Walking the Margin: Gender and Urban Spatial Production in La Paz, Mexico

Abstract

This comparison of two urban public spaces in the city of La Paz, Baja California Sur, examines the production of gendered space within an ethnohistorical context of material and discursive practices related to socio-spatial order, cultural and biological reproduction, and the construction of urban scale. The focus of the study of these two “commons” is on the liminal spatiality of the central plaza and the seaside promenade, the role of everyday life and consumption in the production of these spaces, and the role of women in these successive spatial transformations. In order to understand the relations and practices that produce these commons, the various spatial transformations that have affected the southern Baja California Peninsula are described and discussed. It is a place that has been constituted and reconstituted within successive globalizing forces since at least the beginning of the sixteenth century, up to and including contemporary international tourism. The city of La Paz, its people, and its sense of itself as expressed in its public spaces have emerged from these historical and cross-cultural processes. By examining and comparing the Parque Velasco and the Malecón as the products of both past and emerging patterns of spatial discourse in the negotiation, rehearsal and affirmation of gender identities, the following specific questions are addressed: What is the role women play in the cultural production and reproduction of these public spaces in a borderland? How do the spaces differ--materially, discursively, and in usage? What or whose purposes do they serve? How do they position peripheral agents within a hegemonic globalizing process? Finally, the study considers the question of what future can be envisioned for La Paz and its commons as border spaces.