ABSTRACT
Since the middle of the 1990s, processes of policing, securitization, and regulation of urban spaces have been developing in Mexico City with the objective of addressing the increased violence and crime that the city has lived through (Arteaga 2006). As stated by Zurita and Ramírez (1999), crime increased in a significant way in the 1990s, from 1,700 offenses for every 100,000 inhabitants in 1993, to 2,895 for every 100,000 in 1995. Violent offenses increased 500 percent from 1990 to 1996. In fact, the number of reported violent offenses consistently increased from 1980 to 1996 from 1,000 offenses for every 100,000 inhabitants to almost 3,000 (Ruiz 1999). Robbery, homicide, assassinations, kidnappings, settling of accounts among drug traffickers, isolated acts of urban guerrilla warfare, urban riots, as well as lynching in communities undergoing urbanization painted a violent and criminal picture of the capital during the 1990s.
