Antimonumento +43

An antimonumento was installed in front of the Superior Court of Justice of Mexico City, on the median strip of Paseo de la Reforma Avenue, in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City. The work included the installation of a red number 43 made of metal along with a plus symbol, in reference to the forty-three students kidnapped—and possibly killed—in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014 after being arrested for allegedly committing criminal offenses, plus the six students and witnesses killed during that event, and to honor the more than 150,000 people killed since the start of the Mexican drug war and the 30,000 disappeared persons reported by 2015. The anti-monument was installed by peaceful protesters during a demonstration on 26 April 2015 as a plea for justice and to prevent the case from being forgotten by the authorities and society. The sculpture became the first of its kind in Mexico and would inspire the installation of other guerrilla-like memorials throughout the city and in other states of the country. The artwork was never given an official name and those who installed it referred to it simply as either Antimonumento or +43. After the subsequent installation of other unnamed anti-monuments, like the Antimonumento +65 and the Antimonumento +72, the Antimonumento +43 received its name after its physical characteristics. Demonstrators added the slogan of those seeking justice for the case ("Because they were taken alive, we want them back alive!") to the border of the sidewalk and subsequently installed a complement in front of both elements, a concrete turtle with forty-three rocks on its shell with little turtles painted with the names of each of the disappeared on them.

On 26 September 2014, around 100 students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in Tixtla, Guerrero, left in buses towards Mexico City to take part in a protest for the anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre (1968) on 2 October. The buses were illegally obtained due to the lack of resources to buy or rent them. When they arrived in Iguala, approximately 112 kilometers (70 mi) from Tixtla, the students split into two groups, some waited to rest on the highway while the second group went to the city's toll booth, where they abducted an intercity bus driver. He agreed to cooperate as long as he was allowed to drop off his passengers at the local bus station. There, the driver spoke to security guards who contacted local authorities. As time passed, the students at the station became suspicious and contacted the other group. Upon arrival, they hijacked three more buses and split into five groups, three went through the city and the remaining went back to the highway. A municipal patrol intercepted the city group in traffic and began firing warning shots. The buses continued on their way and the students responded with stones. After that, more patrols joined the chase and started to shoot at the buses. Seeing themselves surrounded, the students got off and responded by throwing more stones at the officers and these fired their weapons back. Six people (including students and witnesses) were killed, twenty-five people were wounded and forty-three students were arrested. None of those who were arrested was taken into custody and their whereabouts have been unknown since that night. The federal investigation, led by the attorney general of Mexico, Jesús Murillo Karam, concluded that the mayor of Iguala, José Luis Abarca Velázquez, and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, were holding an event that would be affected negatively by the students. The mayor ordered their apprehension and they were subsequently handed over to members of the local drug gang, Guerreros Unidos, who killed them and disposed of their bodies in the nearby Cocula Municipality.

Monument data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).