Protests in Mexico’s capital: mirroring the great European revolutions
Una revolucion sin arte es como querer cambiar el systema con dinero, poder y violencia. (A revolution without art is like wanting to change the system using money, power and violence.)
Late in 2014, thousands of protesters gathered outside the Mexican presidential palace, calling for the resignation of Enrique Peña Nieto. It’s a scene that one doesn’t often see outside of historical movies about the Russian or French Revolutions.
In the minds of the protesters, Peña Nieto’s government is responsible for the alleged murder of 43 students from Ayotzinapa school, as well as the subsequent cover-up after they went missing in Iguala. The students were en route to a speech by the town’s mayor’s wife, which they reportedly planned to protest. En route, the local police intercepted the students and although it isn’t clear what exactly happened, sources claim that the students were held in custody before being released to a local cartel, murdered and disposed of under the instruction of mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez.
Through the heartbreak, disbelief and violence, Mexican protesters in the city and throughout the country have been using art to express themselves and deal with an unforgivable situation. From rough graffiti to emotional performance art to intricate classic paintings, art, politics and protest are all weaving themselves together to create a part of history that has stunned the world.
Saner’s Primitivo
Edgar Flores is a Mexican artist who has taken artistic inspiration from the tragedy and turned it into an entire exhibition in New York City. Primitivo is a set of paintings that are meant to convey a sense of the past and present existing together. Images of historical and modern figures are painted wearing traditional Mexican masks, inviting viewers’ consideration on how so-called primitive man influences modern man, and the ways in which he has been forgotten.
Flores, who works under the name Saner, believes that primitive cultures enjoyed a more balanced relationship with their environment, something that has been largely lost in his eyes. Perhaps the most poignant of Saner’s work within the Primitivo exhibition is a drawing that depicts armed police and other people, some of who mare wearing traditional animal masks. This seemingly simple drawing reveals a scene of confusion and chaos, together with the mixed mentalities of the past and present. Some figures hide, others lie wounded, some are shuttled off by men in masks. A lone video cameraman films from the midst.
Of the Iguala tragedy, Flores says: “We are a voice to not let the 43 students and all those who died in Mexico — reporters, social activists, farmers, children — be forgotten.”
Poner el Cuerpo, Sacar la Voz
Meanwhile, photographer Edgar Olguin and model Sara Yatziri Guerrero Juárez are part of a group that is staging nude artwork for shock value. The former remarked: “In our society, it’s more alarming to see a naked body than to see a charred cadaver in column eight of the newspaper.”
“Poner el Cuerpo, Sacar la Voz” translates as “using the body, expressing the voice.” Olguin, Guerrero Juárez and their fellow activists have been stripping off and painting anti-government slogans on their bodies to raise awareness for the 43 lost students. A popular phrase seen on their flesh is “Ya me canse” (I am tired). The phrase is being used ironically after it was uttered by Jesus Murillo Karam, Mexico’s attorney general, in response to repeated questioning about the lost and presumably murdered 43 students of Iguala.
Activists have been stripping off and painting anti-government slogans on their bodies to raise awareness for the 43 lost students.
The work these protesters have done on their performance and “human sign” art has expanded into film and the activists say they are nowhere near finished. Larger human-body protest art is being planned both in honour of the Iguala students and the girls who have been kidnapped and killed throughout Mexico these past years.
Gran OM protesta
A Mexican artist known as Gran OM has also been incredibly affected by the recent events in his country, evidence of which we can find in the form of pseudo-prints online. One moving image features an empty student’s desk, upon which sits a single, burning candle. The text above and below the image proclaims:
Compañeros estudiantes de Ayotzinapa, su lugar los espera. Vivos se los llevaron, y así los queremos vivan! (Fellow students of Ayotzinapa, your place awaits you. Alive they were taken, alive we want them!).
The “yo” in Ayotzinapa has been highlighted in white against a red banner, signifying “I”. In doing so, the artist, like his colleagues, is demonstrating his kinship with those who were taken. The Ayotzinapa college for teaching students was a known left-leaning organization, which is perhaps why the loss of its students has resonated so strongly with other liberal arts supporters such as these and many more artists.
Graffiti, street art and the will to make things better
The works of these and many anonymous artists throughout Mexico and the rest of the world has been pivotal in spreading awareness for the events in Iguala late in 2014, and garnering support from ordinary citizens in Mexico. From red handprints on the walls to #YaMeCanse hashtags on Twitter, citizens of Mexico are showing their solidarity. Not just with the students, activists and innocent bystanders who were killed in the protests, but with fellow citizens who aren’t willing to let their country continue in this vein.
Sara Yatziri Guerrero Juárez put the continued fight for Mexican citizens’ rights best, expressing her belief that every individual should stand together and teach each other compassion: “The fight of Ayotzinapa’s students’ families speaks by itself and is undoubtedly an example for all of us. My family too is well aware of the project and they’re very proud of the courage this kind of expression takes. My parents are the ones who taught me these ideals and strengths.”
Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca and his wife fled the city following accusations of letting the local cartel dispose of the arrested protesting students, but were recently found and arrested in Mexico City.
References
Mexico artist’s exhibition is vivid protest for missing students
En cada manifestacion, una revolucion
Mexico stages radical nude protest for missing 43 students
Poner el cuerpo. Sacar la voz.
‘’Ya me cansé‘’ y otras claves de la conferencia de Murillo Karam
Missing students in Mexico have inspired a wave of protest art
http://www.yaconic.com/gran-om/
https://www.facebook.com/GranOMoficial
Originally published at www.contributoria.com.
