Changes in House Construction Materials in Border Mexico: Four Research Propositions

about Commoditization
Author(s): JOSIAH McC. HEYMAN
Source: Human Organization , Summer 1994, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 132-142
Published by: Society for Applied Anthropology

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 Human Organization, Vol. 53, No. 2, 1994
Copyright © 1994 by the Society for Applied Anthropology
0018-7259/94/020132-1 1$1 .60/1

Changes in House Construction Materials in

Border Mexico : Four Research Propositions
about Commoditization
JOSIAH McC. HEYMAN

In the US-Mexican industrial border city of Agua Prieta, Sonora, houses are being built with purchased, manufactured mate
many of them from outside the region, rather than with local or self-made materials. This situation provides an opportuni
explore the logic of derealization and commoditization of material culture. Definitive explanations are not available, bu
lines of inquiry are suggested. The tradeoff between time and money changes as people enter the wage economy. Houses bec
vehicles for investment across time. Access to local resources become constrained while new commercial channels of pur
manufactures are opened. Techniques of construction change as the regional stratification picture shifts in response to exte
connections.

Key words: consumption, economic development, houses, material culture, US-Mexico border

Mije of Oaxaca, Mexico (Greenberg 1990), and in a Berber area

MOST borderborder
INEXPENSIVE cityPrieta
city of Agua of Agua NEWwith
are built Prieta
thinHOUSES
walls of are built in with the thin US-Mexican walls of
fired brick and galvanized sheet metal roofs. They are blazingly
hot during the cloudless daytime of the Sonoran desert, yet they
retain little of that warmth in the cool high-desert nights. The
older technology- massive adobe walls beneath a cane and mud
roof- is better suited to the climate, yet adobes are declining
in use, and no earthen roofs are to be found at all. Concrete
floors costing precious money replaces dirt floors, while lumber
purchased from sawmills substitutes for timbers. 1
The advent of brick or cement block walls, tin or tile roofs,
and concrete floors is not limited to areas bordering the US;
such alterations have been observed in places as different as rural
Taiwan (Wolf 1968:24), Sri Lanka (Duncan 1989), among the
J os iah McC. Heyman is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and
Science, Technology, and Society at Michigan Technological Uni-
versity, Houghton, ML He thanks his numerous informants in Agua
Prieta, Sonora, and Douglas, Arizona, but accepts all responsibility
for interpretations and errors of fact. An earlier version of this paper
was presented at the Department of Anthropology at the University
of Arizona. The comments there were unusually helpful, especially
those of Thomas Park, Michael Schiffer, and Carlos Vélez-Ibañez.
James B. Greenberg introduced the author to Agua Prieta, most
generously shared his 1981-82 data, and also commented on the
paper. Roger Owen was very generous to the author in writing about
and discussing his trips to Marobavi. The author thanks Patrick
Martin, Boubekeur Rahali, and Mehenna Yakhou for assistance of
various sorts. This material is based on research supported by the
National Science Foundation under grant BNS-8403884, a fellow-
ship from the Doherty Foundation, and a student grant-in-aid from
the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
of Algeria (M. Yakhou, personal communication). Expenditure
of migrant remittances on houses rather than on "productive"
investments is a major area of dispute in migration studies (Du-
rand and Massey 1992:25-29). Why do people alter the con-
struction materials (and closely associated features of architec-
ture) in their regional vernacular tradition, some obtained and
processed by the users themselves, in favor of items that are
purchased, some locally but in significant instances from external
manufacturers?
This question touches on transformations of a profound na-
ture. At the simplest level -commoditization -why do relatively
poor people expend scarce cash to replace items they once gath-
ered and fashioned with unpaid labor? More generally, why are
viable regional material cultures abandoned in favor of globally
uniform goods obtained from outside the regional economy-
the process of "derealization" (Pelto and Pelto in Barkin and
DeWalt 1988:53)? Regional cultures have long been connected
to the world economy, and much material culture was locally
sold or exchanged- that is, in some ways already commoditized.
Derealization, however, involves the intensification of external
flows into regional material culture and the displacement of local
material goods and producers. Finally, such changes in house
construction seem to coincide with the direct impact of capitalism,
in the form of wage labor, commercial agriculture, or migratory
remittances. Does capitalism somehow alter the terms by which
households balance time and cash expenditures? This paper, in
setting forth likely lines of inquiry, suggests that the study of
mere house materials may reveal the stringent organizational
logic of prosaic choices under capitalism.
