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Glitter and Graffiti: Labour, Expertise and the Feminist Remaking of Mexican National Heritage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 May 2024
Abstract
In 2019, thousands of women took to the streets in Mexico City to protest gender-based violence. The demonstrations were characterised by the defacement of iconic monuments, which was widely condemned. But the protests also ignited widespread political mobilisation, including by a group of women restorers who, despite being designated to clean the monuments, refused to perform their work and publicly defended the protesters. By withholding their labour and their ostensible duty to the state and to the nation, the restorers’ actions helped to transform narratives around feminism, protest and the meaning of national heritage. Based on a case study of this previously depoliticised group of art restorers who went on to become one of the most important faces of Mexico's feminist movement, this article argues that political mobilisation can be rooted in and directly linked to people's labour and professional expertise.
En 2019, miles de mujeres salieron a las calles de la Ciudad de México para protestar contra la violencia de género. Las movilizaciones se caracterizaron por la desfiguración de monumentos emblemáticos, lo que fue ampliamente condenado. Las protestas, sin embargo, también provocaron una movilización política generalizada, incluida la de un grupo de mujeres restauradoras que, a pesar de haber sido designadas para limpiar los monumentos, se negaron a realizar este trabajo y defendieron públicamente a las manifestantes. Al detener su trabajo y su ostensible deber para con el Estado y la nación, las acciones de las restauradoras ayudaron a transformar las narrativas en torno al feminismo, la protesta y el significado del patrimonio nacional. Basado en un estudio de caso de este grupo previamente despolitizado de restauradoras de arte que se convirtió en una de las caras más importantes del movimiento feminista de México, este artículo sostiene que la movilización política puede enraizarse y vincularse directamente con la experiencia laboral y profesional de las personas.
Em 2019, milhares de mulheres saíram às ruas da Cidade do México para protestar contra a violência de gênero. As manifestações caracterizaram-se pela desfiguração de monumentos icônicos, o que foi amplamente condenado. Mas os protestos também desencadearam uma mobilização política generalizada, nomeadamente por parte de um grupo de mulheres restauradoras que, apesar de terem sido designadas para limpar os monumentos, recusaram-se a realizar o seu trabalho e defenderam publicamente os manifestantes. Ao reter o seu trabalho e o seu dever ostensivo para com o Estado e a nação, as ações das restauradoras ajudaram a transformar as narrativas em torno do feminismo, do protesto e do significado do patrimônio nacional. Com base num estudo de caso deste grupo anteriormente despolitizado de restauradoras de arte que se tornou uma das faces mais importantes do movimento feminista mexicano, este artigo argumenta que a mobilização política pode estar enraizada e diretamente ligada ao trabalho e à experiência profissional das pessoas.
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References
1 While I write about the feminist movement in the singular, it is important to recognise that there are different groups within the movement that disagree about fundamental issues, making the movement anything but monolithic or cohesive.
2 Classic works that seek to explain why people mobilise include: McAdam, Doug, McCarthy, John D. and Zald, Mayer N. (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Staggenborg, Suzanne, ‘Coalition Work in the Pro-Choice Movement: Organizational and Environmental Opportunities and Obstacles’, Social Problems, 33: 5 (1986), pp. 374–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snow, David et al., ‘Disrupting “the Quotidian”: Reconceptualizing the Relationship between Breakdown and the Emergence of Collective Action’, Mobilization, 3: 1 (1998), pp. 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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5 Facebook: https://es-la.facebook.com/restauradoras.glitterMX/; Twitter: @RGlittermx; Instagram: Restauradoras.glittermx.
6 The interviews ranged from one to seven hours, and I often followed up to ask more questions. All the interviews that I conducted for this article took place on Zoom or by phone and were conducted in Spanish, which is my native language. All the translations in the text are mine. To protect my interlocutors’ identities, I did not record the conversations and do not use real names.
7 My interviewees included one of the founders of the Restauradoras, a representative of the collective who spoke in the name of the group, as well as two members of the collective who had played different organising roles. They also included three restorers who were formally part of the collective but were not active members, meaning that they had signed a letter formally joining the collective and supported the group by liking and reposting some of their social media posts and occasionally joining in-person events they organised but did not take any leadership roles. I also sought out three restorers who, for different reasons, were critical of the collective and refrained from voicing their support.
