This article studies post World War Two Latin American social policy, focusing on the relation between state housing policies and the urban masses in metropolitan Mexico City. Despite the expansion of urban social policies from the 1960s to the 1980s, the urban masses did not receive the same recognition that workers and peasants did between 1910 and 1940. While state policies partially appeased urban groups, they also left many feeling that key decisions and actions favored powerful interests and in no way resolved the roots of urban problems, nor updated government and party structures to take into account demographic, economic, and political changes. Over time, political participation became more rights conscious and more broadly critical of the state. Neither solidly linked to the state nor completely ignored or repressed, the urban masses occupied an uncertain, unpredictable netherworld in between first and second-class citizenship, and as a result their complex political culture was and remains one of the "enigmas" of modern Mexican politics.