Sheinbaum unveils sculptures of women from indigenous peoples on Paseo de la Reforma

Calling it an act of historical justice and profound symbolic meaning, President Claudia Sheinbaum yesterday led the unveiling of six monuments dedicated to women from indigenous peoples – mostly pre-Hispanic rulers – which are part of the Paseo de las Heroínas, on Paseo de la Reforma Avenue.

Accompanied by the Head of Government of Mexico City, Clara Brugada, and female members of her cabinet – including the Secretaries of the Interior and Culture, Rosa Icela Rodríguez and Claudia Curiel, as well as the Attorney General of the Republic, Ernestina Godoy –, the president stated that this action goes beyond placing new sculptures in public space.

“It is an explicit recognition of those who have sustained, from their communities and over centuries, perhaps millennia, the cultural, social and spiritual life of Mexico,” he noted.

“These sculptures represent the greatness of indigenous women, their wisdom transmitted from generation to generation, their bond with the land, their community forms of organization and the values ​​they have preserved – even in the face of exclusion and violence – which are the values ​​of the people of Mexico.”

The effigies, made in the Edysa Ponzanelli Workshop and placed on the sidewalk at the height of the Museum of Modern Art, facing the sacred hill of Chapultepec, represent fundamental female characters.

These are Tzak-B’u Aha (The Red Queen), from Palenque; Tecuichpo-Ixcaxochitzin, daughter of Moctezuma; Mrs. 6 Mono, Mixtec warrior leader; Xiuhtzatzin, Toltec ruler; Eréndira, Purépecha princess, and Malintzin (La Malinche), interpreter of Hernán Cortés.

Present and future of the country

“To honor them in such an emblematic space – the President stressed – is to recognize that cultural transmission does not belong to the past, but to the present and future of the country. Their presence in the heart of the capital city is also a firm symbol against racism, classism and machismo.”

Sheinbaum emphasized the need to pay off historical debts. “For too long, women, and in particular indigenous women, have been made invisible or relegated to the margins of the national narrative,” she said.

“By occupying the center of the country, the Paseo de la Reforma, a space historically reserved for heroes and historical deeds, we affirm that indigenous women are a fundamental part of history and that their dignity does not admit hierarchies or exclusions, that their dignity is the dignity of an entire people.”

He maintained that without them “the history of Mexico is not understood, Mexico is not understood, nor its present nor the horizon of equality and respect to which we aspire as a society in transformation, with a wonderful legacy of greatness.”

The president spoke about Malintzin, questioning the historical narrative that marks her as a traitor. “This interpretation responds more to a need to blame than to a deep understanding of our history,” he said.

He highlighted that said interpreter was turned into an emblem of a supposed original fracture to explain the loneliness of the Mexican, when in reality her life reflects the condition of a woman immersed in a world of violence, invasion and dispossession, who made use of her word and her linguistic knowledge to survive.

“Recognizing it today is not reopening old wounds, no; it is closing a historical debt, it is demonstrating the story that justified machismo and racism; it is closing it and affirming that there is mediation, intelligence and complexity, not betrayal or shame,” he highlighted.

In her turn, Clara Brugada celebrated the vindication of those six women who “paved a way when there was none” and gave their lives for their people, fighting even when history did not name them.

He recalled that the Paseo de las Heroinas –initiated by Sheinbaum during his administration at the head of the country’s capital– already pays tribute to other female figures such as Leona Vicario, Sor Juana and Gertrudis Bocanegra, and stressed that a female President had to come to recognize them all.

The president of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination, Claudia Olivia Morales Reza, highlighted that the effigies of these six figures recognize the women who took care of the land, transmitted the word, resisted dispossession and kept hope alive.

“They all broke the imposed silence and left their mark where official history wanted to see them absent. To name them today is to return them to the place that always belonged to them; it is to encourage the women of this country to recognize themselves in them, to find in their stories a mirror, a root, a strength.”

For her part, the stage creator Jesusa Rodríguez urged the promotion of science with a gender perspective, exposing how some archaeological and historical research persists in making invisible the central role of women in the country’s past.

In that event, which was also attended by representatives of various cultures originating from the country, the national coordinator of Historical Monuments of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Valeria Valero Pie, and Marisela González González, from the Hñähñu (Otomi) people, also participated.