8 The question of the size of the collective is a tricky one to answer, largely due to the level of participation among its members differing significantly and there being no consensus by members of the collective as to who should be counted as a member. Participation in the collective can roughly be divided into three groups: (i) Over 700 people signed a letter that makes them formal members of the collective; most of them participate only by liking and circulating social media posts and occasionally attending events; (ii) Anywhere from 25–50 people participate actively online and attend in-person events, talks and protests; (iii) Usually the same 5–10 people organise events, talk to the media, do collaborative work with other activists, and manage the collective's social media, all in the name of the Restauradoras collective. Some restorers contend that people from all three groups are members of the collective, while others argue that only those in groups (ii) and (iii) should be considered as such.
9 Tilly, Charles, ‘From Mobilization to Revolution’, in Castañeda, Ernesto and Schneider, Cathy (eds.), Collective Violence, Contentious Politics, and Social Change (New York: Routledge, 2017), p. 72Google Scholar.
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14 William Gamson, ‘Constructing Social Protest’, in Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans (eds.), Social Movements and Culture (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 87.
15 Hank Johnston, ‘A Methodology for Frame Analysis’, in Johnston and Klandermans (eds.), Social Movements and Culture, p. 244. See also Roger Petersen, Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
16 While some of the restorers already had ties with feminist activists prior to them organising as a collective, my point is that most of them did not.
17 A person might have a specific professional background or expertise and do something completely different for a living, all while working without pay in other ways, including caring for family members.
18 Scholars have analysed how activists come to influence communities of experts, thereby changing notions of professionalisation and expertise. The 1980s AIDS crisis in the United States is perhaps the most well documented case in which activists constituted themselves as ‘lay experts’ and put forward their own claims to speak credibly about the epidemic, thereby changing medical and scientific practice (Steven Epstein, Impure Science: Aids, Activism, and Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996)). The case of the Restauradoras is different, however, because it was the expert restorers themselves who became feminist activists rather than the other way around. One of the few studies that focuses on how professionals become activists is Lily Hoffman's The Politics of Knowledge: Activist Movements in Medicine and Planning (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989), which chronicles how US doctors and urban planners used their knowledge to help poor and minority communities. But, unlike the doctors and planners studied by Hoffman, the restorers mobilised not only to change their particular field but also in the service of feminist goals unrelated to their profession.
19 Although in this article I focus on paid employment, I hesitate to equate labour with wage labour, given that women often perform unpaid care work which is rarely regarded as work. For an early take on this point, see Maxine Molyneux, ‘Beyond the Domestic Labour Debate’, New Left Review, 116 (July–Aug. 1979), pp. 3–27.
20 Fanco Barchiesi, Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Citizenship in Postapartheid South Africa (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2011), p. 25.
21 Kathleen Millar, Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor on Rio's Garbage Dump (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), pp. 13 and 24.
22 Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), p. 9.
23 In addition to being gendered, labour is also interrelated with race and class. Compelling works on the racialisation of labour in Latin America include: Aura Cumes, ‘La “india” como “sirvienta”: Servidumbre doméstica, colonialismo y patriarcado en Guatemala’, unpubl. PhD diss., CIESAS, Mexico, Oct. 2014; Séverine Durin et al. (eds.), Trabajadoras en la sombra: Dimensiones del servicio doméstico latinoamericano (Mexico City: CIESAS and TEC de Monterrey, 2014). For a discussion of the relationship between race, class and gender in Mexico, see Hugo Cerón-Anaya's Privilege at Play: Class, Race, Gender, and Golf in Mexico (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
24 Joan Tronto, Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice (New York: New York University Press, 2013), p. 68.
25 Simmons, Meaningful Resistance, p. 4.
26 For a compelling discussion of the analytic construct of case studies and how these develop via our efforts to theorise the phenomena we study, see Joe Soss, ‘On Casing a Study versus Studying a Case’, in Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith (eds.), Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 84–106.
