Building a House in Mexico
I recently visited a home construction site just outside Mexico City. If I had to sum up my observations in one word it would be CONCRETE. The structural aspects of the house are similar to a well built commercial building in the United States, with steel reinforced concrete used for the walls, upper floors, and roof. The difference lies in the finish work and the low tech, labor intensive way that the work is completed. Steel scaffolding and aluminum ladders are nowhere to be found. Instead ladders are pieced together on site with scrap lumber that is used and reused as the need arises. Most of the construction and finish work is done with hand tools, many of which are made by their owners. I saw leftover scraps of re-bar that had been fashioned into chisels, crowbars, and even a hack-saw!
Building regulations are foreign to Mexican residential construction. Even in the more expensive homes the waste plumbing is often unvented allowing sewer gases to enter the house. Electrical wiring is usually ungrounded and heating systems inadequate. Structurally, however, most of the better homes are far superior to a typical upscale home in the Pacific Northwest.
While I was visiting the site, workers were busily adding plaster detailing to the perimeter of the ceilings and cupolas. When finished, the look is similar to ornately milled cove molding found in some of Seattle's finer homes. The plaster is applied (thrown) onto the ceiling, then scraped over with a tin template held in place by wooden guides. It takes many passes to get the full ornate detailing, but the speed and skill of the workers transformed the room as I watched. The tin template was made on site to the owners' specifications, with a test sample immediately made for their approval. If the design was not quite right, no problem. The tin snips were back at work creating a new template. More ornamental detailing is created by first carving the design in wood, making a latex mould, then filling it with plaster. These sections are then inserted into a channel in the coving, creating a rich floral band around the perimeter of the room.
While I was marveling at the centuries old technology and artistry that was taking place, Carlos the landscaper appeared with some plans for the owners' approval. He pulled out a photograph of the front of the house that had been taken several days before. Something was different. This photo did not show the construction shack, the workers' cooking pit, or the tangles of rebar in the front yard. Instead there was a reflecting pond, a stone archway, and flowering trees screening the view of the neighboring home. Oh, the wonders of digital technology! The reflecting pond was not to the owners' liking, so Carlos invited us to his ofiice to try out some other possibilities. Looking out the car window on the way to his office I noticed a large hand-made sign with the word "ASBESTOS" printed on it, with an arrow pointing down the road. It would be interesting to see the reaction this sign would cause in Seattle.
After making a few modifications to the virtual photo on his computer, Carlos invited us to tour another part of his business. He and his partner, Alejandro, led us into a room where three women donning surgical masks were carefully placing flea sized plant segments into jars containing a nutrient-rich agar culture. These tiny plant segments all came from a mother plant having physical properties desirable to customers. The jars are then sealed, and stored in a temperature controlled room. Here they grow, without the aid of roots, until they are ready to be transplanted into soil and moved to a greenhouse. They will then mature into clones of the mother plant, all having just the right characteristics.
Most of these plants will be sold to farmers for growing crops. Some of these hi-tech plants, however, will be used in landscaping. They will adorn the houses built with home-made hand tools, outdated technology, and centuries old craftsmanship.