An unauthorized plaque in honor of Giovanni López, the young man who died while in the custody of Ixtlahuacan municipal police in May 2020, has been placed on the Paseo Alcalde, in front of the Rotunda of Illustrious Jalisciences.
Reads the plaque: López was “tortured and murdered at the hands of the Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos police officers for the crime of not wearing a face mask … because of the clumsy decisions of a repressive governor.”
Three municipal police officers were detained after Lopez’s death and are in preventative custody while investigations into the cause of his death continue. It has never been fully established that Lopez was detained for not wearing a face mask, and the official version suggests he was arrested for disorderly conduct.
The plaque was laid by the Colectivo Justicia para el Pueblo, whose representative Raúl Cuauhtémoc Argaez Olivera said he expected it to be removed by state authorities.
“We want the plaque to remain, so this area [of the city center] becomes a place of free expression,” he said.
Nearby, local feminist groups have taken to changing the name of the Plaza de Armas (facing the Jalisco Government Palace) to the Plaza Imelda Virgen, in honor of the first officially recognized victim of femicide in Jalisco.