Lorena Zarate

Caitlin Morrissey

So, Lorena, we wanted to open up this conversation by asking you about the work you've been doing at Habitat International Coalition and of course your extensive scholarship on housing and Right to the City.

But to ask, from that vantage point, what conclusions you were able to draw from your time in Mexico City and since your time in Mexico City about the DNA of the city?

Lorena Zarate

Well, you know, I can speak for hours about that. But let me just put it this way. It's a fascinating city, absolutely fascinating city, and impossible to fully understand. But it's a city that will spark curiosity every single day in every single corner. And of course so many different stories that people can tell about the city and how the city has been built, the meaning of the city for them and so on and so forth. So I have to say I'm from Argentina originally and I moved to Mexico City in the late 1990s, 1999 actually. That was a very special moment in the country. And I studied history – my background is not in architecture or urban planning, not even in human rights.

So studying history, Mexico is kind of a mecca for us in Latin America. And the UNAM in particular, the university in particular because of the knowledge production and the role of that production in general. And of course with the great impact in the humanities but in general in culture, right? We can also say that about the influence of Mexican cinema and Mexico soap operas and TV shows for kids. I grew up in Argentina watching TV shows from Mexico. So it's a powerhouse, it's a cultural powerhouse.

Mexico as a country and Mexico City as the core of that country, the heart of that country in so many ways. So a great influence. I was fascinated by the city before arriving there. And then getting to know the city through the housing movements and the Right to the City movements. That has been an absolute gift. So that was actually my introduction to the city, my introduction in a way to the culture, the real culture, the lived culture and the lived history, not just history and culture through books or through movies. But also my introduction to housing struggles and Right to the City struggles. So yeah, a lot to say about that, but I'm always grateful for the generosity. People in Mexico are really generous about almost everything including the deep knowledge and the deep love for their culture and their history. Yeah, so it's a total privilege to have the opportunity to be part of that in a way.

Greg Clark

If I may, Lorena, I just want to really invite you to talk for as long as you like about what is curious, what is fascinating, what is mysterious about Mexico City? What is it that somehow stimulates you to think in all of those different ways?

Lorena Zarate

Yeah, well of course it's a combination of these different dimensions, right? But just to simplify that in terms of time and space, the two basic dimensions. I'm originally from La Plata in Argentina, which is a city of one million inhabitants more or less. So then moving to Mexico City, the metropolitan area in Mexico City is actually more than 22 million people. Mexico City itself, the administrative boundaries of Mexico City are probably around nine million or just below nine million and has been stable for the past several decades now since the ‘80s.

But the metropolitan area – what we actually call Mexico City – as an area, as a region, keeps growing. So you can imagine that as the first impact and curiosity to what it's like to live in a city like this one, right? It's so huge, so immense. You can travel for hours in the subway system. So the subway system is part of that curiosity too because actually it allows you to know the city. Beyond work, the favourite thing to do with my friends on the weekends is actually what we call our urban adventures. So just pop on the metro and decide a subway station somewhere that I didn't know and then just get down and start walking around. And even without knowing the map or knowing the place, then you discover there is a little church. And it's always a little church and a little plaza, right? And then from there you can start guessing what was the history of the place. Of course there is a market and there are more pedestrian streets than streets for cars so you can walk around, you can see people, talk to people. So it's that kind of a city that will invite you to do that. It's immense and infinite really. So many writers write about Mexico City being like an infinite city in that way.

But also it's a city made of neighbourhoods and you can feel, as so many cities in the world, but you can feel the character of different neighbourhoods and of course the history of the different neighbourhoods. So it's truly fascinating that way. And of course the other dimension is history, it's time, right? And it has a very special, long, rich, complex history. And again, we cannot separate that from the history of the place. It’s not just the history of the city, but it's the history of the country at so many levels.

And that country that has been connected globally for centuries now – at least since the Spanish arrival, and certainly before in terms of regional connections to Mesoamerica and South America and so on, and most probably to the Pacific and et cetera. It has international connections and that is also part of the character of the city. So it's infinite at so many levels and dimensions. It's fascinating and you can never get bored there and you can never get depressed I think in Mexico City because there is always so much going on. Even just sitting at a cafe near any of the main plazas including of course the Zócalo, the main plaza, you can spend hours just watching what's going on and it's just never ending and so many things happening.

And the presence of history. I think that's what's different coming from Argentina – and of course part of what I learned from my work, you know, being able to travel around and getting to know other cities in Latin America too. Part of the history is also common, of course, because of the Spanish Conquest and so on and so forth. But there are many things that are specific about that and history is very present in Mexico. It's not something that is in the past. History is not in the past. History is like a memory that is a living memory and people are very proud of that. And when you're walking around you are actually walking on those same stones and those same plazas and those same markets. So it's very powerful that way.

