Shantytown Mexico:The Democratic Opening in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, 1969–1976

The article analyzes political conflict in Mexico through a powerful social movement that erupted in the massive shantytown of Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl between 1969 and 1973. In the summer of 1969, after decades of abysmal living conditions, the residents of Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl (Neza) launched a payment strike to demand the federal government expropriate the land from private land developers, with the intent to gain urban infrastructure and formal property titles. The rebellion that plunged Ciudad Neza into a state of perpetual strife reflects a juncture in Mexican history when the urban shantytown emerged as a distinct and influential site for mass politics. This article historicizes Mexico's urban shantytown as a political space where the ruling party's entrenched clientelism contended with embryonic forms of local democracy. Revealing numerous contradictions, this case study is emblematic of how the urban periphery was a precursor to the vibrant yet incomplete democratization that would come to define national politics in Mexico and much of Latin America in the 1980s.