Cenotaphs and street worship. The two cities: from the monumentum to the monumenta

Abstract

The worship of the dead is as old as humanity. The awareness of death would provide from affections, rites and myths to symbolic thought and culture. Historically, three affective needs would be the same privileges to which every society and family aspired to: mark the place of death, reserve a space to bury and cohabit with them. These practices would make the tomb, in addition to the depository of the three values, in mnemonic testimonial of emotions and, in the emblematic or foundational origin of families, groups, societies and cities. Of the tombs, the ones that have best allowed such coexistence and worship would be the cenotaphs. Mortuary memorials that emerged in that space of the city characterized by dispel fears and endure uncertainties: the public; and that, promoted by popular-catholicism, they would proliferate in the Mexican city exacerbating their significance if the death they reify occurs suddenly and in unfair or violent conditions. From phenomenology, and using tools of documentary historicity and ethnographic, this essay reflects on it. It is revealed that, seeking to commemorate or avoid the emotions that motivates, gadgets and rituals are used, of which, marking or erecting an object in the place of death, stands out. That, together with the kinship cenotaphs, usually established and with familiar symbolism, others of a collective nature emerge that, seeking to avoid their habituation and banality, they would have assumed three other values: mobile, the place of installation matters more than the place of death; ephemeral, from installations and removable altars and; transients, placing on specific and significant days