“Let cleanliness and neatness be the distinctive sign of our city”. The city center of Chihuahua and some of its ‘vecindades’, 1934–1971

Abstract

This urban history research addresses the historiographic gap on the theme of ‘vecindades’ in the city of Chihuahua through the identification, description, and analysis of the social function that they fulfilled between 1934 and 1971: satisfying the housing deficit after the intense migration from the countryside to the city. The sources used were maps, reports, and government records, as well as correspondence between the authorities and the people. At the same time, some of the ways of life that developed within the neighborhoods are described and analyzed, as well as the perception that society had about this type of housing and the people who inhabited it through the testimony of those who lived with its inhabitants and the photographs that attest to its existence. Also, I complementarily argue that the state urbanization and redevelopment policies of the 1956–1971 period were key in the modernization of the city, which implied the indiscriminate destruction of buildings and constructions, in addition to the gentrification and sectorization of the population. I conclude that the ‘vecindades’, as it was the case in other cities of the republic, were shelters for social otherness and the ‘undesirable’.