Zero Tolerance Policing

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DOI: 10.1177/0094582X12467761 2013 40: 53 originally published online 20 November 2012Latin American Perspectives

Diane E. DavisPublic Space: Evidence from Mexico City

Zero-Tolerance Policing, Stealth Real Estate Development, and the Transformation of

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53

Zero-Tolerance Policing, Stealth Real Estate Development, and the Transformation of Public Space

Evidence from Mexico Cityby

Diane E. Davis

Rising criminality and violence in key neighborhoods surrounding Mexico Citys his-toric center have limited easy access to downtown public spaces that used to host much of the citys social, commercial, and political life. In 2002 a group of powerful local business-men hired the international security consultant Rudolph Giuliani to design security mea-sures that might remedy the citys crime problems. The Giuliani plan not only called for restrictions on free movement and intense scrutiny of public behavior associated with the strategy of zero tolerance but also suggested the criminalization of certain behaviors and made recommendations for police reform that called into question the distinction between public and private police. One of the principal consequences of its implementation was to circumscribe public access to downtown space. Stated simply, the widening of downtowns public sphere brought a narrowing of access to it along class lines. An exam-ination of the context in which the plan was pursued traces the Giuliani invitation to the dynamics of downtown real estate development and land-use collusion between elected officials and private developers in the name of security policy.

El alza del crimen y la violencia en barrios claves rodeando el centro histrico de la Ciudad de Mxico han limitado el acceso a los espacios pblicos cntricos que antes reciban una gran parte de la vida social, comercial y poltica de la ciudad. En el 2002, un grupo de poderosos empresarios locales contrataron al asesor de seguridad internacional, Rudolph Giuliani para que volvieran a disearse medidas de seguridad que pudieran remediar los problemas del crimen de la ciudad. El plan Giuliani no solo recomendaba la restriccin de la movilidad libre y escrutinio intenso del comportamiento pblico asociado con la cero tolerancia sino que tambin la criminalizacin de ciertos comportamientos y en donde se hicieron recomendaciones de reforma policiaca que cuestionan la distincin entre la polica pblica y la particular. Una de las consecuencias principales de su imple-mentacin fue la forma en que se circunscriba el acceso pblico al espacio cntrico. Puesto simplemente, el anchar de la esfera pblica del centro urbano conllevo al estrechar del acceso al mismo segn lneas de clase. Un examen del contexto en el cual se prosigue en el plan traza la invitacin que se le hizo a Giuliani con la dinmica del desarrollo urbano en bienes races y la colusin en uso de la tierra entre oficiales electos y empresarios urban-izadores en nombre de la seguridad.

Keywords: Crime, Zero-tolerance policing, Real estate development, Public space, Mexico City

467761LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X12467761LAtin AmericAn PersPectivesDavis / Zero tolerance And Public space in mexico city2012

Diane e. Davis is a professor of urbanism and development at Harvard Universitys Graduate school of Design.

LAtin AmericAn PersPectives, issue 189, vol. 40 no. 2, march 2013 53-76DOi: 10.1177/0094582X12467761 2013 Latin American Perspectives

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54 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

rising criminality and violence in key neighborhoods surrounding mexico citys historic center have limited easy access to downtown public spaces that used to host much of the citys social, commercial, and political life.1 these deteriorating security conditions affect citizens, local businesses, and govern-ment alike. Although most urban residents decry this insecurity, there has been little consensus about what to do.2 in early 2002 a group of powerful local busi-nessmen hired the globe-trotting international security consultant rudolph Giuliani to design security measures that might remedy the citys crime prob-lems. Giulianis consulting team offered a program of reform built around the broken-windows model of policing used in new York. the plan not only called for restrictions on free movement and the intense scrutiny of public behavior associated with the strategy of zero tolerance but also suggested the criminalization of certain public behaviors and made recommendations for police reform that called into question the distinction between public and pri-vate police.

the Giuliani plan was criticized by rank-and-file elements of the police, not to mention human rights advocates and vocal members of the press and public, who decried the huge sums of money (Us$4.3 million, according to newspaper accounts) slated for payment to the Giuliani consulting team. still, it garnered considerable enthusiasm from local officials and other key social actors, includ-ing land developers, multinational business executives, large-scale commercial proprietors, tourist-related firms, and some sectors of the middle class. this article examines the rationale for the Giuliani invitation and the implementa-tion of the consulting teams key proposals, one of whose principal conse-quences was to circumscribe public access to downtown space. it not only seeks to explain why an advocate of a relatively harsh, human-rights-violating zero-tolerance program was invited to mexico city under the watch of a left-populist mayor from the Partido de la revolucin Democrtica (Party of the Democratic revolutionPrD), who came to office with the support of the urban poor and a commitment to fostering democratic inclusion. it also exam-ines the social, political, and security dynamics that led to the acceptance of the broken-windows strategy and the longer-term implications of this plan for policing, criminality, and the future of public space in mexico city. specifically, it traces the Giuliani invitation to the dynamics of downtown real estate devel-opment and to land-use collusion between elected officials and private devel-opers in the name of security policy.

the article raises questions about the nature and origins of the public-private sector political coalition behind the Giuliani project, showing how the democ-ratization of local politics, decentralization policies, and other historical condi-tions made an alliance of strange bedfellows possible. it links both the problems of downtown policing and rising crime and the policy solutions currently pro-posed to deal with them to the impact of globalization and liberalization on both downtown land use and access to public space. its discussion of the moti-vations for public and private sector support for the Giuliani plan draws from primary documents such as consulting reports and government or chamber of commerce materials and press releases, as well as secondary newspaper accounts and supplementary data.3


Davis / ZERO TOLERANCE AND PUBLIC SPACE IN MEXICO CITY 55

i begin with a discussion of the deteriorating urban security situation in mexico city in the 1990s, the failure of local authorities to turn the situation around despite conscientious efforts to do so, and the emergence of a new coali-tion of private and public sector leaders to invite rudolph Giuliani to design a new security plan for mexico city. After discussing the basic elements of this plan, i turn to an assessment of who supported or opposed its recommenda-tions and why and discuss the assumptions about urban space, policing, and society embodied in the divergent stances. i close with a discussion of the implications of this imported security program for residents and the city, among them the trade-offs between greater security for some groups and diminished access to downtown space for others, and the links between global-ization, urban deterioration, and the growing popularity of zero-tolerance policing.

