Katyna de la Vega

Katyna de la Vega has created a successful model to revitalize towns in the poorest parts of Mexico. Through creating a grassroots movement to redirect government investments already budgeted, she has been the catalyst for more than US$200 million in new investments, which has led to thousands of new jobs, ongoing economic growth, a surge in tourism, and restored civic pride and participation. Katyna’s work started in a small town in the poorest state of Mexico, Chiapas, but its impressive success has since spread and been replicated all over Mexico through the adoption of public policies.

Katyna is revitalizing the economies of small Mexican towns with a strong heritage in some of the poorest parts of the country through innovative urban projects that use government funding to reverse economic decline. Unlike most town improvement projects initiated by the government, Katyna’s are the first to be driven by local citizens in Mexico. Instead of beginning in government offices, her work starts with town hall-style meetings with local citizens, whose participation in the planning and execution of the projects is fundamental. At the same time, Katyna leverages cooperative relationships with the government to lobby for funds already budgeted to be redirected to a town’s revitalization. Local and regional politicians quickly become advocates for this more effective use of federal money while local businesses and residents become strong supporters as they see that their own house or business will be refurbished and improved at no cost to them. Katyna’s work started in a small town in Chiapas, the poorest state of Mexico. Its impressive success has since spread and been adopted all over Mexico in collaboration with local and federal government programs and other citizen organizations. These government partnerships have led to over US$200M of government investment and have created thousands of new jobs in construction, opened new and thriving small businesses, started or re-established major cultural events, increased real estate value dramatically, and led to a surge in tourism as increasing numbers of people come to see the area's cultural and historical roots. Katyna’s work has also led the state of Chiapas, the Federal Ministry of Social Development and the Secretary of Tourism to adopt her model as public policy through the creation of three government programs which have replicated her projects nationwide. Because of the involvement of townspeople, these renewal projects are able to achieve not only a physical renovation and economic revival of the town but also a renewal of the people’s pride, identification with their town, and desire to preserve and protect their local heritage.

Many small towns throughout Mexico are poor and deteriorating. These impoverished areas have continued to grow in population without regulations or guiding principles regarding the organization of their expansion. The result has been massive, unorganized, and unplanned urbanization consisting of disjointed efforts to “modernize” towns. This misguided attempt has caused a devaluation of all that is “old”: townhalls and historic centers have been neglected while new buildings with little to no connection to the history or culture of the town have been erected.

Typically, these towns that once housed vibrant economic centers are now the epicenter for sex workers and empty warehouse space. This process has washed away and devalued the cultural heritage of these locales, leaving instead an amorphous mix of buildings and disorganized town plans, devalued real estate as people move away from the city centers, and stagnant economies.

The consequences of this lack of planning and the devaluation of local heritage are both social and economic. On the one hand, townspeople lose a sense of pride in and identity with their town and do not care to preserve or protect it. On the other hand, as these towns’ colonial heritage has disintegrated, the towns are no longer attractive to visit. The economic impact of the gradual death of small towns has been enormous, as people leave in search of jobs and tourists go elsewhere on their vacations, thus further perpetuating local poverty and unemployment.

Katyna uses community participation in collaboration with government and private financing to renew and protect the heritage of small towns in Mexico. Her first project was undertaken in Comitán, Chiapas, and her approach for urban renewal there has served as a model for future projects. The first stage of any new project is a diagnostic study in which Katyna and her team study the deterioration of the town and survey the important buildings and monuments of cultural significance. Katyna then seeks community involvement in the project, with the goal of socially activating the town so that people will want to play meaningful roles in preserving their heritage. At that point the townspeople are given opportunities in workshop settings to voice their opinions about the state of their neighborhood and how it could be improved.

While attaining community buy-in and participation, Katyna generates alliances and seeks funding for the projects. Her non-profit organization, the Chiapas Trust for Integral Town Betterment, takes on the role of mediator between the citizens’ and the governments’ interests. All of her projects have worked in close collaboration with the authorities and have received government funding mainly from large federal budgets that already have money available but assigned to projects devised by faraway technicians. Katyna’s projects have also received support from private institutions like Coca Cola, Comex, Bimbo, the World Monument Fund, and the Mexican branch of UNESCO. Her innovation has been in knowing how to build grassroots support, redirect government and corporate funds to revitalize urban centers and their economies, and give the necessary credit to politicians, while guaranteeing that current real estate owners do not have to pay a dime.

After the plans for renovation have been designed and approved, the work begins. While the projects have varied in each town, the unifying theme has been that all are targeted to reverse the process of deterioration, reclaim social spaces, and dignify the townspeople in order to revitalize these areas through tourism and the creation of new businesses such as restaurants, stores, and small hotels that restore traditional local customs and culture.

Katyna’s first project in Comitán began in 1993. She was able to raise 32M pesos (about US$3.2M) to improve an 84-city block downtown area. This project included building or renovating public parks, monuments and historical buildings, houses, streets, sidewalks, street furniture and fixtures, and signage. Overhead costs were kept to a minimum because her Chiapas Trust operated mainly with local volunteers, and Comitán quickly became a model for the type of urban revitalization that leads to the creation of hundreds of new jobs and businesses and a surge in tourism and renewed local economic activity.

Over the past sixteen years, Katyna’s work has now spread to dozens of towns throughout Mexico. Upon beginning her work in Comitán, she established a non-profit organization, the Chiapas Trust, and has since started six new chapters in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapa de Corzo, San Juan Chamula, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Palenque, and Tapachula. Each is operated independently but receives training and consultation from Katyna.

Through her work as State Secretary for Tourism, Katyna contributed to and proposed plans to the national Tourism Bureau of Mexico to promote “Pueblos Mágicos” or Magical Towns. This program selects towns with unique cultural heritage and renovates them to promote them as tourist attractions. It is extremely well funded because Mexico has made tourism a major investment priority over the past 20 years and has attempted to diversify its tourist attractions beyond its beaches and few major cities.

Currently, Katyna is the president of the Chiapas Trust and continues to operate town improvement projects with the help of 60 employees and an equal number of volunteers. Katyna is also the executive director of the company Mi Poblado, which works with the help of 14 employees. She travels to give workshops and advice to the various government entities that have adopted her strategy. Between these two organizations, which Katyna runs directly, and the three major government programs that are replicating her program in Chiapas and throughout Mexico, Katyna has excellent platforms for growth and replication in Mexico and has already begun other projects in Latin America.

Although Katyna was born and raised in Mexico City, her family has strong ties to Comitán, Chiapas, where they often spent family vacations. After returning to Comitán as an adult, Katyna realized the area had grown into a sprawling and deteriorating town that was noisy, filled with trash, and virtually unrecognizable from the place she once knew. She lamented the fact that the place she had cared for so much and yearned to return to had lost its identity.

It was then she realized that while she could not recreate the town of her childhood, she could help rehabilitate its heritage and dignity while promoting economic and cultural sustainability. Her college studies in social anthropology gave her the instincts and tools to get started, and the National Institute of Anthropology, with whom she worked, had some of the initial expertise and other tools to help her launch her work.

In spite of her extraordinary success in helping to revitalize hundreds of towns, Katyna knows that her work has barely begun. She has already started working with government authorities in Central America and in parts of Mexico City, where each neighborhood is bigger than the average Mexican town. She is excited to serve as a catalyst, facilitator, and source of inspiration for the revitalization of poor towns throughout Latin America.