Disaster in Mexico City: ¿neoliberalism or earthquakes?

Abstract

This article deals with the socio-territorial transformations of the last three decades in Mexico City and the disasters attributed to the earthquakes that occurred in September 1985 and in 2017. It is based on the idea that disaster is not an event, but a process. Therefore, when analyzing the causes of the tragedy, in urban terms, we find more causal elements in the implementation of neoliberalism than in the telluric movements. Based on this, it is argued that, for capitalist interests, destruction has been a field of opportunity for the advance and consolidation of an economic model that has been configured as structural cause of disaster.