Memory work finds a stage in Mexico’s streets

A performance of Faces of Justice in Mexico City in 2018. Photo © Lorena Wolffer.

Opinion • Lorena Wolffer • September 26, 2025 • Leer en castellano

The Route of Remembrance in central Mexico City has become a poignant public archive of the violence in the country, and the communities that have come together to resist it in recent decades. It is a space of living memory, an updated record of state crimes from the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre to today.

This urban logbook joins other memory initiatives that, using strategies and languages from art, theater, and other disciplines, articulate and condemn the violent turmoil in México. These creations put a spotlight on those who document and fight against violence, acknowledging their irreplaceable work in these times.

If not for these initiatives, what public archives would record the stories of the nearly 76 people who are murdered every day, or the 125,287 who have been disappeared in Mexico, a country with an impunity rate well above 90 percent? Where would we tell and preserve the memory of the girls, young women, and women who are killed every day in a country that also has the second-highest number of transfemicides worldwide?

The 49 ABC statue on Paseo de la Reforma in remembrance of the 49 children killed in a daycare in 2009 stands in front of the National Institute for Social Security, which licensed the facility to private operators. Photo © Dawn Marie Paley.

The city as a public archive

The imposing Paseo de la Reforma boulevard is dotted with what are called antimonuments—large metal numbers and letters in different colors that dramatically alter the landscape. 

They include a red 43+ for the students disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014, and the white 72+ for the massacre of migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, in 2010. There's also the pastel ABC for the 49 children who died in the ABC Daycare Center fire in Hermosillo in 2009. And the purple Anti-monument, which was installed in 2019 to condemn femicides and killings of women around the country.

“No forgiveness, no forgetting”, reads the Antimonument for 1968, erected during a commemorative demonstration in 2018, on the 50th anniversary of the student massacre. 

It stands in front of the National Palace, home to Mexico’s executive branch—and not in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, where the massacre took place—to mark the building from which the orders that ended the lives of hundreds of students were issued.

There are also two roundabouts that have been appropriated for public protest and memory keeping. 

The Roundabout for the Disappeared was established by the families of the disappeared when the number of cases surpassed 100,000, in 2022. It is located where the Palm Tree Roundabout used to be.

Like so many others in the city, the palm tree that gave the roundabout its name died and was replaced by an ahuehuete tree, which also died. The new tree that is now growing slowly in the center of the roundabout has been renamed The Guardian of the Disappeared by the families as part of their ongoing process of reclaiming space and memory.

The roundabout is surrounded by the barriers the Mexico City government uses to shield plazas and monuments during marches and protests. Today, those barriers have been transformed into a seemingly infinite bulletin board that is updated daily with “disappeared” posters from throughout the country.

Then there is the Roundabout of Women in Struggle, which was occupied in 2021 by women and feminist collectives on the site where the monument to Columbus once stood. The pedestal that used to support a statue of the Spanish conquistador now upholds Justice, a purple female figure intentionally created without defining features, so as to represent us all. 

This roundabout is also surrounded by barriers, but here they display the names of hundreds of women fighters throughout the country and from every struggle in bold white letters. The walls that honor each and every one of them as a collectivity, as well as many of those who are no longer with us.  

Although this roundabout is part of the Route of Remembrance, it also has a different political purpose. It not only recognizes systemic violence against girls, young women, and women, but also shifts the focus to those who fight against it. 

In a country without justice, it highlights the importance of naming and recognizing those who dedicate their lives to combating, redressing, and eradicating violence. Naming women who fight for and on behalf of others as active political subjects is a powerful statement in a country where a (trans)feminicidal culture has been entrenched for decades.

In recent weeks, there have been two attempts to dismantle the Roundabout of Women in Struggle. The first incident occurred on September 5, when the Mexico City government removed the barriers, only to reinstall them a few hours later following complaints on social media.

The second incident happened just a few days back when police were deployed to lay the groundwork for a new Garden of Memory for Life, Dignity, and Justice. 

