THE MUNICIPAL PALACE

With this project, I seek to record the ethnographic traces of this system in its first line: The Municipal Palace, a replica of this government instance in the country.

In the 1930s, a system of government began to take shape in Mexico that continues to this day. It is characterized by a sharp presidentialism, a patronage culture marked by administrative inefficiency, and social control that is not exempt from demagogic concessions to working classes. This system has been perpetuated by government corruption.

Preamble for the Palacio Municipal series, Petatlán has a history of assassinations of social activists and former presidents linked to drug trafficking. The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) has governed this municipality except for two periods at the beginning of 2000. Petatlán belongs to Guerrero state, a territory full of conflicts, inequalities, and lags where power and corruption seem to dissolve due to domesticity and complicity of social relationships. Influence and corruption are naturalized in the government exercise.

With this project, I seek to record the ethnographic traces of this system in its first line: The Municipal Palace, a replica of this government instance in the country. Symbolically, these traces represent the assimilation of a historical power that reproduces itself, like gear, through its own normalization.