Yutsil CRUZ and Alfonso HERNANDEZ, The Obstinacy of Tepito

166
Notes
Scapegoat 6
6
Both goals were
1
enshrined in the
Saskia Sassen, T h e
project’s promotional
G l o b a l C i t y : N e w materials, and later
Yo r k , L o n d o n ,
reiterated as the cena n d To k y o (Princtrepiece of an August
eton University Press, 2001 plan intended
2001); Peter Marcuse to “rescue” Mexico’s
and R. Von Kempen
historic centre, which
(eds.), G l o b a l i z i n g
in 1987 was declared
Cities: A New
a national historic
Spatial Order
site by UNESCO.
(Massachusetts,
Blackwell Publishers, 7
2000).
Before 1997, Mexico
City’s mayor was
2
appointed by the
John Rennie Short
President, who stood
and Yeong-Hyun Kim, at the pinnacle of a
G l o b a l i z a t i o n a n d regime dominated
t h e C i t y (London:
by one-party rule.
Longman, Ltd, 1999). After 1997, citizens
slowly became more
3
involved: first in
R. L. Wei Pizarro
consultative councils,
and T. Banerjee,
and later through
“Agencies of Glodemocratic mayoral
balization and Third
and city council elecWorld Urban Form:
tions. In this context,
A Review,” J o u rMexico City urban
nal of Planning
development policies
L i t e r a t u r e 18, no.
became increas2 (November 2003):
ingly tied to partisan
11–130. See also
political struggles
Shahid Yusuf and
between the ParWeiping Wu, L o c a l
tido de la Revolución
Dynamics in an
Democrática (PRD),
Era of GlobalizaPartido Revolut i o n : Tw e n t y - F i r s t c i o n a r i o I n s t i t u C e n t u r y C a t a l y s t s c i o n a l (PRI), and the
for Development
Partido Acción
(New York: Oxford
N a c i o n a l (PAN).
University Press,
2000).
8
For more, see Diane
4
E. Davis, U r b a n L e Jordi Borja and
viathan: Mexico
Manuel Castells,
C i t y i n t h e Tw e n Local and Global: tieth Century
Management
(Philadelphia: Temple
of Cities in the
University Press,
Information Age
1994); Diane E. Davis,
(London: Earthscan
“Contending PlanPublications, 1997),
ning Cultures and the
374.
Built Environment
in Mexico City,” in
5
Bishwapriya Sanyal
When I mention
(ed.), C o m p a r a Mexico City, I am retive Planning
ferring to the Distrito C u l t u r e s (New
Federal, or Federal
York: Routledge,
District, which holds
2005); and Diane E.
approximately eight
Davis, “In Search of
million residents and the Public Sphere:
is administered by an Local, National, and
elected mayor (techInternational Influnically, the “Goberna- ences in the Planning
dor del Distrito”).
of Downtown Mexico
City, 1910–1950,” in
Pablo Piccato and
Cristina Sacristan
Mexico DF / NAFTA
(eds.), F r o m t h e
Calpulin to the
Zocalo: Essays
on the History of
the Public Sphere
i n M e x i c o (Mexico
City: Instituto Mora,
2005).
12
The Reichmann
Brothers are perhaps
best known for
their development
of Canary Wharf in
London. For more on
the evolution of the
firm’s global strategy,
9
and its investments
For more on the long- in Mexico, see
term impact of the
Michael Brick, “A
earthquake, both in
Developer Back From
terms of the built en- the Brink,” N e w
vironment and social Yo r k Ti m e s , 21
movements and local February 2003.
politics, see Diane E.
Davis, “Reverbera13
tions: Mexico City’s
Of course, Carlos
1985 Earthquake and Slim also had his
the Transformation of own agenda. In
the Capital,” in Lawreturn for supplying
rence Vale and Tom
revenues for the “resCampanella (eds.),
cue” of the historic
T h e R e s i l i e n t C i t y centre, a project that
(Oxford and New
included a repaving
York: Oxford Univerof city streets, Slim
sity Press, 2004).
was able to install
phone lines for his
10
Telmex corporation.
One also should
not underestimate
14
political opposition.
