 65, 192–193, 195, 198–199, 205–207; imagined, 37, 155; of memorialization, 23–24, 193, 195, 205–207; and memory, 69, 214, 242n57; political, 21, 175; and resistance, 86, 110, 171, 206; types of, 79n13, 83, 177, 185n45, 281, 288; visibility of, 23, 83, 84. See also Afro-descendant heritage; Ayotzinapa; collectivity; education; grassroots memorials; Indigenous peoples; Pueblo de Xoco; Tlayacapan community art, 9, 11, 110, 213; feminist, 100, 101; mural production and, 40–41, 59–61, 62–63, 69, 72. See also Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante; Colectivo A.M.; grassroots memorials; Grupo Germen community spaces, 17, 228, 269; and exclusion, 110–111, 182, 258; muralism and, 41, 179–180. See also housing developments: and civic space consciousness-raising, 65, 91, 96, 99. See also feminism Constitution of Mexico (1917), 4, 227; Article 27, 240n37, 248–249; Article 115, 249 Corbett, Sarah, 204 Cordero Reiman, Karen, 19–20 Cornejo, Kency, 128 corporeality, 6, 90, 106; and experience, 20, 89–90; and gender violence, 19, 89–108; threats to, 146, 272. See also bodies; embodiment counterforensics, 19, 22, 149, 152, 155; counterarchives and, 143, 150–153. See also archives; forensics counterpublics, 7, 21, 128. See also Warner, Michael Coyolxāuhqui, 119, 124–125

Cruz, Yutsil: La nación (The Nation) (exhibition), 22, 168–172, 169 Cruzvillegas, Abraham: The Writing of Disaster, 295 Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains) (Alÿs, C. Medina, Ortega), 277, 278, 279–280 Cuarón, Alfonso: Roma, 169 El cuarto hundido (allá por Amecameca) (The Sunken Room [Somewhere Near Amecameca]) (Escobedo), 289 Cuauhtémoc contra el mito (Cuauhtemoc against the Myth) (Siqueiros), 38–39 Cuba, 108n28, 122, 133n34 Cuentos patrióticos (Patriotic Tales) (Alÿs), 285 Cuevas, José Luis, 34, 37, 43, 46, 50–51 The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Ahmed), 205 dance, 68, 112–113, 125, 128, 175, 180; Afro-descendant, 120, 121, 122, 126, 133n34; and collectivity, 20, 109, 110, 114; and political subjectivity, 10, 20, 112, 114; and public space, 7, 20, 109, 110–114. See also Colectivo A.M. decolonization: and antiracism, 22, 165, 175; and critique, 15, 19, 78n4; theory of, 15, 78n4; visualities of, 63, 78n4. See also coloniality de Greiff, Pablo, 226 de la Rosa, Natalia, 18 del Río, Dolores, 168, 169, 170 del Río, Pilar, 159 democracy, 8, 10, 256; and change, 72, 77; Mexico’s transition to, 15, 16; and publics, 14, 70, 237; spaces of, 76, 233; strategies counter to, 8, 9 demonstrations, political, 10, 42, 112, 236; feminist, 94, 99–100, 101; Mexico City and, 213, 215, 259, 286. See also 1968 movement; dissent; protest desapropiación (disappropriation), 283–284, 291 El desplazamiento (The Displacement) (Fernández de Castro), 290, 293, 294 Destendedero (Unhanging), 99–100. See also El tendedero (The Clothesline) (Mayer) Destruction of the Old Order (Orozco), 284–285 #detrasdelabarda (#behindthewall) (Ortiz-Struck), 262 Deutsche, Rosalyn, 11; Evictions, 13–14, 29n52, 208n2 dialectics, 19, 43, 63, 73, 74–75; images and, 19, 63, 74–75 Díaz, Porfirio, 22, 158, 221 Díaz Torre, Andrés Roberto: Asamblea Ciudadana del Pueblo de Xoco (Citizens’ Assembly of the Town of Xoco), 180, 181 Didi-Huberman, Georges, 74

disappearance, enforced, 7, 74, 75–76, 81n51, 118, 208n1; interstices and, 255, 291; memorializing, 155, 201–202, 217 (See also Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College; Bordamos por la Paz; Buscando a Bruno (Looking for Bruno) (L. Avendaño); Colectivo Antimonumentos; Memorial del Campo Algodonero; Menos Días Aquí); of women, 140, 145, 228, 229 (see also femicide; gender violence; Memorial del Campo Algodonero) discrimination, 222, 224–226; structural, 220, 225–226, 227, 230, 239n29; systemic, 24, 224, 225, 235, 237, 239n29. See also González y Otras v. México (Campo Algodonero); racism dissent, 6, 8, 9, 17, 118, 286; murals and, 7, 18, 74; repression of, 16, 91. See also demonstrations, political; political spaces; protest Dorantes, Victoria, 168–169, 170 Doss, Erika, 205 drug addiction, 146, 269, 281 drug cartels, 68, 103, 104, 193, 198. See also organized crime drug-related violence, 8, 23, 103, 104, 192, 194, 198. See also war on drugs drug traffickers, 66, 76, 77, 81n51, 144, 201 dust, 129, 285, 287; and abandonment, 274, 288, 291; and decay/death, 272, 280, 289, 294; and destruction/demolition, 273, 274–276, 281, 284; and instability, 279, 281, 283, 284; and invisibility, 272, 283, 293; as metaphor, 26, 271–272, 273, 280–281, 282–283, 294–295; and movement, 275, 278, 281, 282–283, 295; and performance, 277–278, 279–280, 285; physicality of, 26, 273, 278, 285, 296n28; poetics of, 26, 271–272, 273, 294; and poverty, 272, 280–281, 283; in proverbs, 287, 296n24; urban/industrial, 272, 274–275, 283, 291–292, 298n53; and vanitas, 272, 276, 282–283, 293; volcanic, 289–291, 297n49; whirlwinds of, 272, 273, 274, 275, 280, 282 dust and migration/movement, 26, 271–273, 283, 289–291, 293–294; border crossing and, 279, 281–282 dust as contamination, 272, 281, 282, 283, 292–293, 294; on/of the body, 278, 280, 289 earthquake of 1985, 2, 16, 27n1, 115–116; commemorative drill, 1, 266; damage and loss of life from, 4, 276; public response to, 6, 7 earthquake of 2017, 1–3, 4, 5–6, 7, 27n1, 115–116; Brigada Tlayacapan and, 26, 266–270 earthquakes, 4, 137 Echeverría, Bolívar, 38 Eco, Umberto, 70

Index  311

Eder, Rita, 221 education, 36, 58, 59, 61, 64, 131; alternative models of, 65, 66, 67, 71, 72–73, 75–76, 77; government policy and, 63, 64, 67, 76, 79n13, 79n19; ideologies and, 15, 49, 64–65, 72, 94; and memorialization, 201, 204, 235, 243n77; Ministry of Public Education, 35, 63, 64. See also pedagogy; Vasconcelos, José Ehrenberg, Felipe, 18, 26, 34, 41–42, 49, 271, 295n15; Archivo nuevo mural mexicano tamaño doble carta (New Mexican Tabloid-Size Mural Archive), 38–40, 39, 42, 53; and Augusto Monterroso, 278–279; Obra secretamente titulada Arriba y adelante . . . y si no pues también (Work Secretly Titled Up and Forward . . . and If Not Well That Too), 47; Tercera llamada (Final Call), 279 ejidos, 66, 240n37, 249 embodiment, 3, 21, 42, 131, 196, 256; of community, 6, 23; of experience, 106, 182; and feminism, 94, 100; of gesture, 20, 102; and healing, 102, 105, 106; of knowledge, 120, 121, 126–127, 128; of memory, 73, 121, 126, 127, 232, 236; of pain, 101, 166, 176; and performance, 116, 117, 121, 126, 177; of the public, 3, 7, 233 Embraces. See Abrazos (Embraces) (Pinto mi Raya) ENAH. See Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia Enfrentación/Confrontación (García-Vásquez), 121–122, 133n30 Engels, Friedrich, 71, 72 England. See Great Britain Enrigue, Álvaro: Hipotermia (Hypothermia), 289, 297n49 ephemerality, 10, 44–47, 293–294; of art forms, 7, 20, 34, 46–47, 155, 278; and memorialization, 24, 95, 97, 193, 199, 208 Escobedo, Helen, 26, 271, 289; El cuarto hundido (allá por Amecameca) (The Sunken Room [Somewhere Near Amecameca]), 289; Estar y no estar: 15 instalaciones (To Be and Not to Be: 15 Installations) (exhibition), 289; Muerte sin fin—en este valle de lágrimas en donde de aquellos 3 millones de habitantes tan sólo quedan 20 millones de sobrevivientes (Death without End—in This Valley of Tears Where of Those 3 Million Inhabitants Only 20 Million Survivors Remain), 289 Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH), 70, 80n30 Espacio abstraído (Abstracted Space) (series, OrtizStruck), 261–262 Espacio abstraído (Abstracted Space) (work, OrtizStruck), 262

312  Index

Estar y no estar: 15 instalaciones (To Be and Not to Be: 15 Installations) (exhibition, Escobedo), 289 Evictions (Deutsche), 13–14, 29n52, 208n2 exclusion, 16, 17, 190, 280, 288; and definition of “the public,” 8, 11, 14, 17; race and, 14, 21, 166, 168, 172, 183; spatial, 8, 24, 236 exhibitions, 11, 94, 146, 170, 288; Axis Mexico: Common Objects and Cosmopolitan Actions, 285; by Bordamos por la Paz, 205, 207; Chicanos en el Pentágono (Chicanos in the Pentagon) (Grupo Proceso Pentágono), 41; Estar y no estar: 15 instalaciones (To Be and Not to Be: 15 Installations) (Escobedo), 289; feminist, in general, 91, 94; of film, 82, 84; Memorial del Campo Algodonero and, 235, 243n77; outside Mexico, in general, 44, 46, 185n34, 205; public, 21, 40, 141, 146, 165; spaces for, 137, 141; La mujer como creadora y tema del arte (Woman as Creator and Theme of Art), 94; La nación (The Nation) (Cruz), 22, 168–172, 169; Ni de Venus ni de Marte: Feminismo, arte y diferencia (Neither from Venus nor from Mars: Feminism, Art, and Difference), 103–104, 104; Si tiene dudas . . . pregunte: Una exposición retrocolectiva de Mónica Mayer (When in Doubt . . . Ask: A Retrocollective Exhibition of Mónica Mayer) (Mayer), 90, 98–100, 102–103, 103, 107n9; El testigo (Margolles), 140–143, 142, 148–149, 150, 153; WACK!, 98, 107n8; What Else Could We Talk About? (Venice Biennale, Margolles), 148, 151, 153; Yo y mi circunstancia: Movilidad en el arte contemporáneo mexicano, 286, 293 Fateless (Kertész), 262 femicide: art protesting, 195, 215, 232, 242n54 (see also Colectivo Antimonumentos; PM 2010 (Margolles)); Bordando Feminicidios, 185n45, 196; Coyolxāuhqui and, 124–125; increase in, 7, 13, 16, 140, 217, 218, 224; memorials and, 24, 232, 241n45 (See also Colectivo Antimonumentos; Flor de Arena (Leiton); Memorial del Campo Algodonero; Pink Crosses); necropolitics and, 21, 118; state failure and, 223, 228, 235–236. See also Ciudad Juárez; gender violence; González y Otras v. México (Campo Algodonero) The Femicide Machine (González Rodríguez), 140, 144, 145 feminism, 7, 14, 89, 101, 106, 225; and activism, 90, 98, 99, 103, 232, 233, 242n54; art exhibitions and, 91, 94, 97–99, 100, 103–104, 104, 121; art groups in Mexico, 101, 116; art history and, 10–11, 93, 94, 100; and the body as subject, 20,