Greg Clark

One thing I thought when I was listening to you just then of course is that one thing that is really distinctive about Mexico City is that it's one of the big six, seven, eight Latin American cities and yet it's also so close to the USA and such an important part of North America that history is being lived every day there. Not just the old history but present history is being made. What feeling do you have about that curious mix between it being a Latin American city and it being a North American city? How does that idea work for you?

Lorena Zarate

Well, that's fascinating. And for sure, different people will have different answers to that. But because of my background and because of the connections there with the social movements and the broader political agenda... I always remember a phrase from my mentor and colleague within the Habitat International Coalition, Enrique Ortiz. He once told me that if it wasn't for Mexico  he was referring to the country in general – in Latin America, we would probably be speaking English by now. So I think the idea behind that is that you need that size of a country geographically, right?

You need that size of a culture and that rich and deep history – and of course a big economic power – to actually resist that and to actually oppose some kind of, you know, identity that is not just a Mexican identity, but in a way it’s a big portion, I would say, is a regional identity for Latin America and for us to, you know, be speaking Spanish until now. And that influence actually you can see in English too, and so many other languages. Like keywords that they didn't exist before the Spanish arrived to Mexico and encountered the Nahuatl there. So words like “chocolate” or  “jitomate”, they actually enter into English and many other languages from Nahuatl, not from Spanish. I mean, they enter into Spanish and through Spanish then into other languages. That's the influence we're talking about, right?

And so then of course, well, half the US was actually Mexican territory as you know. And the names are still there, the Spanish names. But also the migration and millions of people that are actually Mexicans from Mexican descent now being under attack, as we all know. But actually, I mean, I think goes both ways in a sense too, right? It's like a lot of people and a lot of Spanish and Latino presence in the US for several decades now, and big part of the economy and big part of the culture there too. But in Mexico, we’ll say there is, for me at least, there is a Latin American identity. And I will say that you can feel a stronger attachment and presence of the US culture in the northern part of Mexico as a country. But Mexico City being in the central area and more connected, I think, culturally to that identity of Latin America, at least for me. So, of course, you can see the big presence of investment and money and a lot of shopping malls and that kind of consumerist culture coming from the north and that big push – and also a lot of digital nomads, as they call them, there too, in particular during the pandemic. So a lot of people from the US, young professionals in particular, arriving to Mexico City in this case because of the centrality of that city and the size and the opportunities there and working from there. And that driving a huge push of gentrification and rising housing prices in Mexico City, in particular in some very nice, cute neighbourhoods, with more facilities, more restaurants, more bookshops and all that.

So there are several layers again to that question. But yeah, I feel that the cultural identity is more related to the Latin American identity and the Spanish-speaking identity. Very proudly, very proudly so.

And we can also talk about the presence of Indigenous peoples and Indigenous groups. They're still there, of course. And when you visit those towns, they're not just colonial towns from the Spanish era, they are pre-Hispanic towns with Indigenous roots and Indigenous language still being spoken there.

And the subway stations, for example. Most of the subway stations – there are several lines in Mexico City, 12 or 13, or I don't know how many because they keep building them – but most of the stations actually have Indigenous names and those refer to places, to practices, to cultural issues, economic issues, religious issues there and they don't only have a name, they actually have an image and an icon, right? So you can easily recognise the image of the place. You don't need to know the name. And of course, there's also colours to differentiate them, the different lines, but that's very present there too, right? And people are proud of that. They don't want to change those names and put like English names into those places, not even Spanish names. They reclaimed those Indigenous names and mostly Nahuatl in this case. Yeah, I think it's very deliberate, you know. I hope I answered that.

Greg Clark

I'll just tell you, Lorena, that I used to live near to Taxqueña station and that was great fun. And so I know what you mean. Thank you.

Lorena Zarate

Difficult to pronounce those names too, many of them.

Caitlin Morrissey

Thank you so much, Lorena. I really would love for you to take us back to 1999. And you mentioned that you watched a lot of television and read a lot of books coming out of Mexico City when you were growing up in Argentina. And so how did your impression of Mexico City, how far away was your impression of Mexico City to the reality of the city when you arrived? What sort of conceptions did you have of the city and to what extent were they accurate from the way that the city was portrayed in that media? And in what ways were they really sort of burst open by your moving to the city in the late ‘90s?