For more on Giuliani,
Even with Camacho
his connection to
as advocate, his caLópez Obrador, and
pacity to implement
the role that enhancprograms without
ing public security
public approval was
downtown played in
on the decline. This
downtown redevelowed to the fact that opment, see Diane
in the aftermath of
E. Davis, “El Factor
earthquake-induced
Giuliani: delincuencia,
social mobilization
la ‘cero tolerancia’ en
and dissatisfacel trabajo policiaco y
tion with the PRI in
la transformación de
Mexico City, local
la esfera pública en
governance had been el centro de la ciudad
reformed, and an
de México,” E s t u elected city council
dios Sociológicos
now had an oppor25, no. 75 (Septemtunity to weigh in on ber–December 2007):
major urban projects. 639–683.
11
For more on the Alameda project and
how community
organization stalled
large development
plans, see C. Martinez Leal de la Macorra, I n n o v a t i v e
Community Projects and Their
Role in the Urban
Development of
M e x i c o C i t y (PhD
diss., Oxford Brookes
University, 1998).
15
For more on the
difficulties of redeveloping historic
properties, and the
struggles undertaken by Mexico City
authorities to enable
such permissions, see
Diane E. Davis, “From
Avenida Reforma to
the Torre Bicentenario: The Clash of ‘History’ and ‘Progress’
in the Making of
Modern Mexico City,”
in Linda A. Newson
and John P. King
(eds.), M e x i c o C i t y
167
Through History
a n d C u l t u r e (Oxford and New York:
Oxford University
Press, 2009).
The Obstinacy of Tepito
Yutsil Cruz Hernández and Alfonso Hernández is often the case, while the State sought to
eliminate racial tensions by trying to convert
indigenous peoples into m e s t i z o s (creoles),
racial and status differences in fact deepened.
Nowadays, Tepito is no longer located in
the periphery and is part of Mexico City’s
Historic Downtown. It is a neighbourhood
whose history is intimately linked to the
territory and to the use of the street as a
marketplace. Its inhabitants’ identification
processes have adapted in response to political
changes, agreements, and negotiation, among
In Mexico, even those who have never visited
neighbours, merchants, and municipal and
the neighbourhood of Tepito would testify to
State authorities, who have gradually changed
its stigmatization. It is typical to introduce it
the uses and meanings of public space. The
as one of the most dangerous places in Mexico case of the cult of S a n t a M u e r t e (Holy Death)
City, to link it to crime, and to posit it as the
illustrates this. Unlike the Virgin of Guadalupe,
place where “everything illegal” can be bought “l a f l a q u i t a ” (the skinny one) does not
in its famous t i a n g u i s .1 This discourse is
perform miracles, but residents ask p a r o s
based on fear and frequently disseminated in
favours) of her, to resolve any given aspect of
the media. Eduardo Nivón explains that the
their lifes: money, work, marriage, etc. Such
sense of belonging to a place is cultivated in the phenomena have, constructed unique cultural
imaginary, and that “it is developed on the basis forms that selectively forget and/or remember
of sharing a symbolic universe amongst
traditional customs, while incorporating other
us and the others.”2 The neighbourhood
local features that transcend both the colonial
of Tepito, due to its location and origins,
past and the fixed relationships between the
embodies “the Other” in Mexico. The category
subaltern and the hegemonic.
“dangerous” is itself woven in with the notion
The neighbourhood has managed to preserve
of social class, and figured as early as the
its identity and remain within its own territory,
sixteenth century after the first traza divided
while at the same time, it exists as a product
Mexico City, when the centre was destined for
of, academic study and as part of the collective
the Spanish and the periphery for the Indians.
imaginary; moreover, l o s t e p i t e ñ o s (whose
The castes and conditions for the “uncultivated” who come from Tepito) are strongly tied to
were also defined then, along with the living
social movements. In other words, t e p i t e ñ o
areas for precarious workers who had not
identity functions politically, as an attitude of
learned a trade, thieves, and criminals. This logic resistance. At first, its inhabitants sought to
perpetuated class segregation by way of zoning, identify themselves as t e p i t e ñ o s to defend the
and was accentuated throughout the city’s
neighbourhood against real estate capitalism,
industrialization and modernization periods.
and quickly, the t e p i t e ñ o identity became
During the alleged stage of progress and
affirmative.