89–90, 91, 92, 94, 106; and the body as target, 96, 101, 103; and collectivity, 92, 106; and conceptualism, 90, 92, 93, 94, 101, 103, 104; and consciousness-raising, 91, 96, 99; and contesting violence, 19, 26, 106; groups in Mexico, 94, 99, 101, 234, 242n54; growth in Mexico, 91, 92, 93, 99; and individual identity/experience, 91, 92, 96, 99, 106; and memory, 90, 102, 105–106; and participation, 11, 19–20, 90, 93, 100, 121 (see also Abrazos (Embraces) (Pinto mi Raya); El tendedero (The Clothesline) (Mayer)); and performance, 90, 104, 104–105, 116; “personal as political” ethos, 91, 94, 99, 100, 102; public visibility of, 19–20, 93, 94, 107n8; Red Mesa de Mujeres, 198, 207n77; and revolutionary politics, 92, 93. See also García-Vásquez, Guadalupe; gender violence; Mayer, Mónica; Pinto mi Raya feminist workshops, 91, 103, 105; Abrazos (Embraces), 102; El tendedero (The Clothesline), 98, 99–100, 101 Fernández de Castro, Miguel: El desplazamiento (The Displacement), 290, 293, 294 Fernández Romo, Emilio: María Candelaria, 168, 169, 170 Fetti, Domenico: Parable of the Mote and the Beam, 273, 276–277, 284 “La fe y las montañas” (“Faith and the Mountains”) (Monterroso), 278–279 film, 274, 280–281, 298nn61–62; and collaboration, 19, 82–86; and community, 19, 82–86, 111; and documentation, 46, 148; exhibition of, 84, 269; La fórmula secreta (The Secret Formula) (Gámez and Rulfo), 280–281; as individualist, 19, 82, 83; Ka Niula Yanni (Mujeres activas/Active Women) (Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante), 85; as mainstream culture, 168–169, 170; María Candelaria (Fernández Romo), 168, 169, 170; and memory, 46, 269; and Mexican muralism, 36, 43, 46, 47, 51; Roma (Cuarón), 169; Salva (Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante), 85. See also Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante (CAI); Prior, Jorge; video Fischer, Hervé, 44, 47 Fisher, Steve, 68, 78n8 Flor de Arena (Leiton), 219, 220, 223, 229–231, 232, 233, 236; design selection, 229, 241n45; memorial inauguration and, 229, 241nn46–47 Flores, Bernardo “El Cochiloco” (Crazy Pig), 68 Fonseca, Carlos, 21–22 Forensic Architecture, 143, 148. See also Weizman, Eyal forensics, 148, 152; aesthetics and, 142, 152, 291;

and the archive, 143, 150–153, 159; and dirt, 272, 274, 294; and disposal of remains, 272, 291; gaze of, 145, 146, 147, 149; and official investigation, 149, 176, 262; and witnessing, 21–22, 141–144, 145–147, 148–149, 153. See also counterforensics; Margolles, Teresa; SEMEFO (Servicio Médico Forense/Forensic Medical Service) La fórmula secreta (The Secret Formula) (Gámez and Rulfo), 280–281 Fosa común (Mass Grave) (Cardona), 291 Foucault, Michel, 151 Fox, Vicente, 250, 263n1 Fraser, Nancy, 11–12, 14 Frontera (Border) (Margolles), 283–284 Fuentes Rojas, 195, 196–197, 204 Gaeta, Julio, 201–202 Galerie Peter Kilchmann, 143 Gallo, Rubén, 152 Gamboa, Fernando, 46–47, 56n52 Gamboa, Harry Jr., 41, 55n36 Gámez, Rubén: La fórmula secreta (The Secret Formula), 280–281 García Murillo, Julio, 18 García-Vásquez, Guadalupe, 115–127, 128, 130, 131; Árbol de la Victoria (Victory Tree), 117, 125–126, 127; and Bio-Arte, 116, 121; and candomblé, 120, 122, 132n22; early life and heritage, 119–120, 132n12; Enfrentación/Confrontación, 121–122, 133n30; and macumba, 120, 132n22; mother’s death and remains, 115, 123–124, 127; and the necropublic, 117–119, 127, 128, 130, 131; and orishas, 123, 126, 127, 132n22, 133n34; “Presencia africana en México” (“African Presence in Mexico”)(workshop), 117, 126–127; and Santería, 116, 122, 123, 133nn34–35; and the Virgin of Guadalupe, 116, 120, 121; X/U/MAR, 115–117, 116, 123–125, 124, 127 Garza Usabiaga, Daniel, 56n52 the gaze: anthropological, 111; decolonization and, 19, 63; forensic, 145, 146, 147, 149; public, 21–22, 23, 183; and racism, 171, 180; spectating, 111, 170, 172. See also mestizo gaze gender diversity, 30n77, 173, 175, 177; muxes, 22–23, 175, 185n32. See also queerness; sexual diversity gender violence, 19, 99–100, 103–104, 106, 216, 223–226, 239n26; commodification and, 141, 145; increase in, 91, 99, 106n3, 217, 218–219, 222, 227–228; and lack of punishment/prevention, 214, 215, 217, 223, 227, 228; protests against, 99–100, 101; rape as, 12, 93, 96, 101, 106n2, 255; structural, 220, 222, 226, 230, 235–237,

Index  313

239n29; testimonies of, 90, 96, 98. See also El tendedero (The Clothesline) (Mayer); femicide; González y Otras v. México (Campo Algodonero) Genealogías (Genealogies) (Mayer), 93 Genovés, Santiago, 47 gentrification, 23, 42, 178, 179, 180, 181 Gilardi, Ana: Memoria de un relingo (Memory of a Relingo), 288 Giotto: Annunciation of the Shepherds, 284–285 globality, 53, 106, 206; of action, 202, 208; economic, 8, 49, 78n4, 144, 146, 288–289; of exhibition, 199, 207; and manufacture, 49, 243n72; and modernity, 48, 63; and networks, 78n4, 193, 195, 226–227; and pandemic, 18, 26, 217; of power, 75, 78n4, 146, 148, 226–227 globalization, 67, 75, 77, 227, 285 Goldberg, David Theo, 272–273 Goldman, Shifra, 41 Goldsworthy, Andy, 277–278 González, Alicia, 206–207 González, Claudia Ivette, 219, 223 González Camarena, Jorge, 169 González Lobo, Carlos, 288 González Rodríguez, Sergio: The Femicide Machine, 140, 144, 145 González y Otras v. México (Campo Algodonero), 24, 218, 222, 227, 239n29, 241n45; as legal landmark, 220, 223, 225, 228. See also Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR); Memorial del Campo Algodonero; reparations; reparations, symbolic gore capitalism, 7, 118, 144, 149, 152 government. See the state graffiti, 18, 58–61 grassroots memorials, 7, 17, 23–24, 192–208, 195, 197, 200, 232, 235, 272; and community building, 192–194, 196, 198–199, 202–207; definition of, 193, 207–208; and identity, 192, 196–197; as protest, 192, 194, 196–197. See also Bordamos por la Paz; Colectivo Antimonumentos; Menos Días Aquí; Pink Crosses grassroots projects, 6–7, 19, 65; México Negro as, 122, 133n33 Great Britain, 12, 38, 47, 90, 128, 277 Greeley, Robin Adèle, 4–5, 24, 202, 218–237 Greer, Betsy, 196 Gregg, Melissa, 105 grief, 69, 140; and connectedness, 202–203, 206, 215; ephemeral expressions of, 24, 193; lack of place for, 153, 155; private made public, 199, 233; public, 23, 199, 205, 207. See also mourning El grito (The Scream) (Chavajay), 129

314  Index

Grosfoguel, Ramón, 75, 78n4 Grupo Germen, 18, 58–61, 60, 61 Guevara, Che, 69, 71, 72, 73 Habermas, Jürgen, 14, 233, 242n69 Halberstam, Jack, 177 Hall, Stuart, 166–167, 171, 172, 179 harassment, sexual, 90, 96, 98, 99, 100–101, 105–106. See also gender violence Harmodio, Jorge, 203, 206 Harney, Stefano, 177 Harvey, David, 233 Hernández, Anabel, 68, 78n8 Herrera, Melquiades, 18, 33, 34, 48–53; and fayuca, 48, 49, 52, 57n56; “Botana Cultural: Sátira” (“Cultural Snacks: Satire”), 49–50; “Siqueiros,” 34, 48–49; Uno por 5, 3 por diez (One for Five [Pesos], Three for Ten), 34, 51–52, 52, 53n1; Venta de peines (Combs for Sale), 50–51 Herrera García, María del Carmen, 228 Herrera Monreal, Esmeralda, 219, 223, 228, 240n41 Herrera Pino, Alexis, 71, 71 heterogeneity, 7, 82, 248; vs. homogeneity, 14, 34; memorialization and, 193, 213; muralism and, 34, 37, 62, 72; and politics, 28n24, 62, 75 Híjar, Alberto, 18, 34, 53; and “muralisms,” 38, 42, 47–48, 49; Taller de Arte e Ideología (Workshop on Art and Ideology), 43–44, 45; La praxis estética: Dimensión estética libertaria, 38–39 El Hijo del Ahuizote, 22, 158, 160 Hipotermia (Hypothermia) (Enrigue), 289, 297n49 Holocaust, 231, 255, 260–261, 261, 262, 294; witnessing and, 144, 152 “El hombre” (“The Man”) (Rulfo), 280 homogeneity, 20, 89, 91, 170, 252, 273; vs. heterogeneity, 14, 34 homosexuality. See queerness housing developments, 4, 8, 251–252, 263n7; abandoned structures in, 249, 250, 255, 274; and civic space, 25, 248, 249, 251, 255–256, 258, 263; construction quality of, 249, 253, 254, 258, 259, 265nn36–37; empty spaces and, 254, 262, 263; financial systems of, 247, 248, 249–250, 251, 253, 259, 263; and housing production, 248–249, 250–251, 259, 263n35; Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers (Infonavit), 249, 250, 259, 265n27, 265n36; and interstices, 254–255, 262, 263, 288 (see also relingos); and lack of public services, 25, 255; and location, 247, 248, 249, 251, 252–253, 258, 263; repetition and, 252, 258, 260–261, 268; urban planning and, 25, 249, 261; and violence, 247–248, 253–255, 256, 258–259,

