Mexico: The FIFA World Cup vs Pubic School Teachers

 

Photo: Luis Castillo

This past May 15th the dissident teacher’s organization (CNTE), created in 1979 as an offshoot of the National Teachers’ Union (SNTE) to fight for union democracy, began a strike and protest action in Mexico City and various other states of the country including Oaxaca, Guerrero, Zacatecas, Michoacan, and Chiapas, (some of the poorest regions of the country) and threatened to disrupt the inauguration of the FIFA World Cup Soccer matches which began on June 11.

In terms of Public Relations and winning public support for the teachers’ demands, the strike action, that has now lasted seven weeks, has been, to all appearances, a complete failure.

In Mexico City, the striking teachers blocked highways and streets, set up barricades and tent cities in the historical center of the city, prompting the city government to set up large metal barriers essentially cordoning off the entire city center. Merchants in the center of the city complained that they were losing millions of pesos each day that the city was sealed off and even had physical confrontations with the striking teachers. Videos emerged of the teachers trying to gain entrance to the central square in the city center and trying to occupy the area around the stadium where the soccer games were to open ending in confrontations with riot police. There was film footage of teacher’s wrecking cars, and damaging the offices of the Department of Education and other private property. A bus transporting “normalistas” (students of the normal school system) from Guerrero to the city to participate in the demonstrations was found at a police check point to be carrying over 50 homemade pipe bombs.

The political condemnation of the teachers from both the left and the right was strident. There were rumors, which President Sheinbaum of Morena, her leftwing populist party, embraced and disseminated, that the CNTE and its strike actions were being secretly supported and financed by one of Morena’s most prominent rightwing opponents, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, a Mexican business magnate, the third richest man in Mexico, whose Salinas Group owns a large portfolio that includes a national bank, (Banco Azteca), a chain of popular appliance stores (Elektra), a major TV station, (TV Azteca) and a grocery store chain (Neto). In 2025, Salinas Pliego formed his own political party with the aim of competing in future national elections. He is also under investigation by the government for large scale tax evasion amounting to billions of pesos. The President in her morning public addresses on TV maintained that the extreme left and the extreme right were conspiring against her leftwing populist party, and its progressive program called the 4th Transformation, which enjoys very high ratings of public support.

At least two surveys of public opinion showed that less than 20% of the population unconditionally support the teachers’ strike action. Rightwing media and political commentators pointed out that the CNTE comprises only 80,000 teachers nationwide, only 5% of the 1.5 million members of the SNTE. They accused the CNTE of coercing its own members into supporting and participating in the strike action and even falsifying the results of union votes. They pointed out that the union itself was undemocratic and corrupt and controlled the hiring practices and promotion of teachers. President Sheinbaum herself maintained that the CNTE did not really represent its membership at all and proposed that the government negotiate directly with their members.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum

The rightwing accused the government of being too lenient in its treatment of the teachers’ behavior. The government, in turn, responded with its usual policy statement that they would not repress the exercise of free speech and protest or fall into provocations. Morena and their progressive program of the 4th Transformation, Sheinbaum has insisted, would not repeat the errors that characterized the past repressive rightwing governments of the PAN, under Felipe Calderon, or the PRI, under Enrique Peña Nieto.

And this is perhaps President Sheinbaum’s most convincing argument. The repression not only of popular leftist movements and the CNTE but of the drug cartels under those rightwing parties that governed the country from 2006 to 2018 was particularly vicious and perhaps more than anything else created the political conditions for the rise of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the founder of the Morena Party, and the predecessor of Sheinbaum, elected in 2018 after a long struggle against the rightwing political establishment.

Even the supporters of the teachers strike agree with Sheinbaum and admit that the times have changed and the political situation in Mexico is different from what it was before Morena rose to power. Perhaps the aggressive and violent tactics that CNTE has used to protest and express their demands, which actually date back to the guerrilla movements of the 60’s led by teachers, are outmoded and counterproductive. It would appear that the FIFA World Cup, which is now underway in Mexico, and all of the mass hysteria and euphoria that this has aroused, have successfully and effectively consigned the CNTE and their strike action to the dustbin of history.

