PAPER TO THE
SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS BALTIMORE, MARYLAND |
THE PORFIRIAN ELITE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MODERN MEXICO CITY, IMAGE AND REALITY
JORGE H. JIMÉNEZ
THE PORFIRIAN ELITE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MODERN MEXICO CITY, IMAGE AND REALITY
JORGE H. JIMÉNEZ |
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After almost a century of stagnated development, at the end of the 19 th. Century and the begining of the 20th. Mexico City experimented a three decade growing process it had never known before. The suburbs of the small Spanish Colonial City started an expansion trend that has continued until our days. What kind of circumstances existed in those years that could make the City expanded that way? What kind of imagery did the builders have of the new City? My paper shall try to briefly respond to these questions, starting with the urban tradition and images that the first land developers inherited to a group of entrepreneurs and politicians who, in turn, transformed them, so as to establish the urban conception of a modern Mexico City. |
PRECEEDINGS After Mexico´s independence from Spain in 1810, ideological differences between Conservatives and Liberals, drove the country into an epoch characterized by revolutions, foreign military interventions and political unrest. In 1867 a group of Liberals lead by Benito Juárez assumed power and started a new era in Mexican history. Significant political definitions about the kind of country to build and the establishment of a new State ideology were made. Porfirio Díaz rose to presidential power ten years later in 1877 and ruled the country during a thirty-year dictatorship which allowed for a coherent ideology of political ideas about liberty, peace and order. It was in this period when the City dramaticaly expanded its limits more than four times the initial extension with land developments named colonias Many things had to happen to allow the City to grow like
this. I´m going to briefly explain some of them now. |
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THE PROPERTY OF THE LAND AND THE COLONIZATION POLICY
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Through this policy, governments sought to attract inmigrants to the country and foreign investment for the economic development of the country. It began during reign of Spanish Crown and continued after the Independence, both with the Conservative and the Liberals. Altough the inmigration per say was scarse, this policy resulted in a series of laws that offered to the contractors and inmigrants many benefits. Mexican entrepreneurs wanted to get involved in colonization related business to take advantage of tax exemptions, expedite importation of goods and construction materials, reduced payments and permits. Urban land dealers were one of the groups to made good use of this situation. COLONIAS AND FRACCIONAMIENTOS IN MEXICO CITY The term colonia is now used to refer to Mexican urban settlements and its meaning is almost the same as the English word colony not in the sense of domination but as in settlement or development. Where did this term come from? From the imaginary conception of colonization that pioneer developers used to engage in real estate business in better conditions. Many colonias were made around the country in the rural areas on this basis.Howewer, two were audaciously formed beyond the Colonial City limits in what he would be known as the suburbs. Using the colonization imagery pioneer real estate developers made big profits, even though foreigners never came and both “colonias” were ocuppied by locals in a kind of colonization for natives. When the Liberal Party took power the colonization imagery was enriched with the new and tangible possibilities offered to the realty business by the Reforma Laws; that is, the subdivision of the land and comercialization of corporative properties. The term fraccionamiento meaning to fraction or subdivide, appeared to refer to the way new colonias were created and later became a new word to designate urban developments in Mexico. THE COMPANY The pioneer developers went into the real estate business in the Mexico City area on their own. They didn´t engage in a full-fledged capitalist enterprise because they thought exclusively of selling the land while cutting costs and corners, and that was all. They acted like agrarian landdealers that had the possibility to sell small parcels of land for the first time in the Mexican history. Two events showed real estate business a new path to follow. One was the involvement of Porfirio Díaz in the public utilities construction business and the other was the arrival of the first foreign company to the real estate enterprise through one of his close friends. In 1881, Porfirio Díaz created a company to construct Mexico City´s sewer system: La Compañía Limitada de Canalización y Desagüe de la Ciudad y Valle de México S.A. (1). The object of this company was both to take advantage of the enterprenurial spirit of the epoch and to stop the flood problems of the City. He also got directly involved in the country´s main banks and other enterprises. Meanwhile, Diaz´s construction company had the intention of protecting and assuring the City area for further land developments. In 1883, the US based The Mexico City Improvement Company worked on the layout project, started the subdivision, and finally sold lots in the “Colonia La Teja”. Many people at that time named it as Colonia Americana or the American Colony. These companies changed the evolution of real estate business in Mexico City, because, unlike their predecessors, the pioneers who did business alone, they took heed of colateral advantages that the business had to offer such as savings and loans, partnership associations, public works and utility construction, and the latter, showed the way toward basic structure of modern realty enterprise. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE OLD CITY Although by 1877, Mexico City had hardly gone beyond the urban limits of the Spanish Colonial City, there had been inner changes. Some old Catholic monasteries and Spanish colonial mansions had been transformed into collective houses. The colonial constructions were ocuppied as small living quarters with collective utilities. Room by room, the buildings were gradually tranformed into a kind of tennant housing called vecindades in which living and working facilites had a deep relationship. |
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The opportunity to make a new City was strongly appealing
to the new political government because the old settlement represented the colonial,
religious and conservative regime. The urban space and layout plan symbolized the old
power but it also brought to mind unhealthiness, decadence and the site of craftsman
labors. It was the perfect time to introduce the imagery of a new society into the urban enviroment, because it appears when the creation of a new world is a real possibility. |
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The Porfirian group had an ideal world of their own. How
did these old and new images, projects and ideals materialize in a City of this new era?
Massive inmigration never happened; the initial colonias were not ocuppied by
inmigrants but rather by locals; Díaz´s company was later given to a close friend of
his; the first foreign company went bankrupt. Even so the influence of the real and
imaginary elements were strong enough to start the construction of Modern Mexico City and
to establish the path of its urban evolution. For twenty years many Mexican companies followed those steps. They were modern enterprises that could build around two colonias a year in the last decade of the 19th. Century and up to four “colonias” during the first decade of the 20th Century. But something happened circa 1910. |
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A minority of politicians, entrepreneurs and intelectuals that conformed the Porfirian elite took the development of the City in their hands. They began to monopolize the banks, building material companies and construction firms and formed strong associations involving their lands, investments, capital, enterprises and even their persons, including the dictator himself. They organized the main real estate company of their time: La Compañía Bancaria de Fomento y Bienes Raíces de Mexico.S.A. Important people and companies were involved in this consortium and that not only exposed them as a corporative group but also emphasized the political and economical importance of the City´s development. In no other economic or political effort in the country, was the elite so strongly united and showed so much interest. |
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The company also revealed the Porfirian government´s ideal of integrating a powerful minoritary group to share both the creation of a new Nation and the construction of a new City. The explanation can be found in the ideology that lead the Porfirian regime. |
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THE IMAGINARY SOCIETY IN THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER The Liberal Party behind Porfirio Díaz´s power brought to the country a coherent administration, political stability, authority, energy and the arising of a new kind of military politicians, intelectuals and bureaucrats, that would lead the society. They shared an ideology based on a mixture of conservative, liberal and positivist ideas that could justified them as head of new social order. People that in the name of evolution, progress and order, gradually shared political, economic power with Diaz; he, in turn, allowed them to take control of governmental institutions. They began to fuse and confuse their interests with those of the State. The social darwinism based sense of omnipotence and superiority over the rest of the population set in. |
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In order to give sense to the new society they built a
dream with imaginary origins and endowed it with a scientific frame. A dream with a
supremacist vision of a society based on personal wealth, private property not regulated
by the State and ideological homogeneity would help to achive uniform citizens avoid
idiosincratyc diferences and social rupture. The urban development in Mexico City from the begining of the Porfirian period until 1910 was a new and experimental site in which some ideas from the preceeding developments were enriched with the liberal and positivist ideologies, creating a new urban conception. |
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Why did they decide to made the City themselves, with their companies, banks and construction enterprises and in so big an extension? Because, besides the interest in doing business and keeping the Porfirian elite together, they wanted to erect the promised land for the new society and Mexico City represented the construction of the real place for imaginary people, the settlement of a new society that they were creating and some day they would lead to the progress. In fact, the new City was, as a whole, one of the main monuments of this regime. So was the population to be. |