262; and vulnerability, 252–254, 257, 258, 259, 260, 263. See also urban planning/design human rights, 8, 23, 114n4, 185n41; activists for, 225, 228; American Convention on Human Rights, 219, 221; and grassroots memorials, 8, 24; Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 68; Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará), 219, 239n26; international community for, 220, 226, 240n34; international law and, 218, 223, 225, 226, 228, 237n11; military dictatorships and, 149, 152; national bodies, 210n28, 229; violations, in general, 76, 219. See also femicide; Flor de Arena (Leiton); González y Otras v. México (Campo Algodonero); Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR); Memorial del Campo Algodonero; Memorial to Victims of Violence in Mexico; reparations; state violence IACtHR. See Inter-American Court of Human Rights identitarianism, 75, 272, 293 identities, 58, 92, 116, 118, 273; collective, 59, 198, 199, 201; cultural, 28n24, 179; ethnic/racial, 23, 119, 166, 180 (see also mestizaje; race; racialization); gender, 30n77, 92, 175 (see also gender diversity); loss or deferral of, 111, 122, 279, 285, 295; and memorialization, 23, 194, 197, 236; national, 26, 165, 221, 231; political, 208n2, 233, 272; social, 166, 230. See also intersectionality ideology, 5, 44, 221, 230, 279; mestizaje and, 165, 172; muralism and, 5, 33, 34, 35, 37, 50; nationalist, 18, 227; postrevolutionary, 34, 158; revolutionary, 15, 16, 51–52, 158; ruptura (rupture) and, 35, 44; rural teachers’ colleges and, 65, 71, 75; state, 5, 9, 221, 231, 260; Taller de Arte e Ideología (Workshop on Art and Ideology), 43–44, 45 If This Is a Man (Levi), 144 imaginaries, 136, 168, 267; collective, 72, 169; national, 21, 26, 139, 180; of “the public,” 3, 7, 8 INAH. See National Institute of Anthropology and History Indigenous femininity, 168, 171 Indigenous peoples: activism by, 114n4, 165, 171, 179, 186n53; as ancestors, 20, 116, 117, 118, 119, 128, 131; and ancestral relationships, 123, 125, 126, 129–130; and collectivity, 19, 84, 114; and conception of time, 20, 123, 133n39; and cultural memory/knowledge, 121, 125, 126, 128; epistemologies of, 123, 125, 129–130; indigenismo/ indigeneity, 41, 117, 130, 171; marginalization of, 117, 125, 131, 175; media representation of, 169,

170; and mestizaje, 166, 168, 169–170; racism toward, 168, 170–171; and revolutionary ideals, 15, 36, 119; ritual and, 121, 122, 125–126; and self-expression, 84, 86; violence against, 63, 75, 125, 131, 172; and visibility, 23, 175; whitening of, 169–170, 171–172. See also Mexica people; pueblos originarios/pueblos de indios Indigenous women, 114, 127, 130–131, 170 INEGI. See National Institute of Statistics and Geography infrastructure: in housing developments, 25, 248, 257; lack of, 249, 251; state, in general, 1, 4, 5 injustice, 21, 22, 70, 118, 175, 225 insecurity, 8, 18, 25, 90, 257 installations, 7, 273, 276; by Bordamos por la Paz, 199, 202, 205; by the Comité de Huelga (Strike Committee), 46; Andy Goldsworthy and, 277–278; Guadalupe García-Vásquez and, 120; Acciones para convertirme en los otros (Actions to Convert Myself into Others) (Salgado), 104, 104; Blue Sandals, 293, 298n60; Cuentos patrióticos (Patriotic Tales) (Alÿs), 285–286; El cuarto hundido (allá por Amecameca) (The Sunken Room [somewhere near Amecameca]) (Escobedo), 289; Muerte sin fin—en este valle de lágrimas en donde de aquellos 3 millones de habitantes tan sólo quedan 20 millones de sobrevivientes (Death without End—in This Valley of Tears Where of Those 3 Million Inhabitants Only 20 Million Survivors Remain) (Escobedo), 289; Nomads (Ribas), 294–295; Tercera llamada (Final Call) (Ehrenberg), 279; The Writing of Disaster (Cruzvillegas), 295. See also El tendedero (The Clothesline) (Mayer); Margolles, Teresa Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers (Infonavit), 249, 250, 259, 265n27, 265n36. See also housing developments Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 68 Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará), 219, 224, 239n26 Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), 223–227, 232, 239n29; and the concept of “public,” 220, 226, 228–229; government resistance to, 227, 228–229, 240n42; and memorialization, 218–219, 222, 226, 236, 238n16; and reparations in general, 218, 221, 223, 225, 240n39; and symbolic reparations, 219–220, 222, 226, 227–229, 238n16. See also Flor de Arena (Leiton); González y Otras v. México (Campo Algodonero); Memorial del Campo Algodonero

Index  315

intersectionality, 34, 111, 183; antiracism and, 167, 175, 176, 179 Intersticios (Interstices) (photograph) (OrtizStruck), 252 Intersticios (Interstices) (video) (Ortiz-Struck), 263 invisibility, 24, 136–137, 281, 296n24; and architecture, 258, 259–260; and connection, 285, 293; of death, 146, 148, 153; and dust, 272, 273, 282, 283, 296n28; of Indigenous peoples, 131, 175; and racism, 21, 117, 131, 166; of victims and violence, 70, 198, 233–234, 253. See also visibility Isidro Burgos, Raúl, 63, 64 Israel, 90, 102, 103 Jemmott Nelson, Glyn, 122, 133n33 journalism, 64–65, 262, 276; investigative, 17, 78n8, 148, 196; sensationalist, 140–141, 203 journalists, 46, 53n1; dangers to, 16–17, 30n64, 81n51, 161; Menos Días Aqui and, 198, 208; Regeneración and, 158, 161 justice, 8, 17; access to, 201n36, 228, 240n39; and Ayotzinapa, 67, 69, 213; calls for, 144, 175–176, 222, 236; and corruption/obstruction, 144, 227; failure of, 228, 229, 232, 262; human right to, 219, 225, 226; search/struggle for, 23, 131, 175–176, 242n57; and truth, 210n28, 213, 214, 215, 217, 226. See also González y Otras v. México (Campo Algodonero); grassroots memorials; Margolles, Teresa; social justice Ka Niula Yanni (Mujeres activas/Active Women) (Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante), 85 Kertész, Imre: Fateless, 262 Labowitz, Leslie, 96, 97 Lacy, Suzanne, 20, 96, 97, 126 La Noche Triste, 125, 126, 130 Latour, Bruno, 25 Leiton, Verónica, 219, 231, 242n54; explanation of Flor de Arena, 223, 229–230, 231, 241n46; lack of collaboration with families, 229, 241n46; site of Flor de Arena and, 234, 242n57. See also Flor de Arena Lengua (Tongue) (Margolles), 146–147 Lenin, Vladimir, 71, 72 Lerma, Víctor, 93, 94; and Pinto mi Raya, 89, 90, 101, 102, 103 Levi, Primo, 143, 153; If This Is a Man, 144 LGBTQIA+. See gender diversity; muxes; queerness; sexual diversity Lippard, Lucy, 9, 10–11 Lomnitz, Claudio, 15

316  Index

Lo normal (On Normality) (Mayer), 94 López, Willi Rául, 287 López Casanova, Alfredo, 198 López Obrador, Andrés Manuel, 67, 130, 170 Los Angeles (California), 20, 55n36, 94, 96–98, 97, 110–112, 112, 161 Los Grupos, 41, 48, 57n69, 108n22, 292 Lotes baldíos (Vacant Lots) (Morábito), 291 macumba, 120, 132n22 Making It Safe (Lacy and Labowitz), 96, 96–97 Manifiesto expresionista (Expressionist Manifesto) (Taller de Arte e Ideología), 44, 45 Manrique, Daniel, 292, 298n55 Mao, Zedong, 71, 72 maquiladoras, 140, 144, 233, 286 Margolles, Teresa, 21–22, 26, 140–144, 145–148, 149–153, 155; and the anti-museum, 150–152, 153; and counterforensics, 19, 22, 140, 143, 149, 152, 155; and forensics, 143–144, 145–148, 149, 152, 155; and SEMEFO, 21, 145–146, 147, 148; Andrea, Pistas de Baile (Andrea, Dance Floors), 151; Camiseta (T-Shirt), 284; El testigo (The Witness) (exhibition), 140–143, 148–149, 150, 153; El testigo (The Witness) (work), 141, 142, 152; Frontera (Border), 283–284; La promesa (The Promise), 141, 271, 274–275, 276, 276, 280; Lengua (Tongue), 146–147; Pistas de baile (Dance Floors), 149–150; PM 2010, 140–141; Sonidos de la muerte (Sounds of Death), 141, 142–143, 149, 150–151, 154, 155; 32 años: Levantamiento y traslado donde cayó el cuerpo asesinado del artista Luis Miguel Suro (32 Years: The Lifting and Removal Where the Murdered Body of the Artist Luis Miguel Suro Fell), 148; This Property Won’t Be Demolished, 141, 152; Vaporización (Vaporization), 21, 147; What Else Could We Talk About? (Venice Biennale exhibition), 148, 151, 153. See also forensics Margry, Peter Jan, 193, 207–208 María Candelaria (Fernández Romo), 168, 169, 170 Mariátegui, José Carlos, 35, 36 Marichuy, 114 markets, 3, 8; physical, 12, 13, 17, 40, 49, 101; property, 178, 249, 250, 251, 263n7 Marx, Karl, 71, 72 Marxism, 35, 36, 38, 42, 43. See also communism Matta-Clark, Gordon, 288 Matthew 7:3–5, 273, 276–277, 284 Mayer, Mónica, 19–20, 90–91, 92–104, 95, 97, 103, 107nn8–9, 108n22, 121; and Polvo de Gallina Negra (Black Hen Powder), 101; Abrazos