27 Political scientist Erica Simmons urges us to pay attention not simply to the perceived severity of grievances (e.g. to the number of gender-based violent incidents that happen) but also to how these are interpreted (i.e. the kinds of meaning grievances are imbued with) when trying to understand political mobilisation (Simmons, Meaningful Resistance). I would add here that the case of the Restauradoras also demonstrates the need to pay attention to the reasons and mechanisms by which these interpretations change and shows how these can be tightly linked to one's professional background.
28 Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), ‘Estadísticas a propósito del día internacional de la eliminación de la violencia contra la mujer (25 de noviembre)’, INEGI press release no. 592, 21 Nov. 2019, available at www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/aproposito/2019/Violencia2019_Nal.pdf, last access 22 April 2024. Not all women are equally affected. Most of the victims have below-average schooling (a proxy that is used to determine class). There is currently no data available about the victims’ race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Data Cívica and CIDE, Claves para entender y prevenir los asesinatos de mujeres en México, 2019, available at https://media.datacivica.org/pdf/claves-para-entender-y-prevenir-los-asesinatos-de-mujeres-en-mexico.pdf, last access 22 April 2024.
29 Examples of these laws include: Ley General de Acceso de las Mujeres a una Vida Libre de Violencia; Ley General para la Igualdad entre Mujeres y Hombres; Reforma del Código Penal de la Ciudad de México. See Alejandra Ríos, ‘La sombra de Sísifo: El Estado y las mujeres’, Nexos, June 2016, available at www.nexos.com.mx/?p=28492%2520https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=28492, last access 24 April 2024.
30 Guillermo Zepeda and Paola Jiménez, Impunidad en homicidio doloso y feminicidio en México: Reporte 2020, Impunidad Cero, 2020, available at www.impunidadcero.org/uploads/app/articulo/142/contenido/1605024010E66.pdf, last access 24 April 2024.
31 In addition to the protest that took place in Mexico City, feminists organised in other cities across the country.
32 ‘Critican en Twitter a Elena Poniatowska por hacer comentario “machista”’, El Heraldo de México, 18 Aug. 2019 at 09:29: https://heraldodemexico.com.mx/nacional/2019/8/18/critican-en-twitter-elena-poniatowska-por-hacer-comentario-machista-111963.html, last access 24 April 2024.
33 Raúl Trejo, ‘La trampa de la dinamita’, etcétera, 19 Aug. 2020, available at www.etcetera.com.mx/opinion/la-trampa-de-la-diamantina/, last access 24 April 2024.
34 ‘Agresión contra Juan Manuel Jiménez durante protesta’, adn40, 18 Aug. 2019, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKbr8_VcnIc, last access 24 April 2024.
35 ‘El vandalismo en nada le sirve a las mujeres, daña al feminismo: Poniatowska’, El Universal, 17 Aug. 2019 at 17:57, available at www.eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/letras/elena-poniatowska-y-otras-escritoras-opinan-sobre-la-marcha-feminista, last access 24 April 2024.
36 Arturo Rodríguez, ‘AMLO respalda protestas, pero sin violencia y con respeto al patrimonio histórico’, Proceso, 19 Aug. 2019, available at www.proceso.com.mx/596508/amlo-respalda-protestas-pero-sin-violencia-y-con-respeto-al-patrimonio-historico, last access 24 April 2024.
37 Melissa Galván, ‘“No vamos a caer en provocaciones”, dice Sheinbaum tras protestas en SSC y PGJ’, Expansión Política, 12 Aug. 2019, available at https://politica.expansion.mx/cdmx/2019/08/12/sheibaum-tacha-provocacion-protestas-por-agresiones-sexuales, last access 24 April 2024.
38 Araceli Zúñiga, ‘Monumenta: 7 mujeres artistas, 7 manifiestas’, Escáner Cultural, 4 Sept. 2007, available at https://revista.escaner.cl/node/92, last access 24 April 2024. See also Gabriela Aceves-Sepúlveda, Women Made Visible: Feminist Art and Media in Post-1968 Mexico City (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2019).
39 On the backlash experienced by Mexican feminist activists: Marta Lamas, Dolor y política: Sentir, pensar y hablar desde el feminismo (Mexico City: Océano, 2021); Daniela Cerva, ‘La protesta feminista en México: La misoginia en el discurso institucional y las redes sociodigitales’, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, 65: 240 (2020), pp. 177–205.
