This paper analyzes the process of urban expansion onto ejido lands in an area of Mexico City known as the Ajusco foothills. The author explores the interrelations between industri- alization policies, illegal subdividing, and land takeovers in the process oi ejido urbanization. The author shows how the process of ejido urbanization led to the formation of urban movements and how the political dynamics behind resolving land tenure disputes played a role in coopting such movements. The author concludes by describing the state's role in transforming property rights on ejido lands and the impact of ecological programs on the politics of urban expansion.

The politics of Mexican development

The Politics Of Urban Expansion

Die Uberwindung von Unterentwicklung setzt in den meisten Landern der Dritten Welt eine egalitare Bodenreform in Verbindung mit einer Mobilisierung der breiten Massen auf dem Lande voraus. Dadurch entsteht eine egalitare Verteilung der Einkommen mit der Folge einer Konzentration der Nachfrage auf wenige industrielle Produkte, die — zusammen mit einer Steigerung der Masseneinkommen durch bisher nicht eingesetzte Arbeitskraft und -zeit auf dem Lande — uber einen sich erweiternden Binnenmarkt rentable Investitionsmoglichkeiten schafft. Um diese Zielsetzung zu erreichen, mussen Elemente der staatlichen Planung und Elemente der dorflichen Demokratie miteinander kombiniert werden, so das Chancen fur eine rasche Demokratisierung an der Basis entstehen. Eine solche Mobilisierung ist zugleich selbst eine Vorbedingung fur den wirtschaftlichen Erfolg von Bodenreformen. Diese drei Thesen einer groseren Arbeit1 sollen im folgenden kurz begrundet werden. Sie richten sich gegen verschiedene Aussagen derzeit herrschender Entwicklungsstrategien. Gelingt ihre Begrundung, sind vor allem zwei Konzepte zu verwerfen: 


das Konzept der Modernisierungsdiktatur, bei der auf lange Frist allein von einer staatlichen Burokratie, die gegen die unmittelbar erlebten Interessen der Masse der Bevolkerung Entwicklungsziele ansteuert, die Uberwindung von Unterentwicklung erwartet wird, auch wenn — wie zu zeigen sein wird — einer solchen Burokratie in dem hier begrundeten Entwicklungskonzept wichtige Aufgaben zukommen;


das Konzept, das durch eine ungleiche Verteilung der Einkommen die Sparquote angehoben werden konne (was empirisch falsch ist, Oshima 1971; 176. Ahmad/Sternberg 1969; 171. Massell/Meyer 1969; 227. Bronfenbrenner, in: Randall 1964; 66.), und das dadurch die Investitionsrate gehoben werden konne (wogegen die Praxis des Geldhortens und der Kapitalexporte der Grundbesitzer spricht, Griffin, in: Streeten 1970. Alexander 1963; 559. Grunig 1969; 45) und Produktivkrafte entwickelt wurden (dagegen spricht die Tatsache des hohen Kapitalbedarfs pro Arbeitsplatz in den Branchen, die fur den Luxuskonsum der Bezieher hoher Einkommen produzieren, Bsp. Autoindustrie: Baranson 1968; 27. Johnson 1967; 210).

Agrarrevolution, Wachstumspotential, Demokratisierungsmöglichkeiten

It is my conviction that the president of the republic should not exercise any powers other than those explicitly conferred on him by the Constitution and the law…. Ernesto Zedillo (Mexican president, 1994–2000) It was by all accounts another day at the office for one of authoritarian Mexico's more modest parties seeking to contest yet another Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI)–state victory in the summer of 1988. The tiny Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution (PARM – usually a satellite of the PRI) had decided to contest extreme electoral fraud in congressional district 7 in the state of Guerrero. The PARM submitted its copies of the vote tallies to the new federal electoral court, with poll officials' signatures at odds with those on certified copies submitted by the Guerrero electoral commission. Blatant and extensive alteration of official results was acknowledged but then ignored in the verdict of the magistrates, who argued in the decision that while tampering was evident, the complaint was unfounded for failing to properly state the allegations, and that because the electoral court “facing the judicial impossibility of accessing the electoral packets which should be in the Chamber of Deputies, confronted a technical and legal impediment to determining which copy of the results is the real one” (Tribunal of Electoral Contention or TRICOEL RQ-007 resolution, 4).

Courting Democracy in Mexico: Mexico's National Electoral Justice Success: From Oxymoron to Legal Norm in Just over a Decade

We came in by bullets and will not be removed by votes. Fidel Velazquez (PRI labor head from 1949 until 1997) (cited in del Collado 2000, 271) It was the best case scenario from the National Action Party's (PAN) hypothetical concertacesion playbook. The sitting Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) president congratulates the PAN challenger on the very night of the election, preempting any need to press their postelectoral case through the courts or in the streets. While Vicente Fox's defense of the vote team and the PAN relished their victory and reveled in the fact that they would not have to engage in their usual three-day postelectoral complaint-filing marathons, the PRIistas were not so pleased with Zedillo's announcement. Rumors circulated in the days after the election that Zedillo had betrayed his party for a place in history as Mexico's great democratizer. And while being a gracious loser may have been part of Zedillo's bid to be the hero of courting democracy in Mexico, it was viewed as disloyal by a party that held power for generations precisely by valuing loyalty as the highest trait. If the PRI bureaucracy's immediate response to Zedillo's recognition of Fox was simmering contempt, it boiled over in the following months in a PRI-on-PRI postelectoral conflict in Mexico State claiming dozens of lives and in protests by outgoing governors in Tabasco and Yucatan against the federal electoral court's unprecedented interventions in state elections.

The politics of Mexican development

Citations

The Politics Of Urban Expansion

Agrarrevolution, Wachstumspotential, Demokratisierungsmöglichkeiten

Courting Democracy in Mexico: Mexico's National Electoral Justice Success: From Oxymoron to Legal Norm in Just over a Decade

Courting Democracy in Mexico: Dedazo from the Center to Finger Pointing from the Periphery: PRI Hard-Liners Challenge Mexico's Electoral Institutions

Mexico's economic crisis and need for a new development strategy

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