Houses
in Mexico City as Metonyms of Family Histories
Abstract
In American culture, the single-family house often features as a symbol of family life. In Mexico, for its part, the house is closely associated with a family’s history. This contrast plays out in nineteenth century travel literature—American travelers were baffled by the diffuse boundaries of Mexican households, while Mexican observers of the United States doubted Americans could have a sense of identity without rootedness in place. Today, Mexicans remain attached to family homes for generations and narrate their past through them. In Unidad Santa Fe, a public housing project in Mexico City where I conducted ethnographic fieldwork, families were expected to move to different houses and apartments that responded to their needs in different moments. However, most remain in units they—or their parents or grandparents—were assigned six decades ago. Families have modified units by reconfiguring interiors, building additional rooms and stories, walling off public gardens and changing façades to meet personal tastes. Transformations are often described in relation to events in a family’s history that motivated them (eg. birth of a child or marriage). Scholars have described houses in the United States as “protective wombs” where people find refuge from a hostile outside world. American family homes are sites of idealized nuclear families. By contrast, I examine cases suggesting that houses in Mexico are places where individuals conceptualize and confront their family histories—their formal attributes, spaces, and objects kept in them not only represent cherished family memories, but also pasts lost, absences and forfeited futures.
Bio
Pablo Landa is a PhD candidate in Princeton's Anthropology Department. His dissertation examines the relation among planning, statecraft, memory and everyday life in Unidad Santa Fe, a modernist housing project in Mexico City. As part of his dissertation research, Pablo coordinated the transformation of documents kept by the family of Mario Pani into an archive, which was deposited in the Tec de Monterrey in 2012. Pablo also curated the retrospective Mario Pani, architecture in process for Monterrey's Contemporary Art Museum (MARCO, 2014) and edited the exhibition's catalogue.
[email protected]
In American culture, the single-family house often features as a symbol of family life. In Mexico, for its part, the house is closely associated with a family’s history. This contrast plays out in nineteenth century travel literature—American travelers were baffled by the diffuse boundaries of Mexican households, while Mexican observers of the United States doubted Americans could have a sense of identity without rootedness in place. Today, Mexicans remain attached to family homes for generations and narrate their past through them. In Unidad Santa Fe, a public housing project in Mexico City where I conducted ethnographic fieldwork, families were expected to move to different houses and apartments that responded to their needs in different moments. However, most remain in units they—or their parents or grandparents—were assigned six decades ago. Families have modified units by reconfiguring interiors, building additional rooms and stories, walling off public gardens and changing façades to meet personal tastes. Transformations are often described in relation to events in a family’s history that motivated them (eg. birth of a child or marriage). Scholars have described houses in the United States as “protective wombs” where people find refuge from a hostile outside world. American family homes are sites of idealized nuclear families. By contrast, I examine cases suggesting that houses in Mexico are places where individuals conceptualize and confront their family histories—their formal attributes, spaces, and objects kept in them not only represent cherished family memories, but also pasts lost, absences and forfeited futures.
Bio
Pablo Landa is a PhD candidate in Princeton's Anthropology Department. His dissertation examines the relation among planning, statecraft, memory and everyday life in Unidad Santa Fe, a modernist housing project in Mexico City. As part of his dissertation research, Pablo coordinated the transformation of documents kept by the family of Mario Pani into an archive, which was deposited in the Tec de Monterrey in 2012. Pablo also curated the retrospective Mario Pani, architecture in process for Monterrey's Contemporary Art Museum (MARCO, 2014) and edited the exhibition's catalogue.
[email protected]