STITCHING THE BATTLEGROUNDS

ON A FRIDAY NIGHT in August 2019, Mexico City’s Angel of Independence received a makeover. The statue, long a meeting place for football fans and political protesters alike, was covered in neon-pink, green, and purple graffiti. Before, the inscription on the base of the bronze statue of a child and lion—who symbolize, according to the architect Antonia Rivas Mercado, “the Mexican people, strong during war and docile during peace”—read, La nación a los héroes de la independencia (The Nation to the Heroes of Independence).