México: One year defending your homes
The Council for the Defence of Housing (CDV) has made important progress in the fight for the right to housing for the workers of Mexico. On 14 June it held its National Evaluation Meeting in Mexico City to mark the first anniversary of its starting work. Let me describe the Council’s main achievements.
Laura Itzel Castillo, 18 June 2008
On 18 June 2007 the Council handed a set of proposals to the parliamentary representatives of the Progressive Broad Front (FAP). This was a broad initiative seeking to reinstate the ‘social’ character of the federal housing agencies and to regulate their financial operations. On the initiative of Federal Deputy Cuauhtémoc Velasco, a group of FAP legislators chose an initiative to follow through from this set of proposals: a proposal referring to the Housing Law, to regulate the operations of Sofoles (Limited-Objective Finance Companies). I would respectfully ask the members of the Chamber of Deputies Housing Commission not to throw out this project, as they are planning to do tomorrow.
The CDV used a judicial review to block the destruction, last November, of the archives relating to the sale of past-due loans by INFONAVIT. Subsequently, a citizen audit in which a number of organisations took part managed to get the contracts relating to this sale handed over. This information has been crucially important for people throughout Mexico who have been bringing judicial review cases trying to overturn this illegal operation.
On 31 August, as a result of public complaints, the mobilisation of the organisations forming part of the Council and the coordination of their activities with those of the FAP, and at the initiative of legislator Carlos Navarro, the Chamber of Deputies approved an agreement to prevent INFONAVIT selling any further past-due loans. Recently, the agency has been obliged to buy back some of the loans that it had sold on to Capmark and Scrap II.
The Council has also managed to set up permanent working groups with INFONAVIT itself. This initiative is being extended. At present, INFONAVIT residents from different parts of the country are being defended this way: for example, in Monclova, where, on 3 May, the first collective working group heard the cases of 130 INFONAVIT mortgage-holders.
Thanks to the joint work of the Council and other social movements, INFONAVIT’s attempts to start a policy of bringing legal actions against the leaders of organisations defending the right to housing were frustrated. On 10 December 2007 Juan Murguía Franco, a social activist from Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, was released from jail as a result.
The aim is to turn back the tide of evictions with which this illegitimate government has been threatening the people of Mexico. I am convinced that if we continue to organise collectively, we shall soon be able to move on from defending the right to housing to taking the initiative in policy design.