Lorena Zarate

I was in Argentina at that time and finishing my university and all that. So I had this mix of on the one hand, popular culture, if you want, like through TV and some movies, like in particular old movies from the golden age of the Mexican cinema in the ‘40s and then some other movies, ‘60s probably. Then TV shows including TV shows for kids. So they were like, you know, very characteresque in a way, right? But with social content to it. It was this show that most people in Latin America actually know, “El Chavo del Ocho”, which is basically a little kid that --they're in fact adults playing like, acting like they're kids, which is interesting too. And they live in what they call “vecindades”. Basically like a tenement, like a rooming house in central Mexico City, but you never see the city. It's just the house, the living conditions of those different families, including a single mum with a kid that is acting like a teenage, but he's not a teenage anymore. Then like a homeless boy that actually lives in the courtyard inside a barrel, an empty barrel. That's his home. He goes inside the barrel and he sleeps there. And then the school teacher and then another father, a single dad with his daughter, and he has no jobs, no proper jobs, and so he has trouble paying the rent and trying to escape the landlord coming every week. So those kind of things, not really the image of the city, but more like living conditions of kids in the city. So that was really interesting.

And then, on the other hand, was mostly books about history and Mexican history in particular. Before the Spanish Conquest, then the Spanish Conquest, then the Revolution and so on and so forth. So, I mean, we know the difference between books and reality, right? It was just mind-blowing. And one thing that was particularly striking is that my idea-- because reading history and seeing maps, was that Mexico, the central area of Mexico was quite dry. And yeah, in particular Mexico City, I imagined a lot of buildings and probably tall buildings. Like I didn't know there weren't so many tall buildings in Mexico City as in other big capitals. I just, you know, reproduce whatever image I had of Buenos Aires or whatever. And then I didn't imagine they had many green spaces or yeah, water around.

So I remember my first landing in Mexico City, I was just amazed about the size, of course, but also the green spaces. I was like, wow, there are many trees in this city. And trees and green spaces are very special for me in my hometown (La Plata in Argentina), because it was a planned city, like a modern planned city in the late 19th Century. So trees and open spaces and green spaces are very important. So I was not afraid, but I didn't have the idea that I was going to find that in Mexico City, right? And I did. So I remember that being like, wow, this is great. And then the Chapultepec Park and all these avenues and green avenues. And again, the presence of history because it's not the same reading books about history then seeing that history is actually alive. So probably the other big thing were museums. I was familiar with museums in my country and some other countries, but museums are usually pretty conventional, traditional. They just have a few pieces and they always have the same thing. They're a little bit elitist, just for having fun on a weekend.

But in Mexico, they're popular. First of all, there are plenty of them, many museums, dozens of museums in Mexico City alone about everything, anything. And then people actually go to museums, not just tourists, people from there. And of course, many go like as families and parents with the kids. And the kids go not just because a school assignment, but they go because they want to learn. And they have notebooks and they are asking questions to parents, and then parents and kids talking about things; and the museography and the quality of the museums and the exhibitions. So it's a learning place. It's a learning place, and history is alive and it's something to be proud of and fascinating, and something that you keep discovering. It's not something that is there, that is on a paper only. And so many different ways to approach that from an anthropological, if you want, point of view and not just historiographical, right? So it's totally linked to culture and the understanding of culture. So that richness was just fascinating, really mind-blowing.

Caitlin Morrissey

Thank you so much. And then I wanted to ask you, Lorena, to what extent is Mexico City a Mexican city and where do we see Mexico the country in the city and vice versa?

Lorena Zarate

Yeah, well again it's a complex question. But in a way I think it's the relationship between nations and modern nation states and capitals, right? So Mexico City – called the Distrito Federal or the Federal District before they changed the name, and actually in that name change there is a lot to unpack. But basically, it has been the capital of the city and because of that of course the political centre, the economic centre and the cultural centre at so many different levels.

So let's put it this way, it's impossible to explain Mexico without talking about Mexico City. At the same time, it's impossible to explain Mexico just through Mexico City, right? That would be totally unfair and it's not enough. But you will need to put that into the mix, of course. So main celebrations of main milestones and important days in history, Revolution, independencies and that are celebrated, not just in Mexico City, but in the main plaza, in the main Zócalo of Mexico City. Of course, with the National Palace, the seat of the federal government, is also the church and it's also the local government there in the same plaza. In that same square, you have all those buildings and the concentration, the physical and metaphorical concentration of power.

