At a glance, the proposed design for a new memorial in Mexico City commemorating victims of the drug war appears fittingly simple and somber. Renderings depict 15 steel walls, rusted and inscribed with undefined text and arranged around a reflecting pool. There is no disputing that this might serve as a public place of remembrance. But behind the aesthetic austerity of architect Ricardo Lopez’s design is something far less resolved.
In the past six years, an estimated 50,000 people have died from drug-related violence spurred by government crackdowns on cartels. Among them are civilians, police officers, and soldiers. But buried in the statistics too are drug lords, traffickers, corrupt police, and complicit politicians. Thousands are still missing, and thousands of bodies remain unidentified. The seemingly straightforward initiative to build a memorial — first proposed by anti-violence activists — quickly ran into complications: Who will be commemorated, and who will be excluded? And now in the hands of Mexican President Felipe Calderón and his administration, the memorial seems to have taken on new agendas.
Just last year, Mexico City saw the completion of a 343-foot tall “Pillar of Light,” an ill-received monument commemorating the 2010 bicentennial of Mexico’s independence. The quartz-clad pillar came one year too late and tripled its estimated budget. That Calderón appears to have rushed the design process for the war-victims memorial has left many wondering if he is once again prioritizing his legacy over his country’s intent to construct a proper monument. Moreover, a new motion to build the memorial next to a military compound instead of in a historic park, as originally proposed, has drawn fiery criticism.
Of even greater concern is the fact that Calderón approved funding for the war-victims memorial while vetoing a law that would provide economic, medical, and legal aid to thousands of surviving victims of the war. The mixed gesture suggests, to some, that Mexico is not ready to commemorate the losses of a war that has yet to even end. As activist and poet Javier Sicilia stated in the Los Angeles Times, “The memorial is a process of examining what happened, how [the victims] died and why.” To Sicilia, this is “a process that has not even begun.”