(Embraces), 89, 90, 102–103, 103, 104, 105, 106; Collage íntimo (Intimate Collage), 94; and Destendedero (Unhanging), 99–100; Genealogías (Genealogies), 93; Lo normal (On Normality), 94; Primero de diciembre 77 (December 1, 1977), 93; Receta del grupo Polvo de Gallina Negra para causarle el mal de ojo a los violadores o el respeto al derecho del cuerpo ajeno es la paz (The Black Hen Powder Group’s Recipe for Giving the Evil Eye to Rapists, or, Peace Is Respecting the Rights of Others’ Bodies), 101, 108n23; Tapices (Tapestries), 93–94; and Tejiendo cómplices (Weaving Complicities), 100; and When in Doubt . . . Ask: A Retrocollective Exhibition of Mónica Mayer (Si tiene dudas . . . pregunte: Una exposición retrocolectiva de Mónica Mayer), 90, 98–100, 102–103, 103, 107n9. See also El tendedero (The Clothesline) (Mayer) Mbembe, Achille, 20–21, 118, 132n9; anti-museum concept, 150, 151, 152 McCutcheon, Erin L., 20–21 McLuhan, Marshall, 50, 57n65 Medina, Cuauhtémoc, 141, 286–287; Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains), 277, 278, 279–280 Medina, Elsa, 275–276 Memoria de un relingo (Memory of a Relingo) (Gilardi), 288 Memorial del Campo Algodonero, 24, 219, 222–223, 232, 234, 236, 242n57, 243n77; and the concept of “public,” 220–221, 226, 229, 233; international court order of, 218–219, 220, 221–222, 225–226, 227, 228; and monument tradition, 221, 227, 230, 231; rejection of, 219–220, 229; and symbolic reparations, 24, 219, 220, 222, 226, 227–229. See also Flor de Arena (Leiton) memorials, 192, 193, 209n9, 230–231; communities of, 23–24, 193, 195, 205, 206, 207; and identity, 197, 203, 205, 232, 236; nonofficial, 8, 23, 46, 74, 193, 207, 236–237 (see also grassroots memorials); official, 8, 23, 192, 201, 202, 208, 214 (see also Memorial del Campo Algodonero; Memorial to Victims of Violence in Mexico); as “public,” 22, 23, 220, 229, 232, 233; rejection of, 23, 24, 201, 219–220, 229, 233; as symbolic, 131, 210n36, 218, 226, 228, 229–230 (see also reparations, symbolic). See also Bordamos por la Paz; Colectivo Antimonumentos; Menos Días Aquí; Pink Crosses; reparations memorials, transformation and, 205, 229; societal transformation, 202, 220, 222, 226, 230, 232, 238n15

Memorial to Victims of Violence in Mexico, 165–166, 201–202, 210n36 memory, 63, 201, 214, 269; acts of, 23–24, 73, 106, 126, 192, 222; archiving of, 106, 121; cultural, 90, 121, 126, 127, 168; embodied, 102, 120, 121, 127, 236; and forgetting, 71, 74, 214, 233, 235, 236; historical, 7, 81n51, 116, 215, 222; living, 75, 76, 214, 215, 267–268; official, 67–68, 214, 231, 233, 236; personal, 105–106, 139, 232; preservation of, 194, 197, 199, 202, 207, 208; as process, 17, 73, 236, 296n16; public, 2, 115, 215, 231, 236–237; recollection of, 130, 203–204; social, 21, 121, 127; struggle over, 8, 205, 222, 231, 233, 235, 242n57; subaltern, 67–68, 75–76; and witnessing, 141, 148–149 memory, collective, 121, 125, 152, 232, 236, 269; and memorialization, 74, 197, 232; and mourning, 198, 202, 289; murals and, 19, 69, 70–72, 74–75 Méndez, Regina, 198, 204 Mendieta, Ana, 90, 108n28 Menos Días Aquí, 23, 193, 198, 199, 205, 207–208; conception of, 194, 206–207; counters for, 194–195, 198, 203–204, 206, 207; website, 194, 198, 199, 208, 212n66 Mérida, Carlos, 4–5 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 292–293 mestizaje, 5, 119, 166; aesthetics of, 168, 172; anthropology and, 168, 172; imaginaries of, 168, 180; and indigeneity, 166, 168, 169–170; myths of, 165, 180; politics of, 166, 170; and racism, 22, 165, 166, 168, 177 mestizaje logics, 22, 180, 182; opposition to, 168, 172–173, 175, 182; and racism, 166, 176; and state policy, 171, 177 mestizo gaze, 166, 167, 168, 176, 182, 183; materialization of, 167, 171, 172 Mexican Communist Party, 49, 70. See also communism Mexican Revolution. See Revolution, Mexican Mexica people, 121, 122, 123, 124–125, 180, 188; Aztlán and, 41, 55n34; Nahuatl language and, 55n34, 80n37 Mexico City, 49, 51, 91, 133n35, 284, 297n49; antimonuments in, 213, 215, 216; art actions in, 161, 161, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 213, 215, 216; Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College and, 67, 69–70; cemeteries in, 115, 116; demonstrations in, 99–100, 213, 259 (see also 1968 movement); earthquake damage in, 1–3, 4, 266; exhibitions in, 41, 94–96, 95, 99–100, 165, 235, 275; marginalized spaces of, 58, 287; monuments in, 4, 130– 131, 201–202, 221, 235; Museo de Arte Moderno

Index  317

(Museum of Modern Art), 94–96, 95, 97; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (University Museum of Contemporary Art, MUAC), 98–99, 107n9, 239; National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), 269, 270; performances in, 90, 110, 113, 116, 125–126, 137–139, 138, 185n41; social problems in, 146, 149, 256 (see also harassment, sexual); University Museum of Science and Art (MUCA), 47, 289; urban expansion of, 52, 178, 260–261, 261; Zócalo of, 125, 199, 215, 217, 286. See also Aeromoto; Bordamos por la Paz; Colectivo A.M.; Colectivo Antimonumentos; Cruz, Yutsil; Fuentes Rojas; García-Vásquez, Guadalupe; Mayer, Mónica; National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM); Pueblo de Xoco; SEMEFO (Servicio Médico Forense/ Forensic Medical Service); Teatro Ojo México Negro, 122, 133n33 Mignolo, Walter, 75 migration, 15, 24, 175, 272, 275, 283; internal, 13, 281, 296n21; into Mexico, 122, 214, 216, 217; poetics of, 26, 273; into the US, 122, 276, 281–282, 293, 296n25. See also borders; dust and migration/movement; nomadism; United States-Mexico border Mills, Ella S., 128, 130 Milun, Kathryn, 13 Ministry of Public Education, 35, 63, 64 Ministry of the Interior, 228, 229, 234, 249 missing persons, 16, 131, 145, 192; memorializing, 201, 205, 214, 215, 217. See also Buscando a Bruno (Looking for Bruno) (L. Avendaño); disappearance, enforced modernity, 65, 233, 267, 272–273; and architecture, 4, 5, 39, 254, 262; and art critique, 92, 292, 294; and biopolitics, 13, 144, 145, 149; global, 63, 75, 78n4; and Mexican pictorial tradition, 33, 46, 48; and modernization, 38, 53n1, 282; shaping of, 15, 36, 116, 117. See also muralism, traditional; Museo de Arte Moderno (Museum of Modern Art, MAM); progress Monárrez Fragoso, Julia, 235 Mondragón, Julio César, 19, 67 Monsiváis, Carlos, 6, 17, 27n15, 37 Monterroso, Augusto: “La fe y las montañas” (“Faith and the Mountains”), 278–279; La oveja negra y demás fábulas (The Black Sheep and Other Fables), 279 Monumento a la Madre (Monument to the Mother) (Ortiz Monasterio and Villagrán García), 5, 27n11 monuments, 4, 130–131, 185n41, 269; critique of, 17, 24, 201, 202, 226, 229–235; Monumento a la

318  Index

Madre (Monument to the Mother) (Ortiz Monasterio and Villagrán García), 5, 27n11; to political leaders, 46, 101, 108n23; and state power, 221, 227, 231; traditional, 213, 214, 221, 230–231, 232. See also antimonuments; Colectivo Antimonumentos; grassroots memorials; Memorial del Campo Algodonero; memorials Morábito, Fabio: Lotes baldíos (Vacant Lots), 291 Morado, José Chávez, 5, 35 Morelos, 1, 20, 266. See also Tlayacapan Moreno Figueroa, Mónica, 166, 167, 181–182 Moten, Fred, 177 Mouffe, Chantal, 14, 70, 74, 199, 201 mourning, 141, 201; and community, 106, 153, 198, 206; and grassroots memorials, 193, 195–196, 203, 205; rituals of, 17, 19, 123–124, 173. See also grief Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, 201, 202 MUAC. See Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (University Museum of Contemporary Art) MUCA. See University Museum of Science and Art Muerte a la gentrificación en Xoco (Death to Gentrification in Xoco) (Silva Ruíz), 180, 181 Muerte sin fin—en este valle de lágrimas en donde de aquellos 3 millones de habitantes tan sólo quedan 20 millones de sobrevivientes (Death without End—in This Valley of Tears Where of Those 3 Million Inhabitants Only 20 Million Survivors Remain) (Escobedo), 289 La mujer como creadora y tema del arte (Woman as Creator and Theme of Art) (exhibition), 94 muralism, Chicano, 41 muralism, new, 33–35, 38–44, 46–48, 49–53, 56n52, 59, 295; and aesthetic practice, 38, 42, 43, 44, 46, 49, 50; and aesthetic theory, 43, 44, 47, 49, 50, 53; as critique, 33–35, 42; and David A. Siqueiros, 38–39, 39, 43; definition of, 18, 33, 34, 49, 56n52, 59; and direct action, 42, 58–61; Fernando Gamboa and, 46–47; and film, 36, 43, 47, 51; graffiti and, 18, 58, 59, 60; non-objectualisms and, 47–48, 53; and television, 34, 43, 46, 47–48, 49; and video, 34, 47–48, 50, 51–52; Archivo nuevo mural mexicano tamaño doble carta (New Mexican Tabloid-Size Mural Archive) (Ehrenberg), 38–40, 39, 42, 53. See also Acha, Juan; Ehrenberg, Felipe; Grupo Germen; Herrera, Melquiades; Híjar, Alberto; Rodríguez Prampolini, Ida muralism, traditional, 5, 27n14, 34, 49, 53; and aesthetic theory/practice, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 43; as beyond state co-optation, 35, 36, 43; community