Archaeologists Randall McGuire and Michael Schiffer (1983)
propose that architectural materials are linked to social processes

132 HUMAN ORGANIZATION

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because they embody distinct sets of construction qualities. Some up-front cost balances against length of use-life. Bricks last longer
are more troublesome to obtain or erect, but endure longer; others than adobes; reinforced concrete lasts longer than wood in wall,
can be renewed easily but last shorter periods of time. There door, and window headers; and sheet metal lasts longer than
is no perfect material for all human uses; rather, each social dirt and cane. In all these instances there has as well been a
order has distinctive needs that steer people to prefer certain shift from less durable materials to more durable materials, re-
construction qualities while forgoing other ones. For example, quiring a lower frequency of maintenance or replacement.
McGuire and Schiffer observe sedentarization and the rise of Finally, the sources of materials vary between local and extra-
social inequality in the shift from impermanent wood and dirtregional. The use of non-local materials almost invariably in-
to enduring and ostentatious masonry. One wonders if a similarvolves cash or credit expenditures in a way that is not inherent
transition is now taking place under world capitalism. for local materials, since the chain of commodity exchange ex-
I will begin by delineating alternative qualities of building tends outside the regional economy. Delocalized materials, be-
materials involved in the choices border Mexicans make. Then, cause they are uniform, also involve forgoing strategies of con-
as I present the empirical observations from Sonora, my major struction which are suited to local climate (e.g. , heat insulation).
purpose is to demonstrate that choices have in fact been made In northern Sonora, derealization holds true for cement, iron
among alternatives, and that certain qualities emerge as favored. rods, and sheet metal, but not for sawed lumber and bricks,
Trends in choice are chronological processes, and I rely sub- which are manufactured locally. Derealization may also include
stantially on two direct sources of evidence for historical change. consideration of resemblance to an external referent (e.g. , bricks)
I compare two working class neighborhoods in Agua Prieta: even when the product is locally made.
Barrio Ferrocarril (built, for the most part, during the These trends seem reasonably clear in the Sonoran evidence,
1940s- 1960s; a few houses are older) and Colonia Ejidal (built but their causes are less apparent. Here I suggest four possible
after 1975). 2 For rural Sonora, I compare the reports of two eth- ideas as to why they may occur. First, we should investigate
nographers who worked in the same river valley, the Rio Santhe use of time when it is given monetary value under conditions
Miguel, 20 years apart, Roger Owen (1959), who worked thereof capitalist production. A person may either conserve product
in 1955, and Thomas Sheridan (1988), who worked there incosts by substituting greater time output (whether construction,
1980-81. By using direct historical evidence, I can show that present time, or maintenance, future time) or increase expen-
changes in building material choices parallel major transfor- ditures to minimize the cost in time. I suggest that in the past
mations in the broader society. involvement with the markets either for labor or for rural prod-
Simply noting parallel trends does not, however, establish ucts remunerated time at such a low rate that the optimal trade-
a causal connection. Why should capitalism affect the relativeoff was to conserve cash for a narrow range of outside purchases
balance of material culture qualities? I put forward four argu- (e.g., coffee, sugar, salt, rice) and in all other instances substi-
ments that bridge this gap. These are research propositions, sug- tute the unpaid labor of the household (Wilk 1989). Under cur-
gested but not tested by the ethnographic material at my dis- rent economic transformations, however, as labor time is increas-
posal; they are aimed at future fieldworkers. The four propositionsingly occupied with either wage labor or commercial production,
are not mutually exclusive, since they spring from the same broad I suggest that households choose to trade greater cash expen-
historical process; at the end of the paper I will suggest waysditures for fewer demands on time.
in which they may be mutually reinforcing. Second, I propose that households are using more durable
As Richard Wilk (1989) rightly emphasizes, house construc-but also more costly materials in order to invest in the future.
tion is a series of complex considerations within a household This proposition, however, does not explain why investment be-
decision-making process. The pattern of choices made is notcomes an important criterion, and why houses are significant
the same as the reason for making the choice; some logic (or repositories of investments. The exploration of this limited prop-
competing logics) link the two. Therefore, each proposition em-osition therefore permits links to more fully social ideas: that
bodies an assertion (in a simplified or crystallized form) about investments in houses are a form of savings in urban areas (Leeds
priorities and or necessities faced by households when they make 1973); that investments in houses are a way of resolving intra-
decisions. Ethnographers may either agree or disagree that thesehousehold conflicts (Wilk 1989) and that investments are part
are the important considerations to households, but they shouldof a shift in the use of houses from "containers of women to
explicitly address the organizational logics they do feel to hold. status symbols" (Duncan 1981).
