Convergence is not common bring together photographers, architects and anthropologists to "look" contemporary social change. A change that human flow confirms his secret became and is now dramatic evidence projector architectural visibility in efforts to build their housing aspirations. Eyes of photographers who reaffirmed details and angles, evoking the architectural use of space and anthropologists we crumble meanings of the relationships between people in three countries that are near and far at once. Indeed, this book brings together diverse perspectives, sometimes converging and sometimes less so, of the "architecture of remittances" in the three countries located in the "Northern Triangle", an allusion old geopolitics of past decades, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Countries that share borders and such misfortunes.
These three ways of looking at the option not to provide content to the description of an architecture that surprised by his effort alone, and uncomfortable for their freedom in the form and uses. Architects, more focused on the design and use of space, seeking to understand the social process of this architecture in the context of urbanization, photographers go beyond the framework of space and form, set their eyes on the track detail the characters involved in a daily relationship, while anthropologists wonder what is involved in social change in the background of migration and glean its meaning in that stream of migrants, coyotes, families, family-builders. Architects and anthropologists base their sights on writing and invited to build an alternative vision, while the photographers documented with pictures "in to reveal" a shocking aesthetic even more shocking reality. Architects and photographers are nearby languages \u200b\u200bunderstood in relation to the image and space and photographers make hinge between architecture and anthropology through their everyday social gaze. Meanwhile, anthropologists remind the underworld of meaning implicit in the movement of people in space. As a whole emphasize the geometry of space, the atmosphere of coexistence and the variety of expressions housing.
There are all watching action (fix the eye) and not just take a look (scroll the eye). But even in this look try to explain everything, it invites the reader to "learn to see" that which surrounds him and that he is close but not easily seen or do not want to see, as is the "stress-sacrifice, Suffering" migrants, resulting in buildings, transportation-business-consumer-land, while recalling that today, for many, the house-car-unit-cell sound, have become most desirable aspiration, possible in a demonstration away from the hole of poverty or a flat average. For migrants remittances symbolize the first step to that desire possible.
The scenario
El Salvador, and Guatemala framed in a recent war, was ejecting people from much earlier. The imperative of its size in contradiction with its population growth was considered as the element of finding irrefutable. Guatemala, which was more modest in their mass exodus, is now visible on indigenous migration, despite being less than the sly, their specific cultural boundaries both inside and outside.
In both countries, giving the mass exodus came through the classic step-by-step disintegration of peasant life, harassed by the agro-export economy and commercialized production, which forced to seek employment survivals in larger populations to reach the capital, or in support colonizing the last illusions peasant agricultural frontiers. The latter will soon be exhausted in El Salvador, while last a little longer in Guatemala. Then came the war and displacement were manifold.
Many saw his escape by riding to the old flow of migrants, illegal or legal, to achieve the American dream, says since the early fifties. Time from which the region will accelerate the modern changes in avalanche: urban growth, industrialization, capitalism income of no return, exponential population growth, mass culture, consumption of objects, without necessarily change at the same speed concentrator elites social inequality and political authoritarianism. The Salvadorans were favored by U.S. policy, no Guatemalans. In any event, the northward flow became massive. Honduras, not the magnitude of political crisis that took the other two countries were allowed greater scope to expand the agricultural frontiers in force even today. However, although lesser extent, also part of the population emigrated. If we talk about causes, they are shared: degradation of rural life, poverty, violence, job search and aspiration to participate in the consumer world, seen as distant, but now globalization us one step closer .
If the political crisis affected everybody and made the leap to mass immigration during the eighties, will be to late nineties and early new century, with the crisis in agriculture, due to the global economic crisis, when further opened the irrepressible human jet. Today in the United States government and people are struggling with the dilemma to accept or reject that sea illegal, uncomfortable and unwanted by their origin, but necessary to the way of life of the world power that would otherwise be less pleasurable.
Emigration, painful or successful illusion to the people in that possibility, do not look at your hand in their own countries. Net migration is not trivial. More than one-tenth of the population remains outside those three countries, excluding returns and deported over time. About a quarter of households receive remittances. The migrant widened complex space and a reference back to the national. His identity is now built by adding their links with those other places.