But also you have national movements or revolutions even, the Revolution, the leaders of the Revolution both from the north and the south of the country marched, rallied into Mexico City to make their claims there. The Zapatistas did too, right? So it's a political centre. If you have movements in different parts of the country that you want to be heard and you want to be on the national agenda, they have to go there and they have to present those things there. In that way it's part of that national dynamic for sure. And yeah, of course then the economic centre and all the investment going there. And the people. I mean, we're talking about 20 something million and 120 million a bit more now at national level. I mean, it's a huge portion of the population that lives in that area, so demographically too, right?

Greg Clark

Lorena, will you just say a little bit more about the point you made that this idea of the switch from the Distrito Federal to the Ciudad de México, what does that mean in more than just linguistic terms? What's the meaning of that shift?

Lorena Zarate

Sure, And to the extent I can because I'm not a lawyer. But I can explain a few things probably in in more political terms.

Greg Clark

And symbolic terms.

Lorena Zarate

Yeah, so the Distrito Federal, as in other countries, including Washington DC, for example, you have the city that is the capital city. And that means that it has a different legal and political status. So it's not just any city or any municipality in the country, but it's neither a province or a state. So it. has a very specific status that way.

And also for decades in Mexico that meant that basically the national government, and that's why it's a federal district, the national government was in charge of appointing the head of the city, the head of the local government. So there were elections before up to 1928 or something like that, and then they only resume in the late 20th century. During that period it was the federal government, the national government that was appointing the local government. And eventually, in 1997, the city regained the power and the mandate to actually elect the local government. And this reform we're talking about, this reform is much later, much more contemporary. It’s from the new constitution, so that's 2017.

And what is interesting, we know other cities that have gone through that kind of same political shift. So for example, Buenos Aires, the Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, that also changed the legal status and the political and administrative configuration to some extent; Paris too, and different cities. So that has to do also with the size, you know, the demographic changes and of course, economic changes and so on. So basically that change was really interesting because in Mexico City it changed not only the relationship between the city and the national government or the federal government, giving the city more powers and more economic power, more political autonomy and so on and so forth. But it also was a redistribution of power within Mexico City. So before the federal district had like sub-districts. Now those sub-districts are actually “Alcaldías”, which means they are like municipalities within Mexico City. So Mexico City itself is an agglomeration of municipalities. And of course, then you go to the metropolitan area which includes many other cities and villages from different states. So the Mexico state, Puebla, Tlaxcala, et cetera. It's a metropolitan region, so it's very complex and very interesting that way. All that changed at the same time, at least three levels of government really. The relationship with the federal/national government and the political administrative arrangements within the city. So more decentralization if you want and more tools for direct democracy and elections and local councils, et cetera, and management of the budget at the local level and so on. But also the metropolitan configuration to some extent, although that's still weak. But the idea is that the region can actually act as a metropolitan area with all the implications that that will have.

So it's really fascinating. And I think that in terms of the democratisation of the city and the more direct involvement from citizens in decision-making and voting, not just local heads of governments for those “alcaldías” or mayors, but also local budget and local representatives and so on. So yeah, I think that's been a really, really fascinating change.

Caitlin Morrissey

Fabulous, thank you so much, Lorena, for explaining all of that. I really wanted to ask you whether you think Mexico City is an understood or a misunderstood city? What your judgement is of that and in what ways it is misunderstood if indeed you encounter those misconceptions?

Lorena Zarate

Yeah, I'm not sure about misconceptions. But I will say that in my own experience actually, arriving from outside – and I think the same could be true for all the cities, in particular all the global cities and big cities – is that the image they project or you can access through media, the news or books, or TV or movies and so on are always particular pieces of the city, right? So, some spaces get more portrayed – of course, the central areas – but they are also kind of isolated.

So even if you have a diversity of those different images and different neighbourhoods, you cannot have the full picture of the diversity all together. And again, the richness and the depth of the history that that entails. But being a powerhouse, a cultural powerhouse, as we said before – I mean, there are many more movies about Mexico City than there are about, I don’t know, Lima or Quito. So you actually have an image of the city even if partial. You have many more tools to access that if you compare that with other cities in Latin America. But then the ability to have different people telling different stories. So for example, there are some documentaries about the vision of the city made by the people, but they don't make the mainstream media or cultural circuits. The city that actually the people has built. And in Mexico that's somewhere between 40% and 65% depending on the studies, it's very difficult to get a proper number for that, a proper figure for that.

So that city built by the people is usually not portrayed or is portrayed in a problematic way. A kind of stigmatisation of what we call in Spanish “barrios populares”. So popular settlements are the city built by the people. And there are not really a lot of movies and mainstream media or books that will actually talk about the richness of that, the contributions of the people and those places, and the economy and the culture from those places to the city in particular and the country in general. And that, yeah, we have the same problem in other cities, of course, those kind of voices and experiences are not part of the mainstream. And when they are, is really problematic because they're stigmatised or they are criminalised or portrayed just as gangs and violence and drugs and et cetera, right? So we're missing that part. We're totally missing that part.

