More Than Stones

This has been a turbulent year for Mexico City, a year of governmental transition, of changes—some good, others rather bad—and of growing social discontent expressed in various demonstrations, rallies, street blockades, and marches by different groups. I want to focus on the feminist demonstrations which, this year, have devoted themselves to a demand that goes beyond equal conditions, the right to choose, and an end to harassment: they call for the protection of women’s lives. In fact, one could argue that these marches transcend feminism and civil rights and enter the realm of human rights, because what is being demanded is the most basic thing: women’s right to be and feel safe in every space in our communities.

In Mexico, as in other parts of the world, there is an epidemic of femicides. It is important to make this classification and distinction: femicides. These are not merely murders of women, but femicides, because their sole cause is the victims’ gender. Jealousy, domestic violence, rape, and other causes distinguish femicides; that is why their classification matters. The latest figure I found (25 November 2019) says that 2,833 women had been murdered in the Mexican Republic that year, 726 of those murders classified as femicides. It is an excessive figure, and it would not surprise me if many of these murders were not classified as femicides because authorities are reluctant to use that classification, apparently due to (1) the sexist mentality of many of those authorities, who see no purpose in the distinction, and (2) the need to deny a problem that will make their cities, municipalities, or states look bad. Denying the problem is extremely common among the country’s different governments. In Mexico City alone, the country’s most progressive and active city in terms of dissent, various groups spent years requesting that a Gender Violence Alert be declared, without success. When the new government took office, there was hope that the new head of government would address those requests, but she decided to ignore them for a year. Indeed, Claudia Sheinbaum was compelled to do so after an injunction was granted in September of that year, and even then she did not finally declare the city’s Gender Violence Alert until November. And these alarming figures concern only femicides; what about disappearances and rapes? Let us remember that at the beginning of the year, multiple cases became known of women abducted in the street and in metro stations in broad daylight. There have also been multiple cases during the year of kidnappings and rapes perpetrated by police officers and taxi drivers. All of this in Mexico City alone; the problem is repeated throughout the country.

From this perspective, the anger and powerlessness felt by many citizens in general, and even more acutely by women, are understandable. They rightly feel vulnerable before an increasingly grave and unpunished threat. They feel no protection from the State—not in laws that address this problem, authorities who know how to listen, or the allocation of resources—and even less from the authorities responsible for justice: police themselves are rapists, and reporting crimes is often a re-victimising and fruitless process. They call the State a “rapist,” and they are right. A State that does nothing to prevent femicides, kidnappings, and rapes, that instead tries to conceal the problem and allows total impunity for perpetrators, is a femicidal and rapist State. This problem is so serious that I agree we must use every possible means and space to draw attention to it. We must make victims visible; we must keep addressing the matter and make those who deny it—sadly, many citizens—begin to acknowledge it.

