QARQ Lecture 5 – Catalina Mendoza Leal

Lopez, S.L. (2015). The remittance house, dream homes at a distance. In: The Remittance
Landscape: Spaces of Migration in Rural Mexico and Urban USA. University of Chicago Press.

Quote:

“As simultaneously a pragmatic strategy to meet families’ basic needs, a repository of hard-earned
capital accumulation and a symbolic site for self-expression, the remittance house influences the
imagination and daily life of both migrants and nonmigrants. But vacant and abandoned
remittances houses remind us that migrants’ building projects do not turn out as intended. As
migrants initiate larger projects with public implications, the remittance house provides a useful
conceptual template for understanding the stakes, contradictions, and ultimate success or failures
of public remittance buildings as a form of development from below.” (70)

Argument:

In her first chapter López (2015) writes about the meanings and the social consequences related to
building a house in Mexico with money earned in the United States. This is sent to support his
familiy. Exploring this, López developed a geographical/ethnographical study in the pueblo of San
Miguel Hidalgo in the south of Jalisco. Through this, the author comes with an historical narrative
about the way that San Miguel’s people in the past constructed their houses. The later, was
characterized by a limited sophistication in the building process -regarding materials, amenities
and architecture- but also the labor needed to make it possible (including future improvements)
which relies on a strong tie based on reciprocity between neighbors. Furthermore, the house was
highly oriented to the productive daily life activities that “allowed families to maintain a level of
self-sufficiency” (42). Considering the modern standards of a proper home, the traditional way to
create the houses in the town always remain unfinished, it was growing considering the family
evolution.

López argues that considering environmental, political and social causes, this traditional way to
build houses was affected. In this mater, one of the major drivers of these changes was the
increasing migration to the United States and consequently the rising of money earned in the
north during the 70s and 80s led to a huge rate of building in Jalisco. The major changes in the
social and spatial relations regarding the building of the house are the following: 1) A remittance
house it has to be distinguishing from the other ones, the continuum between the roofs of the
vicinity is ended. 2) In the remittance houses there is no longer a central courtyard that
proportionate the communal space for daily activities is replaced now for and individual
distribution of it. 3) The kitchen is integrated in the house which means a change in the gendered
social relationship between the cooker and the rest of the people in the house. 4) The addition of
a doorbell in the new house formalizes the relationship between neighbors replacing the informal
ways to call the door. 5) And finally, a new tendency of American architecture is imposed in the
pueblo affecting also those who have never left the town, “migration and remitting are a way of
life for all inhabitants of the pueblo, whether they individually cross borders or not” (López
2015:51).

Relation:

There are so many things that we can discuss over remittance, but I would like to go to the almost
infinite economic implications of remittance. In the introduction chapter López argues that
remittance means a considerable flux of money that has large impact in the production of the
space that could also contested the boundaries of place. Thus affecting the way of life of people in
rural Mexico, migrants and nonmigrants. She argues “that migration is not only geographical (…)
but also spatial and material” (8). This was developed during the first chapter that I already
introduced, when the author expresses the influences of the building of remittance houses in the
local economy of San Miguel Hidalgo. In this case, even when the local economy it has been
energized by the influence of the remittance houses, there are tensions and contradictions
deployed in this. The demand for materials and laborer have improve the livelihoods and the local
economy, but the people works under difficult conditions and there are new problematic that
results from the tension between between the local albañiles and the hired architects and
engineers traditional knowledge of how to build houses. At the same time, the macro structure of
production of materials is not satisfied by the local market, which has led to a market for foreign
goods. This also allows international and national companies to get involved trying to fill this gap,
even trying to channel the remittances dollars through their companies. The latter could be also
applicable to the Jaripeo’s case –third chapter- which has been incredible affected by the global
market, in which migrants and ejidatarios also have tremendous profit interests. Thus, the
remittance economy it is positioned an institutionalize way of life. In sum, on the one hand
migrations phenomenon have improved the towns economy through the building environment,
on the other hand shows the vulnerability of the town from exterior influences.

Question:

“The remittance projects that migrants (and their hometown communities) have completed are
immensely impressive given their circumstances, but the modicum of economic self-sufficiency
that they achieve is at a cost that reveals the power of global capital to wreak havoc on rural
communities.” (López, 2015:34)

The former quote, invite us to conceive different ways to construct reality, problematizing the
intrusion of the global market in the Mexican migrant landscape. In this sense, considering the
interest of the international economic agencies and the government of Mexico regarding the
enormous flux of dollars; but most important, considering the social implications of the remittance
for the local people and the centrality that has developed for example in the case of San Miguel
Hidalgo (or could also be applicable to the case of the Jaripeo activities), I would like to know if
there is any collective and autonomous intention to create a reflexive and communitary
development plan for the local communities affected by the migration phenomenon. Is there any
initiative that has worked? How would be the complexity to develop an organization or a different
kind of entity that could channel the contributions to the local community from migrants living in
the United States considering that they are not there?

References:

Lopez, S.L. (2015). The Remittance Landscape: Spaces of Migration in Rural Mexico and Urban USA.
Universityof Chicago Press. Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 3, pp.1-70 & 97-132.