and, 19, 41; critique of, 18, 33–34, 37–38, 40, 42; and ephemerality, 34, 46–47, 58; and film, 36, 43, 46, 47; heterogeneity and, 34, 42; homogeneity and, 20, 89; ideology and, 15, 18, 34, 35–38; loss of meaning, 4–5, 40; Marxism and, 35, 36, 38, 42, 43; as patrimony, 4–5, 27n8; Ruptura generation and, 44, 46; Sala de Arte Público, 34, 37; state patronage and, 37–38, 40, 41. See also Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College; Grupo Germen; Híjar, Alberto; Orozco, José Clemente; Pueblo de Xoco; Revolution, Mexican, and muralism; Rivera, Diego; Siqueiros, David Alfaro murder, 81n51, 197, 217, 280, 289; drug-related, 16, 198, 208n1; forensic witness to, 141, 148; of Claudia Ivette González, 219, 223, 233; of Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, 219, 223, 228, 233, 240n41; and interstitial spaces, 254–255, 256–260, 262; Memorial to Victims of Violence in Mexico, 165–166, 201–202, 210n36; of Laura Berenice Ramos, 219, 223, 233; of students, 62, 67, 69, 71, 73–74, 80n35 (see also 1968 movement); of teachers, 65, 66; unpunished, 76, 143, 215, 217. See also Bordamos por la Paz; femicide; Flor de Arena (Leiton); forensics; gender violence; Margolles, Teresa; Menos Días Aquí; violence; witnessing Museo de Arte Moderno (Museum of Modern Art, MAM), 94–96, 95, 97 Museo Nacional de Antropología, 119, 121, 170 Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (University Museum of Contemporary Art, MUAC), 98–99, 103, 105, 107n9, 183n2, 239, 275 muxes, 22–23, 175, 185n32 Nace el amor en la basura (Love Grows in Rubbish) (Neza Arte Nel), 292 La nación (The Nation) (exhibition, Cruz), 22, 168–172, 169 NAFTA. See North American Free Trade Agreement National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), 44, 68, 113, 234; Department of Architecture, 266, 269, 270, 288; TV UNAM, 50, 51, 52, 53n1 National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), 269, 270 National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI): and housing, 250, 263n7, 264n22; and violence, 208n1, 209n9 nationalism, 8, 17, 180; Mexican muralism and, 18, 35, 43; myths of, 8, 180; official, 4, 35, 221, 227 necropolitics, 6, 15, 21–22, 272; Achille Mbembe and, 20–21, 118, 132n9, 150–151; the anti-museum and, 150–151, 152, 153; colonialism and,

131, 132n9; and consumption/capitalism, 141, 144, 149; femicide and, 118, 144; and the state, 143, 145, 149; violence and, 118, 141; witnessing of, 147, 155 necropublics, 117–119, 127, 128, 130, 131 neoliberalism: and the economy, 3, 8, 16, 118, 147, 180; and femicide, 118, 146; Mexico’s turn to, 7, 8, 15, 18, 180, 227; and privatization, 3, 26, 240n37, 287; and repression, 67, 77; resistance to, 67, 77, 79n13; Wendy Brown on, 8, 13 Neruda, Pablo, 48, 159 networks, 4, 99, 100, 293; activist, 98, 179, 213; Ariadne: A Social Art Network, 96, 97; artisan, 193, 195–196, 198, 207; and collectivity, 3, 15; of power, 16, 75, 78n4, 226–227; social, 2, 82, 83, 91, 96, 97 new muralism. See muralism, new Neza Arte Nel, 292, 298n55; Nace el amor en la basura (Love Grows in Rubbish), 292 Ni de Venus ni de Marte: Feminismo, arte y diferencia (Neither from Venus nor from Mars: Feminism, Art, and Difference) (exhibition), 103–104, 104 1968 movement, 16, 38, 49; muralism and, 46, 47; student massacre, 44, 46, 56n39, 91, 214, 279 nomadism, 26, 281, 289, 293, 294. See also migration Nomads (Ribas), 294–295 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 49, 57n59, 140, 248, 279; and the Zapatista uprising, 68, 240n37 Novo, Salvador, 50 Oaxaca, 69, 119; earthquakes in, 1, 266; and film, 84, 169; performance in, 22–23, 173–177, 185n35, 185n41 O’Gorman, Juan, 5, 27n14, 35, 41 Olalde, Katia, 206 100 Days in the Republic of Death (Mayra), 194 organized crime, 13, 198, 202, 209n9, 217; Ayotzinapa and, 18–19, 68, 76. See also drug cartels orishas, 123, 126, 127, 132n22, 133n34 Orozco, Gabriel: Blue Sandals, 293 Orozco, José Clemente, 4, 34, 35; Destruction of the Old Order, 284–285 Ortega, Rafael: Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains), 277, 278, 279–280 Ortega Domínguez, Abeyamí, 22–23, 30nn76–77, 166, 183 Ortega Orozco, Adriana, 23–24 Ortiz, Antonio “Gritón”: Desarrolladores inmobiliarios (Real Estate Developers), 179, 181 Ortiz Monasterio, Luis: Monumento a la Madre (Monument to the Mother), 5, 27n11

Index  319

Ortiz-Struck, Arturo, 24–25, 210n36; Auschwitz-Huehuetoca, 260–261, 261; #detrasdelabarda (#behindthewall), 262; Espacio abstraído (Abstracted Space) (series), 261–262; Espacio abstraído (Abstracted Space) (work), 262; Intersticios (Interstices) (photograph), 252; Intersticios (Interstices) (video), 263 Orwicz, Michael R., 24, 202 Osorno, Diego, 208 La oveja negra y demás fábulas (The Black Sheep and Other Fables) (Monterroso), 279 Pacheco, José Emilio, 26, 271, 295n1 Pachuca de Soto, 59–61, 60, 61 Palinodia del polvo (Recantation of Dust) (Reyes), 282–283, 296n28 Parable of the Mote and the Beam (Fetti), 273, 276–277, 284 participation, 3, 6, 14–15, 95, 97, 136, 167; active vs. passive, 220, 230, 232; agoraphobia and, 13, 16; and collectivity, 84–86, 98–99, 182, 196, 222; and communities, 27n3, 59–60, 62, 65, 192–193; and cultural memory, 125–126, 127; and education, 64, 65, 189; and feminism, 11, 104, 105, 121; land art and, 277, 277; memorials and, 17, 193, 201, 215, 220, 230, 232; muralism and, 18, 46, 59, 62, 70, 78n3; spaces of, 6, 106, 111, 127. See also Grupo Germen; Mayer, Mónica participation, public, 4, 16–17, 137, 176, 177; and dissent, 6, 16–17, 24, 255–256. See also Bordamos por la Paz; Colectivo A.M.; Mayer, Mónica; Menos Días Aquí; Teatro Ojo Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), 4; authoritarianism and, 2, 26, 66, 221, 279; neoliberalism and, 8, 15; opposition to, 6, 16, 279; weakening of, 8, 15 Paseos (Walks) (Alÿs), 285 La patria (Camarena), 169 patrimony, 5, 27n8, 267, 269–270 Paz, Octavio, 35, 37, 43, 53, 159 pedagogy, 42, 47–48, 49, 98, 190; muralism and, 18, 35, 36; museums and, 36, 38; rural teacher’s colleges and, 64, 72. See also education Peñaloza Pérez, Sergio, 122, 133n33 Peña Nieto, Enrique, 69, 170, 201, 208n1, 251; hostility to rural teachers’ colleges, 67, 79n19 Perec, George, 25, 248; Species of Spaces, 256 performance, 11, 26, 136, 139n1, 232, 269; feminist, 20, 90, 91, 100, 107n11, 108n28; Andy Goldsworthy and, 277–278; and mourning, 198, 199; and muralism, 47, 49; and ritual, 20–21, 116–117, 118–119, 120–122, 123, 125–130, 206; Abrazos

320  Index

(Embraces) (Pinto mi Raya), 89, 90, 102–103, 103, 104, 105, 106; Acciones para convertirme en los otros (Actions to Convert Myself into Others) (Salgado), 104, 104–105, 106; Árbol de la Victoria (Victory Tree) (García-Vásquez), 117, 125–126, 127; Buscando a Bruno (Looking for Bruno) (L. Avendaño), 22–23, 173–177, 174, 185n41, 185nn34–35; Camiseta (T-Shirt) (Margolles), 284; Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains) (Alÿs, C. Medina, Ortega), 277, 278, 279–280; Deus ex machina (Teatro Ojo), 21, 137–139, 138; Enfrentación/Confrontación (García-Vásquez), 121–122, 133n30; Paseos (Walks) (Alÿs), 285; Receta del grupo Polvo de Gallina Negra para causarle el mal de ojo a los violadores o el respeto al derecho del cuerpo ajeno es la paz (The Black Hen Powder Group’s Recipe for Giving the Evil Eye to Rapists, or, Peace Is Respecting the Rights of Others’ Bodies) (Polvo de Gallina Negra), 101, 108n23; Uno por 5, 3 por diez (One for Five [Pesos], Three for Ten) (Herrera and Prior), 34, 51–52, 52, 53n1; X/U/MAR (García-Vásquez), 115–117, 116, 123–125, 124, 127; Zapatos magnéticos (Magnetic Shoes) (Alÿs), 279, 296n16. See also García-Vásquez, Guadalupe; Mayer, Mónica Peru, 35–36, 277, 277, 278, 279–280. See also Acha, Juan Phillips, Patricia C., 9–10, 17 photography, 58, 94, 145, 292, 296n21; aerial, 260, 263; as artistic documentation, 93, 95, 97, 133n30, 185n35, 278; and media, 215, 259; as performance material, 124, 173, 174; photojournalism, 276, 291; Andrea, Pistas de Baile (Andrea, Dance Floors) (Margolles), 151; Auschwitz-Huehuetoca (Ortiz-Struck), 260–261, 261; Basurero de ropa de inmigrantes en el desierto de Sonora (Rubbish Pile of Immigrant Clothing in the Sonoran Desert) (Cardona), 291; Blue Sandals (G. Orozco), 293, 298n58; Buscando a Bruno (Looking for Bruno) (L. Avendaño), 22–23, 173–177, 174, 185n35, 185n41; El testigo (The Witness) (work, Margolles), 141, 142, 152; Fosa común (Mass Grave) (Cardona), 291; Intersticios (Interstices) (photograph) (Ortiz-Struck), 252; Memoria de un relingo (Memory of a Relingo) (Gilardi), 288; Nomads (Ribas), 294; Pistas de baile (Dance Floors) (series, Margolles), 149–150, 151. See also Medina, Elsa Pink Crosses, 232–233, 235, 236 Pinto mi Raya, 91, 101; Abrazos (Embraces), 89, 90, 102–103, 103, 104, 105, 106. See also Lerma, Víctor; Mayer, Mónica

