The political performance created by Regina José Galindo, Earth, in a way, summons Memory, Trauma, and Performance classes. The act performed in response to the genocide of the indigenous population in Guatemala and the non-punishment of Ríos Montt could be juxtaposed with the genocide of the indigenous population in Brazil during the Bolsonaro regime, or of the genocide of Black Brazilian youth, or the killing of civis palestinos going on right now in Gaza. The extermination of one kind that is different than the ones killing them, but the same.

Galindo’s position in not explaining her art reminds me of the poetics of the oppressed in a sense that you see the other as a critical thinker as yourself. Of course one can relate her performance with many other things, but a small research about the artist takes us to the issue in Guatemala. As an artist she is doing what she can to call attention, to protest, to make her statement. Her piece is there to motivate the debate and to call the collective for action, “Galindo intervenes with Earth. Faced with the political foreclosure of a juridical response even before Ríos Montt died, she responds. Galindo stands resolute, a mute victim/witness who sees what’s happening and can do nothing to prevent the inevitable. The very land, as with the Mayans, is being taken out from under her feet”(p.110).

The mandate issued by the military “Indian seen, Indian dead” can still be heard in Latin American countries like Brazil, in an updated version, Ladrão bom é ladrão morto, but we know what ladrão/thug looks like to the state. We know that their skin has an specific color, they live in an specific area of the city, and they occupy specific jobs in the market.