Urban Violence and insecUrity in the 1990s: Failed eFForts at reForm

Although many cities in mexico now suffer from stunning rates of violence and crime, mexico citys problems with growing crime, delinquency, and vio-lence were among the first to be identified, and they date to the mid-1990s. Between 1990 and 1996, reported rates of robbery, property damage, fraud, and extortion more than doubled, from 1,059.0 to 2,434.3 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants (Fundacin mexicana para la salud, 1997: 16), and the percentage of robberies involving violence increased from 38.5 percent to 55.5 percent. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, citizens who used to buy goods in the historic center and stroll through the downtown plazas and boulevards surrounding the government offices, museums, and national cathedral were increasingly fearful of venturing downtown (see icesi, 2005). this held true not only for middle-class residents, many of whom still visited the historic center to shop, but also for lower-income people who lived nearby and routinely purchased lower-end consumer durables sold informally on downtown streets.

there were many reasons that the security situation began to deteriorate in the late 1990s. in addition to the growing predominance of the drug trade in mexico, which accelerated after the U.s. Drug enforcement Agency closed off global trading routes from colombia (thus pushing drug traffickers into and through mexico [see Andreas, 1998, and Bailey and Godson, 2000]), intensified political and economic liberalization also made its mark on security conditions (see Davis and Alvarado, 1999, and Lomnitz, 2003). Political liberalization meant that the Partido revolucionario institucional (institutional revolutionary PartyPri) began losing control over some of its previously loyal forces, including the police, who had worked on behalf of the party-state for decades (see Davis, 2004). economic liberalization, for its part, increased income inequality and made social polarization more visible in the city and the nation. that these trends played an important role in the acceleration of violence and criminality is suggested by the fact that from December 1995 to December 1997, a two-year period capturing the immediate spillover effects of the north American



Free trade Agreement (nAFtA), the rate of (reported) violent robberies jumped from 139.7 to 176.5 daily, surpassing even car thefts, whose rate rose from 154.7 to 169.2 daily (Direccin General de recursos Humanos, 1998: 11).

Whatever the origins of the growing insecurity, its destructive impact on urban life was hard to ignore. One of the first things noted by the citys first democratically elected mayor, cuauhtmoc crdenas, who took office in 1997 after close to seven decades of one-party rule, was that mexico citys crime rate had nearly tripled between 1995 and 1998, in no small part because of defi-ciencies in the economy (Gobierno del Distrito Federal, 1998: 13). He also cited two other contributing factors: the deterioration of the national police and the lack of coordination among different branches of law enforcement. With the achievement of a secure and just city a primary goal of his administration, he sought new structures for hiring and formulated alternative mechanisms for police oversight. these changes included lie detector tests for new and return-ing police personnel, forced resignations among the judicial police (those empowered with bringing criminals to court), and a new system for tracking preventative police (beat cops, entrusted with guaranteeing social order) by neighborhood.

From crdenass perspective the problems of insufficient coordination and inadequate policing had everything to do with the corruption of the police force and its ties to the long-standing ruling party. it was common knowledge that the mexico city police were highly corrupt and had been so for years (see martnez de murgua, 1998, and Arteaga and Lpez, 1998). For this reason, in the original discussions of the problem of rising crime in the 1990s most blame was attributed to police failures, with much less attention to crime as a social problem. it may, however, have been crdenass linking urban insecurity to corrupt and abusive police practices that ultimately limited his efforts to stem the rising violence and criminality. For obvious reasons, the police balked at this characterization of the problem, making them antagonists to any efforts at reform. moreover, as a new mayor from a new party, crdenas had far more opponents than allies in the political structures of governance. thus he lacked institutional or political partners to help tackle the problem of police corrup-tion, in no small part because the mexico city police (as elsewhere in the nation) were still dominated by elements loyal to the Pri. Also, because the PrD was a relatively new party, born out of the struggle for democracy, crdenas came to his post with a weak party base. Both factors further estranged him from the police force and limited his room for maneuver in crime-fighting policy.

Almost from the beginning, crdenass efforts at reform were met by public intransigence from leading police officials, one of whom went directly to the press to defend the moral quality of the citys police despite his own recognition of the occasional problem of judicial police . . . linkages with mafia dedicated to the theft and resale of automobiles and auto parts (La Jornada, August 25, 1999). evidence of crdenass limited room for maneuver in purging the police of cor-rupt elements and reducing crime is that, after his first round of police reforms, beat cops boldly protested by withholding their services in such a way as to facilitate the increased commission of crime in the city. in the first weeks after the reforms noted above, crime rates went through the roof, a direct product of police inaction and perhaps even concerted action (i.e., involvement in criminal acts as a form of retribution). calculated police impunity was so extreme that mexico



city Police chief Alejandro Gertz manero acknowledged that the citys 40,000 member force [wa]s out of control (La Jornada, march 9, 1999).

the reasons for the opposition to the reforms were multiple and deeply engrained in the structures of policing, but one of them was that the Pri main-tained its monopoly on national power and with it a reservoir of institutional capacities that could be used to undermine reform efforts in the capital city. they included a system of federal police forces, still tied to the (Pri-dominated) national executive, with a history of intervening in mexico city affairs; a military bureau-cracy still answering to the Pri and also increasingly worried about what would be exposed in terms of federal armed forces complicity and impunity if mexico city police were successfully purged; and considerable federal control of local finances. Also, the constitution limited the autonomy of the mayor to name his own police chief; any appointee had to be supported by the president and approved by the national congress. Under these conditions, it was very difficult for the mexico city mayor to make much headway on local police reform, especially reform that could expose past Pri wrongdoing in the area of political policing.

crdenas was further limited by the fact that problems of crime were also contingent on the governments capacity to indict the criminal elements that were the source of violent disorder and criminality. the malfunctioning of the judicial system was not just a result of beat cops refusal to cooperate with the state in investigating drug and other gang-related crime (either because they were directly involved in such activities4 or as an act of protest in response to reform-fueled threats to their own livelihood) or to the systems separation of beat cops from the police who have the power to bring criminals to justice. it was also a consequence of the strong-arm efforts of crdenas (through his appointed attorney general, samuel del villar) to cleanse the judicial police of corrupt officers, which alienated key elements of that next stage of the justice system. this problem, too, was acknowledged by then-chief Gertz, who pub-licly lamented the lack of institutional or legal coordination which [could] link [crime] prevention with investigation or articulate civil, business, and penal codes (La Jornada, march 9, 1999).

After a string of failures, including an aborted effort to militarize the mexico city police by bringing in the federal army, crdenas left office in 2000 having made very little headway on the problems of crime and insecurity. if anything, by his final year as mayor there appeared to be even less cooperation between crime-fighting elements than before. A 2000 report cited elected representatives from the mexico city legislative assembly as claiming a total lack of control over police forces and a situation in which there is no longer authority or order (cevallos, 2003, quoted in Anozie et al., 2004: 2). this depressing assessment of the situation was partly corroborated by official statistics showing that of the 1.5 million crimes reported yearly in mexico city in that period, only 7 percent of reported crimes were ever solved (smith, 2003), and by a U.s. Foreign military studies Office study contending that in the Federal District close to 6 of every 10 crimes involve[d] policemen (turbiville, 19975; cf. Anozie et al., 2004: 2).

