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The Punitive City

Privatized Policing and Protection in Neoliberal Mexico

Zed Books Ltd

The making of the punitive city

In June 2004, several hundred thousand Mexico City residents mobilized by civil society organizations like México Unido Contra la Delincuencia (Mexico United Against Delinquency), the country's most influential anti-crime NGOs, rallied to the streets of the nation's capital in order to protest against the inefficiency of the Mexican authorities in their efforts to confront the crime wave haunting the city, and the country in general, as well as the leniency of existing penal laws. In this regard, the protest was accompanied by widespread demands for retributive punishment and 'tough on crime' policies, including calls for indefinite prison terms and the death penalty for kidnappers and murderers (La Jornada 2004a, 2004b). Nearly three years later, in spring 2007, car drivers and pedestrians strolling down one of Mexico City's most trafficked streets, Insurgentes Avenue, were confronted with a huge billboard on top of a multi-storey building. The billboard, placed there by a private initiative, offered a reward of 250,000 Mexican Pesos (then about US$ 23,000) for the capture of a presumed kidnapper and murderer – a capture that was called a 'community service'. A year later, Mexico's Green Ecological Party distributed leaflets among urban households in Mexico City. The leaflet contained two photo stories. One story was about María, whose daughter had been kidnapped and who was threatened by Moncho, a prisoner, to pay the full ransom, otherwise her daughter would have to suffer the consequences. María, the story tells us, despite financial support from her mother, was unable to pay the complete ransom and she never heard from her daughter again. The other story is about Juan, presented as a 'repeat offender'. He was waiting at a street corner for his next victim. When a young boy and girl got off a bus, Juan tried to assault them, but the young man attempted to defend himself. A dramatic series of photos show how Juan stabbed the young man, who died in the arms of his girlfriend. Below the photos, and next to the ecological party's symbol, the leaflet reads: 'Death penalty for kidnappers and murderers. Let's make it real and live in peace.'

These episodes are snapshots of a larger punitive turn in urban politics that accompanied the democratization of the Mexican political system throughout the last two decades and which transformed Mexico City into a punitive city. This development, as this book demonstrates, is not primarily, nor exclusively, related to a real increase in urban crime and insecurity. Rather, it is inseparable from the imposition of a neoliberal vision of economic, social and political order, as well as a new regime of governing urban marginality that is driven by securitization processes that translate into the criminalization and penalization of those at urban society's margins (Wacquant 2009a). As this process is simultaneously overdetermined by the democratization of local politics, the punitive turn in Mexico City converts the city into a veritable punitive urban democracy. A democracy in which, notwithstanding the formal legal empowerment and growing political inclusion of urban residents, a growing number of the city's residents, in particular those at the urban margins, are confronted with a reverse process of punitive exclusion.

This chapter will outline the basic features of this process and highlight the ambivalent, and at first sight, contradictory relationship between the democratization of local politics and the growing penalization of urban marginality. In stressing how the intersection of these processes, and their embeddedness within the rolling-out of neoliberalism, contributed to the transformation of Mexico City into a punitive city, this chapter provides the general context for the subsequent parts of this book by indicating how the urbanization of neoliberalism in Mexico City and its intersection with idiosyncratic features of the local political situation led to the punitive turn in Mexico's capital city.

The punitive logic of urban neoliberalism in Mexico City

Like in most other Latin American countries during the last twenty years or so, Mexico's political economy shifted from a semi-peripheral version of Fordism – grounded in import-substituting industrialization and politically regulated by the corporatist state structures that defined the country's authoritarian regime under the seventy-one years (1929–2000) of uninterrupted one-party rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) – towards a neoliberal free-market economy under the auspices of an 'international competition state' that promotes 'pro-competition and pro-market policy' (Soederberg 2010: 77; see also Heigl 2011). Mexico City was severely affected by these macro-economical transformations. Not only did these processes contribute to a breakdown of the local manufacturing sector that had been central to the city's economy throughout most of the twentieth century, Mexico City also lost its national importance as the centre of economic decision making. Between 1982 and 1989, for instance, the number of Mexican top 500 companies located in the city declined from 287 to 145 (Parnreiter 2002). This development was accompanied by the broader decline of formal economic activities, 'the spread of micro businesses and the unprecedented expansion of the informal sector' (Vargas Hernández and Reza Noruzi 2011: 89). While the actual size of the city's informal economy is difficult to assess, it is widely assumed that around 50 per cent of all jobs in the city are in the informal sector (ILO 2014: 5), which is about 10 per cent below the national average of around 60 per cent (ibid.; OECD 2013: 52). In Mexico City, the informal economy is highly concentrated in the area of Mexico City's historic centre (Castillo Olea 2006: 1). Although the city's economy recovered throughout the second half of the 1990s, this process was obtained at the further expense of formal employment and social standards and accompanied by deteriorating/stagnating income levels. In turn, this left ever larger segments of the urban workforce few options for economic survival other than joining the informal economy, which became the fastest growing segment of the urban labour market (Parnreiter 2002: 148–154).

