Mexico City in the 20th Century

Although the country was politically stable and its economy improved, Díaz disregarded social problems, creating unrest throughout the country.

The value of wages for workers declined from 1877 to 1910.

The government never implemented a public education system.

Child labor was a serious problem throughout the period; an estimated 12 percent of all textile workers were children.

Many working-class Mexicans received their wages as script (a credit slip issued by their employers), forcing them to purchase their food and other necessities from employer-owned stores at inflated prices.

Peasants and indigenous Mexicans lived and worked under particularly precarious and oppressive conditions.

Many worked under a system of debt peonage, under which they became legally obligated to their employers. This pattern, which resulted in numerous abuses and exploitation, became a form of economic servitude.

Many workers wanted the rights to organize and strike in order to demand better pay, fewer hours, and improved working conditions.

The government, however, suppressed these working-class demands, which led to a violent revolution in 1910.

The Mexican Revolution forced Díaz to leave Mexico for exile and introduced a decade of civil violence.

The revolution and its aftermath halted the development of Mexico City.

Indeed, the population actually declined between 1910 and 1920.

The political revolution led to an equally important revolution in artistic and intellectual circles and the revival of indigenous themes in Mexican artistic and literary schools.

Young art students, among them David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco, eventually supported a movement away from paintings on canvas to present their works in large, public formats on the walls of government and private buildings.

They rejected European influences, hoping to create works that were both accessible to ordinary Mexicans and oriented toward national themes.

This nationalistic movement and the dynamic change in style attracted artists and writers from all over the Americas in the 1920s.

By 1920 the political stability had been restored.

For a brief period during the 1920s, an elected mayor governed the city, but in 1928 the federal government gave control of the capital to the Department of the Federal District.

At this same time, the victors in the revolution, seeking to consolidate their political power, organized a powerful political party, the National Revolutionary Party (PRN).

Eventually the PRN became the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The PRI and its leaders monopolized control over local, state, and national government.

For the next 60 years, the party never lost an election for the presidency or the governorship of any state.

The party was able to maintain tight control over the administration of the Federal District and Mexico City because the president appointed the head of the Department of the Federal District and the president always belonged to the PRI.

In 1921 Mexico City had just over 900,000 residents and was surrounded by miles of rural farms and communities.

During the next 50 years, the city’s population grew rapidly, as people moved from less developed regions to the capital.

The population nearly doubled from 1921 to 1940 and more than doubled again from 1940 to 1960, when the population reached nearly 5 million.

As the city grew, much of its colonial and European architecture disappeared.

Numerous residences along the major avenues were destroyed to make way for modern office buildings and retail stores.

Neighboring communities were incorporated within the city’s metropolitan area, and by 1970

Mexico City was no longer surrounded by a rural landscape, but by an extensive megalopolis. This expansion reached beyond the boundaries of the Federal District into the state of Mexico, which surrounds the district on three sides.

During the 20th century, the land on which Mexico City was built subsided unevenly at rates of up to 30 cm (12 in) a year. This subsidence resulted from the drainage of Lake Texcoco and the removal of groundwater.

As a result, the city sat on spongy soil, which tended to amplify the power of the earthquakes that occurred periodically in the Valley of Mexico.

In 1985 a major earthquake, centered on Mexico City itself, caused extensive damage in the central part of the city.

Especially hard hit were the older buildings, many of which were not designed to withstand earthquakes.

The government of Mexican president Miguel de la Madrid did not respond effectively to the crisis.

Many city residents came to believe that the government was more concerned about protecting the damaged buildings from possible looting than about rescuing those trapped in the ruins.

Citizens joined together to carry out the rescue efforts themselves, creating a strong sense of community.

This informal cooperation eventually became more permanent.

Those deprived of housing and employment as a consequence of the earthquake demanded relief from the city's government and organized to support their demands.

These organizations became grassroots civic and political groups that eventually promoted the growth of opposition parties in the capital.

During the 1980s and 1990s citizens of Mexico City voted in large numbers for presidential candidates from the two leading opposition parties, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

In the 1988 presidential elections, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, representing the party that later became the PRD, received the largest number of votes in the Federal District.

The citizens of Mexico City also began to demand more self-government for the city.

The first concession to returning power more directly to residents was the creation of the Assembly for the Federal District in 1988.

The Federal District was divided into districts, each represented by an assembly member.

Despite the existence of the Assembly, most power remained in the hands of the head of the Department of the Federal District.

As part of an electoral reform package, the federal government agreed to a 1997 election in which citizens would choose the head of the Federal District.

The contest for this position became the most significant electoral race in the 1997 national elections.

The victor would represent more than 16 million people and would be a potential candidate for a presidential nomination in 2000.

Voters elected Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas as head of the Federal District, and he took office in December 1997.

His party also won control of the assembly, as well as most of the seats to the national congress that were elected from the Federal District.

Although constitutionally the president of Mexico retained the right to appoint the police chief and the attorney general of the Federal District, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo transferred those decisions to Cárdenas.

However, Cárdenas encountered great difficulty coping with the widespread social and economic problems confronting the city.

The most important problem for the city residents was the lack of personal security.

Although Cárdenas changed police chiefs several times and introduced new forms of policing, including bicycle patrols, his government was unable to reduce crime levels in auto theft, burglaries, and muggings.

In 1999 Cárdenas resigned as head of the Federal District to run for president of Mexico.

The assembly chose Rosario Robles Berlanga to replace him. Robles was the first female head of the Federal District.

In the 2000 election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected head of the federal district.