GiUliani to the rescUe

crdenass electoral successor,6 Andres manuel Lpez Obrador, also of the PrD, knew that something had to be done. Because the July 2000 national



elections eliminated the Pri from the national executive, many police no longer had allies in the federal government to sustain opposition to serious reform efforts. However, the 2000 elections brought a president from another rival party, vicente Fox of the Partido de Accin nacional (national Action PartyPAn), whose proclivity was not to cooperate with the PrD or Lpez Obrador in reducing crime and establishing security, having campaigned on that issue himself. this larger political environment of democratization and competition among rival parties only served to increase tensions over how best to reform the police, leading to further stalemate on the local level (see Davis, 2006a). in 2000 the structure of policing changed, with the president creating a federal ministry charged with overseeing questions of policing nationwide. From this point on, the federal government would be more directly involved in local policing, a state of affairs that further limited mayoral autonomy with respect to police matters; the mexico city police chief focused primarily on controlling beat cops, while the federal Office of Public security exercised oversight over the federal preventative and judicial police working in mexico city.

even with these changes limiting his scope for action, mayor Lpez Obrador immediately undertook several important reforms in the structure of the local police force, including the establishment of a new cadre of community police (polica comunitaria). nonetheless, with limited hope for effective coordination between the federal executive and mexico city authorities, with no end in sight to the declining employment situation in the city because of the relocation of industrial employment opportunities to northern border areas, and with the illegal and informal economy in key downtown areas increasing in volume as old sources of formal employment evaporated, crime and security conditions in the city continued to deteriorate (see Davis, 2006a). it was in this environ-ment that mexico city officials and local business leaders turned to rudolph Giuliani.

most accounts suggest that the original invitation came in late fall 2001, almost 10 months after Lpez Obrador took office. it is difficult to pinpoint the date because it is not entirely clear who was responsible for contacting Giuliani in the first place. some reports have suggested that it was the mayor who invited Giuliani to mexico city in October 2001, a month after the attacks on Washington and new York that catapulted Giuliani into the global limelight (Llopart, 2003: 22). Others contend that the contact was first made by the busi-nessman carlos slim (owner of sanborns, telmex, and other leading firms fused into a globally influential conglomerate with multiple investment arms), who made large donations to new York after the destruction of the World trade center and in fact footed the consultancy bill of Us$4.3 million (Friedsky, 2005). still others suggest a combined effort of slim and Lpez Obrador. sources close to slim suggest that he and Lpez Obrador were already working together behind the scenes to address questions of reviving and rescuing downtown mexico city and that the official invitation to Giuliani most likely emerged as part of this shared objective.7 complicating matters, however, other accounts suggest that it was Lpez Obradors own appointed police chief, marcelo ebrard, who was responsible for the invitation.8

Who initiated the conversation may not matter as much as that support for Giulianis visit was applauded by both public and private sector actors and



institutions in the city and that concerns about the security situation were shared by both business and government officials associated with the citys main leftist party. the citys police chief, marcelo ebrard, took official respon-sibility for the formal invitation and served as project supervisor, appearing with Giuliani and escorting him through town when he first came to mexico city in January 2002. ebrard also appeared in news conferences and press accounts that showcased the Giuliani tour.

Once Giuliani and his U.s.-based consulting team arrived in mexico, the terms of the agreement were made public. the former new York city mayor was to survey the crime situation, write a report, and offer within six months a set of recommendations for reversing the problems of violence and insecurity in mexico city.9 As if to underscore the severity of the problems, the press noted that Giuliani proceeded on his preliminary rounds of the city with a fleet of armored cars and accompanied by a corps of special officers and bodyguards numbering nearly 300, prompting one local policeman to ask sardonically whether Giuliani routinely strolled the streets of new York in this way. clearly, the enormous price tag of the consultancy was not the only source of contro-versy; another was the hubris of anyone proposing quick and simple solutions to a long-standing problem.

Among those expressing concern, the rank-and-file police were particularly critical of the peripatetic Giuliani and Bernard Kerik (his comrade in arms for the first mexico city trip), whose consulting team (along with former colleague William Brattons) has appeared on the short list of practically every Latin American city seeking to attack problems of violence and insecurity.10 the problem was not merely how to justify spending Us$4.3 million on a team that had the reputation of proposing the same plan for every case11 or accepting a figure that seemed almost obscene when compared with the meager salaries most cops received (less than Us$6,000 annually). many also expressed outrage at the assumption that foreign consultants with almost no knowledge of mexican social and legal institutions would be able to address the problems of mexico city in any meaningful way.

Despite the ridicule and skepticism, Giuliani did file his report, and the pri-vate sector lauded its recommendations, as did Police chief ebrard, who pre-sented its main tenets in a variety of public fora. the results were hardly a surprise. According to the criminology expert ral Fraga, the plan was essen-tially the re-application, with a few modifications, of the zero-tolerance strat-egy applied to new York, which meant that it contained an overwhelming emphasis on making small crimes a priority (Friedsky, 2005: 2). Among the reports recommendations were the transformation of individual behavior, including simple actions like obeying traffic signals and not offering bribes to police officers, harsh drug penalties in drug-free school zones, the elimination of prostitution on the streets, the creation of antigraffiti and antinoise police units, and a crackdown on the informal economy of squeegee men, street chil-dren who perform magic tricks, and frenaleros, who watch parked cars.

Also of importance was an overwhelming emphasis on modernizing oper-ations and strategies of policing through the application of advanced internet and electronics technology and through institutional and operational reforms that would allow both greater police powers and more centralized coordination



of police. One of the key recommendations on the latter front was unifying the police into a single, more readily controllable force (sierra, 2003), although crit-ics were quick to note that any such move would be unconstitutional. Another was building on the activities of a special quasi-private police force as a model for a new auxiliary policing service to assist the police in key downtown hot spots (see Davis et al., 2003).

With such a wide variety of recommendations, many of which would entail significant legislative and constitutional changes, some observers concluded that the costly report could hardly be considered a strategic plan for reducing crime in mexico city. no document of 146 recommendations without a clear sense of priorities and the means of achieving the key objectives can possibly serve that function 12 was the way the Lawyers committee for Human rights put it. in its formal assessment of the Giuliani plan, this esteemed human rights organization remained quite skeptical of the practicality and efficacy of the reports proposals:

the recommendations make their strongest contribution in the areas of insti-tutional and operational reform and strengthening, combine good ideas with poorly defined or questionable proposals in the area of public order/anti-crime strategies, and link reiterations of long-standing criticisms of the prose-cutorial and judicial functions with ambitious reform suggestions that, to date, have eluded local legislators and officials in the Federal District government and will require, in general, far more reflection and debate before they can be translated into coherent action. Unfortunately, the report betrays a relatively limited vision of community participation and the importance of public infor-mation, elements that are likely to be of crucial importance in winning the uphill battle to sow public confidence.

to be sure, one reason the mexico staff of the new York citybased Lawyers committee for Human rights became so actively involved in criticizing the Giuliani plan was that it had long advocated for correcting the human rights abuses that accompanied the zero-tolerance strategy in new York and else-where. in mexico city, long-standing concerns about citizen repression at the hands of abusive police, including murder, rape, and torture, were well founded and had inspired many citizen organizations to struggle for police reform.13 in this environment, a report that proposed greater criminal penalties and more police powers was bound to become the object of evaluation and controversy.

