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During the decades of conflict, thousands of people were displaced, killed or disappeared at the hands of a variety of actors: state-forces, the paramilitary, the cartels and the guerrilla. Under former conservative president Álvaro Uribe, in 2002 ‘Operation Orion’ was launched, supposedly to remove the guerrilla from a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Medellín: Comuna 13. Now a tourist hotspot brimming with art and music, Comuna 13 was once one of the city’s most violent neighbourhoods.

On October 16 and 17 2002, a combined force of around 1,500 – made up of the Colombian Army, the police and special military forces – entered the Comuna, equipped with tanks and armed helicopters. The operation quickly became a brutal and largely indiscriminate massacre, after which the paramilitary unit ‘Cacique Nutibara’ took control of the neighbourhood. What followed was a spike of arbitrary detentions and hundreds of disappearances from 2002 – 2003, and the beginning of the infamous False Positives scandal; whereby civilians were dressed up as guerrillas and killed in order to meet military targets – for which soldiers were then rewarded. The victims of this scandal were overwhelmingly from poor neighbourhoods such as Comuna 13 or Soacha, just South of Bogotá. Álvaro Uribe and his supporters continue to defend the operation as successful.

Since the early 2000s, the families – particularly the mothers – of the hundreds of individuals disappeared following Operation Orion have claimed to know exactly where the remains of their loved ones were discarded: a nearby dump for construction waste called ‘La Escombrera’. Unbelievably, the claims of these bereaved mothers’ have been ignored, and for years the site continued to be used as a dump for construction waste, making their search efforts near impossible. In 2016, the Peace Deal brought this to a halt and an official search effort finally began via the Unit for the Search of Disappeared Persons (UBPD). The discovery of human remains has finally confirmed the mothers’ claims, but has also unearthed underlying tensions across the country, through the medium of urban art.

What happened?

On Sunday 12 January 2025, artists and activists in Medellín came together to paint a large mural in solidarity with the mothers and to demand the truth about extrajudicial killings during Uribe’s presidency. Strikingly large yellow letters read: ‘LAS CUCHAS TENIAN RAZON’ – conveying a simple message: the mothers were right. The next day, following the orders of Medellín’s Mayor Federico Gutiérrez, the mural was covered up with grey paint. The Mayor, and other figures on the political right, claim the mural aspires to create chaos and damages public goods.

However, in response to the immediate censoring of the mural, art collectives, activists and ordinary citizens have come together across the country in support of the mothers and their search for truth. The simple but powerful message has been painted in various cities, often accompanied by portraits of the mothers. Murals have popped up in Bogotá, Cali, Bucaramanga, Popayán and there are plans for more to come circulating on social media. In the words of graffiti collective Puroveneno ‘si tapan uno pintamos miles’ – if they cover one, we will paint thousands. In turn, the phrase has even been painted outside of Colombia in London, Santiago, Berlin and other cities.

Initially, these murals were principally an act of solidarity with the people of Medellín, but they have developed into an act of resistance rejecting the elimination of the victims’ truth which demands the full history of Colombia’s conflict be known. Unfortunately, Medellín is not alone in its history of extrajudicial killings and disappearance and, as such, the message resonates with those affected all across the country. 

Backlash

However, as in Medellín, the murals in other cities have been defaced and covered up, but this time without official orders. 

The desire to cover up a mural in solidarity with grieving mothers and in honour of their lost children may, to many, seem extremely insensitive and disrespectful. However, the divisions that linger in Colombia following the conflict run so deep that there are citizens who view the murals themselves as disrespectful and the act of covering them as the correct thing to do. For example, in Bogotá it has been covered at least twice, but quickly repainted each time. In Cali the mural was defaced by an armed man, while in Bucaramanga a group of students covered the mural, accusing the artists of politicising the grief of others to cover up the failures of current left-wing president Gustavo Petro. Petro himself has supported the murals, calling their censorship ‘fascism’. As such, the murals and the topic of La Escombrera have been politicised and what started as a peaceful act of solidarity has been made into a new battle ground for the Colombian right and left. 

The politicisation of the issue that stems from historic sectarian divisions detracts from the struggle of the families whose loved ones are still missing and the injustices suffered by the victims themselves. What these murals are saying is that their stories deserve to finally be heard. Therefore, it is crucial to put political opinions aside and face the facts that remain after technical and forensic investigation: there were thousands of extrajudicial killings under Uribe, Operation Orion claimed many innocent lives, human remains have been found in La Escombrera, and the mothers were always right.

While the resistance to these murals shows that divisions in the country are alive and well, each time one is covered, artists, activists and citizens come together to restore it in a beautiful display of peaceful collective action. In one mural by Bogotá artists, 3MiROo, Krow and Tosan, the message has evolved to say, ‘the mothers were right, are right and will always be right’.

As such, the overwhelming message is one of resistance, solidarity and determination to never return to silence, secrecy and suppression.

About the author

Isabella Crouch is pursuing a Master’s in Latin American Studies at the University of Oxford. Her research explores the functions of urban art and creative expression in peacebuilding and resistance in post-conflict societies, with a particular focus on Colombia. Isabella is currently researching the relationship between artistic expression, social movements and resistance to state violence, during the 2021 national strike in Colombia and the 2019-2020 protests in Chile.

Images

Dgreusard, “File:20210108 171726-Escombrera-opt.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, January 9, 2021. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20210108_171726-Escombrera-opt.jpg

Photos found using the Creative Commons search tool, one from 3MiROo, who gave permission via Instagram and those of the murals in other cities were provided by the author’s partner and friends (who are in Colombia and graffiti artists).