It is only when ethnographers explore such propositions that Third, I suggest that the networks of access to resources change.
we can discern the links between household decisions and im- Regional material resources become appropriated for private
pressive spread of delocalizing, capitalist consumption. purposes and are no longer available for the general use, or they
become overused with urbanization and population growth. At
Changes in house construction in Sonora involved three inter-
locking tradeoffs. Materials vary in cost, and at the extreme differ-the same time, and largely as part of the same economic de-
ence between purchased versus self-obtained and processed items.velopments, new lines of commerce readily supply replacements
For example, bricks, which can be self-made, are mostly bought;from outside the region, often with credit as an inducement to
they are relatively expensive compared to adobes, which can buy them.
be bought but are mostly self-made. This pattern likewise holds Finally, I suggest that we investigate the status referents of
material goods not in terms of the diffusion of blindly imitated
true for concrete against dirt flooring and metal rather than mud
and cane roofs. The trend, varying from partial to complete, global models, but rather in major distinctions of social inequality
has been the replacement of self-made by purchased materials.which dominate a region during long historical epochs; regional
Moreover, house construction materials differ significantlyinterconnections in material culture (the visible "referents" of
in their durability. Tougher materials cost more because theyderealization) shift when the structure of social class radically
embody more energy or effort to make or obtain. Therefore,transforms. The opportunity to spend cash on new materials

VOL. 53, NO. 2 SUMMER 1994 133

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for self-built houses offers the "popular classes" (workers, pros-
perous peasants, and rising middle classes) the novel possibility
of taking an active role toward their social standing when in
the past the status referents had largely been rigid.
Historical Background
House construction was part of a larger process of change
in all domains of material culture (such as sewing machines,
stoves, and trucks) which occurred within the formation of a
working class and a border culture over a century of northeastern
Sonoran history (Heyman 1991). The Opata were the indigenous
inhabitants of northeastern Sonora. They disappeared as a self-
identifying population in the 19th and early 20th centuries,
merging with northern Mexican mestizos. Their blend of Opata,
Jesuit, and mestizo material culture (including house forms) none-
theless persisted in the riverine villages of the region (Hinton
1959, Spicer 1962).
Beginning in the 1880s, the region was dramatically industri-
alized by the introduction of copper mines from the US and rail-
roads connecting them to the border. The mine boom lasted until
1949, and some important mines continue to operate. The for-
mative industrial period had four implications for house con-
struction. It was a time of rapid urbanization. During this epoch
large groups of people were geographically disconnected from
rural resources. The mine cities were company towns in most
cases, which meant that the house construction was designed
and directed by the American managers rather than by the
Mexican workers who built and lived in the houses.
Because the border was essentially open until 1929, there was
a constant transfer of population back and forth between Ari-
zona and Sonora. This resulted in a "cross-border" kinship net-
work (Heyman 1991:63-65), which made possible the transfer
of North American building styles and techniques. Wage labor
on both sides of the border meant vastly increased cash flow.
Credit was offered on payroll-deduction plans through mine com-
pany stores, which, along with independent peddlers, were largely
stocked from the US side of the border.
During this epoch the Sonoran elite also reoriented itself from
central Mexico and Europe toward the US side of the border
(Balmori, Voss, and Wortman 1984). In the US, the Sonoran
elite found commerce, schooling, second residences, and a whole
style of life, including house architecture.
Agua Prieta, originally a small railway port on the boundary,
started rapid urban growth in 1940 because of the arrival of un-
employed miners, 1930s US repatriates working their way back
to the border, and rural folk displaced by rural inequality and
inheritance difficulties. Three elements of border urbanization
are of particular interest. Agua Prieta residents had consider-
able access to earnings in dollars through Bracero, commuting,
and undocumented labor in the US, as well as local border trade.
