Thinking about this challenge from the very beginning, it was an easy thing: to make a documentary about El Yuguelito and the on-the-ground work through the CivActs methodology. Also, one that could expose the structural failures of participation mechanisms in Mexico City and serve as a portrait of urban inequality.

And to do it as a civil society organization without any real audiovisual production capacity, while running two other programs at the same time, under budget limitations; oh, and with a four-person team. Did that discourage us? Not at all. But it was clear that every step we took had to be strategic.

This idea, of course, grew out of the relationship built with the Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente and the community. By the time I joined the Accountability Lab team, Ana Laura Lozano and Ingrid Löwenberg had already implemented the first four phases of the CivActs methodology, hand in hand with the community and the leadership of the FPFV-I, starting roughly a year earlier. That had led them to know the streets of El Yuguelito in depth: its challenges, its people, and the virtues of self-organization and community participation.

After six months of visits to the community, between assemblies and working meetings,  implementing the final phase of the methodology, which consisted of building an action plan to respond to the needs identified in the community survey, the decision was made to design a project to compete for the Participatory Budget in Iztapalapa (Mexico City Borough).

It was there, at the intersection of what a community asked for, what the system rejected – and everything in between as Ana Laura Lozano documents on her blog, that the community hit a wall: the proposal was rejected because it came from an “irregular” settlement, a criterion that, as Karla Luna explains, was nowhere to be found in any public rule of the mechanism. That barrier gave us the cue to think: “There’s a story and a conflict here. This is a side of the events that’s worth telling.” 

Now then, why a documentary in the middle of 2026? I wanted to explain this because it’s important to clarify that it didn’t come from naivety, but from strategic thinking. We know what times we’re living in; we know about the attention economy and the way all of us who create content for the internet are constantly competing for users’ attention. Is it a reality we like? No. But accepting things as they are is what lets us understand how to make the most of them; for the benefit, of course, of those we’re communicating with as well.

Before we got there, we explored other formats. Because when it comes to documentary, audiovisual is not the only way – and often not even the most effective – to record reality and convey a message. For example, the DemocráTICa initiative recently produced Democracia Digital en Acción (translated as Digital Democracy in Action), a podcast miniseries that travels across Latin America and the Caribbean through three stories of communities building their own technological autonomy. I loved that podcast, and I found in it a fantastic example of how the exclusive use of sound makes it possible to layer information and storytelling to create connection and empathy in the listener.

At the same time, I really wanted to experiment with UX/UI to create an interactive documentary piece, drawing my main inspiration from One Shared House. An interactive web documentary that explores both the successes and the logistical failures (the arguments over kitchen schedules, for instance) of communal living (co-living), through the childhood of Irene Pereyra in “Kollontai,” an intentional shared house of twelve people in Amsterdam, founded in 1984.

In the end, we decided to produce an audiovisual documentary in a more or less conventional format, mainly for accessibility. We wanted the piece to reach as many people as possible, including international audiences. Were we being entirely disruptive? Not at all. Producing documentary videos in the organizational sector is a fairly common practice; it’s often even listed as one of the final deliverables when you receive funding. I have produced many documentary videos about the work of organizations and activists.

A constant source of inspiration is also the work of my colleagues and friends from the Luchadoras collective, who, over the years, have used documentary as a mechanism for visibility and vindication, creating beautiful pieces and telling deeply inspiring stories of women on different fronts of life and across territories.

Alright, so we’ve decided to produce a video. Now, what’s next? It might seem like a simple task, but it was the stage we invested the most time in: preproduction. I personally enjoyed this stage a lot. I had the good fortune to learn a great deal from my colleague, filmmaker and educator, Blanca Xóchitl Aguerre. The two of us were initially tasked with writing the documentary’s outline, though afterward the whole team joined in building the narrative.

What’s the best path to take? From what perspective should we tell it? How much information to include and how much to leave out? Where do we want the viewer to be when the documentary ends? This was a stage of more questions than answers. There were weeks when it felt like we weren’t moving forward, and days when we advanced weeks.

As with everything we do at the Lab, this was a deeply collaborative process in which each member of the team contributed from their own vision and expertise. Ana Laura played a central role in building the narrative, drawing, of course, on her deep knowledge of El Yuguelito and on her experience implementing the methodology together with Ingrid. Karla Luna, for her part, brought clarity to the Participatory Budget mechanism, drawing on years of experience in both project design and the institutional side.

In the end we had the outline of what was called, from the very beginning, Del Papel al Territorio: a short story in which El Yuguelito – a self-organized community in Iztapalapa, under the leadership of the FPFV-I – travels the winding road of institutionalized citizen participation from the experience of the periphery; and how, despite the fact that these mechanisms don’t work as they should, they keep resisting and organizing.

Production.

Something Blanca and I defined from preproduction onward was that this had to be, in essence, a portrait of the community. Not an individual one, not one more personal-triumph story; it had to be a group photograph. A collage of beautiful postcards of everyday life, of emblematic moments, of conversations, of debates, of understanding and resolutions. We wanted to inspire others the same way Yuguelito inspired us.

For the production itself, I had the opportunity to work with my colleague Gabriel Amador again. Together, we’ve been producing and telling community stories on many occasions. For the interviews, Blanca Aguerre was a key piece. I can say she’s responsible for the fact that the contributions of the FPFV-I members who appear in the documentary feel so warm and spontaneous, because that’s exactly how she spoke with them. It was magical to watch her build a space of trust so they could feel comfortable recounting everything that had led Yuguelito to become what it is today.

You’d think telling your own story is very easy, but when you have a huge camera lens in front of you, lights, and a microphone clipped to your chest, it’s a harder task than you imagined. It’s hugely important to understand this before starting.

A camera’s presence is never neutral, and building trust with the people you’ll work with is essential. Ana and Ingrid had already formed close bonds with Yolanda, Ricardo, Silvia, Norma, Bety, and Longino, and that made all the difference. It was a truly beautiful experience.

The documentary as a tool for advocacy.

The most beautiful thing, after releasing it (both on YouTube and at the few screenings we’ve held), is seeing how it comes to life. Sparking questions and even discomfort, but also inspiring people to “do what Yuguelito did,” to organize. And so a virtuous circle formed in which, from the screen, the story leaps back into the territory.

It was always our intention that this piece not be made just to rack up views, shares, or likes on social media (which is cool too), but to make an impact; to change reality through inspiration, visibility, and the dignified representation in mass media of irregular settlements and of the residents of the peripheries; so that the story of Yuguelito reaches the spaces where public policy is designed.

Documenting as resistance.

After seven years of accompanying civil society organizations through communication and documentary production, with each exercise like this one, it becomes clearer to me: to document is to protect knowledge. Our sector faces unprecedented challenges, and it won’t take long for that to make itself felt. Teams will change or shrink, agendas will shift too, the tone will lean far more toward the urgent – if not the imminent. Some organizations will even find themselves in the painful position of having to shut down their operations.

In the face of that possible erasure, and in contexts where the truthful is called into question every day (yes, I’m talking about generative artificial intelligence), the audiovisual record becomes a bold bet; one that, most likely, will stand the test of time far better than all the instant content we run into constantly online.

Ana Laura Lozano and Karla Luna documented, from both the empirical and the normative perspectives, the other side of the same coin. They left a record – on paper and in the territory – of what would otherwise be lost. Because in the end, when the funds run out, what remains, if it was done well, is the documented story of everything that worked.

If you’ve made it this far, the next step is to watch Del Papel al Territorio, available on Accountability Lab México’s YouTube channel.