Neither attempt was successful. As the latest Instagram post from the Glorieta states: “Our memory is their defeat.”

The 72+ statue on Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. The text on the monument reads: "Migrating is a human right." Photo © Dawn Marie Paley.

Journalism as antimonument

The Roundabout of Women in Struggle shares similarities with Las periodistas cuentan (2024-2025), a project by Línea de Sombra Theater in collaboration with Elefante Blanco Periodismo. Part of its program, Truth Fragments, sees journalists up on stage instead of actors or actresses.

On a carefully built set where several simultaneous acts are performed, journalists share their stories—each deciding what to tell and how they tell it—creating “a spontaneous map of on-the-ground journalism.”

The title itself, which translates to “The journalists speak” in the feminine, makes a statement: the feminine article “las” refers to women journalists, and the plural verb “cuentan” (they tell) evokes both what reporters share and their importance in a country where 174 journalists have been murdered in the last 25 years.

“Las periodistas cuentan is a narrative exercise that outlines, from an everyday perspective, the face of the witness; that is, of those who have been there, who have responsibly spoken out and put their lives at risk,” according to the theater group.

Alternating among different groups of invited journalists, the play has already been performed in different states across Mexico. 

It is a unique and moving exercise that brings the audience closer to the intimate space of an impossible profession, the implications and reach it has for its practitioners, and the personal and political responsibility required to carry it out.

Memory through art

We’ve found alternative forms of documentation and archiving through art, but also alternative modes of resistance. Pixel (2016) shows 30 seconds of a red screen. It is a video produced by the Teatro Ojo group—which doesn’t ensconce itself in any particular discipline—in collaboration with filmmaker Rafael Ortega for the project In the Night, Lightning. 

That infinite red, we discover at the end of the video, is actually a pixel from the image of the flayed face of Julio César Mondragón, a student killed by police on September 26, 2014, in Iguala, Guerrero. 

This seemingly simple statement manages to highlight and condemn each and every act of violence perpetrated against the 43 students from Ayotzinapa, and against Julio César Mondragón in particular, by the various police forces involved and the army, without (re)producing or actually showing a single one of those acts.

In 2018, the feminist queer/cuir working group Invasorix performed a narrative ballad—in a style known as corrido—called The faces of Justice in front of the National Supreme Court in Mexico City. This was part of the State of Emergency project, which María Laura Rosa, Jennifer Tyburczy and I curated across four locations in the city.

“If justice had a face, it would be that of these brave and determined individuals,” the collective said in the publication that accompanied State of Emergency. “Our song tells some of their stories of pain and resistance.”

Wearing masks bearing the pink crosses symbolizing our struggle against femicides and faces of their “real and imaginary friends,” Invasorix distributed photocopies of the corrido lyrics to the crowd, inviting everyone to sing along. 

This unusual device directly challenged state power—who sings to the Supreme Court? It transformed the genre of the corrido from a feminist perspective, drawing on strength and rhythm to create a corrido for justice: “Until killing us is no longer normal!”

Between 2010 and 2016, I developed Evidence in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Querétaro, and Tijuana. It was a social practice project that involved collecting and exhibiting household objects—including lighters, rubbing alcohol, a dog collar and leash, among others—used to commit domestic violence of all kinds, with the aim of making them visible, naming, and healing them.

Each object was paired with a written testimony from the person who donated it, either by the women themselves or by friends or family members of femicide victims. 

In addition to symbolically fulfilling responsibilities that the state failed to meet, Evidence brought these objects and the violence they represented into the public sphere at a time when it was more difficult to tell the world what we had endured. Every object amplified the others, and together they made a powerful statement.

Together, antimonuments, theater productions and other archives and devices are used to tell a parallel story, a story of another Mexico that is light-years away from the one in the books of the Ministry of Public Education and the official monuments lining our streets, avenues, and plazas. 

These acts offer alternative perspectives on citizenship, democracy, and recognition. They demonstrate a commitment to life that nothing —and no one—can erase.