Can a slum built on a World Heritage Site in Mexico City have rights?
Can a slum built on a World Heritage Site in Mexico City have rights?
Poor urban planning prompted thousands of Mexico City residents to build their own neighbourhood … on the ecologically protected Aztec heritage lands of Xochimilco. Now what?
Megan Carpentier and Marta Bausells
Friday 13 November 2015 07.00 EST
When Doña Chela first settled in Tlalpizatli more than 20 years ago, they didn’t have any roads, electricity, running water – or even a bridge over the canal to the main road. So the new residents built a wooden bridge by themselves, and removed rocks and roots by hand to create roads into the area. “The history of the neighbourhood has been one of suffering, tears and joy,” she said, even though she knows “we haven’t advanced much.” They’re still working to get electricity for street lights.
Tlalzipatli is one Mexico City’s estimated 835 slums; the national government estimates that there are 300 in the delegación of Xochimilco alone (though activists suggest the true number is closer to 500). What makes these ones particularly remarkable is that the entirety of Xochimilco was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1987. Its network of canals and artificial islands are a testament to the Aztec people’s determination to build a home in an unfavourable environment.
Its current residents face the same struggle – except that because a full 80% of the district is part of a federal ecological preserve, they could be moved out at any time.
Slums have filled a housing vacuum in Mexico City created by an absence of urban planning or affordable housing, and by extreme, generational poverty and rampant inequality. The government doesn’t recognise these communities (they’re considered squatters), meaning they also lack government services.
In Tizilingo, for example, another Xochimilco slum up the hill from Tlalzipatli, 35 families work hard to create a workable living environment despite three major obstacles. First, because they’re on a hill, and because they built the rough roads themselves, rubbish and fire trucks can’t gain access. Second, they have to siphon electricity from a neighbouring community to power their streetlights. And third, those same neighbours control the only water source, 200 metres away, and allow Tizilingo residents access three times a week, for two hours and a maximum of four jugs per family.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/13/slum-on-world-heritage-site-mexico-city-rights-xochimilco
