ABSTRACT
The citizens who purchased those lands often relied on false promises that water and sewage lines, paved streets, and other vital public services were forthcoming.11 Marginality and the inexistence of recourse have forced these communities to silently accommodate themselves to the incipient regularization that local governments have undertaken to push these zones towards the formal domain. As time goes by, the exclusion of the most disadvantaged citizens from the urban space has been naturalized, thus reinforcing their invisibility and a deeper sense of fragmentation in Mexican society. The configuration of the City and its surroundings has bolstered the dichotomy between a growing legal culture aimed at the promotion and defense of human rights and the de facto subordination of the working class, whose members are subjected to lower standards of living. This social binary has sadly settled and stabilized into the social and institutional discourse.
