In July 2025, the sound of drums carried across Zócalo as dancers and musicians in traditional prehispanic clothing performed ceremonies marking 700 years since the founding of Tenochtitlan. Families gathered around the square while performers celebrated traditions that long predate the modern capital. Behind them stood the Metropolitan Cathedral, built from the stones of the dismantled ceremonial precinct that once occupied the same ground. The celebration honored the city’s Indigenous foundations while also reflecting something much more current. Indigenous communities continue to shape life in Mexico City despite the pressures of poverty, migration and urban exclusion that many families experience after arriving in the capital.

Strengthening Community Ties

For many Indigenous families, gatherings such as these represent more than a commemoration. They provide an opportunity to strengthen community ties that can come under pressure from economic hardship and displacement. According to the World Bank, Indigenous people across Latin America continue to experience poverty at more than twice the rate of non-Indigenous populations, with Mexico home to one of the region’s largest Indigenous populations. As families move to the capital in search of work or education, community spaces help preserve the relationships, traditions and support networks that remain important long after they arrive.

Year-Round Community Life

The ceremonies in Zócalo lasted only a day, but community life continues throughout the year. Across the city, public spaces host language workshops, artisan markets, traditional dance, communal meals and cultural events that bring Indigenous families together on a regular basis. One example is Mexico City’s PILARES network, which has expanded across the capital to around 300 community centers offering free educational, cultural, sporting and skills-based programs. Alongside workshops and artistic activities, these centers provide places where residents can meet, organize local events and strengthen community ties without financial barriers to participation. During the anniversary celebrations, President Claudia Sheinbaum described Tenochtitlan not as “a dead past,” but as “the living pulse that beats beneath our capital city,” reflecting the continued presence of Indigenous culture in everyday life.

Shared Loss and Memory

Community space also takes shape through shared loss and memory. Across the capital, anti-monuments dedicated to people who have disappeared have become regular meeting places for families, campaigners and neighbors. Relatives return carrying photographs, embroidered names and banners demanding justice for those still missing. These gatherings rarely end when speeches finish. Families exchange legal information, organize future demonstrations, collect donations and support one another through investigations that often continue for years. Places of remembrance become places of practical solidarity as well as public memory.

Visibility and Support

Community spaces cannot remove the inequalities Indigenous families continue to face in Mexico City, but they can make them less isolating. Shared meals, neighborhood events, cultural workshops and public acts of remembrance allow families to exchange practical support while preserving language, tradition and collective memory. They also help ensure that Indigenous communities remain visible in the life of the capital. By the time the ceremonies in Zócalo came to an end, the crowds began to disperse, but the work of sustaining community continues elsewhere. Across Mexico City, shared spaces continue to bring Indigenous families together, strengthening relationships that extend well beyond a single celebration.

– Elliott J Carter

Elliott is based in Mexico City and focuses on Good News for The Borgen Project.

Photo: Unsplash