This post is part of a feature on “Urban Struggles,” moderated and edited by Raúl Acosta (LMU Munich), Flávio Eiró (Radboud University Nijmegen), Insa Koch (LSE) and Martijn Koster (Radboud University Nijmegen).
On April 4, 2019, Pedro cycled for over an hour to get to our meeting with Mexico City’s Security Minister. He made it just on time for Alicia, a leading activist, to write his name on the list of the 14 people who would take part in the meeting. Once we were all in the meeting room, and after waiting around half an hour for the minister to show up, the meeting finally started. An activist offered the services of networked cyclists as ‘eyes’ on the streets: “We are hundreds, and can send reports about things we see”, said Octavio, who had become known in the cycling community through his personal cycling news channel on social media. Oscar, an activist who arrived in a suit, had offered to donate up to 100 new bicycles to a group of policewomen who had been recently appointed to keep cycleways clear of motorcyclists and other obstructions. “We would donate them under the condition that there is clarity about their use, and security about them not being stolen,” he said. Several activists in the room had years of experience behind them, and were well known to Mexico City authorities.
For Pedro, it was a different story. It was his first time attending a high-level meeting with government officials. When he spoke, one could sense how nervous he was in his voice tone. He sat in a corner of the large table, and only spoke as the meeting was coming to an end. “For us in the outskirts of the city, it is particularly risky when cars go by at high speeds, so we really need for police officers to do their job. I’ve seen them do nothing as drivers break the law in front of them,” he said. Before him, the tone of complaints had been in part reproach but in part indicating his willingness to collaborate with the authorities.
One of the main complaints among activists attending the meeting was that security personnel in patrol cars were the first to flout regulations, like running through red lights or parking where they’re not supposed to. “How are you going to enforce the laws that your own agents break?,” Oldemar asked the minister. The meeting had been convened among cyclo-activists who had perceived an increase in hostile behaviour from motorists. In their view, motorists felt free to flout regulations because of the promise of the then newly arrived government (which took office in December 2018) to stop charging speeding fines because of a lack of transparency from the private firm who managed the city’s speed cameras. Instead, the government announced ‘civic fines,’ which would entail a points-based system that would grant 10 points to all drivers and deduct one point per traffic offence, or 5 points if the speed was 40 per cent higher than the established limit. The first two points lost would come with a warning. For recurrent offenders, so-called incremental ‘civic penalties’ that would include online courses, face-to-face classes, and community service. In order to comply with the ‘verification’ (technical assessment of emissions) that is mandatory for all motorized vehicles in Mexico City, drivers need to have at least 8 points or to honour all ‘civic penalties’ incurred. It was the opinion of most activists attending the meeting that the new administration had not succeeded in getting their message across about the nuances of the change, and had rather misleadingly created the impression among motorists that there would simply no longer be sanctions for speeding. When activists explained this, it took the Security Minster by surprise. It seemed he and his team had not thought of that possibility.
Over the past two decades, cycloactivists have achieved much more than they originally thought would be possible. From initial demands for safer cycling, various groups have developed expert knowledge regarding infrastructure, urbanism, and transport policymaking. The city government has also taken many of their demands on board and has situated ‘mobility’ as an important issue on the public policy agenda. Such success, has gone hand-in-hand with an increased presence of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on the issue (especially regarding public transport and urban design), and of foreign financial institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank, which provides credits to carry out some of the changes activists demanded. This combination has brought about the professionalization of cycloactivism in a manner that privileges a technocratic data-driven form of urbanism with its own jargon. This transformation has involved cycloactivists themselves, among whom I have often heard a mantra: ‘what is not counted, does not count.’ Whereas cycling is a popular cause because it addresses urban dwellers’ need for cheap and easy access to the city across social classes and other boundaries, the resulting professionalization of the activist field has brought with it a new set of inequalities that Pedro’s situation illustrates.
