Mexico: Recently Opened 'Memorial to Victims' is 'Act of Provocation' by the Government - Javier Sicilia

Proceso: José Gil Olmos

Without consulting the organizations demanding justice for victims of the "war on drugs", the government of Enrique Peña Nieto took the formal step of delivering the monument that Felipe Calderón promised to certain groups with which he had been engaged since 2011. For the poet Javier Sicilia, spokesman for the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), it was an administrative act, an act of provocation by the federal government by which it aims to divide the group of victims' organizations.

Embroiled in controversy with the families of victims of the drug war and acting in a hurry, the government of Enrique Peña Nieto officially opened a monument at Campo Marte [Mars Field] to remember those who have lost their lives in the spiral of violence over the past six years.

"It is a contradiction to inaugurate a monument by an administrative act, with stele that have no victims' names, in a field dedicated to the god of war [Mars], opposite the monument that Felipe Calderón ordered built for soldiers and policemen killed," says Javier Sicilia, spokesman for the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity.

Three days later the organization launched a campaign in Mexico and abroad to gather 100,000 signatures and ask Peña Nieto to re-purpose the Estela de Luz [Stele of Light] by turning it into a memorial of the victims. Undersecretary Lía Límon, Legal Affairs and Human Rights [department] of the Secretariat for Government Affairs [SEGOB], announced the official opening of the monument (which cost 31 million pesos [2.53 million USD]) and its delivery to the organizations that proposed it: Mexico SOS spearheaded by businessman Alejandro Martí; Stop the Kidnapping led by the activist and former PAN candidate to the Mexico City government Isabel Miranda de Wallace; and the Way Home Foundation linked to PAN Senator Rosi Orozco.

At midday on Friday, April 5, without the presence of the organizations for victims of the war against drug trafficking, Secretary of Government Affairs Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, officially opened the Memorial of Victims of Violence in Mexico. He explained that President Enrique Peña Nieto made this decision because there was no agreement with the various groups to have a single monument.

Alejandro Martí, attending as a special guest, said in response to a question put to him that he was not able to invite any group of victims because the event was organized in three days and was very rushed.

"It is a formal ceremony," he argued, and affirmed that soon there will be a larger event.

However, it was clear that the only attendees invited by the Secretariat of Government Affairs  included Isabel Miranda de Wallace; Patricia Pardo from Way Home; the memorial's designer, Julio Gaeta, and dozens of agency officials in black suits and dresses headed by Undersecretary Lía Limón.

When Miranda de Wallace wrote an inscription in chalk on a metal plate in memory of her murdered son, she posed for the cameras and television and smiled.

Only one modestly dressed woman attended, carrying the photograph of her son, who disappeared on March 26, 2012.

"Nobody invited us," said Irma Alicia Trejo Trejo at the end of the ceremony, adding that she is the mother of Francisco Alvavero and learned of the official opening of the memorial on the radio. 

"This is not useful for anything," she said, while holding her banner to confront Osorio Chong, "it's that they do something, that there is monitoring of the investigations and not just statements by the Secretary of Government Affairs."

A False Conflict

For Sicilia, this memorial is a provocation by the federal government, which aims to divide the victims' organizations.

"We are not going to allow the political interests of the State or of any political party to divide us. This is the message for Enrique Peña Nieto: we continue to insist on rededicating the Stele of Light, on giving it a new meaning by transforming it into a memorial for victims. We want this structure to be a center for victims across the country, the memorial of the dead, of all the disappeared in this country," the poet declared in an interview.

For two years, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity has proposed creation of a memorial to recover the history of each of the victims of the "war on drugs" that Felipe Calderón declared in 2006. MPJD also proposed that a Center of Documentation and a Registry of each of those killed or disappeared in that war be installed in that space.

In 2010 the activist Isabel Miranda de Wallace also proposed to then President Felipe Calderón a monument to the victims. In 2011 the Calderón government accepted [her] proposal after the MPJD put forward their initiative in dialogues held at Chapultepec Castle with Calderón in June and September of that year.

In April of 2011, the citizens' movement brought plaques with the names of Juan Francisco Sicilia and the six other people killed [to be installed] on the pillars of the government palace in Morelos. Since then the campaign was launched to put similar plaques with the names of the victims of that war in every plaza in the country.

"That idea is ongoing," said Sicilia.

Calderón announced the official opening of the memorial for November 26, 2012, but he did not comply. Instead, on November 21 he officially opened the Memorial of the Mexican Army and Air Force, with a cost of 20 million pesos [1.63 million USD], at the Campo Marte facilities. [Calderón's action] was taken as a provocation and an insult to the civilian casualties.

Sicilia recalls:

"During the Calderón administration, they held a working meeting for construction of the memorial, but we left because they wanted to make it only an administrative act. We told them it was not about that, but a process of remembering that has to conclude in a memorial with the names of all victims and a body of documentation. 

