Understanding Mexico: Reading Between Mexico Cityʼs Urban Narratives - Diplomatic Courier 2/27/17, 7'26 AM

Understanding Mexico: Reading Between Mexico

City’s Urban Narratives
December 16, 2013

Written by Stephanie Henaro, Guest Contributor

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Cities can often be conceived as an urban narrative expressing a national reality.

They reflect a true image of the society that constructed them and frame the power
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Understanding Mexico: Reading Between Mexico Cityʼs Urban Narratives - Diplomatic Courier 2/27/17, 7'26 AM

logics imprinted upon their inhabitants interactions. The unconscious dialectic

between space and its relation to the city’s inhabitants becomes the silent discourse
reproducing power structures imprinted upon the nation’s history. In this sense,
space and the political organization of space express social relationships. As noted
by several post-Marxist scholars, space in itself might be conceived as a physical
context, but the organization, and meaning of space is a product of social
translation. According to Harvey, spatial forms are seen not as inanimate objects
within which the social process unfolds, but as things containing social processes in
the same manner that social processes are spatial. Therefore, social relationships
can be understood as both space-forming and space contingent. Urban practices
articulating spaces where life is to be experienced, silently organize the language
determining the conditions of the social. Hence, space becomes an operator of
power.

To consider the city as the projection of society on space is an indispensable

starting point to understand the formal rules which national social practices obey.
Mexico is one of the countries with the most divided societies, but also one with the
most centralized forms of government. Its capital, Mexico City, is one of the five
largest cities in the world, becoming a megacity perhaps even before the term was
created in the 1970s. This article will discuss the way on which the state of Mexican
society, as well as that of its democracy, can be reflected on the spatial practices
materialized in Mexico City.

Urban Narratives and Social Division

The genesis of Mexico’s social divisions can be found in the brutal conquering that
took place in 1521 with the victory of Spain over the Aztecs. An event that not only
altered existing power relationships between native civilizations, but also broke the
prevailing ethnic coherence embraced upon the different territorial units.
Furthermore, after the Spanish rule began, native civilizations were fused with
European culture.

A strict caste system was introduced that classified society in relation to their

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European counterparts, with upper classes being closer to European origin and the
lower class being dominated by native ethnic groups–all of which translated into
terms of economic subjugation after independence in 1821. Little has changed
since that time. As mentioned, cities reflect a true image of the society that
constructed them and frame the power logics imprinted upon their inhabitants’
interactions. Therefore, in order to completely understand Mexico City’s urban
narratives we must depart from the City’s downtown, the most symbolic birthplace
of the current Mexican civilization.

After Spanish conquest, a new spatial appropriation took place in the former Aztec
empire’s capital. Aztec constructions where destroyed and replaced by European
style buildings that where not only constructed with the same rocks, but also on top
of them. The Templo Mayor, the Aztec’s main expression of power, was demolished
and buried by a new Baroque Cathedral. Constituting thus, a tacit spatial
expression of the on going social processes that where taking place upon the newly
acquired Spanish territory. New forms of power and spatial meanings were being
established.

Space is not merely a scientific concept removed from ideology and politics: it has
always been political and strategic. It has been shaped and molded from historical
and natural elements, allowing it to be both deeply political and ideological. The
new architectural dialectic reproduced the discourse of a European nation that had
been recently reunited and expanded into a global empire. It expressed its power
and the new forms that were to rule spatial relations. The “new Mexico City”, built
and conceived by the Spaniards, became the spatial engine of social segregation.
While it came to act as the main centre of power, natives were removed and cast
out to the periphery. Aiming to reflect a “New Spain” where natives, just as the
moors in Spain, had no place.

Upon independence, the spatial logic conceived under the intentions to express a
“New Spain”, were lost. Ethnic divisions, translated into terms of economic
subjugation became the new underlying rationale, and where thus expressed on
space. A new architectural dialectic extended even to the form of government,

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became the new logic ruling the city.

During the 20th century, people from the whole republic moved to Mexico City,
trying to find their way out of poverty. This trend created a strong tendency towards
centralization that birthed what we know today as Mexico City’s metropolitan area.
Today, it is the second-largest urban agglomeration in the Western Hemisphere,
comprising a population of 21.2 million people, a number easily compared to the
total population of Australia.

As opposed to the Spanish-built downtown, the city’s metropolitan area reproduced

an exclusive discourse in the form of fences and the decrease of public space.
Reflecting in this sense, the new national reality. Fences became the new guardians
of identity, keeping houses and buildings from expressing their beauty to the
outside, demarcating in this sense a “coherent inside” from a “chaotic outside”.
Space became private, destined only to serve powerful classes. Only a few and
forgotten spaces, where left for public domain, resulting in a city which became
impersonal to its inhabitants. It is in this sense; the spatial form that a city assumes
can be related to the social behaviors it contains, for it will institutionalize and
determine the future development of social processes.

Spatial Relations and Democracy

As space can be conceived as the ultimate expression of power, spatial forms can
be manipulated in various ways to yield various symbolic meanings. Thus, it is
possible to regard the spatial form of a city as a basic determinant of human
behaviour. The cognitive state of the individual with respect to its spatial
environment will have a direct impact on its perception of democracy and its
relation to it. The city becomes the dominant theme in political legends, but is no
longer a field of programmed and regulated operations. In the case of Mexico City,
access to space can be related to power and the individual’s value to society,
exposing in this sense the link between spatial relations and democracy.

To talk about a genuine democracy, a social unity aiming for a common wealth must
be achieved. Space must be as equally distributed as possible, allowing the city to

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Understanding Mexico: Reading Between Mexico Cityʼs Urban Narratives - Diplomatic Courier 2/27/17, 7'26 AM

be truly experienced by its inhabitants. This has not been achieved in the Mexican
capital. “Social hygiene practices” aiming to make the poor invisible have been the
predominant spatial logic for the last two centuries. Access to the city has become
directly proportional to economic power. Streets, avenues, and urban highways
have become trenches, just as the ones in Bagdad and Beirut, that divide instead of
unite.

Pedestrians, often linked with the poor, have been nullified from social life in the
way sidewalks have been reduced. Cars have become the mechanical armour
allowing its citizens to transit these divisive urban narratives without becoming
sensitive to it.

Therefore, it is only when we realize that walking through the city is what speaking
is to speech that we can observe that only those who have access to the city’s space
decide the country’s future. The poor remain insignificant not only to space but also
to decision-making processes regarding the country’s future.

Mexico City remains an extremely divided space, reflecting a nation with many fears
and many identities. It has become composed of paroxysmal places in monumental
reliefs that express the individual value to society in relation to their access to
space. Its exclusive architectural dialectic exerts a direct impact on the way citizens
recognize their role and place in society and thus upon the country’s democracy.
Therefore, it is only by observing the ways on which Mexico City’s urban space has
been rewritten and designed, the city can be understood as an ethnic spatial
representation that characterizes rhythmic functional patterns constituting the
current Mexican culture and its “chosen” way of life.

Stephanie Henaro is a Wikistrat Researcher based in Mexico City. During 2009, she
served as a coordination officer at the Shanghai Headquarters of the Mexican
Chamber of Commerce in China (MEXCHAM). Her research focuses on Geopolitical,
Territorial, and Security issues for Latin America and Asia-Pacific Regions. She has
studied in France, Russia, and the UK, receiving her Masters Degree from King’s
College London in 2012.

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