In September 1994, Subcomandante Marcos — the spokesperson for Mexico’s infamous Zapatista rebel movement — released a tract called “The Long Journey from Despair to Hope” criticizing the government’s insistence on prioritizing foreign capital over Mexican citizens. “The door to Mexico’s penthouse elevator opens to the great international airports; it does not go up or down,” he wrote.
Mexico’s international airports might have been great in 1994. However, they had significantly deteriorated by the turn of the century. With only two runways, and limited to one runway in use at a time, Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City was at capacity in 2000; it has officially surpassed its official capacity since then. In response, the government twice proposed a new airport for the Texcoco lakebed megacity, in 2002 and in 2014. But despite the urgent need for a new international airport, Mexico ended up canceling both airport projects.
Mexico City’s two cancellations of the Texcoco airport provide two separate lessons for the study of urban politics. The first project’s cancellation showed the power of local residents yet again, who stopped the airport’s construction before it could start. The second project’s cancellation — and the subsequent popular opposition to the Santa Lucía project — demonstrated that political considerations, not objective economic planning, had influenced the construction process.
“Land Yes, Airplanes No”
In 2001, the federal government announced it would build an entirely new airport in the Texcoco lakebed. However, that project soon met significant resistance on multiple fronts. The most significant challenge came from the residents who the airport project would displace, known as ejidatorios. Some objected to the project because the government was offering a pittance for their land, while others refused to sell at any price. The catchphrase “Land yes, airplanes no,” became a rallying cry for the largely Indigenous population.
Although the government largely refused to negotiate, it changed its tune after an ejidatorio died at the hands of the Mexican security apparatus. As his widow publicly bemoaned, “How many deaths are necessary to justify the construction of this airport?” galvanizing public opinion against the project. After that, the government withdrew its expropriations and canceled the project.
As in Caracas and in Buenos Aires, urban populations challenged a massive building project and won. However, the political power of the ejidatorios was even greater than that of slum residents in either of the two other cities: They stopped the project before it even started, while other communities could only react post facto.
Politics over Planning
Twelve years later, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration tried again. In 2014, Peña Nieto announced that the project would begin anew with an X-shaped terminal, designed by British architect Norman Foster, meant to represent Mexico. Peña Nieto had at least learned something from the previous fiasco: The project would be built entirely on federally-owned property, without the need to expropriate any ejido lands for the project.
However, the project soon ran into an obstacle: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as AMLO. In 2018, even though construction had reached the 30% milestone and the government had already spent $3 billion on the project, AMLO made it clear during his presidential campaign that he would cancel the project. With a platform focusing on corruption, citizen security and poverty reduction, AMLO’s unabashed populism emphasized unsubstantiated corruption allegations and cost overruns in the project to justify canceling the airport.
After his election victory, AMLO followed through on his promise to shut down construction. To formally justify his preordained result, he called a popular “consultation” that would formally decide whether to continue with the Texcoco project, buttress the already-existing Toluca airport or build a commercial terminal at the Santa Lucía air force base. Unsurprisingly, the “consultation,” composed of less than 2% of Mexico’s electorate, ratified AMLO’s preferred option at Santa Lucía.
Despite AMLO’s arguments that the Santa Lucía airport would save money, Animal Político reckoned that it actually cost more to cancel the project than to complete it. Indeed, the cancellation of the airport project under AMLO signaled the triumph of politics over rational economic planning. Animal Político found that the country’s system which reviews projects for economic viability, called the SNIP, had practically “found itself in abandonment” due to a lack of support from politicians. “When decision-making is discretional and responds to subjective or political criteria,” the publication wrote, “it tends to identify voters more than citizens.”
Santa Lucía Today
The Santa Lucía airport transparently responded to political criteria — but the government has been less than forthcoming about other details. Indeed, the government has classified all data related to the project, including cost-benefit analyses, feasibility studies and bidding processes. Of course, this means that the public has little opportunity to criticize the project, and entities such as Mexico’s SNIP cannot exercise their due diligence.
This lack of transparency could also signal that the project has something to hide. Multiple outside consultants, from both within and outside Mexico, concluded that the project made little sense from a financial or logistical point of view. From a technical point of view, recent studies have questioned the airport’s security procedures and the new traffic patterns for air travel, since the new airport would be the third in crowded airspace. From a political point of view, critics have charged that AMLO only wanted to cancel the Texcoco project so that he could claim total responsibility for the Santa Lucía project’s success.
The pandemic has exacerbated concerns about the Santa Lucía project. Even though AMLO pledged further fiscal austerity in the face of COVID, his pet project has continued to rack up costs. The final budget for 2020 increased by 128% over the initial budget, even despite the Mexican government cutting costs in other areas.
As of now, it looks like the Santa Lucía project has emerged as the final contender for Mexico City’s desperately needed new airport, despite its uneven political history and the criticism it has faced. If it finishes in 2022 as scheduled, AMLO will definitely claim victory as the president who finally built the long-needed second airport. However, due to the lack of sound economic planning and lack of transparency, it will likely be a performative rather than a substantive victory.
Image Credit: “NAICM.jpg” by Vmzp85 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
