MEXICANS PUZZLED BY AZERBAIJAN LEADER MONUMENT. ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARMENPRESS
2 October, 2012
YEREVAN
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 2, ARMENPRESS: American Associated press referred
to the Mexicans puzzled by the monument of Geidar Alieyev on Mexico
City’s elegant Reforma Avenue.
As reports Armenpress AP mainly writes “The appearance of a life-size
statue of Azerbaijan’s “founder of the nation” on Mexico City’s
elegant Reforma Avenue, not far from Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln
and Mexico’s national heroes, is raising eyebrows and protests. The
Stalin-esque, bronze statue of Geidar Aliyev, the late authoritarian
leader of the Caucasus republic, carries a plaque calling him “a
brilliant example of infinite devotion to the motherland, loyal to
the universal ideals of world peace.” The monument erected in late
August shows Aliyev sitting in a bronze chair in front of what appears
to be an enormous, white marble map of Azerbaijan.
“It is really out of place,” said Miguel Angel Mendoza, an 18-year-old
high school student who was walking past the monument to the longtime
ruler, who led Azerbaijan first as Communist Party boss during Soviet
times and then as president from 1993 to 2003. “Why couldn’t they
put up a monument to somebody who did something good?”
It turns out that Azerbaijan contributed much of the 65 million pesos
($5 million) it cost to renovate not one, but two Mexico City parks,
allowing it to put monuments in both. Critics say that Aliyev, who
stifled dissent, shouldn’t be on a boulevard decorated with statues
to Mexican and foreign heroes.
“They probably have a warehouse full of these things somewhere” in
Azerbaijan, said Daniel Gershenson, human rights activist who was
one of about a dozen protesters who demonstrated last week in front
of the monument, holding banners that read “Get rid of the dictator!”
“It’s like a personality cult, transferred to Mexico,” said writer and
activist Homero Aridjis, who described the style as “social realism
from the Soviet era.’
“It’s as if they brought a dictator from Mars, “Aridjis said. “Are
we going to be a center for monuments to dead dictators? Who’s next?
Hitler? Stalin?”
It wouldn’t be the first time that Azerbaijani PR efforts have
drawn criticism. Rights groups protested Azerbaijan’s hosting of
the Eurovision song contest, and the radical feminist group Femen
protested its hosting this year’s European Cup soccer championship.
Armenpress reports that Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Mexico, Ilgar
Mukhtarov, wrote that Azerbaijan has lavished attention on Mexico
because it was one of the first countries to recognize Azerbaijan
after the breakup of the Soviet Union. “This monument is not intended
to improve anybody’s reputation, because the world’s perception of
Heydar (Geidar) Aliyev does not require any rescuing.”
Aliyev’s monument is surrounded by a manicured lawn and flowerbeds,
and many people like the new park.
Brenda Torres, a 33-year-old architect, was relaxing on one of the
four benches installed in front of the monument.
“The people who come here, they like it, right, but they don’t know
who he is,” said Torres.
And that’s the secret to Aliyev’s success – nobody really knows who
he is.
A second Azerbaijani statue appears in the other park they paid to
renovate, Tlaxcoaque park in downtown Mexico City.
It depicts a woman, her arms uplifted in mourning, commemorating
Khojaly, a village where hundreds of Azerbaijanis were reportedly
killed during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Advocates say a monument
to Mexican suffering would have been more appropriate for a site once
used as a police interrogation and torture center.
The office of Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who accepted the
donations and attended the inauguration of both sites, did not
immediately respond to requests for comment.
But at the inauguration of the first monument, Ebrard said “we are very
thankful to the Republic of Azerbaijan, because the truth is we haven’t
received an investment this big” from a foreign government before.