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As part of the project Urbanizarte –an urban art collective based in Guadalajara that promotes interventions in public spaces– I was invited to intervene the Minerva Statue during the months of July and August 2004. My interventions consisted on a survey that asked the citizens of Guadalajara who they thought were the actual leaders of the community. The idea was to update the existing names of prominent citizens that are already caved in the bronze base of the statue. But also, to provide an arena that could facilitate our understanding of how our community had changed during the last decades of the twentieth century. Who are the leaders of Guadalajara in 2004? Perhaps women would be voted in, or sport heroes, or rock stars, or tv personalities. While the survey was taking place, the lips of the greek goddess will be painted red in sign of her upcoming makeover.

The Minerva Statue was constructed in 1953, by a famous local architect, Julio de la Peña, and commissioned by a renowned intellectual and politician, Agustín Yañez. The names that are currently engraved consist of more than twenty professional men –lawyers, doctors, politicians, among others– who according to our official history helped the development of the city of Guadalajara, and exercise with pride the emblem of the monument: Justice, Liberty and Knowledge.

The event was cancelled prior to my intervention due to an ongoing debate between organizers and government officials regarding the outrage of some sectors of the population that percieved these program of interventions as an insult to OUR public monuments (i.e. our NATIONAL HEROES– which apparently the Minerva goddess now belongs to the prestigious ranking). However, some other aspects that could have influenced the cancellation was the fact that Urbanizarte coincided with The Summit of the Americas and the European Union, held in Guadalajara in May of 2004. The wave of anti-globalization demonstrators was already a threat to the conservative and right wing government of Guadalajara. To them Urbanizarte was “another wave of assaults to public spaces.”

Regrettably, the government acted with extreme force against the demonstrators, and to this date government officials continue to ignore international organizations that demand justice regarding the imprisonment and torture of the demonstrators.