Breathe
By Frida Mendoza
"Camino por la ciudad", that's the beginning of Belanova's song that is about to turn 20 years old but after reviving on TikTok it became a trend, mainly Chilean, whose objective is to share small clips of life in the city. It catches my attention and without hesitation I dive in and give it all my attention to search my cell phone for videos that capture that essence, I know I have that kind of content.
A video walking on the Alameda Central, another in the Nochebuena neighborhood, another in Buenavista and another in Chilpancingo are the first ones I find in my gallery. Pure "downtown" area. San Cosme, Coyoacán, Portales also illustrate my compilation. Why don't I have videos of other areas of the capital?
I like walking very much and I know that being born and living all my life in the downtown area of Mexico City, has favored this habit because one thing is certain: it is not the same to be a pedestrian in Cuauhtémoc, to be one in Tláhuac, Iztapalapa or Magdalena Contreras, because there are more pedestrian streets, parks and spaces that in theory are for "walking freely".
However, one thing all of us who walk this city have in common: we don't do it as freely as we should. According to the "Charter of Pedestrian Rights" made by the members of the Pedestrian League, being able to cross the streets calmly and safely is a priority, but it is not fulfilled and since January 2019 and until March 2024, the Secretariat of Mobility of the capital recorded that 783 people died on foot in a road accident, i.e., by being run over.
"Pedestrians are, in the mobility chain, the most vulnerable. Mainly because we don't have a vehicle to protect us, because we go at a very low speed compared to other vehicles and we are not in a position to defend ourselves," Aldo Gonzalez, secretary general of the Pedestrian League, answers me.
An endless number of complicated crossings come to my mind. Buenavista, where Eje 1 Norte and Insurgentes cross, comes to my mind because between Metrobus units, cars, motorcycles and bicycles, I have to run in a crowd to take advantage of those seconds at the rhythm of the horn that rushes. Circuito Interior is another, in some stretches the option is on the heights of a pedestrian bridge where vertigo lurks while insecurity is latent, in other stretches as in Marina Nacional or Melchor Ocampo it feels impossible.
Other pedestrian rights established by the charter include wide sidewalks. How many streets are not so small that they could not even be considered sidewalks? From municipalities such as Iztapalapa or Coyoacán with their narrow streets to Miguel Hidalgo and Álvaro Obregón with avenues such as Constituyentes, the issue is similar: the passage is reduced to one person, cars circulate a few centimeters away from you and there is nothing else to do but walk at full speed.
But there is another side of the coin: wide sidewalks become a space forced to be shared with vehicles such as motorcycles or bicycles. Whether it is the Parque de los Venados, the Parque Mascarones, or the sidewalk on Avenida Álvaro Obregón, suddenly a horn or bell alerts you on the sidewalk and you have to open the way. Where can you walk freely then?
Safety for women is also contemplated as part of pedestrian rights and in conjunction with wider sidewalks, no doubt my thoughts on the difference of being a pedestrian downtown to being a pedestrian in more distant areas is more evident.
I remember the time when I traveled the streets of Tláhuac for a report. Helena was my interviewee because she lives in the area and while we were walking at dusk through some neighborhoods such as Del Mar, she confessed to me that if at night she did not travel by motorcycle cab or in a cab because she could not afford it, she preferred to walk on the sidewalks rather than on the narrow and dark sidewalks where the risk of being a victim of harassment, abuse or being deprived of her freedom was latent. "I have evaluated it many times and I prefer to be run over than another crime," she told me.
I don't forget when Sara was harassed on Vasco de Quiroga, an avenue made mainly for cars and not on foot, when she was walking from school to the Santa Fe Shopping Center and a guy from his car attacked her. Or a month ago when I was leaving the Panteones subway station, a less than 20-minute ride in the Argentina neighborhood felt eternal because of its narrow sidewalks, covered by trees and harassing looks that made me prefer to pay 50 pesos for a cab app for the return trip.
