A map shows the path of open wounds in our country. Those that cry out not only in pain. Those that demand justice. It is the route of memory, an atlas in which points are marked that do not aspire to perpetuate the memory. They are an exercise in remembrance born from the depths of resistance. They were placed there so that the grievances would not be forgotten. To pay tribute to the victims. They take the form of urban sculptures. They were christened anti-monuments.
The Anonymous, the Nobodies who install them do not ask for permission. They do not notify the authorities. They ignore regulations. Their mandate comes from below, not from above. They just arrive and put them up. They take care of them. They restore them when the vandalism of reactionaries seeks to erase them, make them disappear, damage them. And, as if they were living beings, they feed them on the dates marked on the civic calendar, with roll calls, photographs, music, slogans, flowers, and masses.
The anti-monuments coexist with the official monuments of the past. They stand proudly alongside the bronze statues of historical figures, turned into mere adornments of the urban landscape, on Paseo de la Reforma, Avenida Juárez, and the Zócalo. They are the other side of the mirror of institutional effigies. The one that denounces impunity and lack of justice. The one that serves as a window for the light of resistance to enter and for the stars that herald a new dawn to be seen. The one that functions as an open door to life.
Since the first one, +43, dedicated to the missing students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, was installed on April 26, 2015, several more have been erected. On June 5, 2017, the 49 ABC was placed in front of the IMSS headquarters to commemorate the children of the ABC Daycare who died in a fire in Hermosillo, Sonora. Another one was installed on Reforma, next to the Stock Exchange, dedicated to the miners trapped in the Coahuila mine. A defiant bust of Samir Flores, the indigenous environmentalist who opposed the Huesca thermoelectric plant and was treacherously killed by gunmen in Amilcingo, Morelos, appeared defiantly in the Zócalo on February 21, 2020.
The truth is that, alongside the affronts, these grow like mushrooms in the rainy season. This is what happened last Saturday, August 16. As part of this route through memory, a new large-format installation was planted in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building. It is dedicated to Gaza. It is called Palestine: the door of resistance and life. It is a beautiful flag of that country. A recognition of the dignity, resistance, and self-determination of that heroic people and nation. A cry to end the genocide.
When Foreign Ministry officials enter their offices, they will see it. News of its existence will reach the public administration and the legislature. Will they be able to pretend that nothing is happening? Will they ignore how Israeli colonialism is carrying out an ethnic cleansing called the Nakba, without our country doing what is necessary to prevent it? Will they pretend that it is right to maintain diplomatic relations with a state that kills thousands of human beings through hunger, thirst, disease, and bombings? Will they remain impassive in the face of the worst humanitarian tragedy in many decades? Will they disregard the Palestinian people’s right to return and remain on their land? Will they continue to remain silent about the fundamental issue: the genocide in Gaza?
This installation is also a mural in which the green, white, black, and red stripes represent the thousands of orphaned, malnourished, homeless, wounded, and murdered children of Israel. It commemorates the seven children killed in an air strike by the nation of the Star of David while waiting for water at a distribution point. It symbolizes the six journalists who were killed, five of them from the Qatari channel Al Jazeera, including the 28-year-old correspondent Anas al-Sharif, so that there are no eyes, mouths, or pens to report on the atrocities perpetrated by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
The new anti-monument joins a multitude of initiatives that groups and citizens across the country carry out every week in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Just last August 4, at the Meeting of Resistance and Rebellion, before representatives from 37 countries, militiamen from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) marched with Palestinian flags. Their solidarity with the cause of this people is as old as their struggle itself.At the meeting, Subcomandante Moisés summed up the feelings of many when he said, “Today, in one of those little parts of this Earth, the capitalist system is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. We cannot forget or ignore this; therefore, our humble message to them is: we are all Palestinian girls; we are all Palestinian boys.”
The Palestine anti-monument: the gateway to resistance and life reminds us that we must not remain silent in the face of the crime against humanity perpetrated by the State of Israel against the people of Gaza. Palestine is in our hearts.
Original text by Luís Hernández Navarro published in La Jornada on August 19th, 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.