The Depreciation of Life During Mexico City's Transition into "the Crisis" 1

This chapter discusses the representations of death in Mexico and the representation of impoverishment in the 1970s and 1980s. This is followed by a discussion of crime and of the rise of a particular form of democratic politics in the 1980s, and then by a discussion of the degradation of the human sensibility of the popular classes that was displayed by the reigning technocracy in that period. The chapter highlights the cultural transformation of Mexico City from the 1970s to the 1980s. An analysis of the crisis of the 1980s in Mexico City needs, at a minimum, to recognize the relationship between the brutal deterioration of social conditions in that period and the developments in the 1970s. The lack of value placed on human life in Mexico has long been a staple in the stock and trade of national stereotypes. The Mexican crisis of 1982 required technocratic leadership on a scale that no previous government ever had.