Mexico's Urban Wilderness--Life in a Sea of Emigres Every day 1,600 people move to Mexico City--country refugees abandoning their plows and villages to seek a better life in the urban wilderness. They end up in one of the capital's 500 slums or form a new ciudad perdida--a lost city of corrugated tin hovels. Their barracks are hammered together of industrial rubbish, cardboard cartons, wrecked cars, and stolen building materials. Once families have built shelters, they tap the public electricity lines, dig ditches for crude toilets, and get water from tank trucks. Then a section on the edge of the huts is reserved as a cemetery.