- Mar 26, 2026
- Posted by:
- Category: Abstract of 8th-womensconf
Abstract Book of the 8th Global Conference on Women's Studies
Year: 2026
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Negotiating Power in the City: Cultural Policy, Symbolic Change, and Feminist Re-signification in Mexico City
M. Sofia Azuara Villanueva
ABSTRACT:
This paper analyzes the feminist re-signification of the former Christopher Columbus roundabout in Mexico City as a form of bottom-up cultural policy that challenges state-centered approaches to urban memory. Based on documentary research conducted between 2019 and 2024, the study examines legal frameworks, governmental cultural programs, and feminist interventions surrounding the transformation of the site into the Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan. Rather than treating feminist occupation as symbolic protest alone, the paper argues that this intervention constitutes an alternative mode of cultural governance, producing public memory outside institutional authorization. The conflict between the government’s proposal to install La Joven de Amajac and the feminist installation of the Antimonumenta Justicia reveals a deeper tension between progressive state narratives of inclusion and the limits of administrable memory. This case shows how cultural policies that emphasize diversity and historical recognition may still marginalize grassroots feminist practices that resist closure, permanence, and official control. By situating the Glorieta within debates on cultural policy, urban re-signification, and feminist placemaking in the Global South, the paper demonstrates that public space is not only a site of representation but a contested arena where power, legitimacy, and memory are actively negotiated. The Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan thus emerges as a critical example of how feminist movements reshape the city by redefining who has the authority to produce culture and collective memory.
Keywords: Cultural Policy; Feminist Place-Making; Memory Politics; Urban Re-Signification; Women’s Studies