Fences

I've been thinking about fences lately. We went to one of our favorite museums in Oaxaca last week, la Casa Oaxaca, where we discovered some fences I hadn't thought about. La Casa is in an old colonial spanish building, don't it's history, that's been beautifully restored. La Casa now houses galleries for changing exhibits, libraries of research books on topics such as art and old churches and Mayan history in the area. Pienso que, I think. The exhibits in the downstairs gallery and in the courtyard are usually edgy, modern pieces. Once we saw an exhibit of over-sized woven pieces used for walls and dividers, woven from sisal and other dried plants. The current exhibit is digital collage, social comments from the artist. The work spilled over into the courtyard, where the light is very nice. Upstairs, there is a fascinating exhibit on the restoration work in seven centuries-old churches in the Valley, restoring the retablos.

But, the real reason we went to La Casa was to see the mapo en piso, the map in the floor. There is a huge satellite photo of the city, taken in 1996, of the city, and when you step into the dark room, the lights on the floor begin to turn on, illuminating the historic center of the city. The first time we were there, we crawled over that floor for a couple of hours, fascinated with the view. There is a new map, another satellite photo taken in 2006. The floor of the room is now completely filled with photos. On the walls are some photos taken in 1932 and 1957. The city, in 1932, was a few blocks square, I can see the city cemetary outside of the city. By 1957, there are still a few fields inside the city, the city is getting bigger, but the wall is still around the Sto. Domingo church. I'd never noticed that wall in the photo before...the wall around the church and plaza is not there now. Then, I began to see other walls. The city is built in typical spanish style: the buildings come right to the sidewalks, and the rooms of the house/building form the periphery and there is a central courtyard. In the 1932 photo, I see walls with nothing inside them. Maybe they were used to house horses or cattle? Each block of the city was a secret behind those walls.

The city blocks are still a secret. In the current photo, I can see clearly the trees shading many courtyards, much like the trees in our courtyard at Villa Maria's. The old walls now have driveways behind big metal gates, the places that horse-and-carts used to enter. Those big metal gates have smaller people sized doors, like the old churches with small doors cut into the big wooden doors. Sometimes when we're out walking, if a door is open, I stop and look inside. I've even peeped through small gaps in the metal, or through crumbled bricks, just to see! The pretty places, the private places, cars and hammocks and plants, the junkyard places behind those walls are secrets. The fences, or walls, are there for privacy, and some say security. The decorative wrought iron on all the windows keeps a small community of welders in business in the city. But then, security walls sometimes are made of blue plastic, not metal or wrought iron. On the corner of Fiallo and Rayon, six days a week, a young woman sits at a table with a glass case on it. Underneath the table are plastic buckets holding the food she's prepared at home. She's selling tostados. One night we passed by her 'business' after she went home. The entire 'business' was covered with a blue plastic tarp, tied with some pieces of rope. Security of a different kind. On a corner of Pino Suarez, on the northside, there is a building we've been watching for several years. The stucco facade is crumbling off, but there is still enough to see that the building was lovingly restored sometime. The windows are gone, replaced with boards to cover the street-side openings. I can see through a crack, interior walls deteriorating under a mostly-gone roof, but a hammock and a table in the weeds indicate a home. One night, I saw a light between the cracks. Pirated electricity, even if it's only one lightbuld. Another secret behind a fence.

We went to the Jaguar Zoo this week, with Eshkie and Gerry, and a friend of theirs, Allan Goodin. Allan is a long-time gringo Oaxacan resident, editor of the informative Jaguar Speaks website. When Eshkie invited us to join them, my instincts said "don't go!", but with their company, I ignored my instincts. We drove out beyond Tlacolula, to the zoo. The zoo is in the south end of the valley, on what appears to be several miles of land. The animals are in a sad state, I'll say no more about the animals.


The fences were deep ditches, bamboo, wire or cactus, depending on the animal. Much of the zoo was visually fenced with a centuries-old material: cactus. The cactus created a barrier, to keep animals from seeing each other, and to lead the tourists in the correct direction. The cactus spires are stuck in the ground, and they root. It's the dry season here, a time of stress, many of the cactus are blooming.

The picture below, here could be titled, "Riding Fences". Two men drove up on the cart, which had a small load of cactus. They were preparing to mend some holes in the fence around the camels and giraffe. The horizontal pieces attached to the cactus are bamboo, which grows wild along the arroyos in the valley. The light is so beautiful, even in the brilliance of mid-day.

We drove into Mitla to the Hotel Don Cenobio for comida. We sat in the central courtyard of the hotel for lunch, the only guests. The gold/red color scheme of the hotel was outlined in the courtyard with a bamboo fence painted bright blue. The fence was not for privacy or secrets, not even for stopping traffic...there was an opening to allow us to walk in the grass. It was purely decorative.

On the rooftops in the city, I often hear dogs barking, frustrated because they can't get to all the activity on the streets below. This fence is on the rooftop across the street from Villa Maria's. A recycler! The fence is made from just about any metal material imaginable, wired together or stabilized with gravity.

I have some fences at home, too. Stuart made some from chicken wire, to keep the deer from nibbling at the azaleas and hydrangeas. Not so pretty, but functional. We built another fence, from marvelous plastic mesh, around the vegetable garden. It's invisible, and allows me to hang pretty, rustic gates on the posts. So far, it's kept the deer out, but not the raccoons. Another fence holds up some roses, it's made of wood. The original "mexican" fence along our driveway has been replaced with duller colored, decorative pickets, but Stuart cut each one by hand, providing decoration without paint. There is also a fence for privacy, decorated with sculptures and birdhouses, the virginia creeper vines are slowly softening the view. The other side of our house is fenced with trees along the creek, a fence planted by the birds and the winds.
I think there might be some experimental fences in my near future. But there will be a way to see the secrets behind the fence, I promise.