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The term “counter-monument” was coined by Holocaust scholar James E. Young to describe monuments deviating from the aims and principles of normative commemoration. Rather than honoring and glorifying history, counter-monuments encourage reflection and thoughtful remembrance. They are an artistic medium laden with symbolic power; they embody a scepticism toward lofty plinths, busts and bronzes.

This scepticism is becoming more concrete. In the context of global protest against problematic historical legacies, we are witnessing a wave of counter-monuments with a more specific bent – protest art, erected to directly challenge the view of history expressed by existing monuments and cityscapes. Concurrent to this has been a wave of support from governments, policy-makers and heritage institutions – a desire to defend these emergent marginal narratives, and to document and commemorate the historical moment that’s unfolding.

But the question soon becomes just how such desire should translate to meaningful action. How can authorities best lend their support to counter-monuments and protest art? What are the dangers of such intervention? Above all, how can the counter-monument receive institutional backing without compromising its very raison d’être – its capacity to subvert mainstream interpretations of the past and present?

The case for establishment support

Addressing such concerns is imperative given the substantial benefits of establishment intervention. For one thing, museums and galleries offer the means to preserve what would otherwise be lost to history. The often ephemeral nature of counter-monuments renders them vulnerable to erasure. Some, like Madre Luz, are self-standing sculptures, but many are merely additions: paint, placards, lighting, decoration – anything which alters the interpretation of existing monuments. For those artworks without official approval, this can make the distinction between counter-monument and vandalism markedly subjective in a manner which threatens the former’s longevity.

Take Gregory Ragland’s Serve and Protect (2013), which sits outside the Public Safety Building in Salt Lake City, Utah. The sculpture depicts large hands opening up skywards – sign language suggestive of care, humility and service. In mid-2020, after the death of George Floyd and the intensification of Black Lives Matter activism, the sculpture was covered with red paint; menacing and ominous, it became an emblem of police brutality, symbolic of collective guilt. The paint was quickly washed off by authorities, the moment over and message forgotten.

The conflict over Madre Luz shows that even the more tangible and autonomous of counter-monuments are prone to such transience. This stems from their tendency to provoke antagonism. Often uncomfortable, even jarring, counter-monuments seek to render memory culture an ongoing conversation, not let it linger unchallenged. By posing a counter-narrative, they invite infinite counter-narratives; they rip open the fabric of history, drawing attention to the inexhaustible subjectivity of interpretation. Precisely because of this, they are susceptible to backlash – including damage or destruction.

Establishment support can protect counter-monuments from such dangers, and ensure their survival as relics of a particular historical moment. Here the distinction between commissioned and noncommissioned work, between the official and the subversive, is crucial. Faring far better than Madre Luz, for instance, is Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War (2019). Wiley’s sculpture, which depicts a young African American modelled on a statue of Confederate General J. E. B. Stuart, was created to oppose the ongoing glorification of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. Rather than being put up independently as an act of vandalism or spontaneous protest, the work was the most expensive piece ever commissioned by the Virginia Fine Arts Museum. Firmly embedded in high culture, Wiley’s counter-monument has achieved permanence and protection. 

On the one hand, that heritage institutions wish to endorse counter-monuments – or even sponsor and commission them – is evidence that the narrative is changing. It is deeply encouraging that governments, museums and galleries are endeavouring to recognise activism as historically significant and to give activists a meaningful platform. Such efforts serve to improve diversity in exhibition space and financially empower artists from marginalised communities. They also legitimise reinterpretations of historical legacies, and protect for posterity a genre of art which is inherently vulnerable – a protection Madre Luz never enjoyed.

Problems of intervention

Yet, on the other hand, it is worth reflecting upon how far protest art and counter-monuments are compatible with institutionalisation. Can commissioned artwork really capture the energy of organic social movements? And is something lost when activism becomes an attraction to be consumed and admired by visitors? When spontaneous pieces – such as BLM panel and plywood murals – are acquired by museums and relocated from their original setting? Tokenism is one concern. Another is if entrance fees are charged, or the artwork later auctioned by the exhibition space; both invite a sense of progressive politics being manipulated for profit. And for counter-monuments – whether standalone or artistic inventions – any relocation is particularly problematic since they lose the subversive power of their contextual meaning.

Perhaps the greatest problem is that traditional exhibition spaces are not neutral ground: they themselves have a contested history. In the nineteenth century, museums emerged intertwined with burgeoning ideas about nationhood and national identity; they were originally founded to be the conservative gatekeepers of national narratives, the arbiters of legitimacy and legacy. Though the social function of museums has arguably since evolved, their complicity in many of the issues inspiring protest – colonialism, imperialism and dispossession – is undeniable. In fact, one consequence of recent advocacy has been renewed attention to the repatriation debate; museums across the world have been revisiting their policies to facilitate the return of foreign artefacts. 

Neither are art galleries immune to these same mechanisms of power and appropriation. In August 2020, for example, New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art was forced to cancel the upcoming “Collective Actions: Artistic Interventions in a Time of Change” after several artists alleged that their work had been used without permission or appropriate remuneration. The exhibition had sought to showcase protest art from the BLM movement but faced criticism for co-opting and diluting its progressive narrative. So what future awaits the humble counter-monument? How can authorities and heritage institutions show their support for political activism without undermining it? Or do their efforts to endorse counter-monuments herald the end of activism proper – when reformist energies are relegated to a stagnant moment of the past, not continually enacted as an ongoing exercise of self-reflection? This translation process – from the radical to the institutional, idealism to realpolitik – seems doomed to be an imperfect compromise. But such questions will only grow more pertinent as more and more spaces seek to respond to the momentous advocacy of the last year.

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