The construction and commerce of city growth generated local
jobs as well. After 1967 maquiladora export assembly plants
arrived in Agua Prieta.
There was direct access to US manufactured construction ma-
terials at the border. Furthermore, US goods were relatively
inexpensive to Mexican consumers before the devaluations of
1976 and 1982 undercut the buying power of their pesos relative
to the dollar. Finally, and most importantly, in Agua Prieta people
built their own houses on open city lots (often provided through
134 HUMAN ORGANIZATION
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the municipality) so that unlike the earlier mine working class,
these houses reflected their own needs, desires, and capacities.
Home builders in Agua Prieta usually act as "general contrac-
tors," buying and storing the materials, doing some work them-
selves and hiring out other tasks to laborers or specialists (Turner
1977:91).
Rural northeastern Sonora entered the circuit of cash and com-
merce much more slowly, but eventually rather completely,
through migratory wage labor and the sale of cattle in the US
and Mexico. The cattle trade was old, but its nature changed
between the 1950s and the 1980s. Rural Sonorans now farm not
for subsistence but to feed cattle, which in turn are sold for money
to buy food and goods (Sheridan 1988). Peasants thereby join
their working class kin in a cash-commodity dynamic.
Research Proposition One: Time versus Money
This line of inquiry suggests that Sonorans now favor durable
over less durable house construction materials because wage
labor or commercial production limits the time devoted to mainte-
nance and rebuilding of houses. As part of the same process,
liquid cash (e.g., paychecks rather than hoarded savings) helps
solve maintenance problems through the purchase of relatively
expensive but durable materials. I do not suggest that people
simply impose or reassess the calculation of how much their
time is worth for both unpaid and paid labor. I do suggest that
the economic environment of wage labor and commercial agri-
culture reduces the availability and scheduling flexibility of un-
paid time, that is, time not devoted to earning cash, and that
the use of purchased goods helps solve the problems of orga-
nizing time that result. I will argue that for Mexican men, for
example, the wage economy on both sides of the border has re-
sulted in less time for the repair of adobe walls; they substitute
purchased bricks. This change appears to be an instance in which
money is directly used to buy time. I will also argue that for
Mexican women, unpaid floor maintenance work was reduced
when houses were built with cement rather than dirt floors; in
this instance, however, women do not respond to a monetary
valuation of housework time, but rather to increased time pres-
sure from other unvalued, unpaid chores.
Research Proposition Two : Investment in Permanent Houses
Investment in the future rather than reduction in maintenance
time is a distinct- but not contradictory- explanation for the
shift to more durable materials. This idea suggests that durable
materials are used not in spite of the fact that they are costly,
but rather precisely because they are costly and effectively
transmit the embodied cost into the future. The point of the prop-
osition is not that people calculate the best possible return on
any and all investments, including houses, but that social changes
may bring houses into prominence as a way of transmitting value
into the future, and that durable houses may then become the
best or even only alternative investment among those options
that relatively poor people do in fact face. I will consider several
investment scenarios that emphasize the role of capitalist change.
Both the time and the investment propositions direct our atten-
tion to household decision-making within a context of changing
domestic relations and regional econo-geography; I will there-
fore also examine several actual house-building histories.
Brick versus Adobe Walls. Adobes, called tierra muerta
(dead earth) or adobe crudo (raw adobe), are unfired, sun-dried
bricks of clay, sand, and straw. Adobes in Agua Prieta have the
relatively small dimensions of eight inches deep by twelve inches
long by four high. Fired bricks are often called adobe quemado
(burnt adobes), and that is exactly what they are. Made of clay
and sawdust, they start out with smaller dimensions than adobes
(six inches deep by eight long by three high). The bricks are
fired in brick ovens fueled with firewood and using only the
natural draft. They often come out not very well- warped and
sometimes friable. Bricks are made and sold locally.