In their campaigns and public discourses, cycloactivists frequently used arguments of social justice and inclusion to promote cycling among urban dwellers, and demand improved infrastructures and policies for its practice from government officials. In Mexico City, social disparities are clearly noticeable during commuting times. Some workers spend up to five hours per day commuting. Again, those who live farthest from the city centre tend to be worse off. Recent studies have shown that suburban households earn 30% less than urban households, have 40% longer commutes, and spend twice as much per transit trip (Guerra 2017). For the poorest fifth of households, this expenditure can be a fourth of their total daily income. A recent government survey (INEGI 2018) also showed that while 52 per cent of urban dwellers use public transport on a daily basis, most government expenditure on mobility is dedicated to car infrastructure. In order to address these disparities and promote a more just distribution of resources from the local public administration, some cycloactivists have gone through a steep learning curve that has included professional training. Some of them have studied graduate courses on related issues (urbanism, transport engineering), others joined NGO technical teams to learn about policymaking, a few joined the government, and a couple started their own consultancy firms to promote mobility projects among small local governments around the country.
Cycloactivists have thus taken advantage of the growing relevance of mobility in policy circles. Our global times are built on the possibility of people, things, and ideas rapidly reaching faraway destinations. Mobility “has come to define the contemporary human condition as never before, involving long-range and frequent movement that impinges on or even defines the everyday life of people from all backgrounds and social strata” (Dalakoglou and Harvey 2012, 460). Scholars refer to a ‘new mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry 2006) or ‘turn’ (Faist 2013) that highlights the role of movement as key to our social connections. Mobilities links the materiality of infrastructures with the movement and flows of interactions. Due to environmental concerns and continuous urban growth, mobility has also earned a place in global policymaking equivalent to that of social housing in the 1970s. For some scholars and activists, there is a need to include ‘mobility’ as one more human right (Logan, et al. 2018). This follows from the drastic inequalities that differentiated access and practices entail. In joining the mobility turn from a vantage point of grassroots activism, those involved have earned enough political capital to be able to use it in order to build a career in an issue they feel strongly about. But in doing so, they have also privileged a technocratic data-driven form of politics regarding mobility, which excludes from debates all those who lack the cultural capital to access the language and knowledge needed to take part in debates.
On top of such situation, the issue of mobility has also been dominated by a type of technomorality. In their analyses of relations between NGOs, social movements and the state in India, Bornstein and Sharma defined the way these different groupings negotiate the political relations through ‘technomoral means.’ By this they meant “the complex, strategic integration of technical and moral vocabularies as political tactics” (Bornstein and Sharma 2016, 77). It is basically a translation of moral projects into technical ‘implementable terms’, such as through laws or policies. In the case of mobility, this means that decisions about what is deemed ‘good’ for the city are first taken and then the statistics are provided to show that the government is doing what it can to achieve it. This can similarly be said to be the case for cycleways and pedestrian areas. In both cases, however, some critical activists point out that despite the increase in construction of cycleways and pedestrian areas, more need to be built to address structural inequalities in Mexico City. Furthermore, much of the investment that has taken place on such infrastructures has been concentrated in what is called the ‘bubble’: an area renowned for its restaurants, and cafes, where the city’s young professionals with a high disposable income hang out, and where foreign students or highly skilled workers seem to be more comfortable. The prominence of bicycles in such areas adds to their gentrification, and even helps market new housing developments as more environmentally aware and convenient.
For Pedro and thousands of other cyclists from the outskirts of Mexico City, the challenges of reaching their work places or any other locality in the city centre are, by contrast, enormous. There is no cycling infrastructure in Pedro’s neighbourhood, despite the fact that thousands of people use a bicycle not because they necessarily want to, but because it is the cheapest means of transportation they can afford. Pedro became an activist after organizing a few night rides among his neighbours, and noticing that other groups in the city that had done something similar had achieved changes in their barrios. Once he started gathering groups to cycle around his area, local politicians began to take notice. He started being invited to ceremonies and interviews. And he started getting involved with other better off and well-educated activists from the centre of the city.
I first met him at an event organized by Mexico City’s Assembly (Cámara de Diputados), where experts and activists were invited to talk about their views on any necessary changes to improve mobility laws and regulations. Pedro chose to frame his becoming an activist through a narrative of his personal struggles with depression. “Cycling helped me, and I noticed it could also help others,” he said, as he showed photos of the collective bike rides he’d organized with his neighbours. When he finished talking, he got a big round of applause and the event went on. I kept on meeting him in different events, like the meeting at the Security Ministry I mentioned above. While he enjoyed the attention and appreciated being heard, he generally appeared shy and remained silent when main points of contention were being debated. When I visited him in his neighbourhood, he told me about his caution in dealing with other more established activists: “I get the sense they are so well connected with authorities, you know, that I have little possibility to contribute [to their debates]. That is why I prefer to focus on demands in our local area, without interfering on larger debates about the whole city.”
