Fulbright: Mid-term report

I began my project intending to realize a micro-history of el Pedregal de Santo Domingo, a paracaidistaneighborhood in Mexico City, relying mostly on oral histories with residents, and supplemented by archival research. I wanted to understand how residents had constructed and organized their neighborhood from scratch, both by petitioning local governing authorities and by working autonomously in neighborhood associations. After involving myself in Santo Domingo and beginning my exploration of the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) and other archives, I realized that by limiting the project to study only the internal organization of a single community I would be missing much of what is interesting about the paracaidista phenomenon that engulfed the city during the 1960s and 1970s. I also realized that my knowledge of Santo Domingo’s history was far too limited to immediately begin oral histories with original residents.

The result is that my project has changed in two important ways. First, the scope of my project has broadened to include several questions about the paracaidismo of the city’s metropolitan area. How did citizens and urban governance (elected officials, organizations, programs) participate in the physical and social organization of Mexico City’s growth? How did economic and social policy (changes in government structure, creation of new laws and programs, etc.) reflect the vision held by urban governance for the city’s growth? How did these policies contribute to the demographic explosion and the organizational and social crisis of the city? By adding these questions, I will expand the results of my research to include conclusions about the nature of the urban process, namely the extent to which different actors control its direction, and with which mechanisms, tools, and tactics.

Second, archival research now makes up much more of my source material than I had originally planned. Oral histories are still indispensible for achieving the goals I originally outlined, but in order to understand the whole story of the organizational upheaval that the city underwent during this period, and in order to ask the right questions in my oral histories, other varieties of source material now constitute a much larger portion of my source base. Since my project aims to gauge the nature and influence of citizen participation, the histories and perspectives of individual residents are still an integral component of my research.

• Research progress: revision and detailed catalogue of nearly 200 documents, photographs, and newspaper articles; review of secondary literature; fieldwork in Santo Domingo and beginning stages of interview process; preliminary writing
• Archives consulted: Hemeroteca Nacional; various archives within the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN); el Museo Archivo de la Fotografía (MAF)
• Archives to consult: continuation of AGN; Archivo General Agrario; Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal (AHDF); various mapotecas and fototecas housed within the AGN, AHDF, and the Biblioteca Nacional; Mexican census data (accessible through UNAM libraries)
• Government agencies to consult: Comisión para la Regularización de la Tenencia de la Tierra (CORETT); Delegación de Coyoacán (especially Unidad Departamental de Regularización Territorial)

// SEF // Mexico City, Mexico