It is this growing informalization of the city's economy that triggered a punitive response from the local authorities. In order to understand this outcome, one has to take a closer look at the basis of the recovery of the city's economy. The latter was, more than anything else, the result of 'a deep tertiarization process, which for the urban region [of Mexico City] meant the shift from a national industrial metropolis to a transnational node for financial flows and specialized consumption' (Kanai and Ortega Alcazár 2009: 487). These processes continued well into the new millennium. In 2004, 73 per cent of all foreign companies operating in Mexico had their headquarters in Mexico City and the city's producer service sector, notably services related to finance, insurance and business management, generated 76.5 per cent of the national added value. More striking than this is the fact that around 55 per cent of the overall national added value were generated in only three, centrally located boroughs, or delegaciones (Cuauhtémoc, Miguel Hidalgo and Benito Juárez) (Parnreiter 2011: 7–9). Such indicators clearly demonstrate that Mexico City's economic recovery has been accompanied by the city's rise to the status of a Global City (Parnreiter 2011, 2002; Graizboard et al. 2003). As other Global Cities, Mexico City now functions as a 'command point' for an increasingly globalized world economy; it has become a key location for finance and other specialized producer services that have largely displaced manufacturing as the leading economic sector; it is a production (and innovation) site for these service industries as well as a market for their products (Sassen 2001: 3–4).

This, however, did not happen naturally. Mexico City's rise to the status of a Global City resulted from active policy interventions by the local administrations which, since the 1990s, implemented a neoliberal, entrepreneur-friendly mode of urban governance, which largely centres on a reorientation of the local state's responsibilities, in particular within the field of urban economic development. The local state no longer conceives itself as the director of the local economy but as a facilitator, that is, as an agency responsible for the creation of an entrepreneur-friendly fiscal policy, an investment-friendly legal climate and the provision of infrastructure for investment projects, with the goal of attracting new national and international investors (Hofmeister 2002: chapter 4). While some of these processes were well underway since Mexican neoliberalism became definitely 'locked-in' under the 'technocratic revolution' (Centeno 1997) of president Salinas de Gortari (1988–1994, PRI) and his successor Ernesto López Zedillo (1994–2000, PRI), the democratization of Mexico City politics, culminating in the electoral victory of Cuauthémoc Cárdenas in 1997 from the leftist PRD, did not alter this situation. Even with a leftist party in power – a party whose electoral success largely depended upon the promise of improving social welfare services for the urban poor – the centrality of neoliberal urban economic policies in the guise of an adherence to free market principles, the creation of an investment-friendly environment and the strengthening of Mexico City's interurban competitiveness were firmly established, if not strengthened. Indeed, the PRD's vision of urban governance is firmly committed to the principles of economic 'productivity, rentability and competitiveness' (PGDDF 2000: 105), leading to the implementation of the 'standard' neoliberal urban development strategy of actively promoting 'real estate and finance sectors as the leading forces in urban expansion and local revenue generation' (Angotti 2013a: 63).

In order to make sense of this situation, it must be kept in mind that since the PRD established its power in Mexico City, all local administrations have been confronted with either PRI or PAN presidents at the national level, where, according to Mexico's federal system, many of the city's spending priorities and federal fiscal transfers are determined (frequently on a discretionary basis). These national actors, out of political reasoning, had little interest in improving the local mayor's economic and political performance – and financial resources – as they were fearful that such a success could be converted into political capital (see also Davis and Alvarado 2004: 147–51; Mitchell and Beckett 2008: 93; Müller 2009a). While the democratization of Mexico City enhanced the city's political autonomy, the price that had to be paid for this, however, was that the local administrations became increasingly dependent upon their own revenue-generating capacity; a process that, as argued by Weber in another context, makes cities increasingly dependent upon those economic activities promising the fast generation of such desperately needed revenue, in particular private real-estate markets (Weber 2002: 190). Additionally, and closely related, Mexico City's urban policies, including infrastructure investments for its Global City strategy, are also dependent upon debt and credit and, in this regard, on international (mostly US-based) rating agencies like Standard & Poor's, Moody's or Fitch, whose ratings for Mexico City are displayed on the website of Mexico City's Secretariat of Finance. Local bureaucrats and politicians are well aware of the impact of credit ratings for their own careers but also for their political projects and constituencies, and therefore chose to adopt the preferred policies and 'expert knowledge' regarding the essential minimization of risk, 'predicated on a firm belief in the efficiency and necessity of US-style neoliberal market reforms' (Mitchell and Beckett 2008: 92). As a consequence of this

