Glorieta de las mujeres que luchan

The Glorieta de las mujeres que luchan is an anti-monument (antimonumenta) along Paseo de la Reforma Avenue, in Mexico City. On the afternoon of 25 September 2021, a group of anonymous feminists intervened at the Christopher Columbus roundabout. On an empty plinth surrounded by protective fences, they installed a wooden guerrilla-style sculpture demanding justice for the recurrent acts of violence against women in Mexico. Originally named Antimonumenta Vivas Nos Queremos (lit. transl. Anti-monument We Want Us Alive), the piece later became known simply as Justicia. It depicts a purple woman holding her left arm raised and the Spanish word for justice carved into a support at the back. The roundabout itself was also symbolically renamed Glorieta de las mujeres que luchan (Roundabout of the Women Who Fight).

The traffic circle formerly honored Columbus with a statue sculpted by French artist Charles Cordier, installed in 1887. Ahead of a 2020 anti-Columbus Day protest, Mexico City's administration, led by its head of government Claudia Sheinbaum, removed the statue from its pedestal citing restoration as the reason. Months later, Sheinbaum announced that the statue would not be returned to its original site. Instead, following a petition signed by 5,000 Indigenous women calling for the decolonization of the avenue, a new monument would be erected in their honor. The proposed project, named Tlalli, was to be a sculpture inspired by Olmec colossal heads, created by a non-Indigenous male artist. Since all Olmec heads depict men, and the artist was not Indigenous, feminists criticized the proposal as inappropriate for honoring Indigenous women. Days later, they installed Justicia on the plinth.

The sculpture was not initially intended to be a permanent installation; according to the feminists who placed it, the city could choose a different art design as long as it renamed the traffic circle with their proposed name. Since its placement, feminists have organized cultural events at the roundabout to honor women they describe as fighters, as well as men who support them. Many of their names have been written or memorialized on the protective fences surrounding the plinth. Activists also installed a clothesline to denounce injustices committed by authorities and society, and later replaced the original wooden sculpture with a steel version.

Sheinbaum, for her part, replaced the Tlalli project and stated that the government of the city intended to officially replace the Monument to Columbus with a replica of The Young Woman of Amajac, a pre-Hispanic Huastec sculpture depicting an Indigenous woman. The anti-monument would be relocated elsewhere, an action feminists opposed unless their demands were met. After months of debate, in February 2023, Sheinbaum declared that both Justicia and The Young Woman of Amajac would coexist in the same traffic circle, while the Columbus sculpture would be relocated to the National Museum of the Viceroyalty, in Tepotzotlán, State of Mexico. To prevent further conflicts, Sheinbaum's interim successor, Martí Batres, installed the replica on an adjacent traffic island.