Caitlin Morrissey

We wouldn't want to generalise in any way and we recognise that these are incredibly culturally rich and diverse, but would it be possible to ask you just a little bit more about the barrios populares in Mexico City and sort of lives that are lived there?

Lorena Zarate

Sure, sure. And again, I guess to identify what is specific, we need to also talk about what is more common, right? And so as part of the urbanisation process in Latin America that took part mostly between 1940s and 1980s – that's the bulk of the urbanisation process in Latin America. Latin America is now a highly urbanised region, with more than 80% of the population living in cities. Not big cities by the way. The majority of the population living in  mid-sized cities, half a million inhabitants or so.

But basically that process in the region took part in general without any proper land or housing policies. So what we see is a lot of cities, I mean, neighbourhoods and part of the cities that have been just self-built by the people. We're talking about migrants, internal migrants most of them, people coming from the countryside, campesinos, rural producers, and many of them also Indigenous, with Indigenous backgrounds. Some of them escaping violence and land grabbing and gangs and mafias in their places, but some other just looking for better opportunities, better jobs, and so on. So again, that's a common trend in Latin America, but in Mexico it's quite something, because the size again and the numbers, the figures are just huge, right? So we're talking about millions of people just moving in the span of a few decades, and cities from one to two millions, then all of a sudden to eight to 10 or more millions. So you can imagine how that looks like without any, well, sufficient planning and land, housing and services. Not even jobs.

So basically that's what we see today in Latin America and in Mexico. And a great deal of that was of course just done by people, at the more individual or family level, through mutual aid and mobilising their own resources and in-kind support. But some of those were actually organised and were organised from within the communities, either because the groups were already organised before the migration or because they got organised once they settled –because of course they had a lot of needs and a lot of things to solve on a daily basis for basic social reproduction. So they had to collaborate. But also with support from others from outside those neighbourhoods and from different groups, across class and across political parties, and different churches and support groups, incluiding universities, helping, you know, those processes and those social movements.

So this relationship between social movements, and urban social movements in particular, and quite engaged academia  – not just in action research, but actually building that capacity and helping that political vision and political transformation – was really, really important. And still true today, and that's part of the work the Habitat International Coalition and others have been doing, and it's based on that and those kinds of relationships and networks.

Of course that happens in other places in Latin America too. I'm not sure to what extent, for example, that's happening in other regions that are now undergoing urbanisation at a huge, I mean, even faster pace than the one in Latin America, like Sub-Saharan African countries and cities, and some places in Southeast Asia, right? But those connections, those networks, those articulations were key to explore possibilities – not just to build houses on an individual basis, but actually develop a whole area of the city and introducing services, introducing facilities, reclaiming public spaces, and of course building something in a collective way. And then some of those groups also connected with a broader political agenda, that in many countries were under dictatorships – it wasn't exactly the case in Mexico but to some extent too. So the role of these movements, and land and housing movements and Right to the City movements in the democratisation process of those cities and those countries have been huge too. They have been connected to those broader political agendas and many of their leaders, both female and male, had been part of that process and then ended up in different positions in progressive governments both at local level and national level.

So that link between the urbanisation process and democratisation process in Latin America is very important to keep in mind. And of course, that was the case in Mexico too – although it wasn't like an open dictatorship it was a very authoritarian regime, including several violations of human rights and repression of the students and unions, so and so forth. So this reclaiming of the space and reclaiming of a space in the city and reclaiming a citizenship, a full citizenship and a more democratic context has always been kind linked of together.

So we can see now huge parts of the city that have actually been built by the people. And in most cases, without any support from the government or the public sector or the market other than just people buying materials and things they need. But just as the effort of the people. So that's why we in HIC and in particular my colleague Enrique Ortiz and many others with him have been talking about the social production of habitat. And this is important because otherwise we just we hear and we read about these labels of informal settlements or even words such as of slums like a really broad category that usually has very negative connotations and doesn't describe the diversity and the capabilities and the transformation that those places represent, and the ability of people to organise and transform cities and do things. So the social production of habitat actually intends to point to that and see that from a different perspective. So it's not public, it's not private, it's social and has different logics and different tools, and needs different kinds of support. When that support is in place, we have proved that the results are much better in quality, in terms of time, in terms of cost and everything.

