Mexican Squatters Claim Their Right to ‘Decent’ Home

Every family has the right to a dignified and decent dwelling. The law will establish the means necessary to attain that objective.

--Article 4, Chapter 1

Mexican Constitution

In virtually every corner of this sprawling border city, citizens are energetically exercising what they view as their constitutional right of residence. The problem is, many of them are breaking the law.

On the city’s hillsides, valleys and mesas, a kind of boom town atmosphere prevails as thousands of men and women toil assiduously, constructing their new homes. The simple dwellings of scrap wood, cardboard and tin may not qualify as “dignified and decent”--particularly because entire communities exist without paved streets, running water, electricity and flush toilets--but the structures still represent the fulfillment of a dream.

“We’ve always wanted to have our own piece of land for our family,” said Maria Isabel Ponce, a mother of five whose improvised home sits on a blustery hill overlooking the city.

Unfortunately, her family doesn’t own the land on which their home is built. In fact, hardly anyone in her mountainous neighborhood, known as Colonia Ignacio Ramirez, owns the land where scores of homes in various stages of construction are sprouting like so many seedlings.

The residents of this community are known as invasores-- invaders, or squatters.

In border cities from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, the problem of las invasiones-- the invasions--is among the most severe social and political problems facing Mexican authorities. Each day, scores of homeless migrants arrive in already overcrowded Mexican border cities; inevitably, many come to settle in some of the many squatter communities that ring the cities’ outskirts.

Some invasions are well-organized thrusts, often led by political activists who target specific private or public lands. Other invasions evolve gradually, one family following another over many months. However it happens, the results are the same: a tenuous existence for the squatters, a very delicate situation for the government and a prevailing sense of disorder and anarchy.

“We invade because we have no choice,” said Catalino Zavalo, who

has led several well-organized invasions of vacant land. “The constitution guarantees us a dignified place to live, but the government doesn’t provide it. We are compelled to invade. It’s the only thing that the government listens to.”

The invaders here are not dissimilar to squatters in cities from Cairo to Lima. Throughout the developing world, economic circumstances--and, in some cases, political upheaval--have forced people to flee the rural enclaves where their ancestors had lived for generations. Once in the big cities, they have simply found no place to live.

“Mexico is a country which, in the last 30 years, has gone from a predominantly rural to a predominantly urban population,” noted Jorge Bustamante, director of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a border study organization based here. “In every city (in the developing world) where you have this phenomenon of large waves of migrants--which of course is characteristic of the Mexican border cities--you have this situation, this lag between population and supply of public services.”

Though the problem has been an ongoing one for decades in Mexican border cities--many Tijuana neighborhoods were originally founded as squatter communities--many observers here believe that it has exploded at a record pace in recent years, as the nation’s economic crisis propels more and more migrants northward.

Others, including Bustamante, say the situation is actually more under control now than a decade ago.

Whatever the perception, there is no disputing that the invasions continue as a direct consequence of the constant flow of humanity to northern Mexico. Although U.S. accounts emphasize immigrants who enter the United States, the fact is that untold numbers settle along the border in Mexico, severely taxing areas already incapable of providing basic services to many residents.

No one knows how many squatters live in Tijuana, but one neighborhood alone among the many invasiones houses more than 1,000 families.

Everywhere on the Mexican side of the border, there are swollen neighborhoods with unpaved streets, open sewers and shanty-town dwellings--fertile breeding grounds of disease, crime and social unrest.

In Tijuana, according to official estimates, almost a third of the 1.2 million residents lack indoor plumbing. In Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1 million across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Tex., about a quarter of the population has the same problem.

“Of course, the governor recognizes it as a serious problem, but he has said that it is a social problem, not a political problem,” said Miguel Angel Torres, a spokesman for Baja California Gov. Xicotencatl Leyva Mortera, who has been both praised and assailed for his handling of the situation.

