12/19: Mexico City's Powerful Museum of Memory and Tolerance

Some of you already know that Steven and I met in Mexico, on St. Patrick's Day of 1981, in what was then the small town of Zihuatenejo, on the Pacific Coast when he was vacationing from Denver and I was there from Ottawa, Canada. Over the course of just four days, we fell in love after meeting while waiting to exchange money in a long line in a small bank. Before I left him to return to Canada, we talked about my moving to Denver or his moving to Ottawa and he gave me a lovely gold chain he had bought while living in Iran and I wear to this day! It sounds like a crazy story you would only see in a Hallmark movie but, less than a year later and after a significant health issue on my part, we married and I really did move to Denver! We never dreamt all those years ago that we'd be so incredibly fortunate traveling so far and so long after we retired and our four wonderful children were grown.

I mentioned all that because here I am finally writing about Mexico City, our last stop on our trip to South America that began way back on September 6th in Panama City. It was sad to know our fantastic trip was coming to an end in a couple of days but also wonderful to think we'd soon be back on home turf with family and friends in Denver. The previous day had been a long travel one, flying from Rio de Janeiro to Bogota, Colombia and then landing in Mexico's capital city too late other than collapse at our hotel located in the heart of downtown. 

As we strolled from our hotel, the first thing we saw was Plaza Santos Degollado, which looked like the entrance to the city's Chinatown, the last thing I ever imagined would be in Mexico City!

All along the major thoroughfare were bright red poinsettias marking the Christmas season.

We wandered into the massive Alameda Central Park that looked so inviting first thing in the morning with the fountain, statues and pretty pathways. The park, created in the late 1500s by mandate of Viceroy Luis de Velasco, took its name from the álamos or poplars planted in the park. By the late 19th century, the park was graced with European-style statuary and lit by gas lamps. It became the place to be for the city's elite.

In the park was the magnificent Neoclassical monument that commemorated the Mexican statesman Benito Juárez.

The park was a treat, an added bonus if you will, before visiting  the thought-provoking Museum of Memory and Tolerance across the street. The museum was created fifteen years ago by two women to raise awareness of intolerance and the horrors of genocide.

The focus of the museum was on the genocides that have occurred in Armenia, Hitler's Germany, Cambodia, Darfur, Guatemala, Rwanda and Bosnia. The word 'genocide' was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It's defined as the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. 

The graphics in the museum related how the first genocide took place with the rise of power in Germany following World War I with six million unemployed people and a sense of hopelessness in the country. Hitler took advantage of this and published his book Mein Kampf in which he laid out his ideology and divided humanity into superior and inferior races.

Just two months after taking power, Hitler had absolute control over Germany. Sadly, we all know too well what transpired in such a short time with the persecuted minorities in Germany and much of the rest of Europe in the space of just a few years.

The Nazis created one of history's most effective propaganda 'machines,' believing that a lie repeated a thousand ties becomes the truth according to Paul Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda. The regime took total control of newspapers, theaters and the education system to convince the German people of their racial superiority and to propagate their racist ideology.

The flow of events in the Holocaust section was heartbreaking.

Stepping into a train car used to transport Jews, Romas, political prisoners and other targeted group to the concentration camps brought chills down my spine as I imagined the horrors of people who had been herded like cattle.

We read anew about thousands of people who died in the 400 ghettos that were built. Two million people were crammed into the largest one in Warsaw, in an area meant for just 200,000 people. Steven and I toured Warsaw and much of Poland several years ago and had visited what had been the ghetto. Being at the museum brought those memories flooding back.

The museum stated that Jews' and other prisoners' first encounter with the concentration camps began with a glance by guards who decided who would live and who would die. Nazis told the latter group they could take a disinfectant shower and that's how they were able to prevent rebellion.

For all the time we've spent visiting concentration camps and Holocaust Museums throughout what was formerly Eastern Europe and also in Israel, I hadn't remembered learning about the death marches that occurred near the end of the war. The museum described how Germans decided to evacuate prisoners from camps to the center of Germany as their aim was not to leave any witnesses and evidence of their widespread killing policies. Half of those who survived the camps just ten days before the end of the war died on the marches. 

One of the most gripping displays was this one which pictured the faces of some so-called committed people, those who decided to help and save lives of those who were persecuted. They, of course, risked their safety, well-being and lives for others. Click on the photo to make it bigger so you can see how few faces are turned forward - those represented the committed people.

 Those people with their backs turned represented the majority of citizens who were indifferent to injustice or not brave enough to become committed. It made us search our souls and wonder, if faced with that same harrowing situation, would we be committed ones or turn our backs? I pray none of us will face that terrible 'what if' situation.