So eventually advocating for having changes in legal frameworks and some laws at national level like in Mexico or local level like in Buenos Aires to actually support these processes and have, for example, financial tools – that are different from those that the market uses or the public sector uses – for these particular groups. So combination of small loans with subsidy with savings and mobilisation of in-kind contributions from people.

So that's a big part of our work: recognising, visibilising those parts of the cities and those efforts as part of the social tissue and the economy, including the economic contributions from those neighbourhoods. The micro level and the macro level too. And of course, the political contributions. So trying to look at that from a different standpoint and see that in a positive way. Of course, without romanticising it, but actually trying to change the approach to it.

Caitlin Morrissey

And just following up to that, I know that you've worked extensively in Latin America. But I was wondering if there are idiosyncratic ways that people collectively work together in Mexico City, or if there are idiosyncratic barriers that people face to claiming the Right to the City in Mexico City? You mentioned that to understand the specificity, need to understand the common challenges. But are there ways that when you think about the work that you do in Mexico City, there are quite specifically Mexico City expressions of the work that you do, if that makes sense?

Lorena Zarate

Yeah, makes sense. But I think many of the elements are similar, even some of the historic elements and Indigenous components into that. But I think it's a combination of those that is special, right? So for example, when we talk about mutual aid, or collaboration and collectively doing things, including building your houses and building community facilities and infrastructure for services, and taking care of the kids and all those things that we need for social reproduction. You will have many names for that, for that mutual aid in different Indigenous languages. So in Mexico you have, you know, several different names for that, depending on the Indigenous groups and Indigenous languages. So “tequio” is one of those words that people use, and “tequio” is basically helping each other. And that's something that communities have been doing in rural contexts and Indigenous contexts for millennia. But what is interesting is that you can still see that, and again, not only Mexico City because that Indigenous presence, of course, is common across the region in Latin America. So you can also find that in other places like in Medellín, for example, in Colombia. People still maintain that, those kind of traditions of self-help and mutual aid. Basically because they don't have access to money on the one hand, but also because not everything was commodified. You didn't need the money to actually access those things or services or supports or materials. And so you can still see that.

And then there are other elements of that combo, of course. I think in Latin America in general, actually, it's very difficult to understand these processes without understanding, I guess, two other elements. One is the role of, at the time, the progressive Catholic Church, very committed with the poor and the social agenda to transform that. And that meant not just poverty in general and poor people in general, but actually urban poor and therefore people living in these kind of neighbourhoods. So a strong presence of the progressive Catholic Church and both priests and nuns, including some that were disappeared and murdered under the dictatorships like in Argentina, right? Because they were living and working in these neighbourhoods.

And that's what is called the “comunidades eclesiales de base”, so like grassroots religious communities. And that was able to mobilise a lot of people and add like another layer to that collective approach and social and common agenda. Transformation and dignity, even before talking about human rights, that's the basic dignity that is linked to human life. In this case coming from the Catholic Church but you can trace that in other cosmovisions and religious approaches, of course. So human dignity, and then from there you have the right to reclaim, to resist, to propose, right? So that was fundamental. And to portray people living under those conditions as human beings with the whole dignity. But also political actors with the right to organise and reclaim and propose things. So that was very important and common across Latin America, including in Mexico and Mexico City.

And the third one is the political parties and the centre left and left political parties in the region, in particular during the ‘60s and the ‘70s. And they were also committed to working in those places and having grassroots movements and connecting to social movements. So going beyond the traditional worker, the factory, because also the structure of the economy was changing. The nature of labour was changing and the nature of workers was changing. Political organising wasn't just at the factory through those workers, right? It was at the level of the neighbourhoods – and these neighbourhoods in particular. And women in particular because women were the ones – they were almost never the leaders, the political visible leaders – but they were the ones actually mobilising everything and organising everything, from building their own houses, taking care of the kids, organising the community, going in front of the authorities and reclaiming water and electricity and schools and everything else.

So I think that combo is very peculiar in the region to my understanding, to my knowledge. And it's not just the region, it's the region at that time, right? Because we're talking about particular decades and the context would be totally different now. So I think is that kind of combo that, of course combining different ways in different places, had a huge role.

And then, openings from the local governments or the national governments or some possibilities to actually do some advocacy, or touch upon certain people's minds and hearts and actually have some interesting policies. But that will come later on in the 2000s.

Caitlin Morrissey

Thank you so much, Lorena. I thought it would be great to immediately ask you the question about the sort of most innovative expressions of community building you've come across in Mexico City.