Leftist mayors like Obrador and his successor, Marcelo Ebrard [both succeeded Cárdenas], find themselves caught between their political promises of local spending for needed social services and the all-important movement of bond values and ratings operating on a transnational scale. Their desperate desire to maintain strong relations with U.S.-dominated [rating] agencies frequently leads to municipal policies at odds with their stated mandates of poverty alleviation, including new 'security measures' intended to drive drug-smugglers and sidewalk merchants out of particular neighborhoods. (Mitchell and Beckett 2008: 94, emphasis added)

This need to 'drive drug-smugglers and sidewalk merchants out of particular neighbourhoods', for the sake of good credit ratings and urban competitiveness, is mostly felt within the area of Mexico City's historic centre. This area became the focus of an urban development strategy that aims at transforming this part of the city into an ideal location for (national and international) economic investments in the areas of real estate development, heritage tourism and cultural consumerism (Davis 2013; Linares 2008: 180; Capron and Monnet 2003). The core of this strategy lies in the articulation and promotion of 'historical heritage and local traditions alongside modern developments to improve the competitiveness of the megacity in the global economy' (Canclini 2008: 191). While this also included the partial privatization of the city's central square, the Zócalo, where, following a commercial agreement between the local government and powerful economic actors, since 2003 all of the free open-air concerts and cultural events taking place on the Zócalo are 'organized by a private trust representing some of Mexico's largest economic actors' (Kanai and Ortega Alcázar 2009: 488), the core of this urban development strategy is the so-called 'rescue project', the Programa de Rescate, implemented in 2001: 'an entrepreneurial strategy characterized by public-private alliances established for the physical transformation of urban space at the expense of poor sectors of the urban population' (Crossa 2009: 45).

The economic success of the resulting urban development strategy becomes apparent when considering that in recent years Mexico City has been able to collect nearly 50 per cent of all property taxes in Mexico. This pattern of fiscal concentration is also visible in the city itself, where four of Mexico City's sixteen boroughs account for nearly 60 per cent of the locally collected property taxes. These boroughs are Cuauthémoc, Miguel Hidalgo, Benito Juárez and Alvaro Obregón (Bird and Slack 2008: 151). The fact that Cuauthémoc is at the top of this list points towards the spatial implications of the city's urban development strategy. The borough comprises large parts of the city's historic centre, which due to its colonial architecture and central location seems to be a more than promising area for attracting international capital in fields such as heritage tourism and real estate development – and for generating local tax revenue. However, due to the growing spatial concentration of urban marginality and informality in downtown Mexico City, both the local business community as well as the PRD administrations increasingly considered the historic centre as an endangered urban area, most of all, because the spatial condensation of urban marginality in this area 'has prevented the city authorities from capitalizing on the area's tourism potential. [...] Consequently, some business groups in the area, as well as city authorities, have expressed serious concern about street vending. The Historic Center is said to be in crisis' (Crossa 2009: 47). Confronted with this situation that potentially threatens the economic development potential of the historic centre, local businessmen increasingly started to intervene in public debates in order to move the local government towards action. In a strategy paper published in 2001, which in a paradigmatic way illustrates the securitization of urban space that accompanies the urbanization of neoliberalism in the city, the influential private business council, the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (Empresarial Coordination Council, CCE) stated that,

[T]he Historic Centre is being lumpenized [lumpenizado] and occupied by the excluded who view the run-down monumentality as an opportunity for cheap housing and protection for informal and delinquent activities. The housing conditions in the Historic Centre as well as its competitiveness to attract investments deteriorate, [...]. Informality nourishes and protects illegal, vandalistic conducts and irregular appropriations of public spaces. Laws are dead letters, the state withdraws from regulation. Chaotic transport, street commerce, political demonstrations and protest camps, rubbish, fiscal evasions, brothels and prostitution challenge and subdue the state. A culture of illegality is being reproduced and ever more firmly rooted, and so is a new mafia power that draws on old and new corporatist and clientelistic vices. (CCE/CESPEDES 2001: 10–11)

In order to confront this crisis, a public–private partnership emerged that brought to town zero tolerance policing, the core element of urban revanchism (see introduction), in the guise of a contract with Giuliani Partners, the security consultancy founded by former New York City mayor and 'inventor' of zero tolerance policing, Rudolph Giuliani. This decision was facilitated by the discursive arrival of zero tolerance during the first PRD administration and its efforts to demonstrate that the party was taking the local crime problems seriously (see below).

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Excerpted from The Punitive City by Markus-Michael Müller. Copyright © 2016 Markus-Michael Müller. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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