Mexico Builds Success Story on Quake Ruins

More than 20 months after two powerful earthquakes drove thousands of Mexico City citizens out of damaged homes, an impressive government reconstruction effort here is almost complete, and most of the displaced have moved into new residences.

The homes, in apartment clusters called vecindades , are sprinkled throughout the densely populated neighborhoods of Tepito, Morelos and Guerrero, near downtown, as well as in the old central district called the First Quadrant. Brightly painted in colors ranging from papaya to avocado green to cobalt blue, the homes lend a festive air to the generally drab neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, hundreds of aluminum sheds and canvas tents used as shelters for the homeless have been removed from city streets, parks and esplanades.

Few Families Still in Camps

Of about 28,000 families driven to the outdoors after the earthquakes, only 360 remain in street-side camps, according to the government’s Popular Housing Renovation office, formed to coordinate the building of new residences. Of another 19,000 families that took refuge with friends or family under a government-subsidized rental program, only 2,400 have yet to move into their new homes, housing officials added. In all, about 200,000 people have moved into permanent shelters.

Despite a slow start, the housing program is perhaps the most successful project undertaken by the administration of President Miguel de la Madrid. De la Madrid is in the fifth year of a six-year term that has been marked by economic stagnation and high inflation.

After the two September, 1985, earthquakes, observers here wondered whether the government, seemingly bogged down by bureaucratic inertia, could possibly respond to the sudden need to build 47,000 apartments in some of the inner city’s poorer neighborhoods.

Government inaction set off demonstrations in the late fall of 1985, and further unrest seemed likely. But the crisis passed with the steady completion of more and more homes, beginning in the late spring of 1986.

“It’s a success for the government and for the people,” said Guillermo Flores, a neighborhood leader in the Doctores district of Mexico City.

Marked Improvement

Rafael Galicia, a downtown resident who recently moved into his new home on Pensador Mexicano Street, said: “We’re content with the new houses. They are a lot better than what we lived in before.”

The vast housing program is unusual in several respects. Unlike past urban renewal projects in Mexico City, these houses, in both scale and design, are meant to blend neatly into the low-rise neighborhoods that surround Mexico City’s urban core. In most cases, the residents were permitted to move back to the same site they had abandoned after the quakes.

In all, 3,107 apartment complexes have been built by the government, with another 126 constructed with the help of private aid organizations. Most of the apartment clusters frame open patios containing small gardens. On the street side, space is often made for stores and workshops to preserve the bustling commercial nature of many Mexico City neighborhoods.

Total Cost $400 Million

The total cost of the project reached about $400 million. The World Bank financed about 47% of the construction; the Mexican government, the rest.

In one way, the long slowdown in the Mexican economy made the task of finding material and manpower easier than it might normally have been. There were plenty of under-used factories able to turn out cement and block, and the legions of Mexico City unemployed provided a ready source of labor.

The government expropriated the land used for the new buildings. The apartments are being sold to the returning residents, who pay monthly mortgage installments.

Galicia’s apartment on Pensador Mexicano is typical of the new construction. The 30 apartments each measure about 430 square feet in size. They are arranged around a central courtyard where residents have built a traditional shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint. The U-shaped building is painted a bright orange.

‘Seem Well Made’

“Some of the details were shoddy,” said Galicia, 74, “but in general, the buildings seem well made.” During an interview, Galicia, who is president of the complex’ residents association, was overseeing repairs on metal staircases that, after a few months use, had loosened from their supports.

Over on Jimenez Street in the Doctores neighborhood, Bernardo Lopez said that residents there had been waiting 10 years for new housing promised under a previous urban renewal plan. The earthquake, he said, finally brought action by making their already rundown homes unlivable.

“Without the earthquake, we would still be living in bad conditions,” he said.

The International Red Cross provided the material to build the new parrot-green complex where Lopez lives, and women residents did most of the building while the men went off to their daily jobs.

Nearby, former inhabitants of 14 Doctor Andrade St. await the completion of 72 new apartments. For more than a year, they have lived in aluminum shelters and complained that, because they opposed a government request to increase the number of residents in their vecindad , housing officials were slow to provide materials for the new building.

Getting Impatient

“We have been at this so long,” Elena Jacinto said, sighing. “We hope it will be over in August, but who knows?”

Politically, the rebuilding project set off a prolonged tug-of-war between the government and the residents’ organizations that sprang up in the wake of the earthquake.

After the first tremor struck Sept. 19, 1985, residents took to the streets to mount rescue operations while the government fumbled the organization of its own early relief efforts. Later, with thousands of homeless facing a winter under skimpy shelters, the fledgling groups banded together to press the government for housing help. De la Madrid forced his urban development and ecology minister to resign and spoke out against “bureaucratic tangles” slowing down construction of new shelters.

“Our biggest challenge was to convince the people that we would rebuild for them. It was most difficult to win their confidence,” said Manuel Aguilera, the director of the Popular Housing Renovation agency, which was established to coordinate the new construction.

Refused to Relocate

The lack of trust in government plans was reflected in the unwillingness of many residents to move to camps far from their homes lest someone else end up with their land. Often, skeptical residents set up temporary shelters right beside the building sites for the new homes.

A side effect of the new construction has been to accent the general inadequacy of low-income housing in Mexico City and the inability of the government to deal with it. The spanking new vecindades contrast sharply with many of their older, unrepaired, unpainted neighbors.

Hopes that earthquake repair might translate into general housing improvement intensified with the advent of two quake-related programs.

One is a project to provide loans to residents of damaged buildings so they can buy and repair their own homes. This program, designed for families with higher incomes, is supposed to cover 11,000 families.

Buy and Repair

Under another project, one that has barely begun, the government is supposed to buy and repair dilapidated properties and then sell them, on credit, back to the current residents. This effort is meant to smooth out uneven housing conditions within earthquake-battered neighborhoods, but so far, only about 600 properties are earmarked for treatment under the plan.

Because the government is short of money, it is moving to snip any budding notions, based on the success of the earthquake renovation, that all of Mexico City’s poor can expect their housing to be fixed in short order.

“It would be incorrect to think that an emergency program can be permanent,” said Aguilera, the housing official.

On the other hand, the residents’ groups say they will not disband just because the crisis is over, meaning that housing problems in Mexico City may be, for the first time in years, a major and permanent political pressure point in the capital.