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THE NEWCOMER Through the new state´s education plan, a new
kind of population would arise: materialistic and pragmatic individuals, the kind of
people and leaders that could change the country and confront their pairs from the United
States, a country that they admired but also wanted to keep at a safe distance. |
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In the elite´s society the indigenous people were excluded. They even tought that with inmigration, many white people would come to settle the country and whiten the indian race. The City should be for the newcomer of that ideal mixture: the mestizo. |
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Furthermore the idea of the mestizo included individuality, private property, citizenship and the imaginary vanishing of the indigenous people as an urban habitant. In their research Thomas and Carol Mc Michael Reese found that during the Celebrations of the Centennial of Mexican Independence in 1910 the organizers had to move indigenous from other parts of the country because the organizers must not have thought of the natives residing in Mexico City as authentic or because they were considered urbanized and therefore mestizos.(3). |
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THE NEW CITY The Porfirian elite saw the City as an irrefutable record of its ideals and the Spanish Colonial area as an imagen of the past, the expression of the old regime, the unhealthy, poor and overcrowded buildings. In a frantic action they bought and subdivided a huge amount of land in the surroundings of Mexico City, particularly to the west and south, that would take many decade to occupy. With this action they started the first large scale real estate speculation of the era and defined the shape of the modern Mexico City. |
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Refusing state control over private property, the elite followed no urban design and was unhampered by the very basic construction regulations. The first suburbs or colonias were designed like urban islands. The layout began to look somewhat like a broken plate, contrasting and opposing the old rectangular north to south oriented Spanish Colonial design. |
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Together with the suburbs appeared the idea of the centro or downtown. They started demolishing colonial buildings in order to build and implant new commercial and governmental facilities, but putting a strain on the deep relation betwen working and living facilities that downtown offered its inhabitants and opening the City to the new demands of the industrial era they were creating. |
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HOUSING AND CULTURAL ASPIRATIONS The intelectuals that lead the state ideology during the Porfirian era lost trust in the original Liberal Party´s conception of a free, egaliatrian society because they found it metaphisical and too similar to the ideology and political principles that they linked with social unrest and revolutions. |
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They reinterpreted liberal ideas and introduced the positivist ideology and culture from France because they thought this country was politically closer to Mexico. Furthermore, they assumed that the new ideology based upon the neutral science instead of political principles, could avoid diferences between Mexicans. Ideology and culture were taken as a model and aspiration of the elite and thus influenced in the shape of the new urban buildings. |
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The first inhabitants who left the the Spanish Colonial City area were the members of the elite. They wanted to build their homes in the new colonias and hired Mexican and United States architects to build their new and mainly French style houses. The “Colonia la Teja” I mentioned before was one the first settlements to promot that construction style. With architectural homogeneity they not only showed their cultural ideals and overbearing position but also gave the real estate business a new source of profits because living standards, building uniformity and cultural aspirations symbolized in the architectural style all had a subsequent influence on land speculation. |
EPILOG Like any other projet of the Porfirian elite, the City was an expectation, the dream of a scientific mind about the nation, the City and the people they wanted to lead toward the progress. It was based on an ideal of a society compossed by mestizos, with uniform cultural aspirations, individual land owners and european style houses. But this imagery never really happened as they wanted. While the Porfirian elite was in power and
creating their new social order, it failed to recognize the plurality of Mexican culture
the collective interests of its population, the indigenous traditions and the consecuences
of concentrating wealth in a few hands. Years later when the Nation woke up the dream was still there. The colonias made for the Porfirian elite were abandoned, so were French style houses they occupied. The huge urban area had to wait a little longer to by occupied by another new society based on new ideas and images brought by the Mexican Revolution. NOTES |