¿Quién Puede Borrar las Huellas?

In July 2003 Regina José Galindo, holding a white basin filled with human blood, walked through the streets of Guatemala City, following a route that started at the Constitutional Court and ended at the National Palace. Frequently dipping her feet into the basin, she produced a veritable trail of blood winding through the pavements of the capital. An independent, personal path—as well as a memento of a strong act of violence—the work unfolded silently before the embarrassed or heedless eyes of passersby. ¿Quién puede borrar las huellas? (Who Can Erase the Traces?) was intended as an act of denunciation of the renewed presidential candidacy of deposed dictator and coup d’etat leader Efraín Ríos Montt,under whose government in the early 1980s civilians were subjected to unspeakable cruelty and slaughter. To protest his candidacy—mandated by the Constitutional Court—Galindo undertook this walk in memory of the victims of her country’s interminable civil war, tracing a path of blood and violence that, while destined to disappear from the streets, would leave, it was hoped, an indelible mark in the collective memory of the nation.