People go to Mexico City’s Zócalo seeking help to reclaim seized properties in Edomex

People continued arriving at Mexico City’s Zócalo despite intermittent rain to seek legal advice about properties they said they had been unable to recover in the State of Mexico.

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Who is going to lend me that amount? Let’s see if they can advise me here.

Rafael Mejía, who lives in Mexico City, brought documents concerning the alleged invasion of one of his properties in Edomex. He said the case had reached the Atizapán de Zaragoza prosecutor’s office and a district judge, who ruled in his favor, but he still had not recovered the property. A notary from another state reportedly asked him for 150,000 pesos to regularize the house deeds, while Mejía has only a purchase contract.

Edith Flores said a tenant in a house she rents in the State of Mexico had stopped paying rent and refused to leave. She said she could not afford a lawyer and still was paying for the property, for which she did not yet have the deeds.

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He stopped paying his rent and does not want to leave. I came for advice because, in some way, I cannot afford a lawyer.

Another visitor, Patricia, sought advice about whether her case could qualify as dispossession. She said her brother removed their 78-year-old mother from the family home three years ago. The house remains occupied, and although her mother has the legal documents, the family cannot access them. Patricia said they had spent two years paying lawyers without recovering the property and had made no progress in a new legal action.

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We paid lawyers for two years and could not recover the house. Now we are in another legal proceeding through a property-recovery action, which they say is the way forward, but we have made no progress with the authorities, so I came.