Or perhaps the World Cup has only been a temporary distraction. Bread and Circuses. The CNTE’s strike action has ended and their contingents have withdrawn from the capital and returned to their various rural schools. But the CNTE leadership, represented by Jesus Hernandez Gejales, has vowed to continue their struggle, insisted on meeting personally with the president and correctly argued that the CNTE supported both Sheinbaum and AMLO in the national elections that brought them to power on the condition that their long-standing demands be met. Indeed, many of CNTE’s critics admit that the teachers’ demands are justified even though they may not agree with or accept their tactics. The reform of the state workers’ pensions fund (the ISSSTE law), passed in 2007 under Calderon, which privatized the pension system, and the Education Reform Law, passed by President Enrique Peña Nieto in 2012, which sought to impose policies on the teachers that limited their autonomy and undercut some of the basic principles of public education, are very problematic. The teachers are demanding that these laws be repealed. The Morena government, on the other hand, has said that repeal is simply impossible for budgetary reasons.

July 2

Mexico City, Mexico

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Scenes from May Day 2026

New York

May Day in New York 2026 saw one of the largest turnouts of union members in a number of years.  No reliable estimates are available but my own estimate is that there were somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 participants at the main rally in New York in Washington Square Park. It also appeared, judging from the union labels they held up and their orange uniforms that the majority of participants were affiliated with one of the dozens of union locals supporting the May Day action. This was a dramatic contrast from the “labor” turnout in previous years that featured a token presence by a few bureaucrats with hardly any rank and file participation.

Among the slogans that were raised were, “Tax the rich," “ensure safe working conditions”, and "workers over billionaires", "No ICE, No War, No Private Army" and "Solidarity Forever”.  There were also signs from various groups and individuals with the message, “Free Palestine”, “Fight Fascism” and “End the War on Iran”.

The crowd also included a good sample of the left groups in New York. Among the groups I noticed were the Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA),  The Internationalist Group, Socialist Alternative, The Freedom Socialist Party, Party for Socialism and Liberation.  Even the moribund Socialist Workers Party showed up with their own literature table. The largest contingent of left groups by far was the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who were one of the main sponsors of the event. Of the left groups present at the rally the only one that had a banner that spoke to the political requirements of the moment was Socialist Alternative with its slogan of “Build a New Mass Workers Party”.  While we can certainly support the great majority of the slogans on display, the recognition that none of those demands will go anywhere without the building of an independent working class party is key.

There were also separate contingents representing different unions and in some cases dissident factions within unions such as the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU).   Also represented were a number of local activist groups defending the rights of low wage workers and immigrants against the assault of the Trump Administration. Perhaps the most animated of these groups that I noticed in Washington Square was DRUM, “Desis Rising Up and Moving”, a group dedicated “to build the power of South Asian and Indo-Caribbean low wage immigrant workers, youth, and families in New York City to win economic and educational justice, and civil and immigrant rights.” Rank and file members of DRUM were instrumental to the coalition behind New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victory in last year’s election.

The Mayor made a surprise appearance at the rally in Washington Square Park. He spoke for several minutes on the theme of supporting unions and the rights of workers. Mamdani has walked back almost all of his election promises since taking up residence in Gracie Mansion. The one promise he did keep was to keep rents frozen for rent-controlled apartments.  That one was fairly easy since the representatives of the agency that determines rents in rent-controlled and stabilized apartments are appointed by the mayor. But anything involving a conflict with the Democratic Party establishment and the real estate moguls who run the city behind the scenes  has been abandoned. Promises like “taxing the rich” have all but evaporated as Mamdani has cemented his alliance with New York’s right wing Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul. (Hochul has since come out for a largely symbolic tax on the wealthy.) All this should be seen on top of Mamdani’s overtures to Trump. Notable in Mamdani’s speech was a reference to “fast buses”. This is a sad and ironic echo of his pre-election promise to provide “free buses” for New York’s indigent.

