Urbanization Through Colonias Proletarias in Mid-Century Mexico City: Colonia Gabriel Ramos Millán”
“Urbanization through colonias proletarias in mid-century Mexico City: Colonia Gabriel Ramos Millán” (Draft--please do not cite) Emilio de Antuñano In December of 1955, Colonia Proletaria Gabriel Ramos Millán—henceforth Ramos Millán—celebrated its 5th anniversary. The weeklong festivities were organized by Ramos Millán’s official resident association; those invited included the president of Mexico, Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, the regent of Mexico City, Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, representatives from the PRI, and officials from the municipal government. The celebrations included horseraces, cockfights, a soccer match, singing competitions, fireworks, and a performance by the famous comedian Jesús Martínez, “Palillo.” These snippets of information can be extracted from the flyer reproduced below. It is unlikely that everyone attended the event, particularly since newspapers did not record it, but the mere existence of this flyer—sponsored by Corona, its logo familiar then as now— evidences the resources at the disposal of Colonia Ramos Millán. The names of representatives Julio Ramírez and Francisco Aguirre Alegría signal the role that the PRI played in obtaining urban services for neighborhoods such as Ramos Millán (the party logo is only partially visible at the top of the image). More noteworthy are the names of Rafael Suárez Ocaña and Carlos Zapata Vela, the current and former heads of the Oficina de Colonias, the municipal office tasked with managing colonias proletarias. de Antuñano 2 This image bears testament to a decade of dramatic and unscripted change. While it is possible that the ‘traditional’ images of charros and jarocho dancers illustrate the crafting of a nationalist imagery from within a modern and cosmopolitan city, it is also true that in 1955 Ramos Millán did not have a system of streets, sidewalks, and houses de Antuñano 3 that we associate with modern cities.1 And still, its story as an urban settlement was to that point extremely successful, if ambivalent and contested.
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