MEXICO CITY (appro).– The patrimonial and artistic clumsiness that characterized the morenista Claudia Sheinbaum while she was in charge of the government of Mexico City (December 5, 2018 to June 16, 2023), was symbolically registered in the sculpture called “Young ruler of Amajac”, which the current head of the country’s capital, Martí Batres, unveiled last Sunday the 23rd.
Located next to the now emblematic Glorieta de las Mujeres que Lucchan (in the former Colón roundabout), at number 96 Paseo de la Reforma (Colonia Tabacalera), the sculpture attacks past and present imaginaries that affect the construction of a shared identity.
From the urban perspective, the sculptural volume and its base generate a visual dissonance that alters the landscape balance of the circulation ring. Regarding contemporary quality as a public space, its location and content are not designed to allow and trigger social uses and coexistence; therefore, it is a space without practical utility. As for the sculpture, since it was based on a copy altered in its dimensions of the pre-Hispanic piece of the same name, its value as an original creation or as a work of art is totally null. And finally, an unfortunate aspect regarding current female identity: the differentiation of women by race and rank, as emphasized by the “Young Ruler of Amajac.” For social welfare, it is essential that equality and sorority be promoted today regardless of age, skin color, occupation, sexual preference, ethnic origin or nationality.
And if in the center of the roundabout there is already a splendid proposal for artivism (sic) in the public space, of democratic identity –which is at the same time a memory of the struggle and courage of plural and diverse women, a denunciation of the violence they have experienced, a demand for human rights and a place of meeting and celebration–, why spend public budget on a sculpture that is characterized by the simulation or deception of its identity and value?
The story is this:
Claudia Sheinbaum, 11 months after removing the five sculptures from the Christopher Columbus monument – October 10, 2020 – to protect them from anti-colonist violence, kept the pedestals there; and furthermore, she had changed the identity of the roundabout, by allowing the artist Pedro Reyes to make a piece to commemorate indigenous women by replacing the monument.
Then, on September 25, 2021, the women who later became the Broad Front of Women Who Fight (FAML) occupied the former roundabout, placing, on the main basement, a simple silhouette cut out in purple-painted wood that suggested a female figure. . No face, origin or age. To emphasize what they demanded, on the back it had a support with the word “Justice”.
And while the head of government did not have a Master Plan for Paseo de la Reforma, with a planning that would allow the actions for the transfer of the monument to be carried out in a scheduled manner – such as the removal of the foundations and the location of the final place for all the pieces –, on March 5, 2022, the FAML converted the entire roundabout into a space of memory and resistance: the wooden silhouette was replaced by a metal one and, on the site of the former monument, a “Complaints clothesline” was placed – with a base in the work of Mónica Mayer–, a pink cross and the “Garden We Are Memory” with names of women who have been violated and disappeared. Also made up of indigenous women, the FAML turned the roundabout into an “Antimonumenta”.
Thus, when faced with a piece like this one that meets the requirements of top-level artistic activism, the sculpture just placed by Batres is perceived as a political simulation in which the indigenous identity is only a copy.