40 See, for instance, Omar Wasow, ‘Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting’, American Political Science Review, 114: 3 (2020), pp. 638–59.
41 Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind (New York: Verso, 2020).
42 Clarissa Hayward, ‘Disruption: What Is It Good For?’, Journal of Politics, 82: 2 (2020), p. 45.
43 According to technical definitions, restoration denotes physical intervention to repair an object that has already sustained injury or decay to restore it to something approaching its undamaged appearance, while conservation is preventative and seeks to protect objects from future deterioration. I use both terms interchangeably. Jerry Podany et al., ‘Art Conservation and Restoration’, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 June 2017, available at www.britannica.com/art/art-conservation-and-restoration, last access 24 April 2024.
44 Fernando Domínguez, Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2020), p. 26.
45 Tellingly, 83 per cent of the restorers who are part of the national restorers’ union are women (national union representatives, 4 June 2020, interviewed by author).
46 Gabriela, 28 June 2020, interviewed by author.
47 Darina, 21 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author.
48 Most of my interlocutors confirmed this information.
49 Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), ‘¿Quiénes Somos?’: www.inah.gob.mx/quienes-somos, last access 24 April 2024.
50 Darina, 21 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author.
51 ENCRyM, ‘Presentación’, available at www.encrym.edu.mx/#/AcercaDe/Presentacion, last access 24 April 2024. Even though the ENCRyM is free, passing the entrance exams usually requires being able to study full-time, and speaks to how professionalisation and class are interrelated.
52 Darina, 21 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author.
53 Most of my interlocutors confirmed this information.
54 Most of my interlocutors confirmed this information.
55 Yásnaya Elena A. Gil, Ää: Manifiestos sobre la diversidad lingüística (Mexico City: Almadía, 2020).
56 Paulina Bravo, ‘La patria mexicana’, in José Luis Barrios (ed.), Sueños de una nación (Mexico City: INBA, 2011); Adriana Zavala, Becoming Modern, Becoming Tradition: Women, Gender, and Representation in Mexican Art (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009).
57 Some of my interlocutors explained that they would talk about these issues with their close friends but never in the context of their work or with colleagues.
58 Andrea, 13 June 2020, interviewed by author.
59 There have been some exceptions, including the participation of ENCRyM students in the #YoSoy132 student protests in 2012. Students from all over the country joined these protests, so it is not particularly surprising that restorers did too. They did not, however, play a leading role in this movement. For an analysis of this movement, see Raúl Diego Rivera Hernández. ‘De la red a las calles: #YoSoy132 y la búsqueda de un imaginario político alternativo’, Argumentos, 27: 75 (2014), pp. 59–76.
60 Julieta, 23 June 2020, interviewed by author.
61 Amara, 6 Feb. 2020, interviewed by author.
62 Approximately 130 out of the 160 restorers employed by the INAH are unionised. Although the formation of both the union and the Restauradoras collective coincides, they are completely unrelated events. The former was the culmination of years of slowly organising in response to budget cuts that affected the ENCRyM (https://sinar-mx.org/). The latter, as I explain in the following section, happened quickly in response to the August protests. There is no official data but according to the collective's spokesperson, less than 5 per cent of the restorers who are active members of the collective (groups (ii) and (iii) in footnote 5) are also members of the union (Restauradoras spokesperson, 28 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author).
63 Fernanda and focus group, 4 June 2020, interviews conducted by author.
64 Fernanda, 4 June 2020, interviewed by author.
65 Mexico's unions are known for their sexism and discrimination (Rachel K. Brickner, ‘Feminist Activism, Union Democracy, and Gender Equity Rights in Mexico’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 42: 4 (2010), p. 758).
66 Union representatives, 4 June 2020, focus group, interviews conducted by author.
67 Darina, 21 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author.
68 Paulo Rosales, Itzel Espíndola and Luisa Estraulino, ‘Entrevista completa al colectivo Restauradoras con Glitter’, La Semanal 4T, 27 Aug. 2019, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-PBVn7sdLQ, last access 25 April 2024.
