Urban Corporatism in Mid-20th-Century Mexico City

In the 1940s, the government of Mexico City devised a project of urban reform entitled colonias proletarias (proletarian neighborhoods). Colonias proletarias were envisioned as an urbanistic and political building block for a working-class city. Broadly inspired in the progressive ideology of the Mexican Revolution—particularly Mexico's ongoing agrarian reform—and in transnational corporatist ideas, colonias proletarias were a tool for organizing working-class residents and integrating them into vertical political structures. In pursuit of this vision, the government expropriated land, distributed it among urban dwellers, and passed laws that regulated the internal organization of proletarian neighborhoods, their position in the political system, and their symbolic place in a modern, urban nation. Approximately 300 proletarian neighborhoods had been formed in Mexico City by the 1950s, becoming the most widespread housing option for working-class residents. While the project was highly successful in terms of its scale, it fell short of its more revolutionary aims. Proletarian neighborhoods held an uncertain legal status (they were often understood as informal or marginal neighborhoods) and materialized the profound inequalities that divided and continue to divide Mexico City. This paper interrogates the ideological and legal foundations of this political and urbanistic project, interrogating as well its limits in the second half of the twentieth century.