Global Mexico under Construction: The Santa Fe Megaproject in Mexico City

Abstract

Large-scale urban projects undertaken throughout history embody particular discourses of modernity and nationhood. In the case of the Santa Fe project, I analyze how Mexico City’s government followed the usual approach of undertaking urban initiatives in an authoritarian manner by means of top-down urban planning. This was the way urban initiatives were implemented throughout most of the twentieth century. Consequently, as the dissociation between plans and realities came into play, the events that ensued were evident and predictable from the beginning-a recurrent story both in Mexico City’s urban history and in the current sweep of neoliberalism. David Harvey explains: The very idea that this [increased social inequality] might be-just might be-the fundamental core of what neoliberalism has been about all along appears unthinkable. It has been part of the genius of neoliberal theory to provide a benevolent mask full of wonderful sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, to hide the grim realities of the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power, locally as well as transnationally, but most particularly in the main fi nancial centers of global capitalism (2005, 119)(Harvey, 2005:119).

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