THE RESCUE OF HISTORICAL MEMORY THROUGH ART!
TO THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO AND MICHOACAN
TO THE MEDIA
TO THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Indigenous Communities of Michoacán as of April 17, 2024.
Through contemporary historical development, the indigenous peoples and communities have used art as a tool for visibility, denunciation, awareness, struggle and social change. In particular, the P’urhépecha people during the last 50 years have conceived art as Juchari Uinápekua: Our Strength, Art as Resistance and Collective Struggle.
In this context, today, the painter and muralist José Luis Soto González presents a pictorial work about the first disappeared politicians and indigenous people of Michoacán, five members of the Guzmán family: José de Jesús Guzmán Jiménez and his sons Amafer, Armando, Solón Adenauer and Venustiano Guzmán Cruz, who disappeared during the so-called “dirty war” against political opponents between 1974 and 1976.
The general objective of this painting is to rescue the historical memory of the Guzmán family as social fighters and guerrillas p’urhépecha, who, in a context of repression and criminalization in the 1970s, fought for a more just and democratic country. For this reason, they were arrested, tortured and disappeared by the Mexican Army and the then Federal Directorate of Security, an intelligence agency under the Ministry of the Interior.
The particular purpose is to continue to demand remembrance, truth and justice for these enforced disappearances, which have already completed 50 years of impunity and injustice. Today, the case is before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights #IACHR awaiting a ruling on the merits, a delay that has already been 11 years since the case was admitted in July 2013.
Through art, the author, the Guzmán family, and the 70 indigenous communities that make up the Supreme Indigenous Council of Michoacán, we continue to demand that the #IACHR not delay the final decision on these cases any longer, since they represent an affront to our peoples and tear our collective history.
Finally, we announce that this work will be reproduced in murals and demonstrations of the original communities, accompanying the struggles and autonomy of our peoples, we will continue resisting, organizing, fighting, recovering our historical memory and demanding justice.
SUPREME INDIGENOUS COUNCIL OF MICHOACÁN #CSIM
TERUNHASKUA K’ OIA, ECHERI KA JURAMUKUKUA IAMENTU IRETECHANI
JUSTICE, TERRITORY AND AUTONOMY FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Description of the painting “We are the Resistance” / José Luis Soto.
At the top of the image stand out warriors carrying the p’urhépecha flag, symbolizing the struggles of the indigenous peoples of Michoacán. Also, from left to right are Genaro Vázquez Rojas, leader of the National Revolutionary Civic Association #ACNR, and Lucio Cabañas Barrientos, leader of the Poor Party #PDLP, who worked clandestinely with Amafer Guzmán Cruz, leader of the Movement for Revolutionary Action #MAR in #Michoac to the center stands out the omnipresent General Emiliano Zapata Salazar, always accompanying the struggles of the indigenous peoples.
In the center, from left to right, is Amafer Guzmán Cruz in his stage as student leader and founder of the Nicolaita Student House of the #UMSNH, then two representations of José de Jesús Guzmán Jiménez as a political prisoner and as a social fighter, in the central part stands out the symbol of the p’urhépecha fist, emblem of union and struggle, as well as the symbol of the red star of the #MAR. and finally, the social fighters Venustiano, Solón Adenauer and Armando Guzmán Cruz, all from the indigenous community of #Tarejero.