I noticed the presence of agent provocateurs in the crowd posing as reporters.  It was clear that these “reporters” were encouraging the people they were interviewing to incriminate themselves by making statements that they supported violence against their political opponents.  My suspicions were later confirmed by a Fox News article that reported the result of an “investigation” that found some demonstrators, holding up signs saying “86 47”, were guilty of a terrorist conspiracy to assassinate Trump. These are the same bogus charges that Trump’s Department of Justice used to indict former FBI Director James Comey.

After the Washington Square rally ended the assembled crowd marched to the financial district downtown to take their demands to Wall Street. Several demonstrators were arrested in the downtown rally, including Chuck Park, an insurgent Democrat who is challenging an establishment Democrat for a seat in Congress in the coming election.  Park’s campaign is very much patterned on the model created by Mamdani, except that Park does not have the endorsement of the DSA.  But he does have a number of local groups enthusiastically backing him.  He received the overwhelming endorsement of the local branch of the Workers Family Party but the parent organization of the outfit,  which has always been a shill for the Democrats, nixed that endorsement.

Chuck Park being arrested

The radicalization of the working class that is surely coming will for the most part bypass all the “groups”. A precursor of the coming radicalization was exhibited in the Mamdani campaign. Workers and youth turned out to actively support what was seen by them as an alternative to the bankrupt politics of the Democratic Party while the traditional “groups” were completely sidelined.  The challenge facing socialists is to convince those forces that supported Mamdani (and are currently supporting insurgents like Park) that what is needed is a complete break from the Democratic Party. That will not happen automatically just because Mamdani has so thoroughly repudiated his promises and it certainly won’t happen because self-described “revolutionaries” continuously hector them.  What is needed is a politics that provides a bridge to the consciousness of the masses.

 

Mexico City 

by Ramón Rodríguez

This year, the May Day celebrations and demonstrations in Mexico City promised to be more significant than usual with the large scale participation of the dissident public school teacher’s union, CNTE. The CNTE, which is most active in the states of Michoacan, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, has a decades-long reputation as one of the most radical and militant unions in the country and advocates a culture of class consciousness and solidarity. Their demands include the abrogation of the neoliberal Education Reform Act passed in 2013, which tends towards a privatization of the educational system, better salaries and working conditions, democratization of the main teachers’ union, the SNTE, and more particularly a reform of the government pension plans which under the dictates of neoliberal policy were converted to Individual Retirement Accounts beginning in the mid-nineties. Despite electoral promises by the ruling party, Morena, these demands have not yet been met although it looks like a reform of the state employees’ pension plan is quite likely. Otherwise, the CNTE is threatening even more disruptive political actions and even a nationwide strike leading up to the celebration of the FIFA Soccer World Cup to be held in Mexico on June 11-19 of 2026.

Sex workers in Mexico City protesting their displacement due to the FIFA Word Cup

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Part 03 The “GENTRIFICATION” of MEXICO CITY: The Terminology & the Phenomenon

This is part three of a series on capitalism, gentrification and the housing crisis.

[PART ONE] [PART TWO]

Gentrification is not Progress, It’s Dispossession” Photo Foto: Moisés Pablo (Cuartoscuro)

THE TERMINOLOGY

The trend in urban development that we have been describing in parts 01 and 02 of this series has been dubbed “gentrification”, which is defined as “a process in which a poor area (as of a city) experiences an influx of middle-class or wealthy people who renovate and rebuild homes and businesses and which often results in an increase in property values and the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents”. The term has had mostly negative connotations since it came into common use in the 60’s but seems to reflect contradictory world views: one in which it is a normal kind of development and another which suggests that it is nearly criminal. The phenomenon could just as well be and indeed has been variously described as “progress”, “urban renewal”, “urban planning”, “densification”, “liberation”, “housing shortage”, “housing crisis”, “displacement”, “dispossession”, “colonization”, “social cleansing” or even “blanqueamiento” (“whitening” when the victims of eviction are indigenous residents).  The meaning of the term we use to describe the phenomenon is determined by our relationship to the phenomenon itself.

