Mexican Cities: New Approaches to Urban History

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

The late twentieth century remapped Mexico’s landscape. Although over 60% of Mexicans lived in urban settings by 1980, the social and spatial processes of urbanization unfolded unevenly. By focusing on four models of urban development from 1945 to 1988—Ciudad Universitaria, Acapulco, Cancún, Tijuana, and Mexico City—we reconsider the relationship between “center” and “periphery,” the state’s role in urbanization processes, and the interaction between political economy and political ecology within Mexican historiography.

Jessica Mack begins with Ciudad Universitaria. Despite its promises of education and modernization, it was built on expropriated ejidos to satisfy the growing middle classes. Similarly, the Jet Age and the Cuban Revolution created a tourist market for particular clients. As Marcel Anduiza Pimentel demonstrates, consumer capitalism remade Acapulco from a declining port into an international destination. Emulating Acapulco, the Banco de México founded a trust fund to render Isla Cancún into an even more profitable venture. However, Carlos Hernández argues that Cancún’s development came at the region’s expense.

While the 1970s coincided with Echeverrian populism, it presented certain technocratic constraints. As Christian Rocha documents, government-sanctioned “experts” oversaw urban renewal in Tijuana amid political and economic turmoil. By the 1980s, such efforts culminated in Mexico City’s anti-pollution campaigns. According to Ela Miljkovic, however, this top-down initiative gradually evolved into a grassroots project.

By examining a range of urban development models across a broad geographic spread, we advance an integrative approach to urban history which unifies the rural and urban, the economic and cultural, the political and environmental.

Sub Track

• Cities and Urban Studies

Session Organizers

• Carlos R Hernandez, Yale University

• Jessica R Mack, Princeton University

Chairs

• Jessica R Mack, Princeton University

• Carlos R Hernandez, Yale University

Discussant

• Louise E Walker, Northeastern University

Individual Presentations

• The Rising City: Building 'Ciudad Universitaria', 1945-1954 - Jessica R Mack, Princeton University

• Acapulco, the Jet Age, and the Cuban Revolution: The Emergence of a Tourism Boomtown in Mexico, 1955-1965 - Marcel S Anduiza Pimentel, University of Chicago

• The Caudillos of Development: Bankers, Bureaucrats, and the Founding of Cancún, 1967-74 - Carlos R Hernandez, Yale University

• An Urban Laboratory for the Nation: Tijuana after 1971 - Christian Rocha, University of Chicago

• Air Politics and ‘Vigilant Neighbors’: Forging a Discourse of Pollution Abatement in Mexico City, 1971-1987 - Ela Miljkovic, University of Houston