Beyond the historical experience and recounting of the horrific crimes perpetrated by the Nazis, the museum succeeded in giving the prisoners a face and reminded us that each one had lives, hopes, stories and dreams before so many were snuffed out.

Following the Holocaust, the prevailing belief was 'Never Again,' a promise that such atrocities could and would never happen again because people in all nations were so horrified at what had happened. Exhibits on a lower level made clear that so many genocides have continued since WWII including in Cambodia, Darfur, Guatemala and more. 

What happened to the Armenians in 1915 at the hands of the Turks was the antecedent of the term 'genocide.' The Armenians, the first Christian people in the world, numbered about two million in the early years of the 20th century. Hundreds of thousands were killed by the Turks on death marches as a result of hunger and exhaustion. A further 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated. In less than two months, Steven and I will be starting our next long trip. After a few days in Paris, we'll spend a week in Armenia where I hope to learn far more about that tragic chapter in the country's history. 

The exhibit on the genocide that took place in Rwanda explained that it is generally thought for genocide to take place, there needs to be ancestral hatreds and differences. That wasn't the case in Rwanda where, despite sharing a single people, religion and culture, hatred and prejudice still occurred when a Rwandan colonel, with the approval of the ruling Belgian government, installed a new racial order. The Tutsis were considered to be akin to Europeans but with black skin. Social divisions became racial divisions from then on.

When the Hutu-controlled government became independent from Belgium in 1962, the Hutus wanted the total elimination of all Tutsis; thus began the genocide of 80,000 Tutsis in fewer than 100 days before the UN became involved. It is estimated that between eight hundred thousand and one million people were murdered in a war that the UN could have prevented if they hadn't ignored reports of the officials on the ground to send more troops. Rwanda is still seeking justice and is in a process of reconciliation.

We were all too familiar with what transpired in the former Yugoslavia, having spent quite a bit of time in each of the former republics a few years ago, following the disintegration of the country after the death of its leader, Josip Broz Tito, the fall of Communism and severe economic problems. Ethnic cleansing took place of all non-Serbians in 1991.

Steven and I like to think we have kept up with current affairs and world events but sadly we were both totally ignorant of what transpired in Guatemala when one hundred thousand indigenous Mayans were murdered by the army in the 34-year long conflict from 1962-1996.  Nearly fifty percent of the country's population has Mayan roots and they were victims of social and economic marginalization by a dictatorial and repressive government.

On our first overseas trip together in 2013, we learned of the genocide perpetrated by Cambodian Pol Pot's regime from 1975-79 after tens of thousands of the country's citizens were displaced by US bombings to eliminated the North Vietnamese in 1970. The Khmer Rouge took advantage of the displaced people to seize power, eliminating all private property and banned all religious institutions. 1.7 million men, women and children, most belonging to religious minorities, were assassinated by Pol Pot. Visiting the Killing Fields and execution sites still haunts me to this day.

Learning more about the genocide taking place right then in Darfur, a region in Sudan in North Africa was particularly difficult as it brought home the fact that once again nothing had been learned since the Holocaust and all the subsequent genocides that have taken place all over the world in the last 72 years. 

The war in Sudan began in 2003 when rebel groups began fighting the government, which they accused of oppressing Darfur's non-Arab population.Four hundred thousand Sudanese have been systematically murdered by the government who responded to attacks by carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Darfur's non-Arabs. 

It would be easy to make the 'Memory' section of the museum a very emotional guilt trip to what we humans do and have done to others. Nevertheless, the museum didn't succumb to this temptation. As someone stated much better than I could, "it was presented in a way that will make you become an active member of a group that has recognized that indifference is at the core of the self-inflicted calamities in world history."

The other section of the museum dealt with 'Tolerance' which was defined as to respect, understand and appreciate the diversity of all people. Laudable goals, perhaps, but with a museum such as this one in Mexico City, we may be one step closer.

Both Steven and I were emotionally wrung out after spending so much time in the other part of the museum, we didn't derive as much from the tolerance section as we would have if we'd started there. 

I  cannot overstate how impressed I was with this museum. I can't remember any other museum informing its visitors in such profound ways of the suffering endured on our world. The museum didn't just 'give' information to the public but rather helped raise our awareness to the most pressing problem we humans have: our 'human' nature. If you visit Mexico City, I urge you to set aside a couple of hours exploring its Museo Memoria y Tolerancia - you'll be glad you did.

I had planned to include far more of our day in Mexico City but writing this post has done me in. I want to save the rest of our day for the next post! 

Next post: More of exciting and enjoyable Mexico City!

Posted on June 20th, 2018, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, a day away from home!