A Forgotten Memorial

When I am in Mexico City I frequently look at Google Maps searching for places which I have not yet visited.  In that mammoth city it is not a difficult task.  Toward the end of my latest stay, I found a place at the edge of Chapultepec Park called the Memorial to the Victims of State Violence.  I had never heard of it, and I went to check it out.

The memorial was the brainchild of "Comité 68", a group born out of the massacre of student protesters in 1968.  The committee fights for human rights and for justice for the victims of political violence.  In 2013 the Federal government funded the design and construction of the memorial... a hypocritical gesture since human rights abuses continue to this day. 

The memorial is sadly neglected.  The grounds are untended, and the structures are marred by graffiti.  (At least the vandals have had the decency not to deface the plaques with the names of victims.)  It seems as if it is a place that the government would just as soon forget about.

The memorial consists of an artificial forest of oxidized steel slabs set amid the trees of the park.  The slabs contain the names of more than 7000 people who were tortured or murdered by the government... or who simply disappeared without a trace.

Throughout the grounds are walls with quotations from famous philosophers and writers.

The good citizen is one who cannot tolerate in his homeland a power which makes itself superior to the law.

Cicero

For evil to triumph it is only necessary that good people do nothing.

Edmund Burke

Death does not exist, people only die when they are forgotten; if you can remember me, I will always be with you.

Isabel Allende

Next door to the memorial is the Campo Marte, a site used for military events... ironic since the military perpetrated many of the atrocities.

The "Comité 68" placed an inscription by the entrance to the memorial saying, "The names that we begin to place on the structures of the Memorial to Victims of Violence are only a very small part of the crimes committed by the Mexican State through its direct or indirect actions, through complicity or through negligence or corruption"