Architecture without architects
architecture as an activity can not be defined easily. Came to appoint the manager of the buildings, then put aside the character to focus on the design by modifying the surface in search of human needs. For too long the design is linked to art, visual expressiveness magnifying power and marked a style where shapes, structures and functions were not decoupled. The style is going to culture, a shared knowledge. Later, with the massive population, the style is closer to the functionality of the complex human life, but soon fell and multiplied styles in terms of creativity visual or recreational stereotypical old styles. More functional planning is required or a return to stylistic impositions, but now the market pointed out, first, a democratization of individual decision and on the other, the exclusion of most decisions. Then the "no style" (as noted by an author of the book) became the norm. Today, architecture and design is close to the government by exposing the individual design in the eyes of everyone. Nor is it far to the middle class by exposing the "neos" massive, neoclassical, neo-colony ... and condominiums and shopping centers.
Meanwhile the rest, the majority, as can the agency. Over 60% of the buildings in Latin America there are the eye of the master builder or master mason claims. After all, architecture without architects is as old as history. The ability of populations to build to suit the environment and climate, makes a wisdom passed in time. In this way the so-called vernacular architecture also planted fields. In cities, is modest, everyday architecture, apart from the aesthetic cultivation, for which it is ugly. The slums, lemonade, or slums have been his best. The good intentions of the housing projects state and the "architecture without applause" or "welfare prearquitectura" simply does not reach the threshold of need. The poor state responses were expected and were arriving to a trickle. Eventually the housing effort rests with themselves. Earthquakes and other calamities constantly changing construction resources. However, it has opened the possibility of building for the long term, a strong desire valued in the field, and today the material outweighs the craft industry. The last thirty years in cities and towns demonstrate that change and, with it, the emergence of a variety of styles and no styles.
In this context, emerged the architecture of remittances. Not always easy to perceive, for the constructive effort also depends on the local savings framed in an expansion of the market and services, which slowly come to include a greater number of people, including the poor, because today the vision of what being poor is different from that of the poor of yesteryear. However, remittances leave their mark on style and no style, largely through the process of negotiation between provider and decision maker migrant design shared with the master builder, which merges the desire of what is seen abroad, the dream overcome from experience, and trial and error by the manufacturer. In addition, the negotiation enters the eye trusted person -suegro/suegra-madre/padre- wife-brother-uncle, who oversees the process and manages the shipment. A decision maker who sometimes gives a voice role as family or genus, but who ultimately provide its share of decision on the ground.
remittances architecture is visible through their own efforts. That is, who seeks finds. More visible in the countryside than in the city. Is the measure of success of a comprehensive social drama. He stands looking for community narratives of experience or as individual expression in its effort to distinguish themselves from their peers.
the tragedy of the plot
the tragedy of migration is also spoken in this book. This is a process with many facets. A family decision and individual choice weaves the ejector and the decision to leave. The first is family breakdown will always have lasting effects. Between poverty, fear and assumptions range opportunity motivations. Hence the existential mortgage because it is not only economic data, are life assurance and property of those who leave or stay. The figures are not anything, from 3.000.00 to 10.000.00 dollars to boot. A figure nor do they get in a year in their own country. The coyotes and lenders, the big beneficiaries, are viewed with prestige but also project fear. Their worlds are merged with others, usually illegal. In front of the coyote silence is vital in terms of denunciation, silence is exceeded only by the social buzz can retrieve your contact, the first step of the plot.
The drama continues with the hazardous journey. And again, the plot emerges. The result is an intricate topography of thousands of roads, hundreds of temporary stays, canteens of way, in varied and uncomfortable transportation, everyday risks. Mexico is contradictory, between attraction and rejection. The memory of the migrant is often not kind to this country, is now seen as part of the "north", but little help as such. Again he returns to the drama as the greatest hardships begin do not end there and not when you come across the threshold, symbolized by the new "iron curtain" economic, that is no less ideological, welfare is not threatening but by embracing the hopes consumers. The passing of this threshold is critical, sometimes paying with their lives and the immediate deportation, but almost always with a new marginality. For those who achieve things do not stay there for the stay in the "States" has other complications that reinforce the drama: the search for work-agglomeration with peers, debt and the constant "eye to Christ," "water la migra "ponete diver" .... An everyday life of suspicion and searches for quick escapes. When it sits next to the different lives and it is distant family.