Bricks are clearly superseding adobes in the border city, and
making in-roads on adobes in rural Sonora. As shown in Table
1, bricks are used more frequently in Agua Prieta's newer Col-
onia Ejidal (1975-present) than in the older Barrio Ferrocarril
(1940s- 1960s). This pattern underestimates in fact the temporal
contrast, since numerous houses in Barrio Ferrocarril have been
reconstructed using bricks since the early years of that neighbor-
hood. The chi-square test for non-independence of neighborhood
and building material, which is very strong, does not establish
causality- in fact, a neighborhood logically does not "cause"
a building type- but it does indicate that they covary. This finding
suggests that Agua Prieta's shift from adobe to bricks occurred
in the time span from the late 1940s to the early 1980s.
During these decades households, newly arrived in Agua
Prieta, would rent for a few years or live with kin. As children
were born and matured, and as they settled into the booming
economy and accumulated a little money, families began their
own houses. The city government made it easy to obtain house
lots. Brick house construction thus occurred during domestic
growth cycles set within a regional context of wage-earning and
relocation to the border; we shall consider some instances below.
The demand for construction materials surged in Agua Prieta
in this epoch. Brick was first manufactured there around 1955.
I conducted several oral histories of brickmakers, including one
man, Manuel Becerra, who claimed to have been the introducer
of the technology; he certainly was one of the earliest. He told
me that he first saw adobes being fired in Nogales, Sonora, from
which he brought it to Agua Prieta. Brick technology diffused
in the following two decades until it was widely known in the
mid-1970s. This shift occurred when former employees of Be-
cerra (one of whom I interviewed) entered the business for them-
selves, since equipment was self-made and it had a low entry
cost. Eight brickyards were in operation in Agua Prieta in 1986.
A similar replacement of adobes by bricks is beginning in
rural highland Sonora, the hinterland of Agua Prieta. Roger
4. Total cost
Table 1 Brick versus Adobe in Two Agua Prieta Neigh-
borhoods
Other
(includes mixed
Brick Adobe brick/adobe)
Barrio Ferrocarril post- 1940 16 33 11
week (1986).
Colonia Ejidal post- 1975 17 7 8
Sources: interviews with house builders; comprehensive written records
Chi-square test of non-independence significant at built
of a brick house .01. in 1982, updated by informant to early 1986 prices.
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Owen, who did fieldwork in the village of
found that all but two houses were made of
two older ones made of cobblestones (195
adobe house was completely plastered so th
the weather. Most peasants simply rebuilt
they deteriorated. Owen writes:
When a house is no longer structurally sound it
able beams salvaged, and then used in the new h
nearby. . . . One old man could point to the ruin
the one in which he now lives wherein, during hi
he had resided (Owen 1959:19).
Thomas Sheridan, upriver in Cucurpe du
mented a very gradual incursion of brick an
of all houses -and he observed that new bric
added onto adobe houses (1988:34).
What explains the shift from adobes to bri
six masons, both professionals and self-buil
me the same reason: bricks require no mai
adobes readily erode when exposed to the
nance interferes with their work and it costs
(mortar) itself. Since this was the accepted
it therefore behooves us to explore the idea
traded for reductions in future demands on
Bricks are substantially more expensive th
presents the cost of a small, self-built two r
1986. Bricks are purchased whereas adobes
essentially costless. Bricks also require a sma
mortar, whereas adobes are bound with a sim
Adobe construction, on the other hand, takes
than brick construction because the adobes
and sun-dried. Table 2 presents costs in two fo
plus non-monetized time (the self-builder's p
imputed monetary value of time at the loca
table presents the possibility that people wei
Table 2 Cost estimates for two-room
adobe, early 1986
Adobe Brick
1. Required materials 2,200 adobes 4,000 bricks mortar
2. Cost of materials n.a. 60 pesos per brick
when purchased (240,000 pesos)
9,000 pesos for mortar
3. Time cost of making 45 days (86,250 in 30 days
materials (adobe foregone wages) foregone
only) and construct-
ing house
(a) in time and cash 45 days and 30 days plus 249,000
expenses 0 pesos pesos
(b) in foregone 86,250 pesos 306,500 pesos
wages and cash
expenses
Foregone wages calculated at 1 1,500 minimum wage for a six day work
500 Mexican pesos equaled $1.00 US in early 1986.
VOL. 53, NO. 2 SUMMER 1994 135
unpaid time but does not presume it. Under any sort of calcu-
lation, in the short-run adobes are much cheaper than bricks.
