Sostener la vida entre drenajes y geografías del miedo: Tensiones del habitar y la urbanización popular en Ecatepec (México)

This article analyzes the impacts experienced by residents of various neighborhoods adjacent to the Gran Canal de Desagüe —an old drainage infrastructure— as it passes through the municipality of Ecatepec de Morelos, in the northern periphery of Mexico City. It also explores the strategies that residents employ to sustain life amid multiple precarities and forms of violence stemming from the production of masculinized and fear-inducing spaces. These dynamics, shaped by the presence of the canal and the industrialization and urbanization processes that followed, have profoundly influenced the territorial and social configuration of the area. The historical analysis is based on an extensive documentary review, including press articles, academic theses, technical reports, public documents, and interviews, and is interwoven with ethnographic data gathered through fieldwork conducted throughout 2024 in twenty-three neighborhoods bordering the canal. This research included ethnographic walkabouts, forty-three interviews, and multiple informal conversations with residents. The article integrates varied analytical perspectives to examine how, in the process of sustaining life in urban-popular contexts, contradictory and contested processes emerge and operate. Drawing from feminist political economy, the study expands the notion of labor beyond conventional workplace relations, extending it to the material reproduction of society, where practices of urban life maintenance unfold (ensuring housing, basic services, leisure, and security). Furthermore, from the lens of feminist geography and urbanism, the article critically examines the production of urban spaces as part of a patriarchal ideology, generating gender-based spatial inequalities.