Nor are the terms “housing crisis” or “housing shortage” adequate to describe the phenomenon. As Madden & Marcuse (2016) argue,

 

The idea of a housing crisis is politically loaded…Discrete moments when housing crises become acute tend to be interpreted away as exceptions to a fundamentally sound system… [but] housing crisis is a predictable, consistent outcome of a basic characteristic of capitalist spatial development: housing is not produced and distributed for the purposes of dwelling for all; it is produced and distributed as a commodity to enrich the few. Housing crisis is not a result of the system breaking down but of the system working as it is intended… homelessness exists not because the system is failing to work as it should, but because the system is working as it must. [1]

For the purposes of this investigation, we use “gentrification” to be interchangeable with “displacement”, or depending on the context, with “housing crisis” or “housing shortage”. We will argue that the slow and stealthy transformation of Mexico City that is taking place almost imperceptibly before our very eyes, but at an ever-quickening pace, is coming at a very high human cost by displacing the original inhabitants of urban neighborhoods, thereby destroying the cultural identity, character and sense of community that has developed in these quarters over decades, generations or, as we shall see, in some cases even centuries.

One investigator sums up the situation in Mexico City in this way:

The urban peripheries have continued to grow while at the same time, new exclusionary spaces are being built. These have included private shopping centers, gated communities, and “megaprojects” such as luxury apartment buildings. Urban displacement has also been a growing phenomenon, with a growing number of poor inhabitants of the central areas of the city being priced out and pushed towards the outer peripheries …The city’s building boom has fostered mass real estate speculation across the city. Apartments are increasingly sold for millions of pesos, a price unaffordable to most in a city where the monthly income for the majority of the population is below 7,000 pesos (around 350 USD). Of particular note is a real estate boom in the central boroughs of the city, especially the borough of Cuauhtémoc. [which] was cited by an Oxfam study as a point of encounter where different social classes inhabit the same spaces. Mexico City has become Latin America’s most expensive city, based on relative cost of living. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2017 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey found Mexico City had the fastest rise in the relative cost of living (up 23 percent) out of 133 cities surveyed. [2]                                               

And this is happening all over the city as real estate developers target certain neighborhoods, mostly in the centrally located Cuauhtémoc borough, for investment and development including not only the boroughs of Roma and Condesa (two of the first boroughs in the city to be so transformed) but boroughs such as Benito Juarez, Doctores, Obrera, Escandon, Guerrero, San Rafael, Tabacalera, Santa María la Ribera, Tacubaya, and the list goes on. Some of these boroughs are even being renamed to reflect their new upscale demographic. What makes these areas attractive to investors is their location and proximity to work, educational and recreational spaces, public services, transportation, the presence of historic landmarks, and even their green spaces such as parks and trees.

Furthermore, this process of transformation in Mexico City often results in the violent evictions of long-time residents from apartment buildings and houses whose ownership is disputed or legally in doubt and which are sometimes carried out illegally in the middle of the night by hired thugs with little or no advanced warning or notice being given to the tenants of the building, robbing them of any valuables they may have, and leaving the tenants and all their belongings scattered helter-skelter in the street.

These evictions in the city follow a certain fixed modus operandi on the part of what is called a “mafia” or a “real estate cartel” which involves threats against tenants, corporate fraud, government complicity and general corruption. Criminal elements find disputed, poorly maintained properties in the city that have been abandoned, or whose ownership is in question and whose tenants are often elderly, and then falsify deeds or contracts which they validate in court. They sell the property to an unwitting buyer and obtain court orders for eviction.

“Across the city”, says Bloomberg News, “roughly 2,000 evictions take place every year. Neighborhood displacement can be a violent process. Since 2014, academics have seen an increase in violent evictions, which can involve hundreds of “granaderos” (riot cops)—who arrive to evict residents, often without an official eviction notice from the courts. [3]

Massive eviction in the historic center of the city on August 27, 2025 when several families were violently evicted from a large old apartment building without warning early in the morning

As one of the victims of a violent eviction is quoted as saying, “No temenos donde ir.” “We have nowhere to go”.