La pista de baile (The Dance Floor) (Colectivo A.M.), 20, 109, 110–112, 112, 113, 114 Pistas de baile (Dance Floors) (series, Margolles), 149–150; Andrea, Pistas de Baile (Andrea, Dance Floors), 151 plastic, 52–53, 115, 123, 170, 256–257, 292 PM 2010 (Margolles), 140–141 Polgovsky Ezcurra, Mara, 117 political bodies, 5, 20, 24, 70, 89 political corruption, 4, 13, 16, 76, 179, 287; Teresa Margolles on, 144, 145–146, 147 political demonstrations. See demonstrations, political political parties, 207, 214, 241n48, 267; Mexican Communist Party, 49, 70. See also Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) political spaces, 145, 167–168, 208n2, 233, 255–256, 260; and assembly, 24, 25, 112; created by art/ nonart, 62, 70, 75, 287. See also Arendt, Hannah; spaces of appearance politics, 15, 25, 26, 36, 99, 193; aesthetics and, 28n24, 34–35, 53, 75, 89, 100–101; of affect, 91, 176; and Afro-descendant groups, 117, 119, 179; agendas of, 9, 34, 108n23, 136, 191; and the archive, 159, 162; biopolitics, 13, 144, 145, 149; borders and, 26, 271–272; and change, 207, 232; Chicano, 41, 55n34; and community, 21, 63, 64, 65, 175, 180; and critique/reflection, 34, 101, 232, 276–277, 294; cultures of, 8, 231; and the economy, 16, 248, 249, 267; of forgetting, 233, 235, 236; and gender violence, 91, 98 (see also femicide; politics and feminist art); and housing, 247, 249, 255–256, 260, 263; and identity, 208n2, 272; Indigenous peoples and, 117, 170, 179; of memory, 23–24, 192–193, 199, 205; mestizo, 166, 172; and Mexican muralism, 34–35, 36, 38, 50, 89; micropolitics, 23, 62, 191; muralism and, 63, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76–77; and new muralism, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 49, 53; nongovernmental, 17, 207, 214; projects of, 9, 36, 38, 63; and representation, 9, 167; and social justice, 23, 167–168; sociopolitics, 4–5, 202, 279; and solidarity, 19, 178, 179; subjectivities and, 20, 62, 173. See also Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College; capitalism; communism; democracy; dissent; Marxism; mestizaje logics; migration; Mouffe, Chantal; necropolitics; neoliberalism; Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI); Revolution, Mexican; socialism; state violence politics and feminist art, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 105; collaboration, 103–104, 106. See also El tendedero (The Clothesline) (Mayer) Pollock, Griselda, 29n57, 134n58

Polvo de Gallina Negra (Black Hen Powder), 101; Receta del grupo Polvo de Gallina Negra para causarle el mal de ojo a los violadores o el respeto al derecho del cuerpo ajeno es la paz (The Black Hen Powder Group’s Recipe for Giving the Evil Eye to Rapists, or, Peace Is Respecting the Rights of Others’ Bodies), 101, 108n23 postrevolutionary Mexico, 4, 6, 51–52, 53n1, 221; culture of, 18, 35, 285; racial rhetoric of, 119, 168; the state and, 8, 16, 34. See also Revolution, Mexican La praxis estética: Dimensión estética libertaria (Híjar), 38–39 Primero de diciembre 77 (December 1, 1977) (Mayer), 93 Prior, Jorge: Uno por 5, 3 por diez (One for Five [Pesos], Three for Ten), 34, 51–52, 52, 53n1; Venta de peines (Combs for Sale), 50–51 private property, 23, 187–188, 222, 251, 259, 260, 263, 288 private/public intersection, 17, 19, 20, 152, 297n41 private sphere, 11, 141, 176, 233, 239n26, 267 privatization, 18, 112, 114, 251; and neoliberalism, 3, 26, 240n37, 251; of public goods, 8, 24, 248 progress, 74–75, 171, 180, 235. See also modernity La promesa (The Promise) (Margolles), 141, 271, 274–275, 276, 276, 280 protest, 3, 19, 112, 284, 295; antimonuments and, 24, 213, 215, 217; antiracist, 165, 177–178; community, 177–178, 179, 180; feminist, 10, 93, 94; grassroots memorials and, 23, 192, 193–194, 196, 205, 207; movements of, 92, 236 (see also 1968 movement); muralism and, 46, 62, 69–70, 76, 179–180; at official memorials, 126, 229, 236; repression of, 24–25, 66, 68–69, 80n35. See also Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College; demonstrations, political public/private intersection, 17, 19, 20, 152, 297n41 publics, 12, 25, 40, 188, 232, 236–237; aesthetic construction of, 229–232, 233–236; counterpublics and, 7, 21, 28n17, 128; democratic, 8, 14; as exclusionary, 11, 14, 17; feminist, 11, 19; gendering of, 220, 225; Michael Warner and, 7, 28n17, 28n20, 117, 127, 128; museums and, 36, 95, 97; necropublics, 117–119, 127, 128, 130, 131; and performance, 21, 101, 102, 173, 176, 177; plurality of, 24, 220–221, 223, 225, 226, 227–229; as queer creatures, 7, 117 publics, definitions of, 19; contested, 11, 13–14, 17, 24, 26; discursive, 7, 28n20, 76; expanded, 116, 218, 220, 227–228; mutable, 3, 7, 9, 14; new, 6, 7, 20, 110, 117; traditional, 3, 6, 8, 14, 20

Index  321

public spaces, 5–6, 9, 15, 112, 267; as agonistic, 63, 68–70, 74; annihilation of/disconnection from, 249, 251, 255–256, 258, 263; dance in, 20, 109, 110–111, 112; and dissent, 6, 8, 17, 25; exclusion and, 8, 111, 171, 236, 255; feminism and, 11, 20, 89, 90–91, 93, 106; galleries as, 141, 146, 148, 150, 155; grassroots memorialization and, 192, 193, 196–197, 198, 233, 236–237; inclusion and, 59, 251, 269, 292; interventions in, 166, 167–168, 173, 176, 185n45, 213, 279; itinerant, 198, 206, 207; official memorialization and, 192, 201–202, 220, 233–237; privatization of, 8, 24, 111; protest art in, 62, 68, 69–70; public art and, 9, 11, 15, 62; public assembly and, 24, 25, 62, 112, 198, 214, 255–256; resistance and, 74, 76, 112; state influence on, 20, 24, 110, 186n58, 236, 260; state social control and, 16, 70, 76, 285; transformation of, 59, 63, 176, 214, 215, 269; violence and, 8, 13, 16–17, 21, 96. See also agoraphobia; political spaces public spaces, definitions of: new, 7, 14, 17, 110, 242n69, 292; questioning, 24, 26, 110, 297n41; traditional, 4, 7, 11, 20, 110, 251 public spaces, risks of, 13, 16–17, 20, 70, 110–111; gendered violence and, 13, 96; and indigeneity, 171 public sphere, 19, 21, 149, 205, 206; as agonistic, 14, 19, 63, 70, 74, 208n2; and art in general, 3–4, 36, 276; and belonging, 7, 9, 20; and death/the dead, 117, 118, 146, 147, 153, 193; and gender violence, 94, 239n26; ideals of, 14, 233; and muralism, 5, 76; right to occupy, 166, 176; and the state, 20, 110. See also Fraser, Nancy; Habermas, Jürgen Pueblo de Xoco, 23, 177–180, 181, 186n53 pueblos originarios/pueblos de indios, 23, 178–180 “El puño en alto” (“The Raised Fist”) (Villoro), 3 queerness: and art, 7, 185n33; and counterpublics, 128; homophobia and, 50, 118; publics and, 7, 117. See also gender diversity; muxes; sexual diversity race, 23, 119, 171, 172, 180; Blackness, 21, 112, 128; colonial categories of, 21, 179; and identity, 166, 169, 170; racial discourse, 22, 92, 165; and whitening, 169–170, 171, 172. See also mestizaje racialization, 23, 112, 175, 180; of the body, 171, 176; and difference, 167, 176; and indigeneity, 171 , 176; and oppression, 75, 166–167, 176, 177; and subjectivity, 173, 175; and violence, 19, 75, 165, 166, 167. See also mestizaje logics racism, 119, 165, 166–167, 175; and beauty ideals, 169–170, 171–172; discourses of, 165, 183n1; logics of, 166, 167, 176, 177; normalization of, 166, 168, 182; and privilege, 118, 119, 180, 182;