But even putting aside such human rights organizations bias against increasing police power, one would be hard-pressed to see the Giuliani report as providing an effective strategy for dealing with rising urban crime and vio-lence, particularly in the short term and if one understood, as had crdenas and many others, that a principal source of these deteriorating security condi-tions was the police themselves. When the concept of impunity was raised in press conferences and other public meetings devoted to the report, it was almost always used to describe criminals, especially young gang members, whose asserted proclivities to crime and violence were seen as the source of growing lawlessness. there was no mention of their limited job opportunities or dependence on the informal sector. While 9 of the reports 146 recommenda-tions did indirectly speak to questions of potential abuse of power by police



and the history of police corruption by virtue of the attention paid to creating new strategies for monitoring the police, the majority of the proposals directed at police behavior were generic recommendations for streamlining organizational structures, professionalizing police training, and better identi-fying centralized lines of authority. the sole recommendation in which the term police abuse was used was one for increasing the use of undercover police to detect and prevent robberies in selected zones in which crime prob-lems were likely to be attributed both to citizens who perpetrate abuses by impersonating police and to officers whose identity is by intent not imme-diately disclosed.14 clearly, the reports authors saw citizens as responsible for abuses of power as much as the police, and when they noted that police engaged in abuses they treated it as an oversight.

in short, the Giuliani report let the compromised mexico city police off the hook.15 it placed most of the blame on criminals and avoided the difficult ques-tion of the role of police corruption or impunity. it relied on the police and technology for a remedy for the growing violence, and it offered a set of recom-mendations drawn from a very different set of experiences (in new York city) whose efficacy had not yet been proven in a Latin American urban context.16 more important, perhaps, many of its proposals called into question several principal constitutional tenets of mexicos law enforcement institutions and the justice system, even as they constituted a form of urban warfare against the modes of street life that had long marked mexico citys high and low urban culture. Why, then, was this plan so widely supported with so little cri-tique or serious reflection?

Zero tolerance: Where PolicinG meets doWntoWn deVeloPment and its discontents

One possible hypothesis is that the reports contents were intended primar-ily as political and institutional leveragein other words, as a public relations move by the mexico city government more than a blueprint for policy action.17 Lpez Obrador, after all, was a new mayor from a relatively new party eager to show that he could do something about the security situation despite his predecessors failure in this regard. Another possible answer is that the zero-tolerance strategy represented the most politically realistic or institutionally viable way of proceeding, given the source and magnitude of the problems of police corruption and criminality. Officials may have considered that a strategy focused on better police management practices, combined with the application of a much harsher hand against criminals, was the best they could do in diffi-cult circumstances.

While there clearly is some truth to both explanations,18 there is a third pos-sibility that offers a better understanding of the alliance between Lpez Obrador and slim that produced the invitation in the first place. the Giuliani report may have been solicited not because it offered a serious crime-fighting or police reform strategy for mexico city but because it was tacitly understood that Giuliani would propose policies that would foster downtown real estate devel-opment and speed the rescue of historic mexico city. this was a plan on



which the leftist government of Lpez Obrador and the private sector had already committed to joining forces, and it was with this aim in mind that Giuliani was invited to mexicos capital.

to suggest this is to concur with Loc Wacquants (2006) rather bold assess-ment of zero-tolerance policing as a world-wide security myth, but it differs by identifying a concrete aim to which zero-tolerance policing was attached: real estate development (an idea equally consistent with neil smiths [1998] work on urban revanchism).19 Zero tolerance served to draw attention away from real estate aims and direct it toward the police and their role in promoting security. this allowed the zero-tolerance promoters to move toward a set of urban policy goals that would have been highly contested and perhaps even thwarted if they had been clearly presented as such.

this is not to say that there were no security or crime concerns in mexico city. the deteriorating public security situation was real, and citizens actively mobilized in marches, social movements, and public advertising campaigns to protest it.20 nor is it to suggest that Giuliani himself doubted the value of zero tolerance as a strategy for generating public security, although there surely was a considerable amount of self-interest involved in taking this stance.21 still, such explanations would not be enough to account for the governments embrace of that strategy. indeed, even if active solicitation from Giuliani Partners to sell consulting services may help account for their eagerness to visit mexico and even if the timing of the World trade center attacks further increased the firms global visibility and capacity to do so, such considerations could not explain why elected officials from a left-leading party were so eager to invite him. this is where support from a newly energized private and public sector coalition of forces, eager for a set of programs that would legitimize if not foster plans for upscale development in the heart of mexico city, mattered significantly.

in his capacity as the citys most influential businessman, carlos slim appro-priated the downtown development cause, convening a small group of busi-nessmen and intellectuals to join the great march for the recovery of the historic center (Pineda, 2003). Private-sector investors had long recognized the great historic value of downtown monuments and architecture, affirmed by UnescOs declaration of mexicos historic center as a leading patrimony of humanity in 1987. many saw it as a potential resource to be parlayed into prof-its if the surrounding urban environment could be improved. But conditions had deteriorated over the years because the middle classes had abandoned the historic center, taking with them commerce, private offices, public buildings, and services in general. this diaspora had led to the deterioration of build-ings and public spaces, leaving the city center to be dominated by lowlife (malviventes) underworld figures or persons of few resources who had no other opportunities and producing all sorts of risk in insecure and deteriorated zones. slim and others in the business community hoped to reverse this state of affairs by re-conquer[ing] and reconstruct[ing], house by house and street by street, the historic areas of downtown mexico city (Pineda, 2003).

Of course, slim was not the first to think about rescuing downtown. in 1997 the assembly of the Distrito Federal charged its commission for metropolitan development with producing a plan for renovation of the historic center, but



little progress had been made, as much for lack of political will as anything else (see Davis, 2006b). thus 9/11 served as a watershed moment. When slim met Giuliani on a visit to new York city immediately after the destruction of the World trade center, he found just the personarmed with just the program and global legitimacyto jump-start this initiative and give it credibility in mexico. With the worlds most popular mayor as a potential ally, despite or perhaps because of his new Yorker status, it would be much easier to insure support for his plans. the challenge, however, was to focus public attention on crime rather than on urban redevelopment. Business people allied with slim or committed to downtowns rescue soon stood among the most vocal support-ers of the zero-tolerance crime strategy proposed by Giuliani, so much so that even before his official consultancy report was filed in August 2003 private-sector leaders had publicly lauded its presumed recommendations and poten-tial impact on the city.

Quite simply, Giulianis advocates, slim among them, knew exactly what they were getting in terms of policy recommendations and what they would mean for the redevelopment of the citys downtown public spaces. thus it should be no surprise that the crime-fighting elements of the Giuliani plan that generated the most vocal enthusiasm among mexico city businessmen were those that had already been applied in new York to contribute to urban rede-velopment, including the use of high technology to improve conflictive zones and the emphasis on small successes, including the establishment of order in certain well-traveled streets, as key steps toward a clean, secure, and reno-vated mexico city (sierra and Zuiga, 2003).

that this was a pre-done deal was further evidenced by the fact that in April of 2003, still several months in advance of the completion of the official report, the nations leading association of business owners, the confederacin Patronal de la repblica mexicana (employers confederation of the mexican republiccOPArmeX), went public in urging the adoption of the so-called Giuliani model. spokesmen for this organization argued that Giulianis plans would remedy the chaotic environment of the city, including informal commerce, inefficient tax recovery, urban disorder and decadence, insufficient legal secu-rity, and public insecurity and illegality (Ferrer, 2003). What is noteworthy about the private sectors enthusiasm is not merely that the street-cleaning measures and anti-informal-sector stance associated with zero tolerance were merely old wine in new bottles, having already been identified and addressed through policy actions by mexico city mayors for several decades, albeit to little avail (see cross, 1998, and Davis, 1994). What was also striking was the lack of attention to the anticrime elements of the Giuliani plan.