modernization in the 1950s,3 most of Tepito’s
Tepito works as the hinge with perimeter A
population lacked economic resources
of the City’s Historic Downtown,4 and yet it
and services, and the neighbourhood was
appears to be segregated from it. Informal
considered to be full of delinquents. At the
commerce dominates the area: the market
time, racial mixing was promoted in the official uses the streets every day except Tuesdays,
national imaginary, in order to agglomerate
when the merchants take their day off. There
the Mexican population under the concept of
have been many transformations in housing
a single “race” within a nation. However, as
and commerce. The areas’ inhabitants have
The
Obstinacy
of Tepito
168
Scapegoat 6
decreased with recent land use changes in
the zone, as warehouses have replaced many
homes. Today, a m b u l a n t a j e (itinerant
selling) is an important source of income,
as well as culturally significant for many
people. Tepito has a population of over 5,000
distributed across 60 blocks, and on Mondays
through Saturdays, the famous market covers
approximately 50 of them. On Sundays, the
sale of antiques and handicrafts prevails, and
at least 1,500 additional stands are added,
expanding the market some 12 blocks more;
at night, it is reduced to 10 blocks, with about
850 merchants.
In Tepito, there are also four markets and
very close to it, in La Lagunilla, another three,
with 2,600 tenants in total. The commercial
activities of this huge t i a n g u i s represent
15,450 formal and informal sales points, drawing
a daily influx of approximately 22,000 wholesale
buyers and retail customers. They are there to
buy new, used, recycled, imported, pirated, and
stolen clothes, shoes , household appliances,
and electronic gadgets.
The word t e p i t o y o t l , “small thing,” has
to do with the size of this neighbourhood in
comparison to nearby Tlatelolco.5 For most
people this means that Tepito was the last
neighbourhood with an indigenous character,
and the first marginal urban neighbourhood.
According to Guadalupe Reyes and Ana
Mantecón, however,6 this assertion does not
consider the role of the Spanish urban
t r a z a (urban design), which marginalized
the indigenous populations when Colonial
Mexico was founded. Tepito is also considered
to be the place where the last Mexican t l a t o a n i
(chief), Cuauhtémoc, lost his last battle and
was made prisoner near what is today the
intersection of Constancia and Tenochtitlán
streets, where one can read a sign that states:
“Tequipehuecan” (place where slavery began).
Here emperor Cuauhtemoctzin was made
prisoner on the afternoon of August 13, 1521.”
Since it came to be the capital of an
independent nation, Mexico City has faced
housing shortages due to lack of space for social
housing. As a result, people coose to
Mexico DF / NAFTA
169
The Obstinacy of Tepito
Lorena Wolffer and Carlos Aguirre, Te s t i m o n i o s d e Te p i t o , 2010.
live cheaply on the periphery, crowded in small
rooms with high ceilings where mezzanines
are often built in order to maximize space.
This kind of housing, organized around a large
common patio, is called a v e c i n d a d , and
the proliferation of vecindades gave Tepito an
urban dimension that distinguished it from the
rest of the city. Tepito’s importance can also
be attributed to its geographical location, the
character of its inhabitants, and its long and
storied history.“ B a r r i o (borough) is different
from c o l o n i a (neighbourhood or gated
community), which is a word used in more
affluent areas of the city. For t e p i t e ñ o s , their
borough operates at an urban scale that both
instantiates and preserves their roots, identity,
and culture.
From the mid-nineteenth century until the
beginning of President Porfirio Día’s regime
(1877), the north of the city was heavily restructured: it was enlarged and thus included
sections of downtown, amongst them the
neighbourhoods such as La Bolsa, created in
1870, followed by Díaz de Leó and by Violante,
“created in 1882 by priest Juan Violante in
the borough of Tepito.” 7 Tepito thus gradually
ended up unifying different neighbourhoods,
and in spite of the territorial divisions caused
by the new arrangements, its inhabitants
learned to consider themselves as t e p i t e ñ o s .
