The Borderlands at Display: The Show Window vs. the Wall
Figure 1. PRONAF – Section of “Mexico has an enormous show window” illustration. Source: PRONAF Booklet.
Although the border wall and the immigrant are essential figures to understand the México/ United States border, their oversaturated representation had drawn away from the human and environmental relations that have historically existed in these lands. The “build the wall” affair of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and subsequent administration courted the “angry and nostalgic” conservative Americans, the largely uneducated, neglected, and those who felt their security was threatened. The construction of a “great, great wall” was presented as the symbol of the solution to the death of the “American Dream.” In addition to furthering the divisions that the existing fence already created, the 458 miles of the new “border wall system” turned into a human rights crisis, an international relations affront, and sped up an environmental disaster. In an oversimplification of the colonization, land grabbing, and cultural imperialism that the border stands for, border studies in architecture focused instead in the construction of one element, the wall.
In view of the resurgence of extreme nationalist anti-immigrant divisive politics, this series of articles focus on providing an increasingly relevant and necessary understanding about the borderlands’ built-environment and its cross-boundary interconnectedness. It recognizes the México/United States border as much more than a dividing wall, but the spaces that allow fronterizo – or of the border – cultures to form, arise and resist American cultural and economic domination. In doing so we can begin to envision possible futures for the borderlands. Futures arising from a post-border – based on its indigenous past as a regional system – conscientiousness do not focus on walls, but envision the borderlands outside of the current imperialistic, capitalist and colonial constructs, while recognizing them as historical sites of commercial and cultural exchange.
In this first piece I explore how a 1960s Mexican governmental project intended to present the border’s boundary as a show window, instead of a solid wall. A transparent glass partition that served to showcase Mexican culture, attract visitors, and offer entrance points. An attempt to create a more culturally and economically interconnected border. The 1961 Mexican Programa Nacional Fronterizo (National Border Program -PRONAF), promoted by President López Mateos directed by Antonio J. Bermúdez, with Mario Pani as Architect in Chief, proposed a model of cultural and economic development for the territory that neighbored “the country with the highest economic potential in the world.” The program sought to improve the Mexican border cities’ physical appearance, cultivate a new kind of tourism, and increase exports, through the construction of a modernist “Heart[s] of the City” – as proposed by Sert & Guideon at CIAM 8 – that included commercial and cultural centers. A program that although not fully completed was both an imposition of an idea of Mexicanidad by the federal government to the borderlands, and a first attempt to prop the border cities as worthy representatives of a modernizing country.
Figure 2. PRONAF - Mexico has an enormous show window. Source: PRONAF Booklet.
“[PRONAF was] a program that although not fully completed was both an imposition of an idea of Mexicanidad by the federal government to the borderlands, and a first attempt to prop the border cities as worthy representatives of a modernizing country.”
With the return of the GIs after the end of WWII, and the deportation of Mexican farm workers resulting of the termination of the “Bracero Program” the unprecedented population growth led to a shortage of housing and job opportunities, rendering the urban problems and social inequalities at the border more acute. Committed to the progress and economic competitiveness of the borderlands and backed by the policies of the Mexican Miracle, López Mateos created PRONAF to solve the economic and social inequalities of the northern Mexican border through modernist planning. Through this program, México began to open its borders, and markets to commerce. PRONAF started the construction of border gateways and shopping centers that welcomed American tourists and shoppers, while simultaneously trying to protect México’s internal markets and control over its economy by establishing new industry enterprises. Nevertheless, at the time, México found itself entangled in the Cold War conflict, caught between its northern capitalist neighbors, whom it was trying to attract and keep as a commercial partner, and the Cuban revolutionaries, with whom it shared historical relations of brotherhood and support.
PRONAF proposed using the borderlands as a storefront showcasing the country to American eyes. Although modernist and high-tech architecture was chosen to be the symbol of the developing country, México also wanted to display its vast and deep history. Nevertherless, PRONAF failed to add the layered complexity of the borderlands, a bi-cultural environment. Although México’s cultural identity – art and architecture – had always been dominated by the cultural center of the country, this time the question of national identity was being generated for and put on display at the edge of the country. Although the lead designers like Mario Pani, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, and Ricardo Legorreta were still from the center, and rather informed by such circumstances, they transplanted their ideations from the center to the borderlands.
México’s attempts to generate an international image during the Cold War started at the 1958 Brussels Expo. Although Mexico’s pre-Hispanic architecture had been branded and used as a touristic commodity since Manuel Amabilis’ neo-Mayan palace for the 1929 Seville Fair, it was Ramírez Vázquez who introduced modern architecture to the design of the Mexican pavilions in 1958. These “scenographies of Mexicanness” experimented with the old tropes of folkloric pre-Hispanism commonly used in touristic propaganda, overlapped with the rapid industrialization of the young nation. PRONAF used the border cities as a framework to represent and construct that idea of a new Mexicanidad, an attempt to define the ethos of Mexican culture and architecture for export, in what was considered “an enormous show window… a great recreational and cultural avenue for the country”.
