translated from Spanish: Members of Otomi camp fear eviction

Lorenza is 28 years old and fears losing his meager belongings. Everything this woman can consider as hers fits in a tent made of plastics, through which the water leaks if it rains too much. In the center, there is a mattress on which his three daughters still sleep; Maren, Viviana and Maria Laura. All three are covered almost to the top with several blankets. Around him the furniture is scarce. Just two closets, a TV and a bunch of baskets in which clothes are piled up.
This tent is located in the Otomí camp, located at the 18th point of Rome Street, in the Juarez colony.
“We want decent housing and progress,” she says. Explain that one of the things that hurts most is reproach when it sells on the street. When she’s told to get a job, go back to town, she’s an Indian. “If it wasn’t for the Indians, people wouldn’t have their homes. Who are the ones building them?” he argues.
It’s 8 in the morning. In the camp the inhabitants begin to thicken. A woman cleans her clothes in a pile. Another young man ties the threads with which he makes bracelets that he will then sell on the street. In some of the shops there are signs supporting Marichuy, the candidate of the National Indigenous Council, or as a souvenir to Samir Flores, activist against the Morelos thermoelectric plant murdered more than three months ago.
The camp starts to wake up, there are people who start their routines and others who have not slept all night: they are the ones who stand guard to warn if they see anything suspicious.
They think they can be evicted at any time.
For two decades, members of the Otomi, Triqui and Nahuatl community have resided in the Juarez colony. They first settled on the spanish embassy site in the time of the Spanish Republic (from 1931 to 1936, although it was in operation until the end of the civil war, in 1939). The 2017 earthquake damaged the building and, a year later, they were evicted. They settled in two camps: one on London Street 7 and the other in Rome 18.
Most of the camp members come from Santiago Mexquititlán, Querétaro state.
“Since I was little I was there. We were safer in there. We take risks here, cars pass, we can’t be safe out here. They pass drunk, people who don’t live here and can do something to us. That’s where we were closed.”
Joaquina is 22 years old and knows no life other than juarez. She arrived with her mother when she was two and now her daughter, aged 5, goes to school every day after sleeping in a tent. He says he would like to have a “dignified dwelling” and that’s why they stay here, because they expect the authorities to offer them a solution. She wears traditional Otomi costume and says she is upset when she is accused of not being indigenous.
These women report being discriminated against. They claim to have been insulted by their indigenous status and, at the same time, accused of not being indigenous.
The most urgent concern for both of us is another. Lorenza and Joaquina have in mind what happened last May 30. His colleagues on London Street, with whom they shared living conditions but not organization, were expelled in a coordinated operation between the mayor of Cuauhtémoc and the secretariat of Public Security of the Government of Mexico City. They avoided eviction. But they don’t feel safe. They believe that at the time they evaded eviction because they maintained an institutional dialogue table, but they do not trust the authorities.
Read: ‘We have nowhere to go, where to stay’: testimonies of the eviction in the Juarez colony
They’re afraid the same thing will happen to them. There are 80 people who are still overnight covered by plastic precarious people.
“The mayor said last week that they could come this week. We are afraid that it may happen,” says Diego García, representative of the Emiliano Zapata Revolutionary People’s Union, who accompanies the camp.
“The fear we all have is that they come, they’re going to beat us, throw things at us like the other colleagues did,” says Isabel, another tent resident. She sells handicrafts. In particular, dolls priced between 120 and 240 pesos. He’s afraid if the police come, he won’t be able to retrieve the doll-making material. That’s what happened to those who lived in London 7. According to Roberto, one of the expelled, the mayor’s office did not return their belongings. Only six families from which they were evicted remain on a seeding in the Zocalo. “We have nowhere else to go,” Roberto says.

Meeting of the neighbors with Mayor Nunez
The other side of the coin are the neighbors of the area. They demand that the camp be raised. They allege noise, dirt and crime. They were the reason for the expulsion of the occupants of London Street, according to Arturo Medina, undersecretary of government of Mexico City.
Neighbors allege that, after the first eviction, their request to finish the job has been neglected. According to Alberto, one of the residents who began organizing meetings against the camp’s presence, attended the public hearing twice of the head of government, Claudia Sheinbaun. They also requested a private hearing with the mayor of Cuauhtémoc, Nestor Núñez.
They only managed an open meeting with Nunez. The meeting took place on Thursday, June 13. It was held in Giordano Bruno Square, just opposite the Roma Street camp. Neighbors and a representative of the Otomí community also came. According to Alberto Gutierrez only one agreement was reached: to strengthen security. Now there’s a permanent policeman in the area.
On the demands of the residents, who focus basically on the expulsion from the camp, there is no more news. In the mayor of Cuauhtémoc they say that the objective is to hold another meeting. If they planned to evict, they wouldn’t say it either.
Despite this, the rumor that eviction can come at any time is in the environment. It came to the community, who on Saturday convened a press conference to denounce their situation. It has also reached the neighbours, in whose networks spread rumors about a possible expulsion.
It’s not just the neighbors who have met with the authorities. Members of the Otomí community claim to have held meetings with Larisa Ortiz, director of the Secretariat of Indigenous Peoples of Mexico City. According to Diego García, they received a visit in which the institution pledged to support with water and mattresses. The water came alone on one occasion. The version is corroborated by sources from the secretariat, who say that they are liaising between the community and other institutions such as the Invi, the Housing Institute.
Residents at the camp have not changed their demands: they say they are willing to build their tents if they are guaranteed a home in the colony. They claim that they offered to buy the property, that the law has expropriation mechanisms, but that the authorities have no will.
Read >> Members rectify the law on evictions in CDMX; previous drafting benefited invaders, they say
Although they maintain antagonistic positions, the Otomi community and neighbors have a common ground: they both feel abandoned by the institutions. After the eviction of ’30, the situation has returned to a tense calm. And that unsettles everyone.
The feeling in the institutional sphere is that there is no one to take charge of the conflict. Animal Político asked the Government of Mexico City, the Secretariat of Public Security, the Secretariat of Indigenous Peoples and the mayor of Cuauhtémoc. Each institution went to the ball to another without explaining some kind of plan to resolve the conflict.
Meanwhile, on London Street, the evicted, the cleaning work has already been carried out. The same is true inside the property. This area is guarded by armed agents. One of them identified himself as a policeman in the State of Mexico. This is a common practice: outsourcing public agents to guard private land.
“It seems that the reagent was the power of the owner of the property,” says Alberto Gutiérrez, one of the drivers of the neighborhood group. He suspects that a part of the land was cleared in order to build, and that the different institutions are going to turn their backs on them.
According to the campsites, the property is owned by a real estate company called Eduardo S.A. de C.V. In the mayoralty of Cuauhtémoc, however, they indicate that the terrain is still in dispute.
It is not easy to live in a camp in the middle of Roma Street. Isabel explains that they do not have running water, that they have to collect it from the socket of a nearby park. He says they do it at night, because otherwise the neighbors get upset. They also complain that residents blame them for facts where they, he says, have no responsibility. Like the damage to the pavement, they blame the pipes that pass underneath.
“There’s no drugs or crime here, nobody here steals,” she says. He explains, for example, that the eve there was a problem with four young people in the community. According to their version, someone accused them of stealing from an Oxxo, several patrols showed up, an officer came to pull out a gun.
The version of the street neighbors is likely to be completely different.
There are two completely opposite worlds on a small street in the Benito Juarez colony and they only agree on one thing: they believe that the authorities do not want to address solutions to the problem.
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Original source in Spanish

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