In short, we can say that there is nothing that better illustrates the ever-widening inequality gap in Mexico City than the gentrification process by which the future of the city is being shaped and determined by real estate developers and the city government in such a way that favors a social sector with greater purchasing power than the original residents thereby raising the cost of living in the area and forcing original residents out. The city has become a sort of visible expression for class struggle in Mexico under capitalism.

Mitikah Towers under construction Photo Alejandro Saldivar

THE PHENOMENON

Shortly after the debacle of the Mortgage Debt crisis of 2008, I looked out at the skyline of Reforma Avenue, the main business corridor of Mexico City visible from the rooftop of my modest three-story walk-up apartment building in Colonia Santa Maria la Ribera from where I could see two high-rise office buildings that had long been under construction and wondering if they would now ever be completed. How little did I understand what was happening!

In the years that have since passed, not only have those two high-rise buildings been expeditiously completed, but more than a dozen others have sprouted up like mushrooms after a rain along Reforma Avenue and around the city, and even more “mega-projects” are being planned.  

MITIKAH vs XOCO

The Mitikah Towers

The latest of these high-rise mega-projects is a monstrous 65-story structure, a “mixed-use” commercial center, (i.e. part-commercial and part-residential) luxury tower called Mitikah, now the tallest skyscraper in Mexico City beating out what had been the tallest, Torre Reforma at 57 stories, which was completed in 2016.  (Mitikah is not the tallest building in the country, however. That distinction goes to El Obispado in Monterrey.) The Mitikah Tower, part of a larger complex called “Mitikah Ciudad Viva”, was initiated in 2009 and officially opened to the public thirteen years later in 2022 after construction was halted for a year in 2015 because of financial problems , protests and opposition from the inhabitants of the local neighborhood, and issues with government building permits. The financial and bureaucratic problems were solved when Fibra Uno, a real estate development trust, stepped in and rescued the project.

According to Wikipedia, Fibra Uno, now the sole owner of the Mitikah Tower is, is one of the largest real estate investment trusts (REIT)[4]   in Mexico, which acquires, develops, and operates real estate projects. It was founded in 2010 and was the first to be listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange. The real estate portfolio of investments lists more than 600 properties including shopping centers, industrial parks and corporate buildings. It has also been accused of defrauding its stockholders and as of 2020 is under investigation by the city government for possible money laundering and tax evasion.

The website of Pelli Clarke & Partners, one of the participants in the Mitikah Tower project, goes into raptures describing it as an architectural feat -- an example of sheer technological prowess:

Torre Mítikah soars above the Mexico City skyline and landscape, commanding views from every direction with its striking silhouette and elegant façade, creating an iconic landmark for the city of 21 million residents. Mítikah is the signature residential high-rise building of Ciudad Viva in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City…a mixed-use commercial center of the city, hub for world-class food and entertainment, Class-A office space, and a state-of-the-art hospital. A cultural milestone in the greater metropolitan region, beloved and admired by many, Torre Mitikah has elevated Mexico City in its evolution into a leading world capital.

 An Architectural Website does not describe the project in quite such glowing terms referring to it as a project:

that encourages the segregation of the population and promotes limited interaction among its residents [which] can lead to resentment on both sides, potentially exacerbating existing conflicts, especially if it intensifies problems related to access to water and quality public spaces.

Inside will be the largest shopping mall in Latin America, with over 120,000 square meters of leasable area spread across five levels, representing an investment of 22 billion Mexican pesos, approximately 1.1 billion euros [1.15 billion USD].

The complex is not just a shopping mall; it also includes office towers, the tallest tower at 267 meters high, dedicated to more than 600 apartments, a tower housing medical offices, a private hospital, and a hotel. Furthermore, the residential building…will feature an event hall, movie theater, swimming pool, spa, gym, and a variety of other amenities.

