Undamaged Tracts Taken to House the Dispossessed : Mexico City Expropriating Land in Quake Aftermath

Carlos Martinez is having trouble holding on to the modest house he shares with his brother on Dr. Vertiz Street, and he isn’t sure why.

Twice the city has placed the Martinez home on a list of properties--mostly vacant lots and ruined buildings--that are to be expropriated to provide land for housing people left homeless by last month’s earthquakes.

But Martinez’s house was not damaged, and the small lot it stands on will not accommodate any additional building.

“There must be some mistake,” Martinez told a reporter. “This land is not big enough for more houses. And where are we supposed to go?”

Martinez is one of hundreds of property owners who, it appears, will lose their land to the government for the benefit of those left homeless by the Sept. 19-20 earthquakes that struck Mexico City.

Mistakes Admitted

The expropriation, ordered by President Miguel de la Madrid on Oct. 10, has touched off a great deal of confusion, and the government admits it has made some mistakes.

People driven from their homes by the quakes are still not sure of a place to live, and landowners who are to be dispossessed complain that the expropriation is arbitrary and unfair.

So far, city officials have drawn up two lists of properties to be expropriated. The first, published on Oct. 10, listed 7,000 sites on 600 scattered acres of land.

The list included buildings that were not only undamaged but wholly occupied. On the other hand, several ruined buildings were not listed. And among the buildings mistakenly scheduled for expropriation were single-family homes, churches, cantinas, union halls and pharmacies.

“We’re not sure how this happened,” Alicia Coquet, a City Hall spokesman, said. “We’re investigating.”

Property List Revised

Then, on Monday, a second list was published. About 1,000 lots were eliminated from the earlier list, and others were added. Property owners scurried about trying to find a copy of the official registry, in which the new list was published.

For some owners, among them Carlos Martinez, the second list failed to provide any satisfaction. And it will probably take days to sort out the properties that have actually been expropriated.

Haste may have been a factor in the confusion. Political observers say the government moved quickly in an effort to avoid further tension between the government and the thousands of displaced people--the official estimate is 31,000--living in the streets or under temporary shelters.

The expropriation order was signed after several groups of refugees marched on the president’s residence demanding action.

Many of the displaced had been paying low rents for years, and were suddenly faced with the need to find new housing in what has become a city critically short of housing.

Angelina Ruiz, who had lived in a building that was severely damaged, and is now camped out on a municipal sports field, said: “I don’t have money for a down payment. I don’t have money for rent.”

She had been paying 3,000 pesos a month, less than $10, for her small, two-bedroom apartment in the Carranza district, she said, and has no hope of finding anything now at that price. Rents had gone up before the quakes, and have risen further since.

The government has promised new housing for the homeless, and posters put up at refugee centers advise the refugees to register at government offices in order to be eligible. But if experience is any guide, they face a long wait. A lot on Dr. Jimenez Street, in the downtown district, was expropriated for public housing 10 years ago, but no housing has been built there.

The people who were moved from Dr. Jimenez Street to tiny, one-story brick tenements on nearby Central Avenue are still clamoring for permanent homes. They were not cheered by word that their Central Avenue enclave now has been designated a site for post-quake public housing.

“We’ve heard it all before,” said Antonio Martinez, a legal secretary who lives in one of the Central Avenue buildings.

In the past week, many property owners have gone to City Hall to protest the expropriation. They complained not only about the wisdom of some of the decisions but also about the terms of payment for their property--over a 10-year period and at current prices, at a time when the value of the peso is falling daily.

“We want to help our brothers who are without shelter,” said Justo Nieto, who is losing a small apartment house, “but by the time the government pays for our building, the peso will be worth nothing. We’re giving away the property.”

The expropriation order has also caused concern among business people, who fear that the government may turn to more radical solutions in order to solve its growing problems. Some liken the expropriation order to the nationalization of banks three years ago, when Mexico’s foreign debt burden began to get out of hand.

Also, the expropriation has heaped more work on an already overburdened bureaucracy. Certification of the dead is moving slowly and will probably never be completed. Many schools are still closed because of disagreements over whether they are safe.

Medical Center Issue

A conflict has developed between physicians who want to reopen the city’s damaged Medical Center, Latin America’s largest hospital complex, and the government, which has condemned the buildings. In some districts, the removal of rubble is at a standstill.

Still in question is the cost of reconstruction, and where the money is to be found. Finance Minister Jesus Silva Herzog said the other day that unless government spending is cut back sharply in other areas, the earthquake recovery effort will further aggravate an already large budget deficit.

Silva Herzog estimates that because of the earthquakes, the government will have to put up 4,000 housing units immediately and eventually construct an additional 10,000.