322  Index

visibilizing, 165, 167, 168, 172, 179; and visuality, 166–167, 172. See also antiracism; mestizaje logics Ramírez, Gloria, 234, 243n77 Ramos, Laura Berenice, 219, 223 Rancière, Jacques, 28n24, 57n59, 153, 180 rape, 12, 93, 96, 101, 106n2, 255. See also gender violence Raven, Arlene, 10, 11, 20, 96 Receta del grupo Polvo de Gallina Negra para causarle el mal de ojo a los violadores o el respeto al derecho del cuerpo ajeno es la paz (The Black Hen Powder Group’s Recipe for Giving the Evil Eye to Rapists, or, Peace Is Respecting the Rights of Others’ Bodies) (Polvo de Gallina Negra), 101, 108n23 Red Mesa de Mujeres, 198, 207n77 Regeneración (periodical), 158, 161 relingos, 287–289, 297nn42–43; Memoria de un relingo (Memory of a Relingo) (Gilardi), 288. See also housing developments: interstices; urban spaces: nonutilitarian remembrance, 8; acts of, 23, 192, 205, 215, 222, 236; art of, 70–74, 215. See also commemoration; memorials; memory; monuments reparations: nature of, 218, 225–226, 237n11, 239n29; as transformative, 222, 226, 227, 238n15 reparations, symbolic, 23, 24, 220, 222, 223; and grassroots memorials, 197–198; juridical conception of, 219, 220, 222, 225, 238n16; Memorial to Victims of Violence in Mexico and, 201–202; rejection of, 192, 201–202, 228, 239n29, 240n39. See also Flor de Arena (Leiton); Memorial del Campo Algodonero repetition, 51, 53, 225, 232; in architecture, 252, 254, 257, 260–261; historical, 2, 19; in performance, 139, 173; prevention of, 208, 224, 237n11, 238n15, 296n16 representation, 9, 15, 74–75, 91, 105, 136; community, 180, 228; corporeal, 89, 123, 171, 177; of death, 141, 199, 229; of the disappeared, 177, 196; of dissolution, 272, 274; of femicide, 223, 226, 229–230, 232; of Indigenous subjects, 22, 117, 119, 168–169, 170–172; muralism and, 41, 47, 72, 73, 77; official, 5, 74, 76; of the public, 3–4, 14; racialized, 166–167, 168–169, 171, 172; of the self, 82, 86, 92; of state violence, 77, 213; of the underrepresented, 150, 175; and unrepresentabilty, 91, 106n2; of women, 92, 131, 168–169, 170–172, 229–231 repression, political: and capitalism, 70, 80n30; of dissent, 16, 91, 110, 208n2; of protest, in general,

24–25, 68–69; of rural teachers’ colleges, 63, 79n19, 80n35. See also 1968 movement resistance, 3, 16, 77; artistic, 63, 69, 72, 74, 75, 78n3; community, 86, 171, 206; cultural, 76, 238; to erasure, 127, 131, 159, 173, 282; necropolitics and, 21, 131; to neoliberal/capitalist forces, 79n13, 136, 180, 187; to official art, 17, 23; to private property, 23, 188, 292; sites of, 74, 91, 112, 114; by state, 175, 227; to state-sponsored violence, 66–67, 68, 70, 78n3, 183; strategies of, 98, 99; temporal, 46, 136, 187 Revolution, Mexican, 15, 158, 178, 185n41, 260n21, 274; and communitarianism, 15, 16; “dismounting its horse,” 33, 48, 51–52, 53, 53n1; and nationalism, 2, 8, 18, 221, 227, 240n37; as secular, 15, 16; women and, 92, 93. See also Orozco, José Clemente; Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI); postrevolutionary Mexico Revolution, Mexican, and muralism, 4–5, 27, 40, 43, 48–49; ideology and, 15, 18, 34, 35–36, 38 Reyes, Alfonso: Palinodia del polvo (Recantation of Dust), 282–283, 296n28; “Tolvanera” (“Dust Storm”), 282; Visión de Anáhuac (Vision of Anáhuac), 26, 271 Reyes, Pedro, 131 Reyes Ferriz, José, 228 Ribas, Xavier: Nomads, 294–295 Ricoeur, Paul, 236 Rijtual acción performance (Lago Atitlán) (Chavajay), 128 rituals, 281, 286; Afro-descendant, 121, 122, 126, 132n22, 133n34; dust and, 280, 294, 298n61; Indigenous, 121, 122, 125–126; and memorialization, 23, 192, 193, 198–199, 206, 207–208; of mourning and death, 17, 19, 289, 294; painting as, 60–61, 62–63; and performance, 20–21, 116–117, 118–119, 120–122, 123, 125–130, 206; public, 121, 122, 221. See also García-Vásquez, Guadalupe Rivera, Diego, 4, 34, 36–37, 50, 51, 186n58 Rivera Garza, Cristina, 140, 147, 283 Rivero Peña, Héctor, 235, 236 Rizzo, Cordelia, 198 Robledo Silvestre, Carolina, 202 Rodríguez Prampolini, Ida, 18, 34, 38, 42, 53, 56n39 Roma (Cuarón), 169 Romania, 90, 102 Rosauro, Elena, 150 Rosenwein, Barbara H., 205, 207 Rovelli, Carlo, 283 Rubio-Marín, Ruth, 225 Rulfo, Juan, 26, 271, 281, 296n18, 296nn20–21; “El

hombre” (“The Man”), 280; La fórmula secreta (The Secret Formula), 280–281, 296n20 Ruse, Jamie-Leigh, 204 Salazar Gutiérrez, Salvador, 235, 236 Salgado, Cutzi: Acciones para convertirme en los otros (Actions to Convert Myself into Others), 104, 104–105, 106 Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 69, 240n37 Salva (Campamento Audiovisual Itinerante), 85 Sánchez, Armando, 122, 133n34 Sánchez-Carretero, Cristina, 193, 207–208 Sandoval, Clara, 225 Santamarina, Guillermo, 293 Santería, 116, 122, 123, 133n35 Saramago, Jose, 159 Schapiro, Meyer, 36 Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Obras Públicas (Ministry of Communication and Public Works), 5–6 Segre, Erica, 26 Seigworth, Gregory J., 105 SEMEFO (Servicio Médico Forense/Forensic Medical Service), 21, 145–146, 147, 148. See also Margolles, Teresa sexual diversity, 23, 92, 189. See also gender diversity; queerness Sicilia, Javier, 201, 202 Silva Ruíz, Claudia: Muerte a la gentrificación en Xoco (Death to Gentrification in Xoco), 180, 181 Sinaloa, 91, 103, 104 Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 4, 34–35, 36–37, 38–39, 39, 45; Juan Acha on, 43; artistic theory of, 54n12, 54n14; death of, 37, 48–49; Alberto Híjar and, 44; La Tallera, 36, 41; Marxism of, 36, 43; Ida Rodríguez Prampolini and, 42; Ruptura and, 44; Sala de Arte Público, 34, 37; Cuauhtémoc contra el mito (Cuauhtemoc against the Myth), 38–39 “Siqueiros” (Herrera), 34, 48–49 site-specific works, 7–8, 11, 15–18, 136, 280, 284 Si tiene dudas . . . pregunte: Una exposición retrocolectiva de Mónica Mayer (When in Doubt . . . Ask: A Retrocollective Exhibition of Mónica Mayer) (exhibition, Mayer), 90, 98–100, 102–103, 103, 107n9 socialism, 34, 285–286; and education, 64–65, 71, 72–73, 74, 75. See also communism social justice, 23, 172–173, 220, 274; performance and, 176–177, 183, 185n45; politics and, 75, 167–168, 177. See also justice Solares, Ignacio, 281–282, 296n25 Sonidos de la muerte (Sounds of Death) (Margolles), 141, 142–143, 149, 150–151, 154, 155

Index  323

Sorel, Georges, 36, 54n14 space, urban. See urban spaces spaces of appearance, 23, 173, 184n31 Springall, Luby, 201–202 the state, 9, 15, 92, 168; critique of, 36, 63, 74, 232, 233 (see also Margolles, Teresa); and development, 248, 253–254, 259; failure of duty by, 175, 176, 177, 210n36 (see also González y Otras v. México [Campo Algodonero]); and human rights, in general, 24, 218, 219, 220, 224–226, 227, 239n29 (see also González y Otras v. México [Campo Algodonero]); reparations; reparations, symbolic); and human rights compliance, 224– 225, 227, 228, 229, 240n42; and memorials, 8, 17, 130–131, 221, 231–232 (see also Memorial del Campo Algodonero; reparations; reparations, symbolic); as narco-state, 144, 145, 149, 153; as nationalist, 4, 35, 221, 227; as nation-state, 13, 15, 137–138, 226–227, 240n37; officials of, 198, 208, 221, 227, 229, 230; postrevolutionary, 8, 16, 34; and private property, 23, 187–188, 240n37; public space and, 20, 24, 110; the public sphere and, 14, 17, 19, 233; racism of, 117, 133n33, 166; relationship with the public, 5, 6, 59, 60, 255–256; and repression, 46, 104, 110, 208n2, 255; resistance to, 79n13, 173, 208n2; and student teachers, 64, 65, 66, 70–71, 79n13, 80n35. See also archives, state; authoritarianism; infrastructure; Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI); political corruption; truth, official state sponsorship of public art, 4–5, 36; appropriation of imagery, 40, 186n58, 232; and muralism, 34, 35, 37–38, 41; as normative, 7, 9, 24; racial discourse in, 22, 165; and state ideology, 15, 16, 17–18, 221, 231 (see also Revolution, Mexican, and muralism: ideology and) state violence, 8, 76, 171, 272–273; archival erasure and, 21, 143, 145, 147–148, 149–150; forensics and, 145–146, 149; as narco-state, 144, 145, 149, 153; and repression, 30n68, 91; resistance to, 177, 183. See also disappearance, enforced Stengs, Irene, 197–199 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas), 14, 233, 242n69 subalterity, 11–12, 66, 67–68 subjectivity, 52, 152, 272, 286; and architecture, 260, 280; and the body, 10, 90, 171; collective, 20, 111; new, 70, 92; political, 20, 62; underrepresented, 173, 175; and witnessing, 22, 143, 147, 148 Suro, Luis Miguel, 21, 148 Suter, Gerardo, 26, 271