However, here are visible networks. Those provided by the coyotes, relatives and countrymen, religious communities in protecting add poring faithful defenders of causes partially unsuccessful, with new styles today gubernatorial hopeful but conservative context of exacerbations. At this point, the work is key fields, industries, poultry, maquilas, shops, restaurants, plumbing, construction, florists, gardening ... up a long string of labor niches. And the salary is no longer to become debt remittance. But the sword of Damocles of the "migra" and their allies there, above the head of each migrant.
legalized is a dream and a chance for less. Most expect the patient first capture or put their hopes on legislation that will extend to materialize. For while they work, seeking work or wages sent to strap it becomes income in a country that they do not expect more than that money. Remittances are the monies sent by migrants to their countries of origin. The annual amounts of money are so great that some countries have displaced traditional exports as the main source of income for the national economy. Today, the poor compete with exporters and tourism to see who brings more. Governments and banks are grateful migration is input as cash. While politicians debate whether to extend them citizenship electoral clientelism an effort to expand, banks manage the transfer of money from this emerging market through text messages. And, traders hoard it because most of remittances goes to consumption, whether necessary or superfluous.
Deportation is the sign of failure or that time ran out. But the sport is more benevolent in his view, the migration experience is unique and branded forever. While the idea is not deported is to take the time and dream of the return. A dream that is constructed as an ideology: the house, properties and autojubilación. Dream women and children share less because why should return back to countries where poverty is possible? Relatives stoke the idea of \u200b\u200bresponsibility for them, also encourage religious cults that maximum recycling of early capitalism: represses your passions, is austere and reversed. Women appreciate your fight against alcohol questioning male irresponsibility.
Remittances are also a way to remember what is left behind. Relatives in the country are waiting anxiously, remittances are not always are constant and voluminous. Consume, build and save. Buy land or transport, business and trading place. Additionally, they build, repair or modify the intimate spaces, some in villages, mostly in larger towns. Private
no civility
The villages, these places of the local frame, are transformed. What for housing, trade and consumption shocks and transmutes the people in cities liliputenses or imposes a style without a city, a tangible demonstration of changes. In this way we see the investment as a sociologist reminded us: before the city could be seen facing the field / nature, today the field is perceived by reference to the city. The
architects always emphasize the weaknesses of the development. The rationalism of the long planning that was shelved by the elites, who watched with horror this ideological projection of the common good. Large and small cities grow under the housing market, where all space is marketable, buildable and fundable. His eyes see the top and middle. At the bottom very slightly. In large cities, the mayors see its role as an enormous task. Revenue is limited for this task. The land prices go up but not the tax appraisal. Planning is limited and interventions assume preferences.
Large cities enlarge more. Internal migration has been the engine of that growth. In the cities have long been accustomed to see the great mass engulfing the contrasts. The shift from a high to a slum district may not be so traumatic. One, because it is not necessary to cross urban distances and daily life is focused, two, because the municipalities are beginning to emphasize jardinizaciones and alternate routes, which bring to an imaginary inhabitants of large cities. Three, because today the ideal is to move and not live. However, these settlements live different, but close.
And along with it above the urban chaos. In El Salvador and Honduras appear less chaotic populations in Guatemala. In the bottom explains the meaning of state built earlier. There is simply no regulation, much less official. Hope to be towns become cities of distress when there is another chaos and violence. The cities are no longer the extensive social spaces to become entrenched in coexistence. The more you gather more mistrust. Liliputenses cities are modeled.
Outside the capital the migration effect is felt more strongly. In the villages the sprawl is even more pathetic. A recent rapid growth, which move from one place to another becomes an adventure. Mayors cling to their old traditions while watching government with some new demands impotence: traffic, garbage, utilities, streets and traffic flows, need for energy, water .... The mayor does not require expertise and the political game of alliances of elites sniffer clientele.
The architecture of remittances has contributed to this image of sprawl, unplanned city. People can be built where and how they want. Responses are varied by country and place. Both in cities and towns the urban grows horizontally, gaining ground on agriculture. The limit is imposed, first, the size of the batch, built on the inside and the conditions of ownership. It follows the logic degradation imposed by the historic farm. Reduced inheritance for extending the land is difficult for farmers / farm workers. This is only accessible to those who distance themselves socially from their peers. Remittances come to extend these distances, but the population increase will continue its fragmenting logic properties. So that, when lots are filled traditional village, the tendency is to reclaim land from the field and the disorder is extended in space.
