FOR DECADES, THE GOVERNING PARTIDO Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI, has maintained
control over poor neighborhoods by serving as the primary
channel for access to needed resources-schools, subsidized
tortillas, installation of water, roads and electricity, access to
transport and land. These resources are controlled by com-
munity leaders whom the PRI wins over by granting them
privileges in return for demonstrations of political loyalty.
These priistas (members of the PRI) tend to build their own
local empires, and serve as the front line of attack to thwart
any efforts at independent organizing.
In San Miguel, neighborhood priistas have had an uphill
climb, their offers of free T-shirts being a poor match for the
proven capacity of the Uni6n de Colonos to win community
needs through the strength of its own efforts. Their continued
presence has depended greatly on the outside support of city
officials and police.
For example, when Mujeres en Lucha secured permission
from a federal agency to build a milk distribution center in a
building they built themselves, the city government refused
to sign the necessary authorization. In response, the women
held a sit-in at the national cathedral. The city responded by
erecting a new building on another site, and attempted to
open the center in the name of the PRI–an event which was
completely upstaged by the association’s own inauguration
ceremony, during which the entire community was informed
as to whose efforts were really responsible for the center.
The association has also suffered direct repression through
the jailing of activists on false charges and acts of provoca-
tion and violence. During the most recent period of repres-
sion (1987-88), the city government decided to install a unit
of mounted police in the neighborhood. Through negotia-
tions, the association got the city to submit the decision to a
referendum at a neighborhood assembly; the proposal was
voted down. (For years, residents had been able to keep
police out of the community, preferring by far their own
neighborhood vigilance system to the well-known extortion
practices of the police.) Soon after, the most feared local
gangs appeared sporting semi-automatic weapons instead of
switchblades, and two members of the association were
killed in unprovoked attacks.
ON OCTOBER 12, 1987, A GROUP OF ARMED
men led by local prilsta David Hemindez took over
the Capilla section “green area,” which had been designated
for a technical school, in direct violation of a ban on land
invasions within city limits. Local protest became city-wide
when on February 6, 1988 Hernmndez and his men broke into
a women’s meeting in the Capilla section’s hall at the edge
of the invaded area and beat up one of the neighborhood’s
most active women. Then in May, Hemdndez subdivided the
area and began selling lots and building materials to unsus-
pecting families from outside the neighborhood.
After numerous demonstrations, the temporary takeover
of the Iztapalapa (ward) government building by organized
neighborhoods from the area, and the closely monitored, re-
sounding July 6 defeat of the PRI in the 40th electoral
district-the city’s largest, into which all new eastern urban
growth has been stuffed–the association finally won. In
mid-August Hernindez was arrested by city and federal
police and soldiers, who proceeded to raze the bunkers and
new dwellings, and relocate the recently settled families. In
their zeal, they also knocked down the Capilla section meet-
ing hall of the Union de Colonos.
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