Helena's answer, Sara's experience or mine can be visualized in the statistics, they are not isolated facts.
The National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships (Endireh) conducted by INEGI in 2021 explains that in terms of violence against women in the community, Mexico City has the second highest prevalence, and of this, the streets are the space where it occurs most. 51.4% of women aged 15 years or older surveyed responded that they were violated in the street, above any transport, market and public space.
But if we talk about the population in general, the National Survey of Victimization and Perception of Public Safety (Envipe) conducted in 2023 by Inegi shows that 67.3% of people over 18 years of age in the capital feel unsafe in the street.
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) notes that environments of violence and insecurity reduce freedom of movement and the ability to participate in public life, essential services or to enjoy cultural and leisure opportunities. In itself, it has a negative impact on quality of life.
But even so, among a sea of numbers, many people do not want to stop touring the monster city, I have 31 years doing it and I do not know how to ride a bike or drive, so my options are to spend a lot of money or take some kind of transportation.
Spending soles, what a concept. Since my first years working as a journalist I was told that no one could call himself that if he did not do such an action. That is, without going out on the street, investigating and interviewing we could not know what we are reporting.
Fortunately, before I became a journalist, I was a pedestrian and I was already doing it.
In order to practice my work, as well as thousands of others, it is necessary to go outdoors and the CDMX, unlike many other cities in the country, has the right weather conditions to be outdoors and a wide public transportation network - which although it has a series of problems connects the city at almost all hours - to be able to move around.
In Mexico City you learn to walk fast, you walk in gigantic crowds and if you are born and grow up chilango you will be surprised to learn about other cities where people only walk a few steps. Walking should be recognized as a right, say urban planners, and should be included in any mobility plan.
"It was thought that urbanism and urban development planning is a science, let's say, exact or cold, that is, that the action in terms of improving mobility affected women and men in the same way, but it is not so, the evidence and experiences highlight that there are specific and particular needs when walking around the city. It is not only possible to generalize and there are no magic formulas that from one moment to the next will improve pedestrian mobility", Aldo Gonzalez, who in addition to being a pedestrian activist is also an urban architect, answered me.
One of the areas of opportunity, he mentions, is the maintenance of public space, with examples such as the elimination of visual obstacles on sidewalks, avoiding a climate of insecurity. He also points out the urgency of thinking in an integral way about all public policies related to mobility, because when we talk about it, we generally think about motorized transport and not about human transport.
"The streets are the public space par excellence of cities and to the extent that we incorporate elements that make them habitable, such as benches, trees and other types of furniture that encourage interaction and coexistence, it will be possible to recover this humanity and capacity for real coexistence in our streets and in our cities," says the pedestrian activist.
The possibilities are endless, they explain to me, and while there is some progress in reducing pedestrian fatalities as the quarters progress, it is a number that continues to grow and not one that is stagnating. And the same situation occurs with the perception of insecurity and violence.
But then, after interviewing I remember that one conclusion after interviewing is that there is a solution, there are possibilities. Mexico City can be even more walkable, as much as a Sunday stroll through Parque Bicentenario while you have a stuffed dog on your head, that walking in Cuautepec should be just as peaceful as walking on Paseo de la Reforma while watching the jacarandas bloom in spring.
That any inhabitant of the capital, whether a senior citizen, an infant or a person with a disability, deserves to be able to walk freely through their city with the necessary adaptations so that the space adapts to them, not the other way around.
I would like to think that if I wanted to and again I would make a TikTok with videos walking the city, I could find in the gallery of my cell phone videos that testify my steps in any of the 16 mayoralties because I could record it without fear of being harassed or having my cell phone stolen, because crossing the street I will never find one since the road responsibility is communal.
** This text won an Honorable Mention in the Essay category of the contest "La CDMX en movimiento" organized by the Programa Universitario de Estudios sobre Democracia, Justicia y Sociedad (PUEDJS) of the UNAM.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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