The period between 1860 and 1890
constituted a historical moment of intense
Archivo Centro de Estudios Tepiteños, Tianguis de Tepito, ca. 1970
urban expansion in Mexico City; this is when
Tepito’s population expanded into the Morelos
neighbourhood (known as Violante) and
other zones peripheral to downtown, such as
Doctores and Santa María la Ribera. Leisure
options in this area developed as another
aspect of everyday life, generating public and
leisure spaces like “night centers, p u l q u e r í a s
(pulque bars), bars, restaurants, t a q u e r í a s
(taco restaurants) and lunch-places. Sites began
to be distinguished by the people who used
them.”8 It was thus during this period that the
stereotyping of Tepito began.
Most of the v e c i n d a d e s in Tepito were
built during Díaz’s regime (1877–1911), and
originally conceived to be used as hostels
that would lodge travelers arriving from the
provinces in order to sell their merchandise
in the city. These were gradually transformed
into permanent housing. Oscar Lewis’ wellknown novel, L o s h i j o s d e S á n c h e z
(Sánchez’s Children) portrays the difficult and
precarious life of the Sánchez family, who lived
in a v e c i n d a d known as Casa Blanca. He
presents Tepito as a subaltern, marginal, and
isolated borough, and he describes poverty
as a sub-culture and as a mode of life
perpetuated over generation, the result of the
adaptation and reaction to marginalization.
In actuality, however, t e p i t e ñ o s have long
incorporated elements from hegemonic culture
in order to tailor them for consumption by
subaltern classes, demonstrating a capacity not
to remain isolated, but rather adapt over time.
This peculiarity has allowed Tepito to remain
relatively in sync with global market processes.
It would thus be a mistake to define t e p i t e ñ o
culture as unique, because both hegemonic and
subaltern cultures have given rise to the place.
By 1911, the poor quality of life was not
only reflected in the type of housing in the
borough, but also by the lack of basic services.
Tepito was a sordid region, a neighbourhood
with a bad reputation, where it did not matter
if the population was degraded or damaged.
Boroughs came to be absorbed as the city grew,
as previously peripheral zone, were added to
urban conglomeration. Differences within the
city were accentuated as it grew, and Tepito
was increasingly inhabited by the working
170
Scapegoat 6
class, whose poverty ended up generating other
problems in the area, thus earning Tepito the
title of the “tough borough.”
In the 1920s, Tepito attracted many
tradespeople, and migrants from places like
Jalisco and Guanajuato arrived en masse.
Commercial activity in the zone had not yet
acquired the scale it would achieve later on,
there was a food market in the Fray Bartolomé
de las Casas plaza, but few other retail or
wholesale businesses. After 1940, when the
boroughs of Violante, La Bolsa, Díaz de León,
and El Rastro were integrated to form Morelos,
commercial activity intensified, and small
stands flourished on Aztecas, Caridad, and
Tenochtitlán streets. There, the a y a t e r o s or
c a m b i a d o r e s (clothing merchants) would
sell clothes and second-hand objects that they
exchanged for molasses in middle-class areas.
The demand for used objects grew during World
War II and commercial activity continued to
intensify immediately afterwards.
The streets themselves began to be used
for trade, and in 1956 three markets were built
in order to house the merchants, as itinerant
commerce was forbidden: one for food, another
for shoes, and a third for used goods. But the
Mexico DF / NAFTA
allotted spaces were not large enough and
sales fell, so salespeople returned to the streets.
In 1972, itinerant merchants without a fixed
place gained official support to continue with
their trade. In 1976, there was a second influx
of tradespeople and merchants to Tepito from
Guanajuato; this led to the appearance of family
workshops that crafted leather goods, and
craftspeople and merchants from Tepito began
to form organizational systems, which would
later become the backbone of resistance to
proposed changes to the area.
In the 1970s, new urban projects started
to radically reorganize the city. A significant
change was planned for Tepito, as the area was
divided by the construction of three new urban
axes: one North along Ignacio López Rayón
and Héroe de Granadita, another east along
Avenue Del Trabajo, and another North along
Manuel González. These roads fractured the
neighbourhood and made local developments
incredibly challenging. In addition, these new
plans favoured commercial land use over
housing, which was a cause of some local
concern. These urban transformations, the
expansion of the t i a n g u i s , and the success
of f a y u c a (goods smuggled from the US)
171
The Obstinacy of Tepito
Video still. D o s c a r a s d e l S i l e n c i , Iván Edeza, 2009.
