ABOUT
La Merced, Mexico City, 2025
On March 21, I met Mary. She is 53, Mexican, and has been living on the streets for more than ten years. The people at the camp call her “La Bruja”. When I ask her why, she points to the mountain of trash next to her shelter and laughs. She tells me she is the oldest in the camp, and also the dirtiest.
Mary is the exception. Most of the people at La Merced arrived recently — displaced by violence, poverty, and the slow collapse of the states they left behind. They came north looking for something, and stopped here. Mexico City was not the destination. It became it.
The following day, the camp’s population drops to fewer than 1,300 as the city administration carries out unannounced evictions. No prior notice, no alternative housing. The people move, the camp contracts.
Before I leave, Mary asks me to wait. She disappears behind the pile of rubbish for 35 seconds and returns with a red handbag. Inside are the things she is most attached to — accumulated over the years, kept hidden where no one would think to look.
Informal settlements are not a failure of the system. They are the system working exactly as designed — concentrating the invisible where the city doesn't have to see them, then moving them on when visibility becomes inconvenient.