State, illegality and space production in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the configuration of urban space in the city of Culiacán, state of Sinaloa, Mexico, characterized by neoliberal processes of urban production, the private governance model, and an illegal economy. Based on interviews, newspapers articles, searches in local public archives, and a bibliographic review, it is shown that the urban-spatial evolution of Culiacán is subordinated to the introduction of illegal capital into the local and regional economic dynamics, to the urbanization demands of a global city model, and to the strategies and tools generated by criminal governance. This has produced spaces that allow us to see the hybridization of legal and illegal forms based on which the city has been constituted and reproduced.

space; city; illegalism; governance; money laundering