This construction combines the need for action in space, to demonstrate the aspirations of escaping from poverty, to keep old habits / ways of seeing and living, and to achieve modern functionality. Some continues so that creativity and adaptation of architecture without architects, often disfigures the landscape but meets with limited resources. And here is his merit. Is this a creativity that comes from their own efforts, because neither the capital nor the accompanying state. An architecture in solitude and solidarity.
What culture meets architecture of remittances?
As you walk through the book in that period to "know watching" skip questions about how to evaluate the architecture of remittances. Is this architecture or is itself immersed in the sea of \u200b\u200bno style? The authors emphasize the theme of hybridity / fusion. Two concepts zooms in and out while their definitions we reinforce the ambiguity in the results. Cruce, procreation, and product mix versus nature, species, genetics and culture are the keywords. And if we become more complex and ambiguous meaning binding may include words such as plot, overlap, merge, lapping, fusing, gluing ... Today we know that the hybrid beat the mixture to explain the postmodern cultural changes, leaving the second sense connected biosocial process. Sometimes it seems that the difference lies in the emphasis that we put to the prospect of seeing this relationship. Hybridity speaks of a kind of cultural mixing but in the framework the same character of civilization, while the mixing highlights the nature of related cultural opposites in the crash of civilization.
Contemporary architecture has long since left behind the vernacular. The process of urbanization, is now estimated that half and the Guatemalan population lives in urban spaces, has been accompanied by significant cultural changes and attachments to modernity: the houses of cement, the market absorbing the services multiplied, the hysterical movement The all for today, the dominant communications technology, including its other products: the exclusion of people essential to the market, extensive social violence fear as global culture, a fascination with objects ... all bring this spirit we shared civilization.
this contradiction to some clashes with the inherited tradition, strong in meaning. More evident as the Maya in Guatemala migrant and local recipients are skin-deep. The changes of recent years in Indian social world are visible and attract the tourist as scientific observers or flies. The landscape has been profoundly changed by breaking the romanticism of the folk vision. Community recreation in the area of \u200b\u200bmigration points to his insistence on not abandoning what has united for centuries. While the world mestizo Guatemalan, Salvadoran and Honduran clings to currencies and cultural adaptations with less difficulty. The cultural experience seems to present different features between the two, perhaps stereotyped in the pair, tilt angle individualistic community, although one, with pleasure or distress, the civilizing process of modernity postmodern living.
Many outside observers note that the architecture of remittances has its own statute because it relies on the imaginary relationship. I lived the experience seen in immigration coupled with pictures that move represented a local family's wishes recreate constructive. Local filters-family caregivers and builders, "he added its details and interpretations: the hybrid is obvious and the style is not the result.
This hybridity is often valued negatively as clashes with aesthetics built and high powered positions. And the debate arises, what kind of culture you belong to? And so many dichotomies arise for discussion: the clash between domestic and foreign, the clash between creativity and imitation itself, the clash between traditional and modern, the clash between the bad and the ugly and the beauty and pleasure aesthetic ... Thus we return to the old debate between high and low culture, between simple and sophisticated culture, the culture of elite and popular culture, including creative culture and mass culture, between traditional culture and technological culture ... Anyway, a long discussion, very productive and necessary, if only because sometimes we fall on biased opinions, as criticizing the absurd ugliness or decorative may devalue. The
adaptable, the ornate, baroque, the ugly, gray cement, vertical drawer buildings, humeados windows, columns excessive, the bars ... the taste is not shared that amazes us to see the architecture of remittances from the most creative to the most common and hidden, can not conceal that it is the people who build effort supported by a social drama. The house remittance to those who manage to build or for those who stay on the road, is a dignity issue. Thus, this book forces us constantly to explore it through the eyes of the culture and the eyes of society. A variation in this case gives us that rare combination of looks heterogeneous perpetrators and those who conceived the project of "knowing seeing."
Luis Pedro Arriola
Taracena 
Dreams
Dreams 
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