Can you imagine having an idea to improve your neighborhood and having public funds available to make it happen? In the Yuguelito community, they didn’t just imagine it; they pursued it. After a collective mapping and needs prioritization process facilitated by Accountability Lab, a project was born: Todos juntos por un Yuguelito seguro. It was a Sendero Seguro combining paving, streetlights, security cameras, and neighborhood alarms.

This project was a thorough proposal with undeniable community support. While exploring ways to bring it to life, we came across Participatory Budgeting as a potential avenue. This mechanism is meant to give everyone the opportunity to access public resources by proposing and voting on projects that improve their communities. But is it really for everyone?

This mechanism has existed in Mexico City since 2011, making it one of the most developed models in the country and, as such, a reference for other states. 4% of each city’s 16 boroughs’ budgets is allocated to it.

And how is it decided which project becomes reality? Per neighborhood, the proposal with the most votes wins, but first, it goes through several stages. Central to the process is the technical validation phase, during which the project is evaluated, and a decision is made on whether it advances to the public voting phase. That decision belongs to a group of people known collectively as Órgano Dictaminador, a technical evaluation committee. Some of its members work in the local government, while others are specialists in social and urban issues.

Yuguelito had already tried to bring this and other projects to life through other public programs, to no avail. The Participatory Budgeting mechanism was then their last chance. Expectations were high, but they were quickly dashed, as the project was rejected in the first phase. Once again, Yuguelito was met with institutional rejection, with the State effectively shutting its doors to them.

This rejection revealed an undeniable implementation gap at the heart of the system, resulting in a maze of unclear criteria and unwritten rules, all underpinned by a single argument: the community’s irregular status.

While the Sendero Seguro project had initially been rejected due to Yuguelito’s classification as an irregular settlement, this outcome hinted at a deeper disconnect: the gap between the mechanism’s design and its on-the-ground operation. This ultimately excludes those who most need to be heard, a population that has been historically marginalized, structurally underserved, and denied basic services and infrastructure, and now, excluded from a civic participation mechanism as well.

We were up against a local government Technical Evaluation Committee whose arguments lacked coherence in determining the project’s unfeasibility, both in in-person sessions and in the final ruling. Even so, we decided to fight back during the second re-evaluation, but the rejection still didn’t change. Different arguments, same result. 

The fine print and the invisible criteria, but only for some…

One of the most striking aspects illustrating the gap between policy on paper and implementation on the ground was the exclusion criterion based on irregular status. We started with the simplest question: Did Yuguelito officially exist within the mechanism? The answer is yes, the settlement is included in the official civic participation geography, under the neighborhood of El Triángulo. Strictly speaking, that means all of its residents have the right to propose, vote on, and carry out projects through the Participatory Budgeting mechanism.

Yet whenever someone from Yuguelito submitted a proposal, the answer was an automatic “no” because the land was classified as irregular. Under that label, the possibility of addressing insecurity, one of the community’s most pressing needs, simply vanished.

Because of these contradictions, we began searching for where this exclusion criterion was officially established. We reviewed the Civic Participation Law, which, without going into great depth, mentions five types of feasibility: technical, legal, environmental, financial, and community and public impact. We also reviewed the call for proposals issued by Mexico City’s Electoral Institute (IECM), the institution that organizes the voting process, but found nothing related to this exclusion criterion. However, a member of the technical evaluation committee from another borough shared a document with us.

This document contains the operating criteria for the Technical Evaluation Committee. These guidelines govern its internal structure, procedures, and powers (how sessions are held, agendas, minutes, agreements, deliberations, and the responsibilities of each role within it). But we found something noteworthy: this is the only document that mentions irregular settlements, advising ruling members to verify that a proposal is not located in such an area. This document, however, is not public, accessible, or distributed among the general population. As a result, those submitting proposals were doing so without complete information, even after their proposals had been approved or rejected. On the other hand, the Technical Evaluation Committee was applying internal, largely unpublicized criteria from an administrative guideline that cannot, in any way, supersede the Civic Participation Law, which does not establish irregular status as an exclusion criterion.

Turning rejection into strategy

This was just the starting point of a deeper analysis of Participatory Budgeting’s regulatory framework. In this process, we encountered various irregularities and new opportunities for improvement, not just for the community but also for the mechanism itself. This was no longer solely about the Sendero Seguro project, but about the right to civic participation not being guaranteed for everyone and how structural barriers continue to exclude the same communities, denying them their rights across multiple dimensions.

Drawing on these findings and starting with the Yuguelito case, we designed an advocacy and visibility strategy focused on the structural barriers and the gap between design and implementation of mechanisms, like this one, that limit access to rights. At the same time, connecting it to the fight for housing rights that the Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente (FPFV-I) had long rooted its struggle in.

This strategic assessment translated into concrete actions that informed a new strategic avenue for Accountability Lab’s advocacy work. First, the production of a documentary that would open a broader conversation, drawing on the Yuguelito case, about how and what is needed to guarantee the effective exercise of the right not only to participation but also to housing and to the city in urban periphery contexts, while showcasing the power of community organizing.

Additionally, we pursued advocacy efforts with decision-makers and the institutions responsible for operating the mechanism. In this case, we held meetings with IECM civic participation committee members, during which we raised different angles for collaboration to improve and strengthen not only the mechanism but also civic participation in the city as a whole. We also shared a territorial diagnostic of the Yuguelito case, including observations and recommendations for implementing Participatory Budgeting.

The road ahead

These are actions that continue to contribute to the conversation. This moment must push us to keep critically questioning the opacity of information and its access, in order to exercise our rights effectively. We can no longer afford to ignore the knots and gaps in the system; doing so only tightens them. We must confront what they are, find the thread, and start untangling them to build something better.

It is ironic that Yuguelito, a self-managed community and an example of organization and participation, is shut out of a mechanism designed for everyone to participate in. Presenting a project backed by a real diagnostic was not enough for a system that claims to champion participation and inclusion, yet in practice it excludes.

Despite being a mechanism with a fifteen-year track record, it is not perfect. We must recognize that responsibility is shared among authorities, decision-makers, everyday citizens, and organized civil society in advancing mechanisms that are truly inclusive and responsive to the complexities of territories such as informal settlements and the city’s peripheries, where participation takes place under very different conditions. At the same time, transparency and accountability must be maintained, while recognizing that without political will to implement the necessary changes, the path forward will be even harder.

So what is left for us to do? Don’t give up. The way this mechanism works needs to stop being a mystery to the general public, especially after more than a decade of implementation and persistent low participation levels. Let’s be honest: it’s not because people don’t care about improving their living conditions. Among other reasons, participation remains difficult, and information remains inaccessible or difficult to understand. Demanding clearer, public, and easily accessible criteria is only the beginning. We must fight for a system that speaks the same language as the people it serves and simplifies institutionalized participation. But we also need borough officials with the capacity to provide guidance with sensitivity, fairness, and a vision of territorial justice.

Let’s keep building community, organizing, and working to improve all the spaces where we can transform our realities and guarantee our rights.

Recommended links

• Watch the trailer for From Paper to Territory, our short documentary on Yuguelito.
• Find more information here on what the Participatory Budgeting mechanism is, and its stages. 
• Read a summary of our recommendations to strengthen the Participatory Budgeting implementation here.
• Learn more about our work implementing the first CivActs pilot in Mexico in Yuguelito here and here.

Find more information about the CivActs program.

Karla Luna