Antimonuments in Mexico: Visual Fractures as Tactics Against Official Memory

Fracturas visuales como tácticas frente a la memoria oficial

Resumo

The article analyzes antimonuments in Mexico City as tactics that visually fracture the State’s official memory. The research problem stems from the tension between monumental memory—an institutional strategy that consolidates a linear and homogeneous historical narrative—and antimonuments as interventions that challenge this narrative through the denunciation of forgotten or unresolved injustices. The objective is to demonstrate that, by being positioned in front of monuments and governmental buildings, antimonuments produce a visual fracture that interrupts the continuity of official memory. Guided by the Visual Methods paradigm, a systematic digital photographic record of the antimonuments was conducted, using an observation matrix inspired by the concept of stratified place developed by Michel de Certeau. Photographic editing was employed to highlight three analytical layers: monument (strategy), antimonument (tactic), and urban environment, emphasizing above all their conflictive superimposition. Through the analysis of these layers, the findings show that antimonuments not only commemorate unresolved injustices but also perceptually reconfigure space, generating interruptions in the visual linearity of State memory. The article concludes that antimonuments operate as visual fractures within a stratified place, thereby expanding the understanding of memory as a field of symbolic and spatial conflict.