I refer to Pedro as a ‘peripheral’ activist because of his location at the physical margins of both the city and the political activist arena. Most of the groups that have been carrying out successful campaigns over the last two decades are made up of educated middle-class individuals who tend to have markers that distinguish them from most other urban dwellers. “Some criticize me for being white and talking about justice,” Alicia told me, who represents the oldest and most influential activist group called Bicitekas. In her case, as in others, the clear markers of privilege helped her get her message across to decision-makers in very concrete terms: in the form of invitations to dialogues with government officials, interview requests from major newspapers and magazines, invitations by international NGOs and foundations for specific campaigns and projects, and even awards of prizes for her activism. She is outspoken, well-informed about the latest debates in environmental and urban matters, and creative in thinking about new projects and seeking out the people who she needs to liaise with in order to carry them out. In comparison, Pedro is somewhat shy, although he clearly wants to be more active. Ironically, even though compared to Alicia he is worse off both in terms of economic and cultural capital, in his community he is also above the average. For a start, he has free time to dedicate to activism; and he is able to attend meetings in the city centre when many others need to work. Yet, he is peripheral compared to activists like Alicia.
After talking a few times with Pedro, I sense both his optimism about being able to improve the lives of his neighbours through his activism, as well as his scepticism about the language that he is expected to master in order to successfully address policymakers or NGOs in meetings. When I ask him about the difficulties he may face, he smiles and tells me that “it’s all a part of the journey, like riding a bicycle in this city: it is a risk and a joy.” The journey Pedro refers to, he tells me frequently, is one of endurance. I wonder, however, how much he realises that the movement he forms part of reproduces the dominant structure he and others denounce. With their activism, they demand new infrastructures and policies to correct injustices especially affecting those worse off in the city. But there does not seem to be an effort within that activist milieu to steer their own internal workings into a more equitable arrangement where he and others would not be perpetually cast in the peripheral role.
Raúl Acosta is a postdoctoral researcher at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He currently carries out research on urban activism in Mexico City in a sub-project of the German Research Foundation (DFG) funded Urban Ethics Research Group. His monograph “Civil Becomings: Performative Politics in the Brazilian Amazon and the Mediterranean” examines activist and advocacy networks.
References
Bornstein, Erica, and Aradhana Sharma. 2016. “The righteous and the rightful: the technomoral politics of NGOs, social movements, and the state in India.” American Ethnologist 43 (1): 76-90.
Dalakoglou, Dimitris, and Penny Harvey. 2012. “Roads and anthropology: ethnographic perspectives on space, time and (im)mobility.” Mobilities 7 (4): 459-465.
Faist, Thomas. 2013. “The mobility turn: a new paradigm for the social sciences?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 36 (11): 1637-1646.
Guerra, Erick. 2017. “Does where you live affect how much you spend on transit? The link between urban form and household transit expenditures in Mexico City.” The Journal of Transport and Land Use 10 (1): 855-878.
INEGI. 2018. Encuesta origen-destino en hogares de la zona metropolitana del Valle de México 2017. Mexico City: CDMX, INEGI.
Logan, Samuel W., Kathleen R. Bogart, Samantha M. Ross, and Erica Woekel. 2018. “Mobility is a fundamental human right: factors predicting attitudes toward self-directed mobility.” Disability and Health Journal 11 (4): 562-567.
Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2006. “The new mobilities paradigm.” Environment and Planning A 38 (2): 207-226.
Cite as: Acosta, Raúl. 2020. “Navigating promises and good intentions: technomorality and scepticism among peripheral cycloactivists in Mexico City.” FocaalBlog, 7 July. http://www.focaalblog.com/2020/07/07/raul-acosta-navigating-promises-and-good-intentions-technomorality-and-scepticism-among-peripheral-cycloactivists-in-mexico-city/