The right to the city as a right to urban centrality. The case of the appropriation of central space and resistance through informal labor among indigenous peoples in Toluca, Mexico.

Abstract

This article analyzes the socioeconomic integration strategies of members of indigenous communities in the historic center of Toluca, Mexico, with the aim of interpreting their informal labor as a practice of exercising their right to the city. From an ethnographic perspective, and through case studies and in-depth interviews, the research shows trajectories of adaptability and permanence, the analysis focusing on the process of material and symbolic appropriation of public space. It is argued that the informal economy is the means through which these actors claim their right to urban centrality, challenging historical processes of exclusion and displacement to the peripheries. The results indicate that this process constitutes an act of resignification that confronts their social and spatial invisibility, transforming the streets into a territory of belonging and sustenance. As a main contribution, the research proposes an intersectional reading of informal labor, concluding that the economic practices of these groups are, in essence, a collective claim to their right to inhabit, use, and transform the city, thus exercising their role as active agents in the production of urban space.