"They were determined not to do it. They insisted that they wanted to build a monument. We also rejected that it would at Campo Marte because it is a contradiction to make a memorial of victims in a place dedicated to the god of war and facing a memorial of police and soldiers who definitely have names. We said that we do not recognize it and that if they wanted to do it, go ahead. Now they have done it."

Proceso: What is the government seeking with this action?

"I think that they are not seeking anything. They would not deliver it because it is a bit ambiguous. They wanted to put the blame on us, saying that we didn't want it. That is false. We told them that they would deliver it because they were creating a conflict where none exists."

He insists:

"I do not know their reasons for wanting to blame us for not delivering the monument. Why let them give good, because we are not responsible for the delays. One has to be careful because there's a strategy to create division where there is none. We victims must be united. We must demand from the government the justice, memory, truth and peace that this country needs."

Proceso: If the intention is to divide the victims, do you think it will succeed?

"I do not believe so; we are not going to let anyone divide us because it is not an issue between the political parties, but a humanitarian tragedy. And the victims have no political positions, but we have a commitment to the humanitarian tragedy and to healing this tragedy.

He repeats:

"We are not going to allow the political interests of the State or of some party divide us. This is the message for Enrique Peña Nieto: we continue to insist on the Stele of Light in giving new meaning to this place in order to make it the memorial of victims. We want this structure to be the Center of Victims across the country, the memorial of all the dead, all the disappeared in this country."

The poet and writer, who for two years has been at the forefront of the Movement for Peace, says that unlike other memorials in the world, such as those in Sarajevo, Berlin and several of the United States, in the case of Mexico it's about trying to bring about a peace process.

"The difference is that these memorials were made after the conflict happened. We want ours while the conflict goes on, so we want, we are putting forward a process of peace. We hope that when this war ends in Mexico, the memorial might be like the one in Sarajevo, but the Center of Memory has to remain at the Stele of Light, because that is a wasted infrastructure."

The newly opened memorial had a final cost of 31 million pesos [2.53 million USD]; it is on land donated by the Secretariat of National Defense and consists of seventy metal sheets of differing heights that only carry a legend at the bottom, without victims' names.

The land is outside the pedestrian area, it lacks light and is located between Paseo de la Reforma and the Periférico [major arterials] along one side of the National Auditorium. It covers 13,846 square meters [roughly three acres] in a place where few people pass by.

The metal sheets have engraved phrases and poems alluding to violent death, justice and impunity. One is from the writer Carlos Fuentes:

"How unfair, what damnation, what the fuck is a death that does not kill us but the ones we love."

According to the federal government, this is about a public space for "reconciliation, reflection and unity", but in all that [three-acre] area there is no place to address such claims.

A Step Towards Peace

Since Calderón's government announced the construction of this monument in September of 2012, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity rejected it because the families of the victims of violence in the country were never taken into account.

"The memorial is not a sculptural or architectural piece, but a process of reconstruction of the collective memory that allows the entire society to recover, the river of blood and destruction, the memory of our dead, the names of the disappeared, the injured heart of the country, so that from this exercise we may be able, among all, to embrace the pain of each one and to work together for peace and that such tragedies that so many Mexicans suffer may never be repeated," said Sicilia.

The poet explained that in order to hold the official opening ceremony of the monument they asked their opinion and the answer was that they would do open it in order to put a stop to the allegations that the MPJD movement was responsible for the four-month delay:

"We are not against its delivery, but we do not support it. The problem is that it coincides with our campaign to change the meaning of the Stele of Light. Certain media, and even some of the characters of the SEGOB, say that we have a conflict. We have no problem, we still follow the path to create a true memorial for all the country's victims, a Storage Center of that memory and a place for the culture of peace."

Sicilia emphasizes that the official monument is part of an administrative act, while the memorial of victims that he and his movement are promoting is part of a process of reconciliation and of peace.

Proceso: Is it just a monument that was officially opened?

"Yes, it is a monument, not a memorial. It is a monument in memory of the victims. It is different from what we propose: a memorial, which is a process of memory that concludes with names, it is a process where those who died are brought to life in a ceremony in which their names are remembered. In short, it is an act within a process of peace and reconciliation. 

"We respect the official memorial but we did not recognize it because it is an administrative act, a monument dedicated to a god of war. It is a monument because it has no names, it has no memory. We are not opposed that they did it, but we believe that it is not part of the process of peace and reconciliation that the country needs."

According to the poet, the official monument runs the risk of ending up forgotten because it does not have the sympathy of the victims. Instead, their proposal of getting the most out of the infrastructure of the Stele of Light includes opening a center of documentation in the underground facilities.

He also notes that, despite this official action, the MPJD will maintain its campaign of collecting signatures, and it will endorse ... other events in Guadalajara, Xalapa, Monterrey, Tabasco and also in Barcelona, Spain.

"The movement is for all the victims of the country, for the names and the stories of those victims, it is for the process of peace and reconciliation," reiterates Sicilia.

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