Yes, the problems of safety and insecurity were mentioned by the cOPArmeX, but very little attention was paid to its sourcescriminals and their actions and the polices inability to rein them in. most of the emphasis was on changes in the use of and access to public space, with the principal problems identified as the filth and disorder associated with informal commerce and illegal activities. For much of the private sector, the Giuliani zero-tolerance strategy was appealing precisely because it would remove low-income street vendors and others involved in illegal activities from downtown areas, even as it would help lead to a buffed-up city that would appeal to middle-class



consumers of housing and services, not to mention foreign tourists and global ceOs.

read together, all these factors suggest that the Giuliani plan was all about downtown development, a goal that downtown boosters had been actively trying to achieve in mexico city since 1989 (see Davis, 2006b). A zero-tolerance plan would also help solve the problem of informal commerce, an aim that prior mayors and local businesses had been trying to achieve for the past 40 years. in the past, such measures as bulldozing, entry of mounted police, forced relocation of street vendors to newly constructed markets, and brutality against ambulant peddlers were employed to remedy the problem. now there would be an official-sounding, externally sanctioned, and authoritative strategy ped-dled by a world-renowned superhero for accomplishing more or less the same aims.

Giuliani got the message loud and clear. the reports final recommendations showed a strong concern with land use, downtown development, and public space. this was evident not only in the increased powers given to police to track and control public behavior on city streets but in several very concrete suggestions. Among the final 146 recommendations, one was taking action against pirate taxis, another publishing locations with frequent automobile accidents, and a third creating controlled legal graffiti spaces to balance anti-graffiti measures. A final recommendation was immediate and harsh action against parking-space-keepers and squeegee men, who were known to slow traffic by virtue of their work on city streets. each of these recommendations seems rather far from the most common form of crime in mexico city, which is car theft, and from the most onerous forms of crime and violence, which are linked to small-scale drug traders working out of small shops in lower-income and working-class neighborhoods. moreover, of the latter operations the worst violations emanated not from the city center (with the exception per-haps of tepito and La merced) but from the farther reaches of the capital city, including the iztapalapa and Gustavo madero delegations (Pansters and castillo, 2006).

to be sure, there is often a direct relationship between overall city crime rates and problems in downtown areas, because downtown areas are often most likely to host a large percentage of criminal activities. this was definitely the case in new York, where, before the transformation of 42nd street, one was likely to find a range of low-rent, quasi-legal activities that hosted a strong drug culture and other social activities that drew criminal elements. in mexico city, downtown areas had long hosted a burgeoning illegal and informal trade in drugs, guns, and other activities strongly associated with violence. this fact was used to draw the parallels between mexico city and new York that justi-fied the invitation of Giuliani. However, any assertion that crime was primarily a downtown problem could not stand up to the facts. For several years the problems of illegal drug and gun sales had been spreading across the metro-politan area, not to mention into other parts of the nation up to the border. thus it was other problems identified in the Giuliani report, namely, street disorder and congestion, that remained disproportionately located downtown, and these were the problems that generated most attention.



the preoccupation with securing downtown space was also evident in the reports focus on high-technology software and on strategically placed moni-toring equipment to capture activities and street life in central areas of the city. All this helps explain why the bulk of the monitoring technology recommended by the report, when later installed, was located in downtown areas, as was the new quasi-private police force recommended by the Giuliani report.22 such technologies were consistently identified as a key driving force in the zero-tolerance strategy and a main reason for its success, and Giuliani himself estab-lished this connection in public speeches to mexican audiences.

the fact that Giuliani and others involved in the original application of the monitoring technology profited as private consulting firms by licensing out the software should raise some questions about their motivations in promoting this technology as the key to crime-reduction success. even more important, however, there were forces in mexico city with many of the same profit-making motivations. Prominent among them was carlos slim. in addition to being one of the main protagonists behind the original Giuliani invitation, slim was a purveyor of high-technology equipment and infrastructure for down-town real estate development. As the owner of mexicos telephone monopoly, he controlled much of the countrys internet and electronic capacity and would gain from the citys use of internet services to monitor crime. He was also the founder and dominant shareholder of the centro Histrico de la ciudad de mxico, s.A. de c.v. this corporation drew its partners from several key mort-gage and property development firms in mexico, including inmobiliaria carso and seguros imbursa (plus another real estate affiliate of telmex). in the months prior to the Giuliani visit and in the years immediately following the public announcement of a commitment to rescuing downtown mexico city, this private property development firm acquired up to 64 downtown land parcels strategically located in several key blocks surrounding the citys Zcalo and other key historic monuments. As of 2003, it had already committed to spend-ing 4 billion pesos (approximately Us$371 million) on more than 370,000 square meters of construction and restoration projects (Certeza, 2003).

slim and other developers were involved in the production of new forms of residential housing and commercial architecture that allowed a certain degree of technological policing to be built into downtown development projects. such technology-infused urban design innovations have become increasingly popular worldwide, but the mexico citybased promoters of the new high-tech services advocated by Giuliani were potentially seeking to kill three birds with one stone: offer a new high-tech security application to downtown inves-tors and businesses, create a niche market for a new style of building form and function, and revitalize the citys downtown. the mexico city governments decision to establish a dedicated, quasi-private police force to monitor these technologies and patrol these new developments in downtown areas would increase the value of these investments.

the fact that Giuliani linked the zero-tolerance security strategy to down-town development was made clear in a variety of other ways, including discus-sion of which factor in the equation was most important. Giuliani himself took pains to identify a two-way causality in the relationship between urban renewal



and crime reduction rather than articulating which change should come first. in fact, in a speech to the cOPArmeX he argued that businessmen should invest in the city and create organizations that share resources for urban reno-vation, and in that sense contribute to the bettering of the security situation (sierra and Zuiga, 2003). some might see this as a strange commentary for a man who had been hired to reduce crime so that the city would be safe for investment, not vice versa. Yet in this presentation Giuliani spent more time sharing ideas about tax reduction on hotel properties and the importance of private-sector investment than discussing the details of policing or crime reduction, and at every opportunity he mentioned the success of new York with the zero-tolerance program. careful to avoid discussion of the social polarization produced by these policies in new York, he focused on the securityreal-estate development nexus in mid-town manhattan and how he had led the citys transformation from a crime-ridden capital to a glistening cosmopolitan mecca where visitors no longer feared to tread.

What PUblic, Whose secUrity?

Was it reasonable to think that the application of the zero-tolerance policy in mexico city would bring the same gains as in new York? could it really be more successful than prior efforts of mexico city mayors and their police forces? And, if so, would there be any downside in terms of public space or the public sphere? Alternatively, would the programs successes remain on the level of real estate and downtown development? Would security and crime reduction be guaranteed only for certain people and places, and, if so, what would be the trade-offs in access to public space? While it is impossible to know all the answers to these questions, since mexico city is far from implementing all the Giuliani recommendations and many of its original supporters have since criticized the initiative,23 we can begin to suggest some of its spatial and social class implications.