In numerous YouTube videos about the Mitikah/Ciudad Viva complex on the Mitikah website and here, here, here  and  in Proceso magazine designers and promoters of the project boast that the Mitikah complex:

·      will change the whole area of the city where it is located

·      is especially designed to resist earthquakes

·      is a self-contained city making it unnecessary for residents to ever leave

·      will serve as a model for the future development of the entire city

·      incorporates the latest advances in technology and is a watershed in the history of the city’s development.

Two more large buildings (but not as tall as Mitikah) are planned for the Ciudad Viva complex, but their construction has been halted, at least temporarily, first by Claudia Sheinbaum during her term as city mayor and now by her successor, Clara Brugada, for violating ecological guidelines for construction.

As Proceso says, the Mitikah Tower is emblematic of how the government has been giving free rein to private real estate developers to determine the future of the city without regard to the will or needs of the people who reside in it:

[The Mitikah tower is emblematic] not for being a real estate development per se, but for the way Mexican authorities have facilitated huge projects with government instruments at the service of the developers… The [government] authorities and the developers decided to insert the tallest tower in the city in a small barrio as part of its plan without taking into account the residents of the area or the severe impacts on its environment. [5]

Again, according to Proceso, the abdication of urban planning by the city government to private real estate developers has been going on since at least the year 2000 when Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, then the PRD mayor of the city, quietly passed decrees without consulting the city legislature, supposedly facilitating the construction of “social housing”, but which in reality gave private contractors more freedom over what and where to build within the city. According to one government insider, this initiated a virtual boom in real estate speculation in the city. This policy continued through the successive city administrations of Marcel Ebrard, Miguel Ángel Mancera and Claudia Sheinbaum, a specialist in sustainable development. Sheinbaum, though opposed to the construction of the Torre Mitikah, found herself compromised because it was too late to stop construction, and because members of her own political party, Morena, had been involved in giving it the green light.

As Proceso says:  

Since [the decrees of Lopez Orador], the city government has been at the service of urban developers. Aside from the problems of financing, there have been no obstacles that haven’t been resolved in their favor…The Mitikah complex is the clearest example of how real estate developers have been favored by [government] decisions through opaque mechanisms that have resulted in constructions that are “red flags” for the capital because of their impact on the urban environment. [6]

Xoco

The local residents of Xoco (pronounced Hoko in the dialect of the local residents) were never consulted or even informed of the plan for the megaproject negotiated between the government and the developers and as Proceso describes it, they only realized what was happening in 2009 when heavy equipment began circulating in their narrow streets. As one commentator says, nobody informed them of what would be the beginning of the biggest building project in Latin America until it was already under way. For the residents of Xoco it was also the  beginning of a years-long battle involving law suits, protests and passive resistance for which they were little prepared.

Xoco is one of the oldest and most traditional residential areas of the city, in the Benito Juarez borough, which has been continuously inhabited for centuries dating from before the rise of the Aztec Empire in the Valley of Mexico and is included in a list of 141 areas in the city which have been denominated “Pueblos Originarios” of the city, a dispensation which guarantees them certain rights and privileges. The Mexico Desconocido website states that according to COPRED, the governmental department designed to prevent discrimination, “Pueblos Originarios are defined as those groups that existed before colonization and have inhabited the area continuously since then, preserving their own socio-cultural structures, habits and customs. In the case of Mexico City these groups exist and developed autonomously in respect to the central urban area. Nevertheless, with the demographic explosion and growth of the city these groups have ended up by being absorbed.” [7]

Like many of the small “barrios” or neighborhoods that compose Mexico City, Xoco has its own particular character and identity and even the atmosphere of a small rural Mexican village. One local YouTube reporter and other anecdotes [8] depict the colorful character of the neighborhood which includes a resident who breeds roosters for cock fights thereby exercising the patience even of his  neighbors in the barrio when they crow in the morning; a colonial church dating from the 17^th century dedicated to San Sebastian, the barrios’ patron saint; annual celebrations of San Sebastian Saint’s Day on January 20 complete with the traditional fireworks, rockets and noisy processions in the street which characterize Mexican celebrations and manage to annoy Xoco’s neighbors in the Ciudad Viva complex and the surrounding areas.  