Lorena Zarate

Yeah, well I think maybe now is the time to refer to a couple of things. One is the explicit work on the Right to the City in Mexico City. And again, that's part of those international connections that we were mentioning before.

So, as part of those international connections that we were mentioning before, centuries old at least, the are the more recent ones, actually linked to the right to housing and the Right to the City in particular. Mexico City urban movements have a long history, at least from the ‘80s on, organizing in different parts of the city. They're not just building housing and infrastructure and community facilities, but actually doing advocacy and proposing different programs and laws. And even influencing the constitution. So some of those interesting things happening.

One is that in the early 2000s, they proposed to the local government a program for housing improvement that basically was inspired by something similar going on in Colombia at the time, but actually was quite unique. So it's a combination of social movements, NGOs, technical support groups, and people from academia that go to the local government and say, we're proposing this policy, this local policy for housing improvement – not just building new houses, but actually improving what we have. That, as we said, is a lot. It needs a lot of help to maintaining those places and expanding those places and improving those places. So a special program for that. And actually social movements and NGOs were able to put some money together to have a revolving fund. It wasn't just the government that was financing or funding that policy and that was really interesting in terms of the co-creation. Now we hear a lot about the co-creation and co-production of policies and so on. And this was a very early example of that. And that program is actually still going on, with changes and some adaptations. So that was really interesting. That was kind of a proposal coming directly from the organisations there.

And the other one is the neighbourhood improvement program. So neighbourhood or slum upgrading programs – something that international agencies, multilateral agencies and some national governments have been promoting around the globe for some decades. But in the case of Mexico City, this program is actually different. On the one hand, it doesn't have international funding, it's just out of the local budget – including some international awards they have been winning because of the nature of the program. And the program also has a key word in its name: is not just the neighbourhood improvement program, but it's the community, the community neighbourhood improvement program. So it's actually collective and it's up to the community to decide. It's a kind of participatory budgeting exercise, but not exactly. There is a pool of money from the city and then different neighbourhoods need to present projects. So basically neighbourhoods that are in need of improving social infrastructure, facilities, community facilities and so on; they basically present the projects and for presenting the projects they need of course the support from people from the universities or professionals to actually have a technical project. And then there is an independent committee assessing those and eventually, they just decide upon the ones that are going to be elected for that round and they get the money. And they get to administer the money. So they manage the money spending; it's not the government admin, it's not a program just delivered by the government. That's the “Programa Comunitario de Mejoramiento Barrial”. So it's kind of tricky to put that in order in English, but it's like a community program for neighbourhood improvement or something like that. But it's the community part that is important there, in terms of who proposes and who manages the money.

And then of course the Right to the City agenda in general and then the Right to the City Charter in Mexico City. So that one was developed between 2007 and 2010. And basically, that's a charter, that is different from a constitution – then there will be the constitution. But this is a charter that was kind of a political agenda between social movements, civil society organisations, and the local government. So there was a drafting committee composed of all those different actors working together for more than two years defining what was the charter. And the charter is really a view for the city, right? Based on the Right to the City and the Right to the City principles. And that was inspired by the work in Brazil, based on the social movements working on the Right to the City and urban reform there for decades, including the city statute that is a legal instrument at the national level. So that was, of course, an inspiration. But the Mexico City Charter also brings new components into that.

And then based on the Charter, there was the Mexico City Constitution that was developed, more like a more traditional political process. But that constitution, that is a legal document, not just a political one, recognises the Right to the City and many of the components and proposals that were part of that charter before. So those for sure have been like huge milestones and processes and we as part of the Habitat International Coalition have been collaborating with those in both directions. Bringing to Mexico things from other places and not just Brazil, but also things coming from Montreal, for example, in Canada, or things coming from Europe, or things coming from Ecuador – including the rights of nature and not just human rights, but a different approach to that human-nature relationship. So different elements that are in there.

And now the Mexico City Constitution recognises new rights that are not even recognised at the global level, which is fascinating. Which means that we don't need to wait for the UN to define what a new right is. We actually do it. So the Mexico City Constitution recognises, for example, the right to care, the right to public spaces, the right to public transportation, many things that are not recognised as human rights in the international framework and not even at the national level, in the national constitution. So the idea of cities as political communities that actually can enact – I mean decide and formulate and enact – new rights, I think is quite fascinating too. And now it's bringing inspiration to other places for sure.

Caitlin Morrissey

It is super fascinating and super inspiring as well. Thank you so much for saying that. And also for really explaining the journey of the Charter to the Constitution because I think for listeners who are not familiar with that in Mexico City will find that really fascinating and thank you. So the final question I wanted to ask you was if there was anything else you would have wanted to say about the DNA of Mexico City that our questions so far haven't elicited from you?

