the mexico city metro

I had been told that the Mexico City metro system was great, but I didn’t fully believe these statements until I actually moved here and became a user of “el metro.”

Some of the reasons why I love the metro system:

1. I live near the southern end of the Línea 2, or the royal blue line at the General Anaya station. Even though I live on the outskirts of the metro system, it takes me no more than 40 minutes to get most places–and often it takes less.  Partly, this is because the the different metro lines are organized in a way that makes sense, as opposed to what I’m used to–Chicago’s El.  The layout of the Chicago El looks sort of like spokes radiating out from a wheel hub, meaning there are few possibilities to transfer outside of the downtown area.  In contrast, the Mexico City metro has transfer stations everywhere.  Sort of amazing.
2. It costs 3 pesos per ride with free transfers.  For my non-peso-using friends, that’s about $0.24 USD.  That’s right, riding the Mexico City metro costs less than a quarter.
3. The women only car!  The first several cars of each train are reserved for women, children, and the elderly.  The policy is only sometimes enforced by security agents and police, but you can always count on the first several cars to be majority–if not entirely–women.  Sometimes the timing is such that walking to the front of the platform for the women-only cars would mean having to wait for the next train.  When I first got here, I generally settled for the regular cars in exchange for not missing the train.  Usually this meant immediately feeling uncomfortable because in the non women-only cars there are generally very few women and I don’t love being stared at by a train full of men.  Quickly, I realized it is a much better policy to wait for the next train, in part because…
4. Trains come every 3 minutes!  Seriously.  It’s amazing.
5. The metro is also very clean, which is surprising for a city of 22 million inhabitants.  I especially love my line (the royal blue line) because the cars are super shiny and new.
6. You’ll never run out of batteries!  Nearly every item that costs 10 pesos or less can be bought on the metro.  Admittedly, I sometimes find the battery- or CD-sellers annoying (“Diez pesos le vale!  Diez pesos le cuesta!”), but they can be incredibly useful and convenient, too.
7. Picture time!  Every metro stop has a unique graphic image.  These station logos were implemented at the time of construction to accommodate Mexico City’s non-literate population.  The image for each station corresponds with either the name of the station or the neighborhood in which the station is located.  For example, the logo for the Coyoacán station is of a howling coyote, as Coyoacán means “place of the coyotes” in Nahuatl.

The Mexico City metro by the numbers:

• Annual ridership (2008): 1,467,000,000 (fifth-largest in the world)
• Average daily ridership (2008): 4,019,178
• Miles of track: 110
• Cost of trip: 3 pesos/.24 USD
• Number of stations: 175
• Number of lines: 11
• The year the first line opened for operation: 1969

The Mexico City metro system has, in fact, come up in the course of my research.  First, the construction of the metro required immense amounts of labor power.  The first phase of the construction began in 1967 and ended in 1972, during which Lines 1, 2, and 3 were finished.  The second phase of construction did not begin until 1977.  Many of the individuals who worked on the first phase of construction came from elsewhere in Mexico, usually from rural areas in state with little work opportunities.  The construction of the metro was also paired with several other massive construction projects in preparation for the 1968 Olympic Games, like the Olympic Village and the Aztec Stadium.  The massive influx of laborers with scarce economic resources (which diminished as the construction projects were completed and unemployment rose) contributed to an already booming population with an insatiable appetite for land and housing.  Thus the late 60s and 70s saw a blossoming of urban land invasions and colonias paracaidístas–literally “parachute neighborhoods.”

Secondly, the metro system was designed in the late 1960s and so gives a good snapshot of city limits at that time.  Much of what now encompasses the metropolitan area is not served by the metro (for those from Chicago, think about the limited reach of the El into the southern part of the city).  The neighborhood of Santo Domingo, a focus of my research, was a community on the urban fringe when it was founded as a colonia paracaidista in 1971.  This is illustrated by the fact that it is served by the metro station Universidad–the southern terminal station on line 3 (the pea green line).  Today, Santo Domingo is squarely within the urban center of the city.  (This, of course, has prompted a whole new set of problems as the land value increases and residents who came in 1971 are themselves subdividing lots and renting to new waves of migrants from the Mexican interior.)  The rapid expansion of the city’s urban reach can be read in the history of land disputes between these new-comers (invasadores, or invaders) and the campesinos, comuneros (individuals pertaining to commonly held land parcel), and ejidatarios (individuals pertaining to different type of communal land tenure specific to Mexico) who lived a rural, agriculturally-based lifestyle.  Before the invasion of 1971, for example, Santo Domingo was communal land and recognized as such by the Federal Government.  In that case, the comuneros and the invasadores were engaged in conflict over ownership of land for many years after the invasion.  The conflict was often violent, with comuneros burning down the makeshift houses erected by the invasadores, and both sides organizing themselves into armed militias.