Do marches, demonstrations, anti-monuments, performances, and graffiti merit this? Yes. Is vandalism and/or the destruction of historic monuments the best strategy to make this problem visible? I believe it is not, and I will justify my position in three points. Public relations However cynical this may sound, bringing gender violence to light is a public-relations problem. Society must accept the problem so that society as a whole demands action from the State. We may live in our progressive bubble—friends, social networks, media—thinking that most people are aware of the problem and want it solved, but in reality we are deceived by living in that bubble. It is natural to surround ourselves with people who think as we do, and daily contact with them can make us believe everybody thinks as we do. Reality is very different. We forget that we live in a deeply sexist society—yes, even in Mexico City. If we decide to leave the bubble, we will realise that the majority of society thinks things such as, “She was raped because she dressed like that.” It is not difficult to leave the bubble: simply look at the comments people make on social media. Of course, it is no use looking at comments on stories published by the progressive media we like to consult; look for conservative outlets or simply mass media outlets—Televisa, TV Azteca—and verify how comments are often heavily charged with sexism, from men and women alike, since sexism manifests itself in both genders. How do we get the majority of the population, against the sexist mentality in which they were educated, to accept the problem? Making it visible through marches, demonstrations, and anti-monuments is a good strategy; however, what society might consider a “just cause” becomes an offence when vandalism begins. Analysing the protests over the 43 trainee teachers from Ayotzinapa is a good exercise for understanding this effect, including the reluctance of a large part of society to condemn that mass disappearance: “That is what they get for kidnapping buses.” If we know this is how society thinks and reacts, how do we expect it to react when masked women destroy a Metrobús station, vandalise the Ángel, and try to start fires on Paseo de la Reforma and in the historic centre? What was the strategy behind that? What message was being communicated to society? It reminds me of an episode from my youth—when I was even younger. I took part in a protest against the United States’ war against Iraq (2003) at a border bridge, on the Mexican side, and in the middle of the protest a group of participants produced a United States flag and set it on fire. At first, like everyone else, I shouted and jumped around the burning flag, hurling slogans against the neighbouring country, invader of the Middle East in search of oil. One of the dissenters, an older, grey-haired, half-hippie man, reproached us. I remember him saying that flag-burning was a device one had to know how to use intelligently. I remember the looks of Americans crossing from Mexico to their country as they watched us burn their flag; then I understood. Our message had been lost. What they saw was a group of foreigners—to them—burning their flag. Undoubtedly, their patriotism and unqualified support for their government, which had arisen after 9/11—United we stand—grew stronger on seeing us. They no longer thought that their government was doing something wrong; they thought they had to support it against the horrors outside their borders. At that moment, our protest was a complete failure; our message was lost. That is precisely what vandalism of historic monuments in Mexico City has caused. I have heard many people say, “You care more about stones than about our lives.” First of all, they are more than stones, but I will address that later. The important thing to understand is that it was vandalism that made people worry about “the stones.” Those who carry out these acts of vandalism divert attention from the real problem—gender violence—to a problem that did not exist until then: vandalism of historic monuments. I do not think the mistake is difficult to understand. It resembles my 2003 experience: those who committed these acts changed the conversation, sent it somewhere else, somewhere purposeless and endless. It is true that dissent must often transgress; that is in fact the purpose of blocking streets, undressing, or presenting slogans and images that seize society’s attention and bring apathetic citizens into the conversation. But these transgressions must be used intelligently, just as flag-burning must. Throwing pink glitter at the official in charge of public security, for example, was a transgressive act. It was much criticised, but I believe it was intelligent: it brought people into the conversation, it was violent without being real violence, it created a symbol—which was later squandered. Creating symbols is powerful. Let us remember the red AIDS ribbon used at the Tony Awards in the early 1990s, which would become the symbol and colour of a cause. The pink crosses that began with the disappeared women of Ciudad Juárez are a powerful symbol. Graffiti on the Ángel or the Hemiciclo a Juárez is not. A symbol must be recognisable, replicable, and portable. Graffiti on historic monuments, by contrast, has been received by most of society as an affront that has done nothing but create interest in the “stones.” Misguided resources So far I have not seen graffiti and fires at historic monuments save a life, free an abducted woman, prevent a woman from being raped, or change laws. It sounds harsh, but let us be objective. The feminist movement’s progress has been achieved—perhaps with some help from dissent—but generally through the work of organised, very intelligent, very combative women who have managed to bring about change through organisations and campaigns and have even penetrated the State itself through legislative power. The decriminalisation of abortion in Mexico City in 2007 and in Oaxaca that year, the approval of the Olimpia Law in this city and other states, as well as other gains, were achieved through organised work: work by hundreds or perhaps thousands of women over years. Of course dissent is also important and has its place. Argentina’s green tide in the summer of 2018 created an important symbol; symbols matter because they unite people, and those who wear a green bandana or scarf identify themselves as part of a movement. The 1968 movement was a dissident movement. A whole variant of Olympic iconography was created for use in protest; there were marches such as the March of Silence, where people expressed support for students from their buildings’ balconies, and rallies in which neighbours joined. Thus the importance of dissent is not in doubt, but the commitment and true motives of those who have gone into the streets to destroy monuments are. Joining an organisation and working—surely as a volunteer—for years to secure a law’s approval collectively is difficult; it requires effort. Covering one’s face and going out with a spray can to scrawl on a monument, under the protection of a crowd, is easy; it requires no effort. One of these things achieves results; the other obstructs the work of those who have spent years pursuing those results. More than stones I have said before that people speak of “the stones,” asking how it is possible that stones matter more to us than women’s lives. First, I have seen no one say stones matter more to them than women’s lives. In fact, the saddest thing is that no one is talking in these discussions about women’s lives because attention was diverted from the real problem. More seriously still, destroying the stones has inflamed a large part of society, producing the opposite effect from the desired one: bringing society together. I have used the word “destruction” deliberately. Contrary to the argument many people use—that the paint can simply be washed off the stones—the stones are in fact being destroyed. Restoring these monuments is neither easy nor complete and will cost the city millions of pesos, millions that would be better spent tackling gender violence. The city government itself has caused part of this destruction, because it used a gel on some monuments that removes paint but damages stone. In the case of the Hemiciclo a Juárez, damage to the stone is more evident than elsewhere. To begin with, the paint was not entirely removed; and if you visit it, look at the stone closely and touch it, as I did, you will find that the areas where the paint was removed lost their shine and even changed texture. That monument, like others, was damaged beyond repair. Here begins the substantive part of my argument on this point. Monuments are more than stones. To people who are ignorant, they may appear to have a merely aesthetic, ornamental function—as with the sculptures in the Alameda—but monuments—the Ángel, the Cuauhtémoc monument, the statues on Reforma, the Hemiciclo—have an educational purpose. Their purpose is to teach us and remind us of events in our history and our identity. Not everyone has access to an excellent education; not everyone has a great library of history; but we all have these symbols, the monuments. Earlier I spoke of the importance of symbols. This type of symbol has importance for society at different levels, and I will take the Ángel as an example. The Independence Column, which we all know as the Ángel, is a symbol of national identity for all Mexicans (level 1). All Mexicans can recognise it as something that represents us; it is impossible to deny that it is the country’s most famous monument, nationally and internationally. It is a symbol of our independence (level 2), a testament to our history that reminds us that, just as we have had many problems and suffered many wrongs, we have also had at least one victory that in the Mexican imagination we all feel is ours: Independence—let us set historical realities aside. And the Ángel is also a symbol of the city (level 3). It can serve all of us as an identifier of Mexico City and, though it may sound corny, as a source of chilango pride. It does not matter if you have seen it a thousand times: whenever you are in the area, you turn at least once to look at it again because of its symbolic weight. Tourists usually take photos with the monument in the background; locals spend afternoons sitting on the rotunda’s steps. The Ángel is the meeting point for national victories, parades, the pride march, and even dissent; protest marches begin there. The Ángel is thus symbolic at different levels and important to Mexicans. Given this, what reaction can be expected from society when it is vandalised?

In conclusion, it is urgent to increase awareness and visibility of the problem of gender violence; it is important to find appropriate, effective strategies to achieve this. Those of us who disagree with vandalising monuments do not do so from a position of denying the problem—at least I do not—but from a broad view of the problems this causes. Let us bring people into the conversation and, rather than divide ourselves ever more, unite to collaborate, each according to our possibilities, in demanding concrete solutions from the State and educating society. Yes, educating it, because education is the only antidote to sexism.