Mexico City’s mayor, Martí Batres, presented to the public this week a reform to the local Constitution on private, public and social property. The modification, which had already been unanimously approved in the capital’s Congress on August 22 and was published in the official gazette on Monday, has fueled the controversy that private property is disappearing in the city, a falsehood. The hoaxes are growing non-stop in the face of a reform that only adapts the local text to the federal Magna Carta. Exactly, the third article, which deals with the guiding principles of the capital, now says: “Mexico City assumes as principles the respect for human rights, the defense of the democratic and social State (…) the respect for property in the same terms as article 27 of the political Constitution of the United Mexican States.” However, the text did not matter, the misinformation had already spread.
“Breaking news: private property no longer belongs to citizens, it belongs to politicians.” “Say goodbye to private property, now all the goods that you have bought with so much sacrifice, businesses, houses, cars, etc., are property of the State by decree of Martí Batres.” “Today, the chilangos no longer have a house, it belongs to the State.” “I am saving for my first home, but with this reform, what is it for?” The message, repeated on dozens of social media accounts, has become one of the main trends in the country on Tuesday.
The idea was also amplified by videos in the media: “And they can expropriate, they take away guarantees from private property: a house, an apartment, a neighborhood… Because the government can say, what do you think? Now it is for public use,” said columnist David Páramo on Ciro Gómez Leyva’s newscast, during prime time. “But they have always been able to expropriate,” the host answered. “Yes, but now they can say that the property is no longer private, but rather communal or social. That is the problem.” “Now private investment will have less security in Mexico City,” Páramo concluded. The video has accumulated more than 430,000 views on X alone.
On August 22, the Congress of Mexico City was to vote in an extraordinary session on a package of initiatives submitted by Martí Batres. The long day in the chamber was going smoothly. When it was time for the property reform, it was PAN deputy Diego Orlando Garrido who announced the proposal. The project had already been approved by the Commission on Constitutional Matters and Citizen Initiatives, made up of politicians from Morena, PAN and PRI. “The intention of the initiative is to point out that the protection of property in the private dimension, but also in the public and social dimension, exists as a guiding principle of our city,” explained Garrido, president of this commission, “where in the case of conflict, the social has priority over the private, having as its main foundation the federal Constitution itself, thus making normative harmonization the central objective of this initiative under study.”
In its guiding principles, Article 3 of the Mexico City Constitution only included respect for private property. In his proposal, Batres requested that the text read “respect for private, public and social property.” The Congressional commission decided to opt for “respect for property in the same terms as Article 27 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States.” The federal text states that “ownership of the lands and waters within the limits of the national territory originally belongs to the Nation, which has had and has the right to transfer ownership of them to private individuals, constituting private property.” The text also establishes that “expropriations may only be made for reasons of public utility and through compensation.”
The proposal to harmonize the local Constitution with the federal one received 57 votes in favor, with no abstentions or votes against. That same day, the limit on rents in Mexico City was approved, as well as reforms on neighborhood improvement and judicial functions. The next day’s newspapers hardly mentioned the change in property rights. Until this Monday.
The decree was published in the Official Gazette and the head of government made a presentation at the Old City Hall for almost an hour on the modification. He was accompanied by Martha Ávila, president of the board of directors of the Congress of Mexico City, and Pablo Gómez Álvarez, head of the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), who was the first to point out “the contradiction” of the third article of the local text. “We must be very emphatic and clear that private property remains duly protected by the legal order,” said the legislator, “the express reference to article 27 provides legal certainty to all citizens.” Ávila also hinted without giving further details: “This harmonization can become a touchstone for the construction of some chapters of the General Territorial Planning Program for the integral development of the city during the next years.”
Batres pointed out that the Mexican Constitution, in 2017, by placing only private property as the guiding principle, reflected “a neoliberal setback” because “it placed private interest as the supreme principle, superior to all social interest,” which contradicted the federal text. “I know that it might seem elementary, obvious, but it is not so, it might seem that sticking to what the country’s Constitution says is obvious, it is logical, but in the years of neoliberalism precisely what was sought was to demolish, undermine, neutralize the original meaning of article 27,” said the head of Government, who took the opportunity to attack the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation and its interpretation of the Constitution: “It makes it difficult for the current Judicial Branch to make interpretations of our local norms in favor of the most powerful economic groups.”
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