Suburbia Mexicana 2006-2009 by Alejandro Cartagena (February 20, 2010) 
(12 votes, average: 3.83 out of 5)
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Curator Statement by Michael Itkoff
Alejandro Cartegena focuses his lens on the development in Northern Mexico in a series of projects from which this portfolio is drawn. The rapid modernization and quick pace of pre-fab construction threatens not only local natural resources but also the traditional culture of the region. Mexico City is one of the largest urban centers in the world with over twenty million inhabitants. These new developments are being built to the north of the city with the help of government subsidies. While they depend on the economy of Mexico City, the new communities remain estranged from it in a number of ways and Cartegena’s images portend a difficult future for these new urbanites.
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This is a representation of the current Mexican suburban sprawl with a focus on the Metropolitan area of Monterrey (MAM). The implemented neo-liberal economic strategies made by the Mexican government since 2001 have pushed urban growth out of the regulation of the metropolitan urban plan. This has created contradicting policies that have let construction firms build more than 300,000 new houses around the nine cities of the MAM.
In 2008, The national housing commission (INFONAVIT) marked Monterrey’s metro area as first place in the issuing of home loans and for the first time in Mexican history, the commission has issued 497,000 loans towards buying houses in all of Mexico. Consequently, this demand has granted a green light to developers to urbanize in ways where profit is sought out for over the well being of the community, with roadways, parks and proper public transport systems standing far from becoming a reality.Amazingly even in the financial and mortgage crisis being lived in most of the world, the commission just announced in June that they will position another 500,000 loans for housing in 2009.
After photographing these landscapes for the past three years I have now returned to many of the finished housing complexes and learned of many misfortunes the new inhabitants are facing, the ecological impact and the increasing distance being formed between the well-urbanized city and these new fragmented cities in the peripheries; a new chaotic ambient to which México is growing into. Expectantly what I strive for with these aesthetic representations is to point out and open relationships between issues created by an economy-driven State and how our society resides in the dilemma of living as capitalists but wishing for a fairer World.
Alejandro Cartagena (1977) lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico.
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