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In the municipality of Córdoba, in the central Mexican state of Veracruz, lies El Patio de la Estrella, a neighborhood inhabited and defended by Afro-descendants, women, and LGBTI+ people. Since 2016, they have resisted attempts at forced evictions and now also the processes of gentrification and touristification. The Ministry of Tourism has just named Córdoba a "magical town."

The residents of El Patio continue to resist police and institutional harassment from the Córdoba City Council. Using intimidation, lawsuits, bribes, and eviction attempts, the authorities are seeking to force the families to leave the area to build a shopping center.

“We know that with their gentrification policies they are going to destroy this space that is my home, my haven, the place where much of my personal, family, and community identity has been built,” says Lx Santx, a resident of Patio de la Estrella.

Currently, the Patio de la Estrella has a mixed use. It houses families and also functions as a self-managed community cultural center; and as a shelter, especially for women and LGBT people who are victims of violence and need a roof over their heads.

The Patio de la Estrella is also the only space in Córdoba that offers free cultural options and creates solidarity-based spaces for precarious producers. It's also a meeting place for women and sexual dissidents, organized by the maroon, anti-racist, and Afro-transfeminist collective Ko'olelm .

Magic for tourists

The municipality of Córdoba has just been designated a "magical town," a "signature of exclusivity and prestige" awarded by the Ministry of Tourism (Sectur). The goal, according to the Guide to the Incorporation and Permanence of Magical Towns , is "to achieve development objectives and for tourism to contribute as an activity to raising levels of well-being."

Every year, the governors of Mexico's states enter a competition and nominate municipalities to be considered magical towns.

“The main problem with the issue of magical towns is touristification. It's a very similar process to gentrification, but there are some differences. Among them is the fact that prioritization is a market, an industry. The concept of magical towns itself is based on the idea that there are areas that will be dedicated to tourism. Therefore, tourism is a priority, even over housing,” Carla Escoffié .

The Mexican government has designated 177 territories as "magical towns." The list published by Sectur (National Secretariat of Tourism) lists 132, but in June of this year, 46 more municipalities were designated as "magical towns," including Córdoba. There are now eight "magical towns."

"Space is a product"

“The Magic Towns policy doesn't include an analysis of eviction mitigation or gentrification. There's only an analysis of space as a product. The design of Magic Towns is a touristification policy, and that can lead to forced evictions, community displacement, and neighborhood disintegration,” Escoffié adds.

The Ministry of Tourism is increasingly expanding these types of programs. Just in September 2022, it announced the "Magical Neighborhoods" program, focused on spaces "with charm, tradition, and mysticism" located in cities. Additionally, in May of this year, it announced the "Kingdoms of Mexico" program. According to the head of the Ministry of Tourism, this designation will be given to "developments inspired by other regions of the world." There are already two locations in the country with this "brand .

But the defense of El Patio de la Estrella did not begin when Córdoba was named a “magical town.”

Evictions and police harassment

In 2016, the argument that Córdoba City Council authorities gave the residents of El Patio de la Estrella to abandon their homes was that they had "purchased portions" of the property. However, according to Ms. Batista, who is leading El Patio's legal battle, the deeds presented by the City Council during a trial contain inconsistencies.

In 2016, former PAN mayor Tomás Ríos Bernal launched an operation with three patrol cars and at least 25 police officers in the early morning hours to evict the 19 families then living in Patio de la Estrella. The forced eviction was unsuccessful because it was women who resisted, and they were never presented with any documentation attesting to the legality of the act.

Since 2016, the City Council has maintained a policy of harassment against families. They have tried to bribe them with 50,000 pesos and offered them a house on the outskirts of Córdoba if they would leave. Out of fear, at least 16 families left Patio de la Estrella. Those who remain resist institutional and police harassment and the constant uncertainty of experiencing yet another attempt at forced eviction.

Mrs. Batista, Lx Santx's mother, who is leading the legal fight, was also charged by the City Council with the crime of "dispossession." She was prosecuted and found guilty in a criminal trial that lasted seven years. She even lost her job as a result.

Furthermore, the newspaper El Buen Tono, a media outlet aligned with the Córdoba government, has used its media clout to publish personal information about the families.

“ In Mexico, the right to housing is not guaranteed.”

Attorney Carla Escoffié comments that in Mexico, housing is viewed as a market object, not a necessity or a right. "The right to housing is not guaranteed; in Mexico, we don't have a public housing policy, but rather a real estate policy," she says.

But then, how do we understand housing? For Escoffie, housing itself is the right to have a place to live. It is also the right to have measures to prevent forced evictions that are arbitrary, illegal, and unjustified; and even the right to non-discrimination in access to housing.

The City Council's harassment of the families living in the Patio de la Estrella has caused stress that has made them ill.

Escoffié also mentions that narratives that speak about the “benefits of tourism” and “improving” certain areas of cities respond to whitening through dispossession.

“What happens is that improvements are often linked to the issue of profiling people. That is, who is accepted, but also what practices are accepted. And precisely issues like sex work, LGBT people, racialized people, migrants. They are seen as people who must be removed for the “improvement” of the space. Often, this improvement of the space implies not only a spatial change but also a population change.”

From a slave to a neighborhood courtyard

The Patio de la Estrella is considered a historical heritage site dating back to 1857 and is located in the historic center of Córdoba, Veracruz. This site was originally a place where enslaved Black people were bought and sold by slave owners. Over time, it has had various uses until it became what is known as the neighborhood patio.

In Veracruz, more than 215,000 people identify as Afro-descendants, according to the National Institute of Statistics, Geography, and Informatics ( INEGI ). This represents 2.7% of Mexico's total population.

In Mexico today, the word "neighborhood" denotes a very specific type of housing and is historically associated with housing where precarious people live.

According to the INEGI Population and Housing Census (2020), in Veracruz there are 32,513 neighborhoods or quarters where 83,889 people live.

“Since the 19th century, the poorest population groups have turned to so-called vecindades. This housing option, located primarily in the city's central and run-down areas, is the result of the transformation of the large mansions of bourgeois families,” explains María Teresa Esquivel Hernández, a doctor and urban studies researcher.

But they are also spaces that, due to their construction, have allowed for forms of community coexistence and solidarity networks. This is rarely seen in an apartment building or low-income housing unit.

“This is the only open space for women and dissidents in Córdoba. It's the only place that, through oral tradition with an anti-racist and decolonial perspective, seeks to crush and demystify the legends created by the Spanish colony. We build all of this through community,” says Lx Santx.