Urbanización neoliberal y procesos de destrucción territorial creativa del ejido suburbano: el caso de La Aldea, Morelia, Michoacán

Abstract

Within a context of privatization and commodification of the production of urban space, the neoliberal Latin American city is characterized by an explosive physical expansion over adjacent rural areas and a patchwork structure of its peripheries. Once the city encroaches over rural areas, it destroys the institutional fundaments of such territories, giving pass to new territorial arrangements that enable the expansion of the capital. In Mexico, such production has been materialized over peri-urban land with social property (ejido). The purpose of this paper is to show from the Critical Geography perspective, how neoliberal urbanization has hastened as well as intensified the creative territorial destruction over peri-urban ejido. By using the dialectical method, we analyze the case of La Aldea, an ejido located in the northeastern part of the periphery of Morelia City, in Michoacan state. Findings show how neoliberal urbanization destroys the fundaments of the rural-ejidal territories, producing new geographies of inequality that somehow facilitate the reproduction of the capital.