The Church of San Sebastian with Mitikah Tower in the background Photo by the author

There have been conflicts between the new residents of the neighborhood and the old in which the inhabitants of the towers have not only complained, but have harassed, confronted and even attacked these celebrations by throwing stones, bottles and glass on them from the towers above. There have even been physical confrontations in which the residents of Xoco have blocked the entrances to the complex in protest.      

 

Demonstration by residents of Xoco against Torre Mitikah complex  Photo Benjamín Flores Proceso     

The complaint of the local residents of the barrio, on the other hand, has been not only that construction of the Mitikah Tower has destroyed the character and sense of community in their neighborhood, but that it has tripled its population density, that it has caused serious problems with traffic as the subterranean parking levels are built to accommodate 13 thousand automobiles, that the main street of the community has been privatized and appropriated as an auto entrance into the parking structure, which, in turn, has complicated  pedestrian traffic in the area and resulted in the illegal felling of dozens of trees, that the new structure has  interfered with Xoco’s access to electricity and water, the latter which is monopolized by the tower, that it adds to an increase in sewage disposal in the area, that the towers either block the sun entirely or its smart windows reflect the sunlight into the barrio, which becomes unbearably hot, and worst of all, that it has increased the cost of living and property taxes in the barrio to levels that the residents cannot afford.

Jorge Pigeon, vice president of a capital markets investment firm, argues that while property taxes have risen, the nearby properties have actually benefitted from the construction of the Mitikah Tower complex because the value of their own property has risen. That, of course, is precisely the problem if you think of it in human terms instead of profits. The residents don’t want to sell their properties. They want to live in them. What is happening with the construction of such mega-projects as Mitikah Tower is that the public nature of the urban space is being privatized and the original residents are now faced with three possible choices: to leave, to stay and adapt, or to stay and resist. Many have chosen to stay and resist.

The huge, outsize dehumanizing scale of Mitikah Tower which looks down in contempt on the residential district below like an alien enclave from another planet can almost be considered a symbol of how the city government is at the service of powerful real estate developers in search of profits rather than of the residents of the city who consider the neighborhood of Xoco their ancestral home.

As the president of the Xoco neighborhood Citizen’s committee contesting the Mitikah project says:

They didn’t notify us. That is one of our greatest complaints. Never did they inform us of anything in spite of legal norms that mandate [consulting] the opinion of the residents. Everything was done between the government and the developers. [9]

The Violence of the Vertical

As Alejandro Porcel Arraut argues, Mitikah represents  a kind of gentrification that is distinct from that which takes the form of “exclusive, affluent gated communities on the city's outskirts—aimed at privileged classes seeking areas removed from the anxieties of urban life”, or those older historical boroughs in the inner city which have become fashionable and occupied by affluent outsiders seeking “authenticity”, or those isolated urban islands like shopping centers or exclusive condominiums scattered throughout the city accessible only by automobile.

[The Mitikah complex] tries to be a city unto itself, as the name of the project suggests, Ciudad Progresiva (the former name for Ciudad Viva)….This constitutes the basic contradiction that arises between the neighbors in Xoco, between physical proximity and the enormous socio-cultural distance that separates them. This creates a place of passive hostility and conflicting visions of the city, which like other great social, urban centers, has lost its socializing function. [10]

 

Giant high-rise megaprojects such as Mitikah represent what Porcel Arraut calls the “violence of the vertical”:

[G]iant real estate developments vulgar and arrogantly tall, inserted into dense, central spaces of the city amid older residential areas next to single-family homes, extremely exclusionary, surveilled and completely directed to life within [a space] ‘you will never have to leave’ because all of the amenities you need are inside.

