This project documents the unique spatial, social, and political structures enabling irregular settlements in Chimalhuacán, a municipality of more than 600,000 residents partially built in the desiccated Texcoco Lakebed, to the east of Mexico City. 

After our research, we concluded that this ”informal” development is in fact carefully planned and executed as a means of social, political, and spatial control of vulnerable and forgotten populations by the politically motivated ”social organization” Antorcha Campesina. We contend that Chimalhuacán’s development has ensued through intricately designed patterns intended to segment the municipality into a cluster of mutually exclusive enclaves. Each enclave is a unit of control, dividing the municipality into statistical abstractions of population in order to suppress collective consciousness.

In Chimalhuacán, patterns of enclave development repeat, mirror, and tessellate with quasi-computation proceduralism, constituting a program of expansion and population management scripted to control, occupy, urbanize, and repeat.

Social organizations seize unoccupied public and private land through organized invasions disregarding ownership or regulatory structures. After securing the perimeter and dividing the land, they hold tight control of (upon) dwellers through organized payments, obligated votes, and public mobilizations for the political party to which the social organization is aligned. This type of urbanization becomes an explicit technique of whipping democracy in order to maintain control by the ruling party. 

Cites: Walled, Island, Linear

The exhibit