Extreme Makeover, Mexican Style

Article and photos by Efren Ulloa

PART ONE

Villagers meet before the roof raising

Sitting at a scenic and breathtaking 9842 ft. among the majestic and towering Sierra Norte Mountains of Mexico lies the tiny but proud indigenous village of Cuacuila.  It is home to roughly 1700 inhabitants. It is one of several indigenous communities sprinkled throughout the Sierra Norte, where Spanish, the national language, and the indigenous tongue Nahuatl are spoken. Incredibly, Cuacuila is one of 58 municipalities that belong to the city Zacatlan De Las Manzanas, about 150 km east of Mexico City. Even though each one

This house must be replaced

of these communities partakes in its own proud customs and traditions, Cuacuila finds itself as the leader of a movement that promises, in time, to benefit and improve many of these communities. Only a few days removed from the urban jungle that is the Chicagoland area, I was overwhelmed by the ubiquity and endlessness of the mountains, whose perpetuity and grandeur emanated tranquility and peace.About a 2-hr drive from Zacatlan, there is no form of public transportation that reaches Cuacuila. It is only accessible by renting or hiring a private car to trek the journey through the various winding and ascending mountain dirt roads. The town is indeed small, housing a small church, a mess hall, a small number of colonial style houses, a presidential palace, and a recently constructed room and board building for the various school children that come to Cuacuila from other communities. The one-floor but roomy building is equipped with numerous bunk beds for the kids who dorm there on weekdays and return

The stone foundation is laid

home to their respective, isolated villages and families on weekends.


Humble as it may seem, what makes Cuacuila a pioneering community amongst its peers is the impressive and respectable work it has done over the past year overseeing and authoring the construction of adobe houses for its people. Along with 16 other indigenous communities, Cuacuila formed an organization called CIUDEMAC (United Indigenous Communities in Defense of Our Corn and Our Culture) dedicated to building respectable and decent homes for its villagers. Although comprised of several communities, Cuacuila has quicklyestablished itself as the heart and soul of the organization.
The organization’s objective is to build using only local materials, such as earth, brick, and stone, abundant materials found in Cuacuila. The benefit of the project is that very little, none in some cases, of material is purchased or adversely affects the environment. 
CIUDEMAC’s reverential respect for the environment, evidenced by its use of natural resources and its globally conscious effort to produce homes in a minimally invasive manner to Mother Earth, is one of its more outstanding qualities. By exclusively using crude earth and local materials, the organization also believes that the villagers themselves become the authors of this MesoAmerican project.