[The] vertical city is a product for those seeking a central location … without …encountering neighborhood life, with its challenges, and unsavory low-life. Verticality [insures] a different kind of distinction. … with walls, fences, surveillance cameras, security guards, and identification systems: an exclusionary architectural design... The populations that inhabit them are generally unaware of the businesses next door, do not walk the streets of the neighborhood, and constantly look toward the main avenues, which they use to reach other enclosed spaces within the island city.

[Its] verticality [exresses] …an overwhelming power sustained by money, real estate speculation and economic rationality. The developers of the vertical city are not interested in adapting to the locality or in modifying their projects by reason of their environmental and urban impact. [11]

CONCLUSION

But despite it particular characteristics of gentrification as manifested by Mitika Tower we can also see it as the general tendency towards the privatization of public space which also demonstrates what is happening to democracy under capitalism, in which large corporations are dictating how we live rather than vice versa. What we see is that the concept of progress implies the imposition of a model of development which is completely alien to the resident communities requiring that entire populations in these communities who have inhabited these urban spaces for decades if not centuries be displaced and dispossessed from what has become their home.

Lastly, in the case of Mexico, we see that the city is unusual in the respect that it is really the product of the “clash of two civilizations”, the European and the indigenous Americans, and that what has evolved over a period of centuries is a sort of syncretism in which traces of pre-Columbian peoples and culture have not only survived but shaped the character of the modern capital of Mexico and that these peoples and cultures will continue to struggle for their rightful claim to form part of the urban space.

As Barbara E. Mundy (2015) says:

…While the Conquest changed an indigenous New World capital, and it was remade into the hub of the global empire of the Habsburg kings in the sixteenth century, it did not destroy indigenous Tenochtitlan, either as an ideal, as a built environment, or as an indigenous population center. Instead, indigenous Tenochtitlan lived on.  Looking beyond the triumphant accounts of Cortés and the despairing accounts of Las Casas to other representations of the city, and focusing on ones created by and about its indigenous occupants, will reveal the endurance of the indigenous city once known as Tenochtitlan within the space of Mexico City. [12]

In the next instalment of this series we will look at some of the other possible immediate causes of gentrification as it is evolving in Mexico City.

NOTES

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[1] In Defense Of Housing The Politics of Crisis by David Madden Peter Marcuse VERSO London. « New York First  published by Verso 2016

[2] Anti Gentrification Activism in Mexico City’s Digital Public Space (2016) Paula Martín Jason Pagan Tamara Velasquez The New School International Affairs

https://mxc.com.mx/2025/09/08/estas-son-las-colonias-mas-gentrificadas-de-cdmx-por-airbnb/

[3] The Restaurant at the Center of a Gentrification War: Rising housing costs have triggered a wave of displacement in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico. But residents are finding creative ways to resist. By Martha Pskowski Bloomberg June 4, 2019

[4] According to Investopedia REITs allow investors to own shares in income-producing real estate without managing the properties themselves leading to steady income streams for investors. REITs are mostly traded publicly like stocks, providing liquidity and accessibility not commonly found in direct real estate investments.

[5] Un “Foco Rojo” Para La Ciudad Jorge Carrasco Araizaga Y Juan Carlos Cruz Vargas Proceso Agosto 2019

[6] Mitikah, un gigante que impone su ley en la Ciudad de México Proceso no. 2234 August 25, 2019

[7] Pueblos originarios de la Ciudad de México, cuáles son y dónde están (mapa y listado)

https://www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx/pueblos-originarios-de-la-ciudad-de-mexico-cuales-son-y-donde-estan-mapa-y-listado.html

[8] La crónica como antídoto / No. 203 Las batallas en Xoco Juan Paulo Pérez Tejada

[9] Mitikah, un gigante que impone su ley en la Ciudad de México Proceso no. 2234 August 25, 2019

[10] Desarrollo inmobiliario en Xoco: relato de ciudades enfrentadas Alejandro Porcel Arraut Nexos, octubre 16, 2018

[11] Ibid

[12] Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, The Life of Mexico City Barbara E. Mundy (2015) by  University of Texas Press p. 3

 

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