Form, Function and Chicanado

Chicanado?  The first and only time I ever heard that term was on one of our first trips to Baja. We were staying in a neighborhood of Los Barrilles know as Spa Buena Vista and had summoned our landlady when the shower head quit working. Our landlady managed the rental as part of her real estate business and in a few hours appeared in our casita dressed professionally right down to high heels.  At the time, she spoke about as much English as I did Spanish so we began our usual method of communication trying piece together meaning between the two languages.  Soon, she and her high heels were standing our shower.  She examined the showerhead, pulled a bobby-pin from her hair and with that as her only tool, she had the shower working. She turned to me, smiled and snapped her fingers saying, "Chicanado!"  Seeing my puzzled expression she soon explained that is how Mexicans fix things, with whatever is at hand: chicanado.

I've thought of that word several times in our travels, like the time we bought grapefruit right out of the tree. The owner fetched his picker, a large empty tin can with just the right crimp in the edge and nailed to a long straight stick. With this tool he picked the fruit from the highest branches. Often we see signs hand painted on the lids of now defunct plastic tubs. Sheet goods like plywood and chip board are nearly non-existent here. Then there are the dog dishes fashioned from the bottoms of large plastic bottles. Whatever is on hand is used to solve the need.

Homemade dustpan (Chicanado style)

Since dimensional lumber is scarce down here, the rules of chicanado dictate that most of the buildings are made of cement and cinder block. We once watched a construction artist at work. He deftly placed and punched perfectly round holes in exactly the right place of the block. (I later examined his blocks to see if they came with perforated holes; they didn't).  He wielded trowel and mortar handily, lining the block's edges with mortar as easily as a baker frosts a cake. Often, even the roof is made of cement making these buildings nearly impervious to the ravages of a hurricane.

Surprisingly durable and unique to Baja are the versital palapas: thatched roofs made of palapa palm fronds. Palapas vary from standing on a solitary center post providing shade on a beach to a complete structure or even a complicated roof complete with dormers.  The neighborhood yoga studio is a palapa

As is the roof on our house:

A view from the inside hints at the construction method

Now, can you tell which type of palm is 

used for Palapas?

And the final Mexican form that serves many architectural functions is the palo de arco.   This shrub grows everywhere and produces many branches about the diameter of a person's thumb.  Mexican builders know how to incorporate its harvested branches into attractive fences, walls or shade-providing roofs for outdoor decks. The shrub is easily recognized by its yellow blossoms. 

The walls of our house are made of palo de arco sticks woven into an attractive pattern. 

More often, the sticks are intertwined to form a fence or a shade

And most often of all, the sticks are simply woven into a barbe. d wire fence to create a barrier. 

Those three commonly sourced building materials are used in 90% of the structures we see around here and define the urban scenery: cement, palms and palo de arco.