Lorena Zarate

I think everything is there. Maybe one last thing about the innovations. Because right now, Mexico City – and this is interesting because it wasn't a policy coming out of the central government, but it's actually a policy coming out of one of those “Alcaldías” that we mentioned before. And this alcaldía is Iztapalapa, which is in the eastern part of the city. One of the biggest and probably one of the poorer areas in the city. Long stigmatised as not a really nice place, not a really pretty place and a dangerous place. There were like garbage dumps from the city being put there and also prisons and other such things that the city didn't want actually going there – there is always a place like that in our cities, right?

So it was kind of the backyard in a really bad way. We're talking about 1.8 million inhabitants now in Iztapalapa, so it's huge. It's a city within the city really. And most of that has been self-built by internal migrants and all the processes we were describing before, including people coming from rural areas and campesinos and Indigenous people. So out of that process, and this processes of the urban popular movements and things we were talking about before, one of the leaderships is a female leadership, Clara Brugada. She started there very, very young. And she eventually became the Mayor of Iztapalapa. And now recently, last year, she became Mayor of Mexico City. So she's coming from that “Alcaldía” to be the head of the government in Mexico City.

And as the Mayor of Iztapalapa during the past years, and mostly almost during the pandemic, she started a new program that is called Utopias. UTOPIAS is the acronym for Units of Transformation, Social Inclusion and et cetera, et cetera. I can provide the proper name in Spanish: las Unidades de Transformación y Organización para la Inclusión y la Armonía Social. Basically these are new huge social infrastructures. And they have a wide range of facilities, activities and services including several different sports and recreational activities, cultural activities and auditoriums, and a film school, music schools and orchestras… more than 30 different sports and so on and so forth. But they are also like care nodes and care facilities, including day spas (for free) for women, and places where they can get legal and psychological support, if they're suffering violence at home, domestic violence. There are also different groups working with youth, working with LGBT groups, working with the elderly and different centres, different spaces and activities for those different groups, and services they can access: legal aid, health issues, recreational activities and so on.

These are becoming not just places that are important because of the place they occupy in the city and the neighbourhood, they are actually like nodes that have different programs and services there. And introducing what we can frame as a feminist approach to urban planning and combining different programs and services and facilities, being aware of the proximity issues and the importance of proximity of these in particular fr women doing the care work and moving around, you know, taking care of kids, and taking care of the elderly and people with disabilities, and so on and so forth. This policy now is going to be translated at the Mexico City level.

So we see this with a huge potential. It's not just realising the Right to the City and of course providing some social, spatial justice for these particular neighbourhoods and the whole area in the city, long neglected. But actually introducing a feminist approach to that and the centrality of care and social reproduction into urban planning. And so we see that it has a huge potential. Also incorporating Indigenous knowledge, traditional medicine and water management and food production. So recovering that traditional knowledge from Indigenous people too and incorporating that into these new facilities. It's really, really innovative, really fascinating – it has inspirations from Bogotá and Barcelona and other places, but they're going way beyond. And we're following that up and actually writing something about it in English. So happy to share that when it's out.

Caitlin Morrissey.

Yes, please, we would love to read it. They sound absolutely incredible, those centres offerings so much and for such different generations of family and community. And I just wanted to ask, are these Utopias a kind of spatial manifestation of the commitments made through the Constitution? Have they come since the Constitution or were they pre-existing?

Lorena Zarate 

No, no, they're coming since then. Actually 2018 on. And actually, there are explicit references to the Constitution and the new rights in the Constitution – including the Right to the City, but also these other rights that we just mentioned. The right to care, the right to public spaces, the right to transportation – because many of these nodes are, not all of them but many, most of them are connected with the existing and new networks of transportation, including cable cars and things that go up into the hills and connect in those neighbourhoods.

So yeah, and it's framed that way, actually. You can read explicit references to the Constitution in this program – that was the framework for the program. So they're advancing into that. Yeah, it's really interesting.

Caitlin Morrissey

Wow. It feels like every city could do with these. But I know that Mexico City is such a place for the world to learn from when it comes to social justice. And like you said, the embedding of feminist movements and ways of thinking into the built fabric of the city as well. This has been such a wide-ranging conversation, Lorena.

And I just have to say on behalf of Greg, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. And it's been such a pleasure to learn about your work and your expertise and your perspectives on Mexico City. We are so grateful to you for taking the time to do this.

Lorena Zarate

Thank you, my pleasure and again an honour. There are so many people that can say so many things about Mexico so yeah, it's an honour for me.