The fact that bricks are favored over adobes in most new houses
tells us that some other consideration than initial cost must be
at work among border Sonorans (and most Mexicans), since
brick houses represent a significant expenditure versus incomes;
in 1986, buying and piling up the materials for a humble two
room brick house would take 40 weeks at the minimum (stan-
dard) wage paychecks in one of the local factories, without a
cent for food or other expenditures.
Brick walls take resources up-front, but they require no mainte-
nance and last indefinitely, whereas adobe shifts time and effort
to the future. Adobe walls crumble and eventually fall when
exposed to water and wind. One option is to let adobe walls
erode, simply rebuilding the house when needed. The life of
an adobe house in the relatively wet desert around Agua Prieta
is, unfortunately, unknown. Roger Owen's elderly informant in
Marobavi lived in three adobe houses in 78 years, or one for
every 26 years (1959:19). Longitudinal evidence on a process
of such duration will be hard to obtain, but it may be possible
to set up an artificial time-series of less and more eroded adobe
houses using informant estimates of the age of the actual dwel-
ling. The abandonment and reconstruction of adobe homes may
be more difficult as houses become larger, more elaborate,
and otherwise built with permanent elements (e.g., wiring and
plumbing). The restored adobe Casa Cordova in Tucson began
eroding at wall bottoms and a junction with a stone facade within
five years; the use of impermeable concrete floors (one change
in house construction which appears linked to the use of bricks)
encouraged trapped water to rise into and break down the po-
rous adobe walls (Hunt 1978:60).
Perpetual maintenance is the other option. If adobes are to
be protected from the elements, they have to be plastered ("stuc-
coed"). Plastering adobe runs roughly 17,000 pesos in materials
for the two-room example. Plastering adobe is difficult, for the
plaster does not bind well to the vertical edge of raw earth. In
order to hang the plaster, small stones are placed at intervals
in the adobe wall or, more recently, the wall is hung with pur-
chased wire laths. Even after a wall has been stuccoed, the plaster
continually develops cracks which allow in moisture, which in
turn causes even more plaster to pull away from the wall. There-
fore all flaws have to be repaired quickly.
Researchers may also wish to ask if the incomplete replace-
ment of adobes by bricks reflects income differences within
mixed, but poor city neighborhoods and rural towns. Bricks
may simply be too expensive for some households ever to afford,
even saving brick by brick. Therefore, if we follow this line of
investigation, we will require more adequate data on mainte-
nance time and costs, and on the distribution of materials versus
economic resources at the time house construction is started.
Bricks as Investments. I suggested above that more du-
rable and costlier materials may be introduced during periods
when houses become regarded as value-holding investments in
addition to being shelters and spaces for meaningful activities.
Wilk (1989) studied just such a case among the Kekchi Maya
of Belize. He suggests that under egalitarian restrictions, wealth
was inherited as a limited set of personal luxuries (the few things
the expenditure-conserving Kekchi bought with cash). As cash
income rose with rural commercialization, the Kekchi faced an
"allocational crisis" in which individuals within households (espe-
136 HUMAN ORGANIZATION
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cially fathers and sons) contested the uses of the new wealth;
they tried to resolve tensions by investing the resources in in-
disputably shared uses, the pre-eminent one being houses.
In order to generalize Wilk's outline of house consumption,
we will need to follow several lines of inquiry. What are the
alternative inheritance possibilities that households around
the world face when they become involved in increased cash
flows- for both urban and rural households, is additional land,
tools, and children's education available, as well as houses? In
what social and physical structures (e.g., bounded city house
lots) do each of these inheritances ameliorate versus exacerbate
intra-household tensions over who gets what?
Inheritance involves the embodiment and transmission of re-
sources from the present to the future, which impels choices
to minimize the erosion of the investment. Leeds (1973) sug-
gests that people without the social power to use the banking
system and speculate with capital have limited ways of preserving
their meager resources when faced with chronic inflation and
devaluations (which most people in most of the world witness
as their expectable future). He suggests that people invest in
homes when there are few other forms of savings. Durand and
Massey (1992:25-26) likewise argue that wage labor migrants
spend their money on houses in areas of Mexico where weak
agrarian economies leave few alternative uses for remittances;
land is typically scarce and little enters the market, while busi-
nesses are highly competitive and small in scale).
