Expansion of Mexico City towards a lacustrine edge: memories and imaginaries from a digital semiosphere

Abstract

This article analyzes how evocations of early urban settlements on the former bed of Lake Texcoco, particularly
in the central core of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, are embedded in a genealogy of structural violence. Through digital ethnography and the analysis of a corpus  of historical photographs circulated on  Facebook, it examines the  interaction between images and comments. The  results reveal the coexistence of contrasting memories and imaginaries:  territorial stigmatization and community-based reivindication rooted in popular urbanism. They also show that urban violence is
expressed through the symbolic  dispossession of memories and narratives. As a limitation, it was not possible to profile participants due to the open and  expansive nature of the digital corpus.  The originality of the study lies in articulating semiotic anthropology and critical geography
to analyze memories in social media. It concludes that  images shared on Facebook function as
devices of symbolic contestation,  opening spaces for
narrative resistance and consolidating themselves as new sites of memory.