Gender debates on the stage of the urban memorial: glitter, graffiti, and bronze

Abstract

Memorial landscapes are in constant transformation and their values reshape as history is being written. What effect does public opinion have on changes to these spaces? Recently, at an iconic monument in Mexico City a heated debate surrounding gender and the reshaping of the memorial landscape has engaged officials, conservators, protestors, and the public. The preservation of the Column of Independence has been contested from a feminist angle. Re-examining collective memory and heritage preservation in this dynamic space is difficult using traditional theories and practices. This paper reveals the lack of theories and practices available to heritage practitioners to cement new expressions of communicative memory into the cultural memory enshrined in the memorial landscape. The erasure of the contributions of women in the memorial landscape is highlighted. This paper examines the possibilities for layers to be added and preserved in the memorial landscape as the evidence of shifts in collective memory.

Keywords:

• Urban spaces
• memorial landscape
• heritage management
• collective memory
• Restauradoras con Glitter

Acknowledgements

We are truly thankful to Restauradoras con Glitter for allowing us to illustrate this paper with images from their archive, la archiva.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This grafitti does not cause irreversible damage to this monument.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

María Eugenia Desirée Buentello García

María Eugenia Desirée Buentello was born in Mexico City and is now a heritage manager at Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico City. She graduated from the National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museology (ENCRyM-INAH, Mexico). She obtained a dual master’s degree in World Heritage Studies from Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg) in Germany and in Cultural Heritage from Deakin University in Australia. She served as an intern at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in Paris and the UNESCO Office in Mexico. Her interests as an independent researcher are critical heritage studies, gender studies, queer studies and intangible cultural heritage.

Jasmine Quinn Rice

Jasmine Quinn Rice is a PhD candidate of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cologne and a scholarship holder of the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne. She is a graduate of the dual degree Heritage Conservation and Site Management master’s program of Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg) in Germany and Helwan University in Egypt. Her research interests are uncomfortable heritage, the interpretation of contested and difficult heritage, and memorial creation. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College.