In the first days of January 2022, a group of mothers searching for their missing relatives in Guanajuato, organized as the NGO "Hasta Encontrarte, A.C.", contacted the creators of Memorial Disperso. They wanted to build three memorials on the first anniversary of their funding, which was only four weeks away.
The complex conditions for the victims–no political support, and virtually no available funding–made traditional approaches to memorialization nearly impossible to realize. This unique challenge is what drove the design of the second iteration of the Scattered Memorial, which aims to provide access to the right to memory for victims like the members of Hasta Encontrarte.
Thus, a design based on the lessons from the first phase of the Dispersed Memorials was proposed and executed in the city of Pénjamo on 03/02/2022.
The Dispersed Memorial in Pénjamo. Members of the NGO "Hasta Encontrarte" gather to take a group photo.
The Memorial accompanies the natural structure of preexisting trees to support itself. Each piece of the memorial is a ribbon tied to a tree with written statements, a laminated photograph of the disappeared person with written information on when and where they were last seen.
A detail of one of the elements of the Dispersed Memorial, showing the picture of one of the disappeared persons.
One of the members of "hasta Encontrarte", wears the memorials of her disappeared family members .
Another detail, where bells that call passerby's attention can be appreciated, as well as desires for the presentation in full health of the disappeared and information of their possible whereabouts.
This memorial was the first step in piloting the second iteration of the Dispersed Memorial. Once completed, a feedback and critique session was facilitated with the families of the disappeared, in which the following questions were explored:
1. How did you feel? And I think I felt super satisfied with the action. I think that having started to take three trees from the State of Guanajuato is a good start. I think it helps a lot to make the memory visible and to let the families know that someone is looking for their children and they can unite. Each tree is an act of hope. And we would have to wait to have the QR and the web page and everything. And wait.
2. What went well? The idea of everything went very well, that is to say, the eye-catching ribbons, the photos, the messages of love, the view, the simple act. I think it is an act of hope and love that united the families of the collective and invites more people to join this fight. Yes, I do believe that this form of memorial is the right one, the limitations of time and economy will always be present in memorials as well as in any act we do but that does not prevent us from doing them, I think we are in a difficult situation as a collective because of problems of verbal aggressions and that distracts us from our goal which is to seek, find and create memory.
3. What could have been done better? I am not so sure, maybe we could have made a statewide petition for the donation of the trees. We also need to put a plaque on the trees.
4. How is the memorials faring? The memorials are still standing, that is to say, they are still in place, we committed each authority of the municipalities not to remove the light when they were, to let us know so that someone of us could go to remove the photos and then put them back.
5. What are the next steps? Well, I think that the QR code is missing. We also need a web page, which is a wonderful idea. We need to start taking more trees by municipalities, but sometimes it is difficult to mobilize so many people because of the economy, the time, the work, the searches, the accompaniment. But I think we have to give ourselves the space to start taking more trees.
This feedback will serve to continue developing and improving this second phase of the Dispersed Memorial, hoping that through several iterations, at the end of this phase it will be ready for the third and final phase of the project where it will be launched as a public memorialization platform.
