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theses

This dissertation examines the growth and development of contemporary Mexico City from the Mexican Revolution through the present. The twentieth century birthed two Mexican ‘monsters’, I argue, the PRI—the ‘ruling party’ that dominated Mexican politics for roughly seven decades until its ouster in 2000—and the capital, Mexico City. I pay special attention to the relationship between these two leviathans as they struggled through a century of revolutionary changes. An historical exploration of this relationship yields three interrelated conflictual trajectories, each of which receives in turn a more targeted investigation through specific cases. I explore the first of these, the city’s proliferating environmental, political, social, economic, and other crises, most of an increasingly dire character, through an examination of the history of ‘the right to the city’ in Mexico City from its earliest conceptualizations in the late 1980s though the public endorsement of the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City in 2010. My investigation moves through the second trajectory, the troubled path of democratization and party politics in the capital city, by way of a largely ethnographic engagement with a planned redevelopment project along one of the city’s historic boulevards, Avenida Chapultepec. I follow the third trajectory, the growing tension between the city and the national state and the PRI—which appears in several distinct manifestations—through an historical reconstruction of the decades-long processes of ‘political reform’ by which the city finally achieved its political “emancipation” in January of 2016, and an 2 ethnographic exploration of the contemporary social and political context surrounding these ideas and events. Taken together, the cases here considered contribute several significant conclusions and open up several new avenues for the study of urban political geography. My approach to dialectical investigation provides a basis for innovative methodological and empirical considerations, not least in the way of political imaginaries elaborated in pursuit of radical change and the potential implications thereof. The plural and shifting meanings of revolution in Mexico City, the process of battling seemingly incontestable hegemonies, and the dangers and benefits of grassroots social and political movements forging partnerships with political parties or arms of the state all likewise hold potentially pathbreaking insights for the study of the character and pace of urban political change.

ETD_8379

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Ben Alan Gerlofs

doi:10.7282/T3CF9T61

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.