Gladiolas for the Children of Sanchez: Ernesto P. Uruchurtu's Mexico City, 1950-1968

Abstract

This dissertation examines the moralization and beautification campaigns of Mexico City's mayor Ernesto P. Uruchurtu. As head of the Department of the Federal District from 1952-1966, his policies encouraged more popular housing, improved infrastructure, better transportation, cleaner markets, and safer streets. Uruchurtu also aimed to crack down on vice and beautify the city. He believed that through beautification and moralization the city would become safer, healthier, and more livable for all residents. Significantly, he promoted the expansion and improvement of parks, gardens, recreational facilities, the repairing and building of fountains, and the planting of trees and flowers, especially gladiolas. Living with more green and athletic spaces, urban dwellers would have the opportunity to improve physically and spiritually, and would feel inspired to lead more moral lives. Residents could then collectively come together to take pride in their city and generate a stronger sense of civic culture. Consequently, a new generation of youth would grow up in a healthier urban environment and promote national prosperity.This dissertation explores these policies and analyzes the debates surrounding Oscar Lewis's anthropological work, The Children of Sanchez, to highlight anxieties about the effects of urbanization, modernization, and industrialization on the capital's inhabitants. Following the book's publication in 1964, hundreds of articles appeared in newspapers and magazines responding to its subject matter; the intimate details about life for one "typical" poor family living in a slum tenement in the city's center. The debates underscored the uneven benefits of Uruchurtu's policies and offered insights into contradictory depictions of Mexico City: the prospering center of industrialization and growth, and the hub of poverty and despair. Responses to the book expressed how many of the poor experienced economic and political changes during the 1950s and 1960s. The debates also offered details about the cultural and social implications of Uruchurtu's administrative policies and provided a unique opportunity for an open public exchange about life in the capital.