El Monstruo: reflections on catastrophic metaphors about Mexico City

Like many other megacities, the Mexican megalopolis has known its share of catastrophic metaphors. Through a history of cultural production about the city, we trace the contours of its depiction as a monster. Through a history of its governance structures, we depict the numerous efforts to “tame” the monster. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the impact of catastrophic metaphors in the context of a globally urban twenty-first century. If pejorative qualifiers were common in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, centuries dominated by the nation-state, how can we explain the persisting negative image of megacities in the twenty-first century?