Still from the video shared by the artist Pedro Reyes where the sketch of the sculpture 'Tlali'.RR is shown.
H.H.
As if it were a rolled up conch shell, the controversy over the
Tlali
sculpture
continues. This Tuesday, Claudia Sheinbaum has had to back down: it will no longer be the Government of Mexico City who decides on the monument that will replace Christopher Columbus on the Paseo de la Reforma, but a body made up of experts. The Committee for Monuments and Artistic Works in Public Spaces (COMAEP) - made up of personnel from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the Ministry of Culture and specialists in heritage - will analyze Pedro Reyes' proposal to endorse or discard it.
Haunted by the controversies surrounding the play, Sheinbaum has decided to step aside.
The head of government wanted to emphasize that it will no longer be she who chooses the monument that will go on one of the main avenues of the capital, but COMAEP.
"We put it as established by law, regulations, to the decision of this Committee, what is going to go, or what is the sculpture of the indigenous woman that is going to go in this space," he said in the act of reception of the 5,000 signatures that prompted the departure of Colón from Reforma.
This announcement comes a couple of days after 350 people from the culture addressed him a letter against the election of Reyes and his work.
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In a confusing message, which has been interpreted as farewell, the Head of Government thanked Pedro Reyes for taking the commission "as something fundamental", and announced that "it is very likely that part of his work is also being exhibited in the city".
However, the Ministry of Culture has come out moments later to clarify that
Tlali
is not ruled out, but that COMAEP experts are going to analyze and decide between the projects presented.
So far, as this newspaper has learned, there is no other proposal besides that of Pedro Reyes.
It is not known when exactly the Committee will meet, as it does not work according to a schedule, although Sheinbaum has spoken of the "next days, weeks".
One of the main criticisms that the Government had to face after presenting
Tlali
is the awarding of the project without public tender. A controversy that seeks to stop now with the entry of COMAEP in the process. This body, belonging to the Secretariat for Urban Development and Housing (SEDUVI) chaired by Carlos Ulloa, former private secretary of Sheinbaum, is specialized in the arbitration of the election, revision or removal of monuments. One of his decisions affected, for example,
Las Alas de México
, by the sculptor Jorge Marín, who changed their location in Reforma.
At the beginning of September, Sheinbaum finally announced the withdrawal of Colón from the avenue as part of the process of "decolonization of Paseo de la Reforma." The statue of the Genoese admiral had been out of its gazebo for almost a year while it was being restored. Instead he settled on a tribute to indigenous women. The objective was to present the new monument, at the latest, at the beginning of 2022, so that it continues within the celebration of the 200 years of independent Mexico, the 500 of indigenous resistance and the 700 since the founding of Tenochtitlán.
In an interview with EL PAÍS, Pedro Reyes confirmed that he barely had half a year to have the work ready.
“It's only a few months, that's also why the invitation was made to me.
They asked me if I had the capacity to do this type of commission and I just did an equivalent one for the city of San Antonio, in Texas, where we made a sculpture six meters high, "said the artist.
When asked if it should be an indigenous woman who made such a symbolic monument, Reyes argued that she did not believe it was a gender issue: “In the last 15 or 20 years I have felt very lonely, I have been working on stone carving and virtually no one else does.
It is not so much a question of gender but of who has been working on these types of monumental formats ”.
The artist valued the infrastructure and experience of his team - made up of 40 sculptors - in this type of commission. “They presented the situation to me and I have been working with the best sculptors out there for more than 10 years, not only in Mexico but in the world, in my opinion, because we do things that are no longer done. It is a kind of anachronism: working in the same way that was used for the Gothic cathedrals or the pyramids of Tenochtitlan. To all that team, which was already formed, they asked us if we could respond to the invitation and we said: 'yes, we took it out, before the end of the year, ”he said.
However, the promoters of the letter sent to the head of government - among whom are Laureana Toledo, Mónica Mayer, Gabriela Jáuregui, Lorena Wolffer and Julieta Aranda - demand that women from indigenous communities must be in charge of the production and manufacture of the new monument.
For the artists, the election of Reyes "reproduces the silencing and invisibility of the struggle of women and their native peoples."
Now the last word seems no longer up to Sheinbaum.
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