On the upside, interviews with new residents of upscale housing complexes in the downtown targeted for rescue (spanning the Zcalo and the Alameda Park and including the entire Perimetro A of the historic center) suggest that there has been a marked change in the urban environment. in the past several years developers have completed several new commercial and residential proj-ects that have generated a small but loyal following of young professionals returning to the center city. the revitalization of the downtown area as a resi-dential location has helped revive the citys cultural life, although for a differ-ent clientele. the focus has been on the establishment of new and more avant-garde activities, many of which replace the traditional cultural and con-sumption activities (tequila cantinas, working-class hangouts, dance halls, etc.) associated with the historic center.

in some ways, these changes are seen as holding the promise of making the downtown area another city hot spot, as occurred with the late 1990s trans-formation of the colonia condesa from a traditional middle-class neighbor-hood into a bustling center of nightlife peppered with cafs, bars, coffeehouses, and restaurants. indeed, since the Giuliani visit and the application of several



key recommendations, downtown has clearly hosted a slow but steadily grow-ing nightlife fueled by the emergence of new cultural centers, dance clubs, bookstores, bars, hostels, and other activities explicitly oriented toward youth. One might say that a key strategy for redevelopment in the area has been to follow the sharon Zukinstyle model of building housing and commercial venues for artists and students, whose return to the city is anticipated to bring a new vibrancy to streets that had once been deserted by late evening (see Zukin, 1989).

these initial gains were solidified by mexico citys next mayor, marcelo ebrard, who came into office in 2006 after his stint as police chief and obviously was not politically hurt by his initial involvement with Giuliani. mayor ebrard both built on and reaffirmed his commitment to crime reduction downtown and the encouragement of commercial and entertainment activities by creating a new agency, the Autoridad del centro Histrico, headed by the renowned urban historian Alejandra moreno toscano, which is now empowered to coor-dinate renovation and crime reduction activities, among other things. the results have been noteworthy. the sense is that street crime is not a serious problem for new residents or nighttime visitors, perhaps because of the new technologies for surveillance in buildings and the installation of cameras oper-ated by both private security companies and the new citizen Protection Unit police on downtown streets. indeed, Alejandra moreno toscano and residents of upscale housing developments downtown expressed more concern about the lack of parking opportunities than about crime. some of this optimism may be due to the fact that crime and violence in downtown mexico city have long been known to be connected to the mafias and other organized constituencies in the illegal or informal sector (see cross, 1998; Davis, 2006a; Baroni, 2007). violence often stems from competition over supply chains or territory rather than from attacks against random citizens.

Despite these gains, the impact of the changes on the comprehensive revital-ization of the downtown area is less clear. While young people have indeed turned in greater numbers to the downtown because of the excitement of the nightlife, there seem to be clear limits to the revival of the area due in part to the history of downtown land use. the area has a preponderance of very small-scale commercial operators that serve as quasi-wholesale outlets for retail goods sold in other parts of the city. in contrast to the situation in new York, where downtown developers (with government backing) achieved success in transforming entire buildings and lots and replacing small, low-rent commer-cial and retail outlets with larger or more upscale ones, in mexico city these establishments remain, for both political and economic reasons. As long as these activities persist, new policing practices, surveillance cameras, and upscale development will be unable to make more than a dent in the income and residential character of the area.

Accordingly, the zero-tolerance strategy has not been and cannot be a magic bullet for downtown development, although it has made considerable gains in jump-starting the process. With lower-income residents still living and work-ing downtown and with downtown areas still identified as key wholesale outlets for retail goods, streets continue to be filled with street vendors, who may in turn battle with authorities for the right to sell their goods. estimates



drawn from a 2006 survey by ineGi (cited by Baroni, 2007: 8) show that even after the imposition of zero-tolerance there were close to 60,000 street vendors on downtown streets (with more than 500,000 operating citywide). these ven-dors will now confront an inflow of new upscale residents, foreign tourists, and others seeking to use these same public spaces. tensions are bound to arise. At the same time, because these spaces are now highly regulated, those most likely to be restricted by the new downtown police units are the ambulant vendors. thus, while the newly renovated downtown spaces remain fundamentally public in theory, in practice it is precisely the diversity of this new spatial envi-ronment that sustains the need to impose strict policing measures and surveil-lance techniques. the result may be less aggregate access to public space than before zero tolerance was introduced. indeed, in the past, when the city was dominated by the more humble classes, fewer upscale citizens dared to venture on its streets, and the police felt less pressure to impose regulations or preemp-tive measures. now, with new real estate projects and the sense of security their high-tech components are creating because of zero-tolerance-supported upscale property development, people with a wider range of incomes are com-ing into the city. in a sense, this suggests a more public sphere if the diversity of incomes, social classes, and occupations is the measure. But because these income-diverse people do not coexist easily in the same physical spaces and because the police use zero-tolerance-type measures to restrict the movement of the original lower-class residents in order to make newer residents feel safe (and make their investment decisions worthwhile), restrictions on who can actually inhabit this public space will continue to arise. conflict is one potential result.

establishinG Urban secUrity Vs. GatinG doWntoWn: social and sPatial imPlications

to be sure, conflict between police and street vendors or other poor residents who seek access to downtown streets (ranging from pirate taxis to squeegee men) is nothing new (see cross, 1998). But the transformation of downtown areas and property markets via zero-tolerance policing also produced new governance problems, ranging from tensions between different police forces to a growing divide between old and new residents, as the redevelopment of downtown spaces (and the interventions of police in the name of securing and/or cleaning up the environment for upscale residents) can create two classes of residents with different urban priorities. examples of the former include high-profile squabbling between local and federal police and elected officials over who should have the authority to monitor downtown streets.24 examples of the latter include public disagreements over local infrastructural projects, as in the case of a citizen organization trying to push for street reha-bilitation in an area where street vendors shunned renewal projects because of potential displacement.25 Both attest to the accelerating battle over the social control of space in mexico city (valenzuela Aguilera, 2004: 1) or what Henri Lefebvre (1996) has called the right to the city.



the installation of sophisticated technology in downtown streets and build-ings can exacerbate both problems. Private security guards now enter a secu-rity domain that used to be dominated by the police, and who has the legal right to monitor downtown spaces is becoming an increasingly contentious issue. the Giuliani reports recommendation has privileged a small new force whose domain encompasses a wide range of economic activities, including street vending, some of which have been the main source of bribery and other corrupt practices. some police officers have felt disadvantaged by their exclu-sion from these activities. thus, even if violence continues to decline in certain parts of mexico city, there may be negative consequences in other domains, including local governance and the states capacity to monitor crime.

