Plaza de la República Metrobus station that runs along Avenida Insurgentes. The flow of people from this site is painted purple and green. From both directions groups of girls descend with scarves, face masks, blouses, flags, makeup, glitter. The main entrances to the Tabacalera neighborhood have been closed since the early hours of this Tuesday, March 8.
The area is occupied by groups of girls who use the sidewalk and sidewalk as work tables and also as a canvas. They have brought here cardboard, markers, aerosols to make the speeches that they will carry during their march towards a walled-up Zócalo in the capital, where they will meet other large contingents from different parts of the city, the Glorieta de la Independencia, the Zona Rosa and University City among them.
“I refuse to be indifferent”, “We are the cry of those who no longer have a voice”, “March has had more femicides than days”, are part of the texts that they capture on cloth and paper and raise them high, walk with them , they hug. On the intersection of the homonymous street that surrounds the Plaza de la República and Ignacio Ramírez street, a collective drew the face of a woman and wrote on her forehead: “For my grandmother!”
It is from that point where a large part of the largest contingents enter the square. They come from the southern area of Reforma or from other parts of the city, they cross and greet the Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan, renamed after groups of indigenous people, feminists, mothers of disappeared persons and human rights activists.
Young members of La Chichi Colectiva build an artistic installation on one of the fences that surround the roundabout with a pedestal that previously held a sculpture of Christopher Columbus. They stick clay figurines with floral shapes, starfish shapes and appellations of the female body, and they write: “Joy is the clay with which we compose ourselves”. Right there, a mother and her daughter, no older than 15, carry a cloth on which you can read: “Today I come to march with my daughter with the fear that one day it will be without her or without me.”
In the XXI century!
The feminist tide is nourished by young voices because they are energetic and not necessarily because of age, capable of endowing their slogans with joy and sorrow, and fury. But this one that is developing is not a homogeneous tide, it is crossed by the different feminist positions and their struggles. There is so much to make visible, abolish, reconstitute, that the lack of diversity would be impossible, it would be against nature.
The Wonder Witches collective is one of many that has been cited at this point and does not accept men within its contingent; but the Movement of Persons with Disabilities and a contingent of relatives of disappeared persons and victims of femicide also meet here, as well as groups of young students from the National School of Folkloric Dance, the Centers for Artistic Education (Cedart), the National Institute of Theatrical Art (ENAT), from INBAL; of the University Center of Theater (CUT), of the UNAM, and the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH). All of them march together, share postures and, before leaving, delimit their perimeter with tape.
“We are here because of the machismo that we continue to experience every day, especially in the field,” declare four voices of Archeology students and members of the Warrior Goddesses collective. “It is incredible that in the 21st century they continue to tell us that dedicating yourself to archeology or something related to INAH is an activity for men, when, in contrast, our generation (2016-2020) is made up of 70% women. Teachers, archaeologists, classmates keep telling us that we are not capable of digging and carrying buckets, because it is hard work”.
Another voice shares an experience: “I went to ask for a job as an archaeologist intern at the airport project (the AIFA, in Zumpango, State of Mexico) and I heard the same thing again: ‘we are looking for male archaeologists, because women don’t know do archaeology. On that occasion, those of us who went to look for work were around 15 women and two men”.
In this same contingent, the dancer Paulina Ornelas, co-organizer of the collective Mujeres Performando Lucha, from the National School of Folkloric Dance, shares:
“(In our school) very few reports of sexual assaults have been followed up. Some of those who were our classmates, harassers and violent, dropped out of school, but others are still there. There were no sanctions against him or for the teachers identified as harassing. In other performing arts schools there have been follow-ups on some complaints, but in our school there have been no changes”.
Life before the monument
Finally, the archaeologists add: “we are here to eradicate that position that ponders the care of heritage. We, who are the ones in charge of taking care of him, ponder a single life over any archeological site or building. Society is changing. A monument (like that of Columbus) represented a historical moment in the country, but history must be rethought and we need to represent this historical moment. Why don’t they take care of us, they don’t give us work and they violate us, while they protect the monuments for the image of the city?
Other creative manifestations in the framework of 8M:
- On the eve of March 8, a zeppelin flew over Mexico City, the Diana Fountain, the Winged Victory, the Senate of the Republic, the Monument to the Revolution and Fine Arts, with the written phrases: “10 daily femicides” and “None in oblivion”.
- The Lado B collective led the initiative to change the nomenclature of the streets of the country with names of historical and illustrious women, feminist fighters, victims of femicide and mothers of disappeared persons.
- On the wall erected in front of the National Palace, the collective Antimonumenta Vivas Nos Quiero wrote the sentence “Feminicidal Mexico” and added: “Conservative, the impunity that protects murderers, Mr. President.”
- Over the weekend, the “Jardín Somos Memoria” was installed around the Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan, with a clothesline for denunciation and lists of the names of indigenous people and historical feminists, disappeared and murdered in historical conflicts, journalists who have been raped and displaced women. , among other.