houses and homes

Today was an exercise in efficiency.

I combined my morning walk with a round-about trip to the butcher while shooting snapshots of a different side of Barra de Navidad. Actually, what I shot is symbolic of one of our area's social scars.

That scar is Nueva España -- the street that divides a housing development of almost-Scandinavian order from the houses of the families who once possessed that land. The street forms an apartheid line that any Boer would recognize. But it is not a racial line. Or not entirely. It is primarily an economic line.

Several decades ago, a wealthy Mexican family proved the old adage if the law does not work for the wealthy, it can be manipulated to do so. The area south of Nueva España was once occupied by villagers who primarily made their living from fishing. It was a hard scrabble life, but they had a means to support themselves and land they could call their own.

That tranquility was disturbed when the wealthy Mexican family decided that the land on which the local fishermen lived would be a great place for their fellow wealthy friends from Guadalajara to live -- and it would be a magnet for Canadians and Americans who had equity money burning holes in their investment accounts.

The stumbling block was all those villagers, which did not turn out to be much of a stumbling block, at all. Their land was "acquired" by the wealthy Mexican family, and the villagers who once lived near the lagoon were transplanted north of Nueva España. The development was then ironically named "Pueblo Nuevo" -- in much the same way that Manahatta became New Amsterdam.

The memory of that forced migration still festers in the neighborhood north of Nueva España. But there was not much that could be done against a family that had the political power to have a portion of the state of Jalisco magically transformed into part of the state of Colima to further their development of a luxury hotel and golf course.

There is an interesting acquired stigma amongst some members of the foreign community here. When I told a Canadian acquaintance where I lived, a look of shock and horror passed across her face. "No. Not really. That is the other side of the tracks."

Yes, it is. And that is one reason I live where I do.

Well, that is more than I had intended to say this morning, and in a voice that is not always my own. What I wanted to do was to share some additional photographs with you. Instead of shooting houses here I found interesting, I used a random number generator on my telephone. I would walk that many paces, and no matter where I was, I would shoot that house.

So, here they are, the entirely random houses of Barra de Navidad.