Historically, the areas surrounding the historic center have been home to informal and illegal activities, many of them concentrated in a neighborhood named tepito (made famous by Oscar Lewis as the site of his study of the cul-ture of poverty) and, more recently, in La merced, where local cartels involved in smuggling, drug running, and illegal gun sales and human trafficking have long been present.26 For decades, the tepito has been seen as emblematic of the larger problems of informality, illegality, and violence (ross, 2003: 1819; see also murrieta and Graf, 1988; UnAm, 1991; and cross, 1998). many of these problems remained confined to the neighborhood for years. However, as liber-alization in the 1990s limited the scope of informal-sector activity (e.g., selling contraband electronics no longer paid off when tariff restrictions were removed under nAFtA), many residents of this area became involved in dangerous but lucrative activities that fueled violence, police corruption, and illegality in areas outside the communitys borders. By 2000, tepito-based mafias involved in activities ranging from gun-running and the drug trade to general contra-band and pirating of cDs, DvDs, software, and a range of Gucci watches and other upscale name-brand goods, began extending their activities into other parts of the downtown and beyond.27

this seeping out of violence from tepito and La merced into contiguous public spaces was one of the reasons Lpez Obrador was so willing to join with slim in pursuing new ways to preserve the historic parts of the city that were under steady invasion by informal-sector workers.28 Lpez Obradors and his successors support for zero-tolerance policing seems to have been intended as a challenge to the globally linked smugglers as much as a means of supporting upscale property developers like slim, precisely because these two projects depended on each other for their success. Although the PrDs alliance with the business community over upscale downtown development may have seemed somewhat surprising given that most of its base is in popular neighborhoods like tepito, its leadership strategized that supporting the upscale redevelop-ment of more prosperous downtown areas adjacent to these troubled barrios would be one way of advantaging the poorer populations who lived there.29 moreover, with a commitment to zero-tolerance policing as one of the means to enable downtown development, both mayors had legitimate reason to call for new forms of police practice that might be used to gain a foothold in the much larger and more significant battle over police corruption and mafia-led urban violence and crime that preoccupied everyone at the time.



However logical the strategy of using the securitydowntown-development nexus as a basis for challenging police corruption and mafia violence, these problems were too large for even zero-tolerance policing to change. Despite gains in certain parts of downtown, violence and crime did not disappear in tepito. rather, they continued to menace the areas slated for rescue. to be sure, no one could have expected that the virtual gating of a particular downtown area through new policing and surveillance measures or even the privileging of its security concerns would solve all the larger problems of violence and criminality in the city. But this is precisely why the Giuliani reports focus on increasing police powers and securing public spaces through high-tech tech-niques for monitoring space should give us pause.

the issue was not merely that Giulianis consulting team effectively side-stepped the issues of police corruption and illegal trade but that the zero-tolerance policy increased police authority and power. Given the connections between the police and the mafia and other illegal activities in the neighborhoods sur-rounding downtown, most criminal activities in the central parts of the city remained unchecked. Persistent violence and criminality in tepito, La merced, and other parts of the city set limits on the success of downtown development and left the city with a new police force that was continually called upon to secure the social boundaries between upscale and other residents and the spa-tial boundaries between this area and its neighbors.

the GlobaliZation oF Zero tolerance and the FUtUre oF PUblic sPace

What has all this meant for security in mexico city? By virtue of their role in sustaining upscale property redevelopment downtown, zero-tolerance strate-gies widened the public sphere by bringing more diverse, more vibrant, and more mixed-income land use to the historic center, which in turn brought a greater array of social and class forces to the city center. nonetheless, the pub-lic sphere remained mixed and diverse not because of zero tolerance but despite it; the zero-toleranceredevelopment nexus was limited by the continued con-centration in the area of small commercial enterprises.

moreover, because one consequence of the approach was more conflict about what the downtown area should look like, zero tolerance also enabled greater police repression and restriction of movement in public space. these actions, in turn, reversed some of the open, public character of the downtown area. stated simply, the widening of downtowns public sphere brought a nar-rowing of access to it along class lines.

this paradoxical dynamic is nestled in a larger spatial and developmental context that also calls into question the relationship between public sphere and public space, albeit in a slightly different way. even as movement in public space was restricted by zero-tolerance policing, the absence of police reform and the persistence of criminal activities emanating from neighboring areas meant that immediately outside the privileged parcels in the center city the security situation was much worse. the vibrancy of the urban public sphere was compromised, perhaps even in the gated areas downtown that most ben-efited from zero tolerance, by these spillover effects. On the citywide level, crime remained so intense that many residents were reluctant to venture into



public spaces without some form of private security. A 2005 survey undertaken by icesi showed that 39 percent of the population of the Distrito Federal reports having reduced its public activities because of fear of crime (the national rate is 20 percent) and close to 77 percent still refused to leave their homes at night (Jimnez Ornelas, 2005: 125126).

those who freely used the city streets, public transportation, urban parks, and other public spaces were more likely to be low-income people who could not afford private security and relied on public transportation and walking to move around the city. the results might be characterized as a diminished or narrowed public sphere, insofar as the public spaces that are used are less likely to host class and income diversity. One might go so far as to say that after the imposition of zero tolerance mexico city developed two distinct publics: residents who used the streets and other public spaces and residents who moved through a semiprivatized urban world with security personnel and pri-vate armored cars. it has only been in the past several years with the creation of a new Public space Authority (Autoridad del espacio Pblico) in 2008, in fact, that such a division has been called into question, mainly because city officials are now turning to more socially and spatially inclusive measures to create security and a renewed sense of public life across multiple downtown spaces. much of this owes to government recognition of the negative conse-quences of zero-tolerance policing and its limited potential to create a unified public sphere.

But why did it take so long to realize the limits of this hugely popular imported strategy? Globalization, both as a process that has transformed mexico citys urban economy and as a mechanism for the worldwide dissemi-nation of concepts, discourses, and ideas in good currency such as zero toler-ance, is one explanation. in his invocation of new York citys experiences with zero tolerance as a model for cities around the world and in his person as a global consultant charged with disseminating the zero-tolerance strategy to eager consumers, rudolph Giuliani gave new meaning to certain concepts and practices of globalization. But far from just shedding light on the globalization of solutions to truncated downtown development, the mexico city experience also underscores that globalization was part of the problem of growing insecu-rity and compromised downtown development in the first place. An increas-ingly global trade in drugs and guns helped exacerbate crime and violence in mexico city, and this not only led to new limits on public space and the public sphere but also set limits on local efforts to redevelop the historic center. the violence and crime that came to characterize the city are complex problems whose origins lie in the past as much as the present and in the global context as much as the urban. When combined with the history of police corruption and long-standing patterns in downtown land use and the urban economy, it is no surprise that ready-made solutions developed for other developmental con-texts were not up to the task.

notes

1. Despite government efforts to resolve these problems, crime rates have increased rather than decreased in the capital. According to national surveys conducted by the instituto ciudadano de estudios sobre la inseguridad (icesi), the year 2004 showed a 25 percent increase in the urban-ized zone of the metropolitan area of the valley of mexico and an overall rate more than double



the national average. in mexico city, 8 of every 10 criminals involved in robbery use firearms and 8 of 10 criminal acts take place in the street or on public transport (de la Barreda solorzano, 2007: 26).

2. For the historical roots of this problem, see Davis (2005). 3. Although one must recognize the clear limitations of using newspapers and other nonschol-

arly sources in the construction of causal arguments in the social sciences, there are few published articles on the application of zero tolerance in mexico. most observers merely suggest that the program was flawed and that it was implemented as a political banner (see Arroyo, 2003).

4. it is relatively common knowledge that the mexican police are involved directly or indi-rectly (in terms of payoffs) with criminal elements, especially drug, gun-running, and other illegal mafia activities. this serves to intensify the problem of police corruption and explain why it has been so hard to eliminate (see Zepeda, 1994; Zepeda Lecuona, 2004; Bailey and Godson, 2000; and Arias, 2004).

5. While this particular statistic is for 1997, given crdenass problems with police reform there is no reason to believe that the situation was better by the time he left office three years later.

