TIJUANA, Mexico _ The eviction squads arrive in convoys, whisking attorneys, police officers, bank agents and teams of movers through the gates of the Canadas del Florido housing development.
They eject the residents, seal the front doors with bricks and post signs warning against break-ins. Abandoned units blight every block of this 2,000-home community. Squatters ignore the signs and take over, their flickering candles casting an eerie glow at night.
Maria De Jesus Silva's turn came on a spring day in 2014, when she found a thick stack of foreclosure documents on her doorstep.
According to the documents, the Bank of New York Mellon, acting as trustee on behalf of bondholders, had started the long legal process to evict Silva from the two-bedroom home she bought in 2006 and shared with her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter.
"I was shocked because New York Mellon is a very powerful bank, and I'm a very poor person," said Silva, who makes $225 a month working at a gas station. She has hired a lawyer to try to block her eviction.
One of the harsher aftershocks of Mexico's housing collapse came from subprime-like mortgages given to the working poor, people who didn't qualify for loans from Infonavit, Mexico's giant housing finance agency.
Both types of loans featured rising monthly payments, and the total amount owed also increased. But the subprime loans were structured to increase at a higher rate.
For investors, those escalating payments provided a hedge against inflation and currency fluctuations. But for homeowners, the onerous loan terms led to defaults on a massive scale.
Ten years later, a cyclone of foreclosures continues to cut a slow-motion path of financial destruction across Mexico. It's the latest stage of a housing collapse that left developments plagued with infrastructure problems and abandoned homes. Now banks and bondholders are extending their reach into the decaying tracts to seize homes.
In Silva's neighborhood in eastern Tijuana, mailboxes are stuffed with foreclosure notices. Cul-de-sac gates are locked in mostly vain attempts to keep out eviction crews. "Is the bank trying to take away your home?" reads a sign with a phone number to call, nailed to a teetering utility pole.
Silva's mortgage came through Su Casita, a Mexican lender that received funding from an arm of the World Bank called the International Finance Corp., whose motto is "Reducing Poverty. Improving Lives."
She delivered her payments in person, but after six years the burden became too great. The monthly payment had increased 32 percent. The amount she owed had ballooned 20 percent, to the equivalent of about $18,000 at the time.
She stopped paying, triggering foreclosure proceedings.
Silva said the builder and lenders "deceived us into buying these homes, and everybody left, or is waiting to be kicked out."
The Bank of New York Mellon, which declined to comment, sold off its Mexican banking subsidiary in 2014.
