Los Panchos, a leftist community within Mexico City

By SJ Otto

This summer I made my historic trip to Cuba. I’ve written several articles about Cuba but I haven’t yet written about my time in a leftist community in Mexico City called, La Organización Pancho Francisco Villa Independiente Izquierdista (Los Panchos for short). It was an interesting place and in some ways it was a city or country within a city or country.

While I was there we saw every element of the community. It was literally like a separate country or city. Everything the people needed, from growing food, cleaning up water for the community’s use, skating rinks, stages for community culture, even a radio station was all provided by the community.

More than 4,000 people live in this place. It is very private to join. To belong to this place had a lot of requirements, including going to meetings and helping out with the various jobs and tasks the community required. At first I wondered why people were willing to give up time and privacy to belong in this place. But walking around the outside of this community in Mexico City it became obvious why people would want to live here.

Mexico City is crowded—real crowded! Buildings are close together. They seem to build buildings on top of buildings. There are homes and buildings everywhere. What is lacking is space between the buildings. Front lawns are non-existent—as well as back yards. The city is dirty and I could smell sewage almost every place I went. At one point in the leftist community we could see outside to a ghetto. It had lots of bland looking concrete buildings and we were told that one reason it smelled so bad is that people kept farm animals in their homes. We saw a turkey standing on a tin roof. There was no farm land, that is to say, we saw no dirt, grass or spaces for the farm animals. They just live among the homes that were jammed next to each other and on top of each other.

Inside the leftist community we could see the apartments they all lived in. They were clean, spacious and brightly painted. There is actually some space between buildings in this community. There were all the resources and amenities needed for a person to live comfortable. Living here is well worth the requirements.

There is strict security to this place. No one gets in without some kind of ID. People have health care in here. They have music theatre. They developed there own cultural identity.

They sometimes had to ration water. They had a water works outfit so that water is available for such uses as drinking, bathing and cooking. They have some water that is kind of a gray color and is only used for such things as growing vegetables.

They have their own radio station. Besides news programs it has a schedule for all kinds of music, reggae, punk, hip hop and just about anything the community wanted to listen to.

There are plenty of pictures of famous Latin American Revolutionaries, such as Che Guevara and Pancho Villa. There is definitely a leftwing ideology to this community.

It seems like a deviation from a revolutionary movement to provide a closed community for just those who want to join, rather than trying to change the whole city or country. But this community has been very successful over the years. Maybe this is just one way to try and promote left-wing ideas. One thing for sure is that living in this place is far more comfortable than trying to live in regular Mexico City.  

There is plenty of things to do in La Organización Pancho Francisco Villa Independiente Izquierdista. This is an open place for sports and when it it cold enough, a skating rink.

This has a playground for the kids and a stage for cultural activities.

A main building for this community is located on this crowded street in Mexico City.

Buildings are close together and stacked on top of each other in Mexico City.

This is a slum  that can be viewed, down hill, from the community.