6. strictly speaking, crdenas was succeeded by rosario robles, whom he named interim mayor when he left office to campaign for the presidency. But in the party primary and the full election Lpez Obrador was the PrD candidate for mayor, and he won.

7. the idea of a deal struck over downtown between Lpez Obrador and slim was cor-roborated by Adrian Pandal, the ceO of the Fundacin del centro Histrico, an organization set up to manage slims investments in downtown real estate (interview, mexico city, July 21, 2005). it was also corroborated by the independent architect Jos castillo, whose firm has worked exten-sively on downtown development projects (interview, mexico city, July 22, 2005).

8. that this was the story as late as 2005, after Lpez Obradors term had ended and after reassessments had suggested that the Giuliani teams efforts had failed, highlights the possibility that this is the most truthful account (see Gerson, 2005).

9. According to reports the full fee was never paid because of controversy over the deliver-ables and the quality of the consulting (see Gerson, 2005).

10. Giuliani Partners and the Bratton Group, both consulting firms peddling the zero-tolerance approach to crime reduction, are sometimes referred to interchangeably even in the same docu-ments. even when there is no institutional overlap in consulting efforts, the clear overlap in policy recommendation strategies is due to the long-standing Giuliani-Bratton partnership (in and out-side new York city government, where Bratton served under Giuliani as police chief) and their involvement with the manhattan institutes George Kelling, the so-called father of the broken-windows strategy. Among the countries in which one or more of these consulting firms have operated are mexico, Peru, chile, Argentina, Brazil, and venezuela. As a result, the police of caracas, Lima, and mexico city have all adopted portions of the Giuliani-Bratton strategy (see De Palma, 2002).

11. A cursory overview of the reports prepared for both mexico city and Lima by the Giuliani Partners and Bratton Groups, respectively, shows that the two consulting teams offered essen-tially the same menu of strategies. Both emphasized upping the penalties for minor disturbances, both relied on high technology as a key mechanism for crime detection, and both argued about increasing policing powers (through organizational reform as well as legislative changes) so as to facilitate arrests (see Letter to Police chief marcelo ebrard from roberto varinek, director of the mexico Project, Lawyers committee for Human rights, september 4, 2003 [hereafter Letter], p. 2).

12. Letter, p. 2.13. Perhaps the best-known nongovernmental organization (nGO) in this field is the instituto

ciudadano de estudios sobre la inseguridad (icesi). For more scholarly discussion of citizen efforts to support police reform, see Alvarado and Arzt (2001).

14. Letter, p. 2.15. this may actually not be very surprising. systematic evaluations of the zero-tolerance

strategy suggest that its greatest impact was in enhancing the scope and reach of police power, leading to a stupendous expansion of human and financial resources devoted to policing (Wacquant, 2006: 104105).

16. Although it is not the purpose of this paper to evaluate the zero-tolerance strategy in more universal terms, there are reasons to raise questions about its efficacy even in new York. several good studies have demonstrated that crime rates went down in new York city three years before



Giuliani came to power and imposed his zero-tolerance strategy and that the same declining crime rates were seen in cities not adopting zero tolerance. On the limitations of the approach, see Harcourt (2001) and Wacquant (2006).

17. this in fact is a thesis proposed by the mexican security consultant mario Arroyo (2003), who called the Giuliani plan a political banner for the mexico city government.

18. A high-ranking staff member of marcelo ebrards team, mario Delgado (interview, mexico city, July 29, 2005), acknowledged that ebrard (and ostensibly Giuliani) worked on the assump-tion that 20 percent of the police were highly corrupt, 20 percent were very honest, and the remaining 60 percent could be improved or better managed with organizational reforms. thus there was an acknowledgment of both limits and possibilities for action within the system.

19. Wacquant also sees the scholarly myth as serving some sort of tangible aim, but it is in the area of repressing low-income populations, justifying the neoliberal decline of state responsibility to its citizens in quality of life and employment terms and supporting the rise of a penal state (see Wacquant, 2006: esp. 9396, and smith, 1998).

20. in addition to public relations campaigns by icesi and other citizen nGOs, citizens have taken to the streets. in July 2004 200,000 citizens marched in the name of public security, and they continue to use other channels to call attention to their plight (see Reforma, July 28, 2004).

21. According to steinart-threlkeld (2002), so celebrated is the compstat success that mapel, Bratton, Yohe, John Linder, and others have been able to create private careers based on imple-menting it in other citiesand even in private businesses. indeed, in January, shortly after leaving office as mayor, Giuliani formed a consultancy called Giuliani Partners, with the express purpose of showing how to use compstat as a means of monitoring government performance.

22. called the Unidad de Proteccin ciudadana (citizen Protection Unit), this new police force was organized separately from the rest of the citys police services, with its personnel identified by their different uniforms, higher pay, and the responsibility for monitoring crime and street life with new technology in downtown areas.

23. According to Gerson (2005: n.p.), when marcelo ebrard became mexico city mayor in 2005, his own police chief, Joel Ortega, was quoted as saying, i am no fan of Giuliani not only because, he said, the homicide rate dropped less than 1 percent in 2004 but also because kidnappings and other forms of crime were on the rise.

24. this particular controversy involved a main downtown thoroughfare called calle Articulo 123, between Bucareli and Balderas (see Excelsior, march 27, 2001; http://www.excelsior.com.mx/0103/010327/nac49.html).

25. this conflict emerged over the threatened entry of the Polica Federal Preventiva (PFP) into tepito in 2003 (see ramirez and servin, 2003).

26. tepito is not the only crime-ridden area of mexico city, and in recent years violent organi-zations and activities have spilled over into other areas of the historic downtown, ending most recently in more peripheral, low-income neighborhoods of the Distrito Federal such as ixtapalapa. But when Giuliani came to mexico city, tepito was identified as particularly violent hot spot with an iconic identity as a site of illegality, and its location close to government offices, upscale neigh-borhoods, and much of the built-environmental historic patrimony of the city made it a major concern for the mayor.

27. some began to call this historic barrio a no-mans-land because of the high levels of vio-lence and the total absence of a rule of law. this term was coined in press accounts in november 2000, describing a violent tepito-based battle between drug lords, citizens, and police (1,200 judi-cial police and 600 riot police dispatched to an area hardly larger than 12 square blocks and only 8 blocks from the national presidential palace) that resulted in massive injuries and the destruc-tion of six police cars.

28. Part of the problem was that conditions became so violent and dangerous in downtown mexico city that people who had stalls in tepito could no longer count on citizens coming to the barrio. thus they moved into new streets of downtown, into the historic center. this further fueled the call for redevelopment.

29. Of course, the PrD had other complementary motivations that explain its openness to upscale development under both Lpez Obrador and ebrard. in an environment in which the federal budget was controlled by other political parties, both mayors needed alternative tax rev-enues to support local social policies for the partys own political constituencies. not only would real estate developers pour new monies into the city but in exchange for supporting the rescue of the historic center the city received some important urban perks that reduced overall expenditures.



One of these was having carlos slim pay for the street paving in the newly renovated downtown area (a bargain that suited slim because he, in turn, was able to lay his telmex phone cables under the old citys streets). Both Lpez Obrador and ebrard spent these excess funds on a variety of targeted programs for the citys less advantaged residents, ranging from milk subsidies to old-age pensions.

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Zero Tolerance Policing

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