69 For instance, in 2013 the statue known as El Caballito was damaged after a group of non-professional restorers were hired by the government to ‘clean’ the statue. A similar thing happened in 2016 with the Hemiciclo a Juárez. Jannen Contreras Vargas and Karla Alicia Jáuregui, ‘Los retos de la atención de monumentos emblemáticos, El Caballito y La Minerva: Problemas materiales, políticos y mediáticos’, Estudios sobre Conservación, Restauración y Museología, 6 (July 2019), pp. 63–9.
70 Darina, 21 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author.
71 Restauradoras spokesperson, 28 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author.
72 RGlittermx, ‘Comunicado a la opinión pública y medios de comunicación acerca de la entrega de la carta con nuestro pronunciamiento el miércoles pasado en audiencia con @Claudiashein’, Twitter, 2 Sept. 2019, available at https://twitter.com/RGlittermx/status/1168698201836310530?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1168698201836310530%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-33115989614270883400.ampproject.net%2F2009190410002%2Fframe.html, last access 25 April 2024.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.; see also Nora Muñiz, ‘Restauradoras con Glitter: “Que no se remuevan las pintas hasta que se dé solución a la violencia de género”’, Plumas Atómicas, 22 Aug. 2019 at 06:26 PM CST, available at https://plumasatomicas.com/feminismo/restauradoras-glitter-angel-pintas/, last access 25 April 2024.
75 ‘Entrevista a Restauradoras con Glitter’, Arquine, 11 Sept. 2019, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCL140S6--A, last access 25 April 2024.
76 Piven, Frances Fox, Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)Google Scholar.
77 Ibid., p. 20.
78 Ibid.
79 Weeks, The Problem with Work.
80 Mónica Arellano, ‘Mujeres restauradoras se pronuncian ante las pintas de los monumentos en la Ciudad de México’, ArchDaily, 9 March 2020, available at www.archdaily.mx/mx/924586/mujeres-restauradoras-se-pronuncian-ante-las-pintas-del-angel-de-la-independencia-en-la-ciudad-de-mexico, last access 25 April 2024.
81 The letter initially included the full names of everyone who signed it but, due to death threats and online harassment, the collective opted to erase people's names from all public communications.
82 Darina, 21 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author.
83 Museo de Mujeres Artistas Mexicanas (MUMA), ‘Conversatorio #FuimosTodas’, Facebook Live Virtual Public Talk on 26 March 2021, available at www.facebook.com/muma.mx/videos/536679217316263/, last access 25 April 2024.
84 Restauradoras spokesperson, 21 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author.
85 Blanca Noval Vilar, ‘La conservación del patrimonio cultural: Valoración, identidad y uso social’, Conservación y Restauración, 19 (June 2019), p. 101.
86 This data was provided by the restorers’ union representatives, who also claimed that the members closer to retiring are men, meaning that the percentage of women will continue to grow.
87 Gabriela, 28 June 2020, interviewed by author.
88 Marta, 19 June 2020, interviewed by author.
89 Gabriela, 28 June 2020, interviewed by author.
90 Rosales, Espíndola and Estraulino, ‘Entrevista completa al colectivo Restauradoras con Glitter’.
91 Marta, 19 June 2020, interviewed by author.
92 Darina, 21 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author.
93 Josefa, 12 June 2020, interviewed by author.
94 Ayahuitl Estrada, ‘¿Qué pasó en México después del #8M del 2020? Manifestación en Contingencia’, Interview by Alejandro Franco, WFM Radio (9 March 2020).
95 Andrea, 13 June 2020, interviewed by author.
96 Alejandra, 9 June 2020, interviewed by author.
97 Spokesperson of the collective, 21 Jan. 2020, interviewed by author.
98 This form of denunciation often becomes the first step to begin the processes of a formal investigation.
99 ‘Conversatorio: Mujeres precursoras de la restauración’, with Yolanda Madrid, Liliana Giorguli and Mariana Flores, 24 March 2022, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu97RN2OBpA, last access 27 April 2024.
100 Honig, Bonnie, A Feminist Theory of Refusal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021)Google Scholar.
101 Weeks, The Problem with Work.
102 Honig, A Feminist Theory of Refusal, p. 3.
103 Weeks, The Problem with Work, p. 100.