Colonia Proletaria Felipe Pescador: A Study in the Politics and Property of a Mexico City Settlement, 1940–78

Abstract This paper tells the story of Felipe Pescador, a neighbourhood born of an occupation of railway lands by railway employees in Mexico City’s industrial corridor. Across disciplines, a rich literature on Latin America has critically examined housing struggles among marginalised and working-class people. But attention to individual, self-built settlements has remained a less common approach to the issue. Focused study provides an opportunity to critically examine how changes in the city’s political economy gradually shifted strategies to obtain shelter. As the heft of organised labour waned and the institutionalisation of housing demands increased, residents ultimately legitimated a pragmatic political practice – sometimes at odds with the policies of the official party, the PRI – and put property rights at the centre of their struggle. Historicising ties between property, law and politics thus complicates visions of informal housing struggles as necessarily progressive initiatives, as well as accounts of informal settlements as places of grassroots entrepreneurship.