Nonetheless, the fact is that the invasiones have had strong political repercussions in Tijuana and other border cities. During his campaign, Leyva Mortera made a promise to provide a dignified dwelling for every family. (“He put the noose around his own neck,” said one critic.)

Frequently, squatters’ rights groups, usually affiliated with political parties, have become important political forces, with charismatic leaders agitating for land titles and trading accusations and insults with officials.

In squatter neighborhoods along the border, there is a very unsubtle battle being waged for the hearts and minds of the new residents. Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish acronym as PRI, is using promises of future ownership to bring squatters under its tricolor banner.

In Tijuana, a day rarely passes without some critic blasting the government for not providing land for the landless.

“The government is more interested in other priorities--bringing services to industrial areas, paying off the foreign debt--than providing land for poor people,” said Zavalo, who is a member of the opposition Revolutionary Party of the Workers and is one of the most vocal and well-spoken leaders of the squatter groups.

“The governor recognizes the right of people to own a dignified dwelling,” responded Torres. “But people can’t just settle wherever they want. There has to be order.”

While squatters such as those found here would probably be promptly evicted and/or jailed in U.S. cities, the outcome is not nearly so clear-cut in Mexico, where the issue touches a raw nerve. Land reform was a central concern of the not-so-distant revolution of 1910-17. Historical figures such as Emiliano Zapata, who championed the rights of landless peasants, are enshrined in Mexican history.

Much of the success of Mexico’s ruling PRI stems from its ability to use revolutionary rhetoric to enlist the support of mass groups of peasants. Consequently, political leaders tend to become unnerved at the sight of landless peasants marching in the streets or loudly protesting at government offices, demanding pieces of land.

“These are people who are the natural constituency of the PRI,” Bustamante said.

Efforts by authorities to remove squatters have often led to violent confrontations of the type that belies the PRI’s preferred image as a paternalistic provider for the poor. Thus, dislodging squatters by force is considered a last resort, but the threat is always there--particularly because the land is often owned by the government or by wealthy proprietors who carry considerable clout.

In Baja California, the government has launched a much-ballyhooed program to assist squatters by relocating them to so-called “people’s neighborhoods.” Applicants judged to be needy are eligible to receive lots for a nominal payment of about $7.15 a month. In the last three years, the governor’s spokesman said, the effort has resulted in about 36,000 families statewide being provided with land or building materials.

“The governor understands that these people invade out of necessity,” said Torres, the governor’s spokesman.

Critics say the numbers are seriously inflated. There are only two “people’s neighborhoods” in Tijuana, they note, housing fewer than 3,000 families. Moreover, critics complain that those neighborhoods tend to be far from the city center, making them a long commute to work via the city’s problematic public transportation system.

“The program is a good idea, but we need many more,” said Francisco Fregoso, a leader with a group known as the Grupo Francisco Zarco. “People are arriving here daily from every part of the Republic. Where are they going to live? . . . All we want is a piece of land for our children.”

As Fregoso spoke, standing in the hallway of the state office complex here, a group of protesters aired their complaints. They had come to pressure the government to expropriate a 400-acre parcel of land and turn it into a “people’s neighborhood.” Otherwise, they threatened, they would soon invade it.

“We can’t afford to pay the rents,” said Esther Estrada, a 36-year-old mother of seven who migrated to Tijuana 18 years ago. “The governor hasn’t kept his promise to us.”

A few miles down the road, in Tijuana’s Zona del Rio, future residents were hammering away at their future homes. Cardboard and scrap wood will serve as walls. Roofs fashioned from tar paper or plastic, held down by old tires, will serve as protection from the winter rains. Most residences have no electricity or running water.

Though officials have said that these squatters must eventually move from this valuable government land, several hundred families continue to occupy this stretch of property, which is not far from Tijuana’s central commercial zone.

“We will never leave this place,” said Eva Sanchez Moreno, a feisty 62-year-old who has been active in the fight for squatters’ rights for years.

“They say we don’t have titles to the land. Titles? What titles? Our titles are our children. We have a constitutional right to a piece of land. This is our land.”