Dominant Space and the Post-68 Legacy in Mexico and the World: Militarization, Securitization, and Violence

Abstract

This article reflects on the spatial reconfiguration resulting from the 1968’s movements as a strategy for the reaffirmation of class power that prompted the consolidation of late capitalism. We discuss space as a domination device that developed forms of securitization and militarization to impose conditions of production and reproduction. To analyze the post-68 legacy we must consider the authoritarian and repressive methods adopted by the ruling order to contain potential disruptive acts of the subalterns’ infrapolitics, that is, to consider the excesses of democracy are a condition, means and expression of subordination. From our approach to the spatial conditions of 1968 in Mexico, we point out some of the urban processes that guided the production of dominant space and that allow synthesizing the fracture and emptying of the socio-spatial fabric through securitization and militarization of the everyday life. We conclude with an analysis of how the security mechanisms and military measures that resulted from the 68’s movements constituted strategic axes that support and give viability to forms of domination of the world space. It is therefore a discussion that places social spatiality as fundamental political mediation and, therefore, as an epistemological key.