ART AS AN ENGINE OF TRANSFORMATION: Re-thinking “La Merced” neighborhood of Mexico City
Diana Vazquez Martinez | Master Thesis, 2020
The east of Mexico City's Historic Center, particularly in the neighborhood and market of La Merced is threatened by gentrification processes, besides facing increasing deterioration, unemployment and insecurity. The strongly contested gentrification process that Mexico City’s historic center is undergoing has slowly advanced, transforming the spatial configuration of the place and creating different displacements linked to street commerce and diverse popular uses of public space.
La Merced inhabitants, particularly the popular urban and rural migrant sectors, have found possibilities to develop strategies to confront their conditions of deprivation and structural exclusion. This works approaches La Merced as a ground for resistance, expresion and renewal. It recognizes that a wide range of artistic and cultural manifestations occur, as a collective action that is part of a whole cultural movement in La Merced.
My work traces the history of these interventions, presents what they activate during their process of creation and performance, and how are playing a relevant role in the aesthetics of the city: in the way of making and re-imagining the city, and in the construction of a future for the neighborhood, strengthening the social struggle of the inhabitants to remain in La Merced.