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A small group of members of the project "Erinnern  für die Gegenwart” interviewed a random selection of passersby on the streets of Mexico City after completing our initial mission to interview the head of the German Graveyard on what remembering means. All of the participants gave us the permission to share their answers.

Ignacio: "Remembering would be to bring back past moments, memories, experiences, to the present.”

Verónica: "Remembering for me, is to relive a moment.”

Fuensanta: "¿Remembering? To go back to a moment… you normally remember things that had an impact on your life.”

Pedro Villalobos: " ¿What does it mean to remember? Remembering is to think back of moments, wether happy or sad, bitter; it means to live again. It’s about making an effort, one must make an effort to remember. And a memory is part of learning, I think.” 

Carlos Camacho Cruz: "Remembering would be to relive, right? As people classically say, to be there again. How? Let’s see: photos, memories… we are made up of memories, of our experiences; our experiences form us as people. Everything we do day by day makes us what we are. So memories are significant, that’s why we call them memories: for example I can’t remember what toothpaste I used two, three weeks ago, but I remember meeting up with her [companion] two, three weeks ago. Those are the things that shape you as a person. Thus a memory is a part of you, it’s your essence as a person.

Anonymous 1: "I think it is, just as he [companion] says, you remember those important things and I feel that what you are encompasses the memories you bring with you, right? For example: if you got sick in the past this is going to mark you and you will obviously remember it and it made you grow, maybe. I think memories make you grow.”

Luis: ¿What is remembering for me? Well, remembering means the experiences we live day by day; to remember since our birth and until now, right?  And I think its really nice to remember everything we’ve been through and that leaves us with a beautiful experience. That would be remembering for me.

Arturo Ramírez: Remembering entails lots of things that one could have: beautiful memories of past events or of present day; everything we are living, what we are enjoying, what we eat. I think it’s important for everyone to remember: remembering, as its name says is to “relive”, right? 

Anonymous 2: " Remembering is super important. For example, I remember things since I was ten years old, one remembers everything about this journey. I’m almost 59 years old and I remember since I was ten years old how my life was, my parents, what we suffered; because one suffers when you’re little and you live in a dysfunctional family. Teenagers suffer. For their parents, maybe.” And also poverty: if you were raised there and all that it shows you that… when people suffer as children they grow up to become good people, because they value what you’ve done. Because they value what it has cost you. Nowadays the youth, whom their parents hand everything to, they don’t value anything. Let’s make an example with our current government: a lot of students get a scholarship, and there are a lot of them who waste it. They spend it on things they shouldn’t. Well, lastly, for me remembering is to live.

Announcement: The translation of the transcript in English was simplified to retain only the important information.