Figure 3. Brussels World’s Fair Mexican Pavilion.1958. By Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, and Rafael Mijarez. Source: Arquitectos de México (México, D. F., México). -- No. 8 (Jun. 1959).
Mario Pani’s general plan for PRONAF’s civic and cultural centers depicted in the media included shopping, touristic and entertainment centers, a museum, a convention hall, a cinema, a theater, office buildings, hotel, motel, and a lienzo charro. They were laid out in a similar way of what later Alison Smithson coined as a mat-building, with parks, and gardens woven in a superblock. The superblock was used as the urban unit, both dense and free of points of conflict between cars and pedestrians, connected to high-speed motorways, and replicable for a controlled growth of the city. Intended to make cities more attractive for both Mexican and foreign investors by promoting both a cohesive and unified national culture at the borderlands, the projects’ design was undertaken from the architectural to the urban design as a singular and co-related task.
Figure 4. Perspective render of the “Model of the most modern Commercial Center in Latin-America.” 1961 Mario Pani y Arquitectos Asociados. Source: PRONAF Booklet
Pani’s projects responded to modernist urban treatises and guidelines, but at the same time intended to present the inhabitants and visitors with the country’s historical roots. The forms and layouts abstracted from the temple cities of the Valle de México were used as models to organize the commercial and cultural centers; even using traditional materials like volcanic rock in innovative ways, while adapting to the increasingly important presence of the automobile. Beyond an architecture that just fulfilled PRONAF’s programmatic functionality, Pani’s plazas attempted to promote a sense of community. He designed these superblocks so they would include spaces were “cultural festivals of symphonic music, ballet, high quality Mexican and foreign motion pictures, would be presented in these first-rate theaters, while preserving and promoting those sporting events which have a high drawing power.” Events like exhibitions, book and home fairs, were organized by the three levels of government – federal, state, and municipal – in collaboration with the private sector, were organized to be accessible to both tourists and locals.
Figure 5. Plan Regulador for Cd. Juárez showing locations of PRONAF in relation to the borderline. n.d. By Mario Pani and Arquitectos Asociados. Source: Fondo Mario Pani Darqui
Figure 6. Perspective render of “Centro Comercial PRONAF Cd. Juárez. Showroom.” 1961 Mario Pani y Arquitectos Asociados. Source: PRONAF Booklet
PRONAF was a part of a series of government financed development-oriented projects, where the federal government provided the land, the settings, and the infrastructure for the private sector to occupy and manage commerce through different fiduciary mechanisms. For its success the role of the planner-architect became an indispensable figure between the state and the private sphere. Pani’s proven experience in promoting and creating similar mechanisms of collaboration was used to render PRONAF both a profitable enterprise and a cultural landmark. The project sought to solidify a border market affording economic independence, desired only by the Mexican people, but by the fronterizos on both sides of the border.
“In contrast to the postwar American modernity of middle-class suburban ranch-type houses subdivisions, suburban shopping centers, and freeways, what the Mexican modernity presented at the borders was comprised of monumental commercial and public buildings within the city. ”
The partially completed projects in Tijuana, Nogales, Cd. Juárez, Piedras Negras, and Matamoros showed traces of the trends followed in other Mexican cities: concrete shells, structurally defying and hyperbolic paraboloid buildings. These characteristics made the Mexican public projects very distinguishable from those located/built in the border cities of the United States. In contrast to the postwar American modernity of middle-class suburban ranch-type houses subdivisions, suburban shopping centers, and freeways, what the Mexican modernity presented at the borders was comprised of monumental commercial and public buildings within the city.
Although the program, promoted by the federal government, was well received in national and international media, most border cities that received funding to develop PRONAF raised concerns about their local needs. Instead of the grandiose commercial and cultural projects, they demanded basic urban infrastructure; water, sewer, street lighting, and good mass transportations systems. Schools, historical customs offices, and other buildings were demolished, and their land’s expropriated and sold at low prices to make way for the new PRONAF projects. In Cd. Juárez the historically commercial and entertainment establishments complained about the diversion of traffic that the urban renewal project proposed. At the same time, the Mexican southern border cities complained about the long neglect and not being left as a second thought after the Northern border cities.
It must be kept in mind that PRONAF remained unfinished, as it was not continued by subsequent administrations, which focused instead on using cheaper labor to industrialize the border: the maquiladora model. PRONAF must then be measured through the perspective of its success as a program that attempted to resist the American commercial dominance through the defense and promotion of national culture and products, and integration with the global economy through tourism. More than a project for the borders, PRONAF sought to represent the whole country’s development at the borderlands. As a project that served three masters – urban development, generation of a local economies, and the attraction of international tourism – it was perhaps destined to fail. However, it was a project that for the first time carried out the idea of generating and presenting a border culture and portraying a more positive image of México.
