Women turned Protective Wall into a memorial Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Mar 8 2021

Location: 

Mexico City

Ahead of Monday’s planned protest, police set up a barricade around the presidential palace, which a spokesperson described as a “peace wall” to prevent vandalism, the Guardian reported. But protesters said the barrier was symbolic of the president’s refusal to take on the issue, noting that he frequently makes a show of traveling in drug cartel-controlled parts of Mexico but felt unsafe ahead of their protest.
Women instead plastered the barriers with slogans and the names of murdered women. They also left flowers, memorial objects, and painted the pink crosses, an iconic memorial object from the Dead women of Juarez back in 1993.
Over the National Palace, the words "Mexico Feminicida" were projected.

External sources: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/03/09/womens-day-protests-amlo-mexico/
https://politica.expansion.mx/presidencia/2021/03/08/del-no-pinten-paredes-al-mu…
https://www.infobae.com/america/fotos/2021/03/07/8m-la-impactante-transformacion…
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-56321145
Posted by Fernanda Soria on Mar 17 2021

Staff rating: 

0

Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Activates (people)Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Shifts (culture)Shifts the cultural landscape in order to imagine and enable change.

Timeframe For change

This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear short-term goal. Short-term goals tend to be things like: create or repeal a law; get a President impeached; make the city administration repair a sidewalk. A campaign with a short-term goal needs a clear theory of change, complete with targets that can be cajoled or pressured into effecting the goal.
The short term goal was to redirect the focus and public's attention, from the government wall, to the thousands of women who have fallen victims of feminicide and violence
This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear long-term goal. Long-term goals tend to be things like: end racism; end homophobia; make the sun stand still in the sky. A campaign with a long-term goal also needs to have some kind of theory of change.
End gender-based violence in Mexico and demand the government to take responsibility

Notes

The intervention was really successful in redirecting the public's attention to the victims and the issue for which women march every year. Across media, the transformation of the wall into a memorial was reported, commented, shared, and circulated. The memorial became an icon of this year's protest almost instantaneously. And the current government was left on a position of shame.