STATUE OF A FOREIGN AUTOCRAT SITS UNEASILY WITH SOME
New York Times
Nov 13 2012
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: November 12, 2012
MEXICO CITY – When the mayor inaugurated a pretty little garden fronted
by a very large statue at the edge of the central Chapultepec Park
last summer, it seemed another step forward in his drive to improve
the quality of life in this impossible city.
But a quick check on Google might have spared Mayor Marcelo Ebrard
from what happened next.
Speaking off the cuff, the mayor praised the statue’s subject –
a complete stranger to many Mexico City residents – as “a great
political leader, a statesman.”
The statue portrays Heydar Aliyev, who ruled Azerbaijan with a stern
hand after the breakup of the Soviet Union. A K.G.B. general and
Communist Party boss, who died in 2003, Mr. Aliyev made himself the
center of a cult of personality, his image gracing villages across
the tiny country.
The admiration has spread since his son, Ilham H. Aliyev, became
president nine years ago. Statues have gone up in Russia, Ukraine,
Turkey, Egypt, Georgia, Romania and Serbia in homage to the father
of modern Azerbaijan.
The Mexico City version, though, is proving to be an uncomfortable fit.
During Mr. Ebrard’s six-year term, this city has aspired to be a
progressive New World capital, legalizing abortion and approving
same-sex marriage. Often sounding more like the mayor of a Scandinavian
capital than of a Latin American megalopolis, Mr. Ebrard has promoted
bike-sharing programs and championed urban gardens and buildings
constructed with the environment in mind.
“This is a liberal city; this is a city which has nothing to do with
anything that could be called a dictatorship,” Mr. Ebrard said in an
interview. “We believe in democracy and human rights.”
But the statue – a gift, along with the garden, from Azerbaijan – has
put the mayor in a bind. The United States State Department repeatedly
pointed out Azerbaijan’s poor human rights record under Mr. Aliyev,
which included serious abuses and the suppression of democracy. A few
weeks after his bronze figure materialized along Mexico City’s Paseo
de la Reforma, newspaper columnists, radio hosts and human rights
activists began to press for its removal.
“In Mexico City, on our main avenue, our Champs Elysees, there are
statues of Gandhi, Churchill – and Aliyev,” said Denise Dresser, a
writer and academic who sits on a citizens’ commission that oversees
projects for Chapultepec Park, which is Mexico’s own Central Park.
(Gandhi is actually a few hundred paces inside the park, in a more
contemplative spot.)
Officials in Mr. Ebrard’s cabinet were tongue-tied. They argued
that it was not Mexico’s place to pass judgment on other countries’
leaders. That unleashed a spate of commentary in which writers threw
out the names of undesirable strongmen who might one day find a
pedestal on Mexico City streets under such reasoning. (Pinochet!
Mubarak!)
Mr. Ebrard looked for a way to stem the damage that is tarnishing the
end of his term. The mayor, who has been open about his presidential
ambitions in 2018, will hand the city over next month to a successor
from his own left-wing party, whose landslide win this summer was
widely seen as a vote of approval of Mr. Ebrard’s stewardship.
“It’s a mistake, and we should have evaluated that this could
be problematic,” Mr. Ebrard said. “Since they said, ‘This is the
father of the country, Azerbaijan opened relations with Mexico in
2004, everything’s O.K., we are part of the United Nations, we have
elections,’ we didn’t think there would be a problem.”
The Azeri ambassador, Ilgar Mukhtarov, argued that he had done
nothing wrong and blamed the country’s longtime enemy, Armenia, for
the uproar. When he proposed a Mexico City-Azerbaijan friendship
park two years ago, the city government saw no reason to object,
not even to the statue. Indeed, the city government proposed the site.
“Everybody knew about this,” Mr. Mukhtarov said. “We signed all
the agreements.”
Arguing that Azerbaijan is a struggling young democracy, he continued:
“Behind all this movement in Mexico is the strong Armenian lobby. They
gave the wrong opinion about Heydar Aliyev.”
A draft proposal slipped by the citizens’ park commission when it
was first presented in July 2011. But then members began doing their
own research and warned late last year that the statue might cause an
uproar. The city, arguing that it had an agreement with Azerbaijan’s
embassy, forged ahead anyway.
“I think they thought we were making a mountain out of a molehill,”
Ms. Dresser said. “They were clueless and they were ignorant, and we
alerted them to the fact that they were clueless and ignorant.”
Indeed, the city government has been happily accepting similar
donations from various embassies. The Vietnamese government helped
clean up a square in the historic center and burnished it with a statue
of Ho Chi Minh, seated in front of a curved wall bearing a quotation.
Oil-rich Azerbaijan has turned adulation into a special kind of
kitsch. Last Tuesday in Azerbaijan, for the birthday of Heydar Aliyev,
the authorities had more than a million flowers flown in from various
countries. They were fashioned into huge and elaborate sculptures,
including a mosaic of the face of Mr. Aliyev made of purple, white
and gold chrysanthemums. (By Saturday night, dump trucks had backed
up to a park to cart away the rotting blossoms.)
In Mexico City, the country has been generous, spending more than
$6 million.
Along with the friendship park, complete with the statue framed by a
jagged piece of marble that is a map of Azerbaijan, it restored a plaza
in the historic center. There it painted the facade of an adjacent
church and installed a dancing fountain. But a plaque commemorating
the victims of a 1992 massacre in the village of Khojaly during the
undeclared war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh brought more trouble.
Nobody in the city government bothered to check the text on the plaque,
which calls the massacre a genocide. The small but influential
Armenian-Mexican community complained. So did the government of
Armenia.
To find a diplomatic solution, Mr. Ebrard has appointed a three-man
committee and promised to follow its recommendations, not only about
the statue and the plaque but also about how to make decisions a
little more transparent.
He has been trying to persuade Mr. Mukhtarov to move the statue to
a private space that could become a Mexico-Azerbaijan cultural center.
The commission’s recommendation and the Azeri response to Mr. Ebrard’s
proposal are expected in the coming days.
Nobody has asked the people who visit the garden, a tranquil retreat of
hydrangea and geranium-choked flower beds wedged between busy streets.
“I really don’t know why he is here – maybe because they paid for the
park,” said Yohan Islas Hernandez, 34, nodding over at the statue. Mr.
Islas walks over from his office to eat his packed lunch under a tree
every day. “For Mexicans, there really is no problem,” he said.
Mr. Mukhtarov warned that removing the statue by force would not be
interpreted as a friendly move, and he wondered at all the fuss in
Mexico. “I think they have other problems to concentrate their minds
on more than a monument,” he said. “For us, it is a really big issue.”
Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/world/americas/statue-of-azerbaijan-leader-at-issue-in-mexico-city.html?_r=0