Cosmopolitan Aspirations, Urban Encounters and Class Boundaries in Mexico City
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“For The Enjoyment of All:” Cosmopolitan Aspirations, Urban Encounters and Class Boundaries in Mexico City Alejandra M. Leal Martínez Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2011 © 2011 Alejandra M. Leal Martínez All rights reserved ABSTRACT “For The Enjoyment of All:” Cosmopolitan Aspirations, Urban Encounters and Class Boundaries in Mexico City Alejandra M. Leal Martínez This dissertation examines the production and experience of class and racial distinctions in contemporary Mexico City by focusing on encounter and proximity between different social groups in the country’s most emblematic urban center. It draws on eighteenth months of ethnographic fieldwork with artists and young professionals living in the city’s historic center as part of a public-private redevelopment plan locally known as the “rescue.” Led by multimillionaire Carlos Slim, this endeavor has been framed as an initiative of civil society to recover the symbolic heart of the nation from crime and illegality while transforming it into a secure and livable space for all Mexicans. The rescue mobilizes a neoliberal idiom of the modern (associated in Mexico and across the world with democracy and responsible citizenship, a retreating state and a free market economy) and epitomizes the illegibility of public and private distinctions. I focus on moments of encounter between the historic center’s new affluent residents, on the one hand, and the inhabitants of its dilapidated tenements and the vendors of its informal street markets, on the other. Such encounters slide into suspicion, uncertainty, instability and misrecognition. In focusing on encounter I trace new residents’ desire for commonality, for an “all of us” in the historic center (a recognition as urban dwellers or as fellow citizens), and their anxieties about the very possibility of this commonality. Such situated fears, I argue, articulate with longstanding elite apprehensions in Mexico about the popular masses, historically construed as the embodiment of the national subject and at the same time as the manifestation of atavistic residues. In the discourses and practices of different agents of rescue (new residents, the police, private investors and state officials) these masses figure at once as subjects to be redeemed and as plainly irredeemable others, unfit for the requirements of modern democratic citizenship. The dissertation thus traces relations between new residents’ quotidian fears of crime and violence in the socially mixed spaces of the historic center on the one hand, and contemporary debates and anxieties over liberal democracy, citizenship and social belonging, on the other. Table of Contents Table of Figures................................................................................................................ iv Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... v 1. Introduction 1 Making Contact ............................................................................................................... 1 The Mayor and the Billionaire to the Rescue ................................................................. 9 Sensuous Space, Monumental Space ............................................................................ 16 Urban Lifestyles, Cosmopolitan Aspirations ................................................................ 25 The City, the Crowd, the Stranger ................................................................................ 33 The Citizen, the Mass, the Criminal ............................................................................. 41 Ethnographic Context, Fieldwork and Ethical Dilemmas ............................................ 50 Mapping the Chapters ................................................................................................... 60 2. Standing Out 63 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 63 A “Rich and Intense Lifestyle” in the Historic Center ................................................. 66 “The Situation” ............................................................................................................. 72 Standing Out ................................................................................................................. 81 Healing the Neighborhood through Art ........................................................................ 85 Neighbors in the Callejón ............................................................................................. 91 i Of Yuppies and Policemen ........................................................................................... 97 Graffiti and Urine ........................................................................................................ 101 3. Racial Imaginaries and (Neo) Liberal Sensibilities 103 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 103 Race, Racism and Racial Imaginaries ......................................................................... 108 Mexico as a Mestizo Nation, or, the Racial Imaginaries of Mestizaje ........................ 111 The Temporalities of the Mestizo, or, Can Mexicans Become Modern? ................... 116 Racism without Race, or, Güeros, Morenos and Nacos ............................................. 124 Mixing and Unmixing in the City ............................................................................... 128 Beyond the Pale… ...................................................................................................... 133 4. Clients of Slim 142 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 142 The Rise of King Midas .............................................................................................. 150 Civil Society to the Rescue ......................................................................................... 155 Slim’s Police ............................................................................................................... 162 Illegible Citizens, Illegible Clients ............................................................................. 168 5. The Rescue of Law 178 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 178 The Rescue of Law ..................................................................................................... 186 Franeleros and the Law .............................................................................................. 195 Intimacy, Contagion, Corruption ................................................................................ 203 ii 6. The Return of the Masses 208 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 208 Farewell to the Masses? .............................................................................................. 217 Hanging from the Lampposts ..................................................................................... 223 The Plantón and the Temporality of Rescue .............................................................. 229 Back to the Past ........................................................................................................... 235 7. Conclusion 241 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 247 iii Table of Figures FIGURE 1. VIEW OF THE ZÓCALO FROM THE WEST (THE FINANCIAL CORRIDOR), WITH NATIONAL PALACE BEHIND THE FLAG. PHOTOGRAPH BY NITZAN SHOSHAN 21 FIGURE 2. MAP OF THE HISTORIC CENTER WITH “PERIMETERS.” THE RESCUE TARGETED TWO SMALL AREAS OF PERIMETER “A,” WHICH WERE DESIGNATED AS “THE FINANCIAL CORRIDOR” AND “THE CULTURAL CORRIDOR.” SOURCE: FIDEICOMISO CENTRO HISTÓRICO 24 FIGURE 3. DETAIL OF REGINA STREET WITH RENOVATED BUILDING ON THE LEFT AND VECINDAD ON THE RIGHT. PHOTOGRAPH BY AUTHOR. 75 FIGURE 4. MUSIC PERFORMANCE AT THE CALLEJÓN. PHOTOGRAPH BY AUTHOR. 95 FIGURE 5. VIEW OF PEDESTRIAN STREET IN THE FINANCIAL CORRIDOR, WITH NO STREET VENDORS IN SIGHT. PHOTOGRAPH BY AUTHOR. 171 iv Acknowledgements I would like to extend my most profound gratitude to all the people and institutions that enabled, supported or encouraged the research and writing of this dissertation throughout the years. Research and write-up were made possible thanks to different grants and fellowships: A Faculty Fellowship from Columbia University provided funding throughout my years as a doctoral student, together with a scholarship from the Regional Program for Graduate Scholarships in the Social Sciences funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation. An Individual Research Grant from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and a Scheps Summer Research Award from Columbia University funded my fieldwork. My warmest thanks to the members of my dissertation committee: to Marilyn Ivy, for her constant encouragement and for her rigorous and critical engagement with my work; to Deborah Poole, for her generous and unwavering mentorship since my years as an MA student at the New School for Social Research, which has crucially shaped me as an anthropologist