Natalia Alonzo Romero-Lanning. Jardín vecindari de Jerónimo
Hagerman, Vecindad Casa Blanca, 2012.
Archivo Centro de Estudios Tepiteños, Plazuela de Tepito, vista poniente, ca. 1920
created yet another Tepito. According to
Georgina Sandoval, Tepito and Morelos are
exemplary cases of neighbourhoods organizing
themselves in order to resist the new projects.
There formed 36 cultural, social and political
organizations. [Tepito’s] inhabitants found a
way to enable for themselves all the provisions
needed for everyday survival, create their own
defense mechanisms, reappropriating space
in a way that everything that they need, is
available in the zone.9 As a consequence, this
new transformation of Tepito revalorized space
once more and significantly increased the value
of the streets through their commercial use.
By the beginning of the 1980s, neighbourhood
and merchant association leaders acquired
increasing power, and even collected fees
for each sales point in the t i a n g u i s ; certain
collective organizations suffered from
corruption, and individual interests prevailed.
During these years, cocaine emerged as
a significant good in these markets, with
attendant social consequences. As Lourdes
Ruiz, a saleswoman, explains: “Tepito got
fucked when D o ñ a B l a n c a [Snow White,
or Cocaine] came to beat the shit out of her
dwarfs.” A small group of merchants emerged
spontaneously, driven by their concern for
addicted youths who frequently committed
crimes. This is how the “Comisión del 40”
(located at Tenochtitlán 40) emerged to
organize an array of activities such as medical
services, legal assistance, and workshop, for
young people. The organization then extended
its activities to collaborate with the City’s
Government Housing Restructuration Program.
Soon after, the “Comisión del 40” united
under the name “Colonia Morelos Neighbours’
Association,” and by 1974 there were 350
organized homes who succeeded in defending
the neighbourhood from government projects
and real estate speculation. By mid-1982,
there were about 6,000 itinerant tradespeople
organized in 21 associations. As is always the
case, these alliances between neighbours
and merchants came to the attention of
politicians so that the social movement was
affected by political partisanship; by 1990,
there were 29 associations linked to the PRI,
the ruling Institutional Revolution Party.
What started as a movement of solidarity
amongst neighbours and merchants was thus
transformed into a form of power tied to
the government. The management of
information, external contacts, and proposals
for action ended up being controlled by the
organizations’ leaders, which exacerbated
corruption among the unions, bringing the
formerly collective interests into crisis.
172
Scapegoat 6
The 1985 earthquake was also a major
justification for the re-development of the area.
The social fabric was severely damaged and the
quality of life greatly reduced, which led to a
process of gentrification that sought to displace
the original population in order to significantly
increase the value of the land and attract a
new population with greater income and social
status. Just prior, however, and more significant,
was the redesignation of the downtown core,
including Tepito. After the Templo Mayor ruins
were discovered in 1978, the area was named
“Mexico City’s Historic Downtown” by a
presidential decree two years later. Indeed, the
most important collateral changes in the last
two decades have been undertaken through
the “Rescuing Historic Downtown Program,”
officially initiated in 1990. It has been executed
with public resources in collaboration with
the private sector, especially entrepreneur
Carlos Slim, who funded the Centro Histórico
Foundation, which acquired many of the area’s
buildings. Another similar institution, Mexico
City’s Centro Histórico Trust Fund (FCHM),
originally created as a private entity, was
transferred to the government when the leftist
PRD (Democratic Revolution Party) officially took
power of the city in 2001.
Due to the increasing prominence of the
Historic Downtown designation, a considerable
number of itinerant tradespeople located in the
area’s “first” square were displaced, beginning
in the early-to-mid-2000s, putting pressure
on the merchants of Tepito to accommodate
them. In response, the local government
intervened: taking away the merchants stands
from the street, and installing surveillance
cameras. Marcelo Ebrard, then Mexico City’s
mayor, also expropriated a major housing unit
—40 Tenochtitlán Street—arguing that illegal
activities were taking place such as piracy and
drug trafficking. As a result all the inhabitants
where evicted from their homes.
