Pinterest High heel shoes are seen in front of a cross outside the Municipal Palace of Ecatepec during a protest against the murders of women. A few weeks earlier, an entire family was dismembered and stuffed into bags in the railyard that runs through the neighbourhood. In another incident, two policemen were killed during their lunch break. For 20 years, though, rap has helped Luz process the world around her. She first heard about it as a teen in the early s.
Subsidies that had supported small-time agriculture were dismantled, so poor, rural residents flooded down from the mountains into the valley in Mexico City. Families built small shacks using found materials and the neighbourhood expanded up into the hills. In this environment, Luz and her friends learned to navigate the streets, shopping for hip-hop cassettes at open-air markets called tianguis and finding solace in the bravado of earlys gangster rap.
Luz was inspired; she started penning her own raps to Cypress Hill beats, but tried to find a way to forge her own version. As the decades passed, families have replaced cardboard and sheet metal with sturdy cement bricks and added multiple storeys to their homes. In a parallel trend, Mexico City has seen a boom of real-estate investment and a new wave of renovation.
Now the city centre is filled with the hulking skeletons of new skyscrapers, and upper-middle class neighbourhoods are enjoying a surge of new construction and rehabilitation. As infrastructure and security have improved, Mexico City has become recognised as a major hub of cultural activity. The New York Times named the capital as the top place to visit in The situation on the periphery of the city, however, is less stable.
