Cablebus L1 Indios Verdes-Cuautepec, Mexico City. Infrastructure policies and the promise of mobility for citizenship

Abstract

One of the main challenges of mobility in Mexico City has been the integration of different modes of transport and the need to create new and efficient infrastructure for the movement of more than 99 million people per month by public transport. However, investment in new networks represents high costs when they are established in remote and difficult to access areas on the outskirts of the city, such as Cuautepec. As a matter of government, policies tend to focus on the improvement of existing systems, consequently, the construction of infrastructure is often seen as a political instrument. In this sense, through the establishment of Cablebus L1 from the perspective of the anthropology of infrastructures, it is possible to understand and explain the way in which a plan is constituted as a promise and within this, infrastructure as a projection. This can or is used to represent the power of the state to its citizens, but at the same time it enables different social confrontations that would otherwise take place because of the constructed object.