324  Index

Taller de Arte e Ideología (Workshop on Art and Ideology), 43–44; Manifiesto expresionista (Expressionist Manifesto), 44, 45. See also Híjar, Alberto Tamayo, Rufino, 35 Tapices (Tapestries) (series, Mayer), 93–94 Taylor, Diana, 120–121, 127, 131 teachers’ colleges, rural, 79n13; church hostility to, 64, 65; early development, 63–64, 78n9; government hostility to, 19, 63, 64, 70, 77, 79n19; as grassroots, 19, 65; pedagogy in, 64–65, 75, 77, 79n19; and political consciousness, 65, 66, 67–68; violence against faculty, 65–66, 69, 73, 75; violence against students, 63, 66–67, 80n35. See also Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College Teatro Ojo, 21, 136–139; Deus ex machina, 21, 137–139, 138 Tejiendo cómplices (Weaving Complicities), 100. See also El tendedero (The Clothesline) (Mayer) temporality, 2, 74–75, 137, 283; Afro-descendant, 20, 118–119, 123; and collectivity, 3, 10, 127; and cyclicity, 9, 18, 27n1, 133n39; Indigenous, 20, 118–119, 123, 133n39; as linear, 118, 123; and multiplicity, 28n30, 123, 136–137, 285; and precariousness, 272, 294; slow, 17, 187; and urgency, 187, 204. See also ephemerality El tendedero (The Clothesline) (Mayer), 89, 90, 106, 107n8; appropriation by other groups, 98, 99–100; at Galería Antonio López Sáenz, 103, 104; in Los Angeles, 96–98, 97; in Medellín, Colombia, 98, 99; at the Museo de Arte Moderno, 94–96, 95; at the University Museum of Contemporary Art, 98–101, 105–106; and Destendedero (Unhanging), 99–100; and Tejiendo cómplices (Weaving Complicities), 100 El testigo (The Witness) (exhibition, Margolles), 140–143, 148–149, 150, 153 El testigo (The Witness) (work, Margolles), 141, 142, 152 testimony: Agamben’s definition of, 147; and architecture, 141, 288; community, 68, 74, 281; impossibility of, 155; Indigenous, 126, 170, 172; post-, 283; survivor, 143, 144; testimonio, 147; verbal, 90, 91, 96, 99, 100, 102, 105–106. See also forensics 32 años: Levantamiento y traslado donde cayó el cuerpo asesinado del artista Luis Miguel Suro (32 Years: The Lifting and Removal Where the Murdered Body of the Artist Luis Miguel Suro Fell) (Margolles), 148 This Property Won’t Be Demolished (Margolles), 141, 152

Tijuana, 29n45, 203, 276, 279 Tixtla de Guerrero, 19, 62, 63, 64, 68–69, 75, 77 Tlayacapan, 25–26, 266–270 “Tolvanera” (“Dust Storm”) (Reyes), 282 Tomlinson, Michael, 205 Tornado (Alÿs), 273–274, 275 Torres, Ana, 18–19 transformation, 86, 191, 260; aesthetic, 37, 57n59; architectural, 248–249, 258, 267; of dust, 271, 280, 282, 295n1; economic, 49, 118, 149, 248–249; experiential, 111, 204; ideological, 4–5, 52, 53n1, 72; and linearity, 10, 18; neoliberal, 7, 8; political, 25, 74, 101, 136, 202; of public art, 26, 38, 42, 52; and public space, 8, 14, 20, 58, 59, 60; and ritual, 121, 122, 126; socioeconomic, 36, 57n59; urban, 91–92, 94 transformation, social, 6, 58, 59, 116, 220; and feminist art, 98, 106; muralism and, 37, 58, 71, 72; and official memorials, 202, 222, 226, 227, 230, 232, 238n15; and rural teachers’ colleges, 63–64, 65, 71, 72 trauma, 102, 105, 106n2, 120, 148–149; historical, 21, 116, 125, 127, 128, 130–131; and memorialization, 131, 193; and performance, 122, 123–125, 130 “Trayectoria del polvo” (“Trajectory of Dust”) (Castellanos), 281 truth, 22, 74, 144, 273; historical, 149, 150, 152, 215; and symbolic reparations, 221–222, 242n57; Truth and Reconciliation commissions, 149, 152–153, 199, 210n28, 226 truth, official: and antimonuments, 213, 214, 215, 217; and counterforensics, 22, 143, 149, 152, 153 (see also archives, state); and enforced disappearances, 67–68, 70–71, 76, 78n8; and grassroots memorials, 193–194, 198–199, 236; and housing problems, 253–254; and state forgetting, 22, 235, 236, 237 Turati, Marcela, 68, 78n8 UNAM. See National Autonomous University of Mexico the undercommons, 7, 22, 23, 167, 182; public space and, 176–177, 180. See also the commons United States–Mexico border, 41, 55n34, 149, 227, 279, 295n15; Ciudad Juárez and, 22, 143–144, 145, 274–275, 276, 284; and identity, 26, 272. See also North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) United States (US), 38, 44, 45, 50, 117, 289; Chicano art from, 41, 55n34. See also Los Angeles (California); North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

University Museum of Science and Art (MUCA), 47, 289 Uno por 5, 3 por diez (One for Five [Pesos], Three for Ten) (Herrera and Prior), 34, 51–52, 52, 53n1 urban planning/design: alternative approaches to, 260, 268; and citizens’ rights, 247, 248, 249, 255; and efficiency/homogeneity, 249, 252, 260–261, 268; and public space, 25, 259. See also Auschwitz-Huehuetoca (Ortiz-Struck); housing developments; La promesa (The Promise) (Margolles); relingos urban spaces, 97, 111–112, 150, 283, 285, 287; and alienation, 90, 249, 251, 261–262, 262, 291; as commons, 5, 13; disconnection of, 25, 249, 251, 253, 255, 258, 262–263; dust of, 289, 291, 298n55; gentrification and, 23, 42, 178, 179, 180, 181; as landscapes, 59, 233; memorials in, 192, 233–234; nonutilitarian, 297n41 (see also relingos); overtaking rural, 51–52, 53n1, 91, 178, 249, 287; and political life, 25, 199, 207, 248, 256, 259; and private property, 251, 258. See also housing developments; public spaces Uribe, Ana, 125, 126 Valencia, Sayak, 7, 118, 144. See also gore capitalism vanitas motifs, 272, 276, 282–283, 293 Vaporización (Vaporization) (Margolles), 147 Vasconcelos, José, 35–36, 63–64 Vélez, Alejandro, 203–204 Venice Biennale. See What Else Could We Talk About? (exhibition, Margolles) Venta de peines (Combs for Sale) (Herrera and Prior), 50–51 Veracruz, 42, 119, 122, 133n35, 266; Pueblo de Xico, 38, 39–40; Xalapa, 126 video, 10, 11, 185n32, 263, 274, 278; and installation art, 170–171, 172, 285; and new muralism, 34, 47–48, 50, 51–52; Cuentos patrióticos (Patriotic Tales) (Alÿs), 285; Intersticios (Interstices) (Ortiz-Struck), 263; Tornado (Alÿs), 273–274, 275; Uno por 5, 3 por diez (One for Five [Pesos], Three for Ten) (Herrera and Prior), 34, 51–52, 52, 53n1; Venta de peines (Combs for Sale) (Herrera), 50–51. See also film Villa, Saúl: La belleza está en la calle (Beauty Is in the Streets), 287 Villagrán García, José: Monumento a la Madre (Monument to the Mother), 5, 27n11 Villoro, Luis: “El puño en alto” (“The Raised Fist”), 3 Vines, Robyn, 12 violence, 17, 47, 54n14, 76, 205; anti-LGBTQ+, 50, 150; anti-socialist, 65, 72–73, 74; of colonization,

Index  325

125, 127, 128, 131; commodification of, 141–142, 143, 152, 207; and community cohesion, 18, 61, 76; displaced, 148, 151–152, 153; drug-related, 8, 23, 103, 104, 192, 194, 198; dust and, 26, 271, 272; escalation of, 7, 16, 22, 139, 140, 143, 148; against Indigenous peoples, 63, 127, 131, 171, 176; Memorial to Victims of Violence in Mexico, 165–166, 201–202, 210n36; objective, 247, 253, 254; racialized, 19, 21, 131, 166, 167, 172, 176, 180; sensationalized, 141–142, 143; spaces of, 247–248, 254, 256–260, 294; structural, 171, 222, 224, 226, 236, 239n29; systemic, 76, 118, 238n15, 253–254; traces of, 21, 141, 152, 153; ubiquity of, 8, 78n3, 152, 254. See also femicide; gender violence; gore capitalism; murder; necropolitics; state violence; trauma; witnessing Virgin of Guadalupe, 55n36, 116, 120, 121 Virno, Paolo, 19 visibility, 24, 25, 116, 123, 221; Afro-Mexican struggle for, 117, 119, 122, 131, 133n33; feminist, 19–20, 93, 94, 107n8; of grief, 116, 207; of memory, 127, 196, 198, 208, 220, 229, 233–234; public, 16–17, 23, 93, 233, 263; of racism, 165, 167, 173, 180, 182; struggle for, 26, 70, 75, 274; of testimony, 90, 91, 99; of the undercommons, 23, 173, 175, 176, 180; of violence, 148, 152, 167, 180, 198, 232. See also the gaze; invisibility Visión de Anáhuac (Vision of Anáhuac) (Reyes), 26, 271 volcanic ash, 289–291, 298n49

Westphal, Carl Friedrich Otto, 12 What Else Could We Talk About? (Venice Biennale exhibition, Margolles), 148, 151, 153 When in Doubt . . . Ask: A Retrocollective Exhibition of Mónica Mayer. See Si tiene dudas . . . pregunte: Una exposición retrocolectiva de Mónica Mayer (exhibition, Mayer) whiteness, 166; and whitening, 119, 169–170, 171, 172, 180, 184n22 witnessing, 146–147, 176; forensic, 21–22, 141–144, 145–147, 148–149, 153; galleries as place of, 141, 147–148, 155; murals and, 19, 63, 72–73; ritual, 125, 129; and silence, 143, 144, 145, 147, 150, 252; El testigo (The Witness) (exhibition, Margolles), 140–143, 148–149, 150, 153; El testigo (The Witness) (work, Margolles), 141, 142, 152; and testimony, 144, 145, 150. See also Agamben, Giorgio; Bordamos por la Paz; Margolles, Teresa; Menos Días Aquí Wolffer, Lorena: La belleza está en la calle (Beauty Is in the Streets), 287 The Writing of Disaster (Cruzvillegas), 295

WACK! (exhibition), 98, 107n8 Wade, Peter, 167, 181–182 Warner, Michael, 7, 28n20, 117, 127, 128 war on drugs, 6, 16, 23, 63, 76, 81n51; memorialization and, 192, 193, 194, 199, 208 Weizman, Eyal, 22, 143, 148–149, 150, 152–153 welfare state, 13, 15

Zamudio, Raúl, 285 Zapatistas, 68, 170, 240n37 Zapotec culture, 30n77, 173, 176, 185n32 Zaramella, Enea, 21–22 Žižek, Slavoj, 247, 253 Zócalo, 125, 199, 215, 217, 286. See also Mexico City

326  Index

Xoco. See Pueblo de Xoco X/U/MAR (García-Vásquez), 115–117, 116, 123–125, 124, 127 Young, James, 231, 232–233 Yo y mi circunstancia: Movilidad en el arte contemporáneo mexicano (exhibition), 286, 293