Constructing a Communal Form of Life: Destituent Praxis in the Peripheries of Mexico City

Abstract

Born of revolutionary struggles in the peripheries of Mexico City, the Panchos have spent the past three decades transforming land occupations into vibrant communities aiming to take charge of every aspect of their lives. To date, they have constructed eight autonomous territories that are home to thousands of families. The Panchos insist they are building not housing projects but life projects. The struggle to transform the material environment to meet immediate needs forms part of a larger political struggle for a qualitatively different form of life, a dignified and communal life grounded in quotidian practices of self-organization, collective decision making, and shared labor. This article argues that the deepening of this communal form of life exemplifies a destituent praxis, one that reveals, refuses, and abandons the world imposed by the metropolis. By placing Ivan Illich's critique of institutionality in dialogue with recent theorizations of destituent power, this article explores emergent practices of emancipation that abandon the classical locus of revolutionary struggle—seizing state power—and instead combatively assemble, here and now, other ways of living.