A protester at a police barricade on International Women's Day.
A protester at a police barricade on International Women's Day.
What are monuments for? And who are they for?
Last year in Mexico City, a group of women climbed on to an empty plinth in the middle of a roundabout and installed a wooden silhouette of a woman with a raised fist. Around the plinth they painted the names ofvictims in Mexico's epidemic of violence against women. This year the wooden statue was replaced with one made of steel.
The city authorities wanted to put up their own statue, commemorating something completely different. The protesters warned them, "Any attempt to alter the makeup of the roundabout will be considered as an act of direct aggression to the demands of justice, memory and the fight of all families."
Women at the Women Who Fight Roundabout, Mexico City.
In Mexico, 10 women a day are murdered, many of them victims of femicide: the killing of a woman or girl because of her gender. The roundabout, now known to many as La Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan, or the Women Who Fight roundabout, has become a central location in a feminist uprising called the Glitter Revolution.
It began three years ago, when women protesting sexual violence by police officers threw pink glitter over the city's security minister. Since then, there have been several enormous marches and building sit-ins. Many monuments have been taken over, with graffiti, placards and "anti-monuments".
The Glitter Revolution: Protesters on International Women's Day throw glitter in the air. Photo / supplied
The activists are "changing the discourse imposed by the state of what the representation of vulnerable women should be", says Ayahuitl Estrada, a founder of Restauradoras con Glitter, a collective of architects, historians, archaeologists and restoration experts. "The feminist movement has managed to transform national symbols and monuments into something entirely different."
Monuments are now being used as "a medium through which an evolving society expresses itself". The group has documented and recorded the graffiti, installations and other protest material, which it publishes online and in exhibitions.
The official response has been mixed. Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum initially rejected the protesters outright, but later met with them for talks. "It is fundamental that we listen to each other and that we build effective actions together for the respect of women's rights," she said.
The problem, though, is not monuments or even the lack of laws to protect the rights of women. It's that the police don't enforce the laws.
Statue protesting violence against women at the Women Who Fight Roundabout, Mexico City
Prior to International Women's Day last year, the Government erected a 3m-high metal barrier around the National Palace. They called it the "Wall of Peace". Activists painted the barrier with the names of thousands of victims and renamed it the "Wall of Remembrance".
This is urban design, the populist kind, serving justice and human rights, and the challenge of the Glitter Revolution is plain: What's more important, monuments or women's lives?
The Wall of Remembrance, Mexico City. Photo / supplied
Design for Living is a regular series in Canvas magazine about bright ideas that make cities better.