Throughout this turbulent recent history,
Tepito’s population has diminished and
diversified; its inhabitants no longer solely
make a living by selling in the t i a n g u i s , and
Mexico DF / NAFTA
M o n u m e n t o a Te n o c h t i t l á n 4 0 , Colectivo Bulbo, 2008
not all of its merchants still live there. Shoe
production has almost disappeared because
the new types of housing do not allow for
family workshops. Indeed, some of the extant
workshops are anthropological treasures,
although street commerce is still very common.
Characterized as part of the global market,
Tepito had already been North Americanized
before NAFTA due to the great fayuca boom
of fake or smuggled goods in the 1980s and
1990s, and all the pirate CDs and DVDs as well
as c h i n a d e r a s products that began to be
imported from Asia. The global aspect of Tepito
is not only a phenomenon that affected it from
outside, but a result of internal ruptures that
led the neighbourhood and its inhabitants to
carry out complex relations of recognition and
legitimation over and over again.
In Tepito, the informal market prevails, continuing with its ancestral heritage, articulated
historically in an originary borough—authentic
and rough by birth. The area still lies under the
mark of Xipe-Totec, the flayed god and patron of
commerce, to whom the streets themselves pay
homage, with their tubular structures covered
with canvas that resembles his skin. Tepito’s energetic potential still works structurally as a rhizome, articulating poles with concentrations of
employment and services, nodes that integrate
different media and routes for free mobility, corridors with streets and places connected to the
rest of the borough and the city it remains the
t a p e t e b a r r i a l (the borough’s carpet), with
173
The Obstinacy of Tepito
schools, markets, sports facilities, services, and
vital spaces of identification.
For t e p i t e ñ o s , the t i a n g u i s , aside from
being their main economic compass, operates
as a quotidian social factory against the
powerful crime industry and its delinquent
Fordism. Emboldened by its location and
history, Tepito is a neighbourhood that resists
through informal commerce and creates its own
sense of belonging; it feeds on its obstinacy and
remains in its native place, nourished by the sap
from its genealogical n o p a l (cactus). Tepito
functions as a socioeconomic laboratory that
resisted the ruinous processes of the neoliberal
system. Because Tepito learned to mix local
culture with its street economy, it has not
allowed itself to be entirely “scaled down,” but
through self-sufficiency solves its own problem,
dismissing governmental urban solutions, it
affirms its own life through its vocations of
crafts and commerce. In Tepito, there are still
15,450 businesses that represent more than
5,000 t e p i t e ñ o s who make a living every day,
submerged in their own histories.
Notes
7
María Dolores
1
Morales, “La
Market, from the
expansión de la
Náhuatl t i a n q u i z t l i , Ciudad de México:
market or plaza, and
El caso de los
t i a m i q u i , to sell.
fraccionamientos,”
This practice is still
Ciudad de
alive in Mexico City
México: Ensayo
as exercised by the
de construcción
tiangueros
de una historic,
(Mexico: INAH, 1978,
2
191.)
Eduardo Nivón,”Los
barrios en la ciudad
8
de masas,” in L a
Armando Palomo,
Ciudad y sus
“La política urbana
b a r r i o s , ed. José.
y el futuro de los
Lui. Lee and Cels.
barrios,” L a c i u d a d
Valde (México: UAM, y s u s b a r r i o
1994), 17.
(Mexico: UAM, 1994),
292.
3
Specifically, in 1957,
9
four public markets
Georgina Sandoval,
were built as the
“Añoranza y
street tianguis was
actualidad por la
dismantled, but only casa y la ciudad,”
a year later it was
La ciudad y sus
back on the streets
b a r r i o , (Mexico:
and had begun to
UAM, 1994), 253.
grow.
4
Mexico City’s Historic
Downtown encompasses an area of nine
square kilometres
divided into two
perimeters: A and B;
A delimits the first
square with the most
buildings and public
spaces that have
been declared part
of the patrimonial
heritage; B defines
the outer limits of
Historic Downtown
where there are some
historically significant
sites.
5
Elena Enríquez
Fuentes, I m a g e n
y espejo: Los
barrios de la
ciudad de México
(México: Praxis,
2010), 131.
6
Guadalupe
Domínguey and Ana
Rosa Mantecón,
Los usos de la
identidad barrial:
Te p i t o 1 9 7 0
– 1 9 8 4 , (México:
UAM, 1993), 32.