Crisis of housing cooperatives in Mexico City:
A struggle for Palo Alto
Luis Márquez Cruz, Fabiola Carrera, Ana Vilenica and Pedro Montes de Oca
Published in Issue 6.2 // Conversation Series
Keywords:
cooperative housing, gentrification, Palo Alto, Mexico
Abstract:
This article features a conversation with Luis Márquez Cruz and Fabiola Carrera from the Palo Alto Cooperative, delving into the history and ongoing struggles of one of Mexico City’s oldest housing cooperatives. Formed in the 1980s based on principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and self-management, the cooperative provided affordable housing to working-class families. However, changes to cooperative laws in 1994 halted new cooperative projects and shifted government support to private developers. Today, Palo Alto faces internal divisions as some members push for the cooperative’s dissolution and sale of property amidst rising real estate prices, while others fight to preserve collective ownership. The article explores the cooperative’s international alliances, political training, and grassroots organizing efforts, highlighting the urgency of defending cooperative housing as an alternative to Mexico City’s increasingly commodified and exclusionary housing market.
doi.org/10.54825/RJGN5458
Housing Cooperative Palo Alto is in the Palo Alto neighbourhood in the western part of Mexico City. It is based on the principles of solidarity cooperativism, self-effort, and mutual aid, with the goal of satisfying the housing needs of the community where its inhabitants currently live. Fabiola Carrera and Luis Márquez Cruz live in Palo Alto.
Ana Vilenica is a feminist, no-border, and urban activist and organizer from Serbia, currently residing in Italy. She is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the ERC project ‘Inhabiting Radical Housing’ at the Polytechnic of Turin’s Inter-university Department of Regional & Urban Studies and Planning (DIST) and a core member of Beyond Inhabitation Lab. Ana is a member of the Radical Housing Journal Editorial collective and the Feminist Autonomous Centre for research (FAC research).
Pedro Montes de Oca Quiroz is a postgraduate student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the Latin-American Literature Program and works at the National Audio Library of Mexico. He teaches Spanish as a second language.
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See article reference
Márquez Cruz, L., Carrera, F., Vilenica, A. and P. Montes de Oca (2024) Crisis of housing cooperatives in Mexico City: A struggle for Palo Alto, Radical Housing Journal, 6(2), pp. 115-125; https://doi.org/10.54825/RJGN5458