Does Leeds' argument apply to the choice between bricks and
adobes? Bricks hold up better over time than adobes; however,
the cost of bricks is so much greater than adobes that one could
envision making adobes and allocating the remainder of the re-
sources to alternative forms of savings, if they exist , while pe-
riodically paying for the inexpensive replacement of adobe houses
from the earnings ("interest") on the savings.
We know that adobe buildings wear out, although we do not
have the research to tell us exactly how often they do so. If the
non-house savings of adobe construction over bricks can be put
to use at a high real interest rate (the increase in nominal cur-
rency value minus the rate of inflation), then adobe houses can
be replaced frequently, which avoids the physical problems of
decay. If the real return on non-house savings is low, however,
then a new adobe house can be paid for less frequently, and
the physical problems of decay become more pressing. Money
and time may have to be put into costly maintenance, which
reduces the value of building with adobes in the first place. If
the return on non-house savings is negative, that is it falls behind
inflation, then it is never worth building an adobe house because
savings are lost every time one pays for replacement. In other
words, alternative possibilities and levels of real interest rates-
the social economy- powerfully structures the decision-making
context households face.3
In fact, the "interest" on houses is complex. Bricks may cost
in real interest (raising the net benefits for adobes) if the money
to buy the house is borrowed. Only one of the 63 households
I interviewed in 1986, however, had had a mortgage, and the
man in question was connected with Mexico's ruling party; many
others had credits to buy house materials such as roofing and
lumber but never bricks. The typical strategy of amassing house
materials gradually, brick by brick, obviated the need for bor-
rowed money.
In turn, adobes may give a real interest benefit if the savings
can be put to a positive alternative use. During the long period
from the late 1940s to the early 1980s when brick construction ment lasted ten years. José and Mercedes by this time had nine
arose, urban Sonorans were increasing their real wages against children living in the two room house. The two oldest daughters
inflation; they were always aware, however, of the potential de- were reaching an age at which they could marry, although they
valuation of pesos against the dollar, which threatened to sud- had not yet done so. Mercedes' younger brother, who lived
denly reduce their savings (Heyman 1991:43-45). There were with his elderly parents next door, had married and had several
few ways for them to embody their savings. Small savings ac- children.
counts in banks in Mexico lost interest to inflation until 1988. In 1957 José and Mercedes bought an existing adobe two room
Furthermore, the popular classes feel, with considerable reason,house one street over. José added a kitchen and two back bed-
socially discriminated against in Mexican banks, and generally rooms, all made of brick. During this time José, a legal US res-
avoid them. After 1982, the need to hedge against inflation wasident ("green-carder") commuted across the border to work at
dramatic, as inflation rates hit one hundred percent and the peso a mine in Arizona. José therefore had the income- in dollars-
fell to one-fiftieth of its dollar value (early 1982 to late 1986). required to buy bricks and other construction materials. The
There are several non-bank forms of saving money againsthouse construction was done by hired masons, while José re-
inflation. On the border one could buy dollars with pesos, aturned on weekends to inspect the progress of work.
good strategy with little risk; one either had to hold this as phys- In the long-run, both sets of houses were used as inheritances.
ical currency, and resist intra-household pressures to spend it,After Mercedes' elderly parents passed on, the 1947 adobe houses,
or put it in an American bank, which again was easier for the now joined, were given to her eldest daughter when she married
Mexican elite than the working folk. One could put the moneyin 1964. Mercedes' brother, who had taken over a store, built
in consumer durables, which can be resold at future prices (thusan impressive new brick house on the remaining lot. The now
matching the rate of inflation), or invest in a small store (whose elderly Mercedes and José lived in the 1957 house with a di-
inventory plays much the same role). Doing so may preservevorced daughter and grandchildren. In parallel with the houses,
value against inflation but it subjects the investment to the risks it is worth noting that the Hernandez parents had also invested
of buying and selling. Durable resale strategies were importantJose's earnings in the education of their sons and daughters.
to Aguapretense but, in keeping with Wilk's findings, they wor- The Córdoba family moved from a terminated mine company-
sened household tensions because they took money from youthfultown to Agua Prieta in 1962; they joined kin and later rented
wage-earners for ends controlled by older women and men apartments. In 1965 they bought a house lot from the munic-
(Heyman 1991:184-185). ipality. They built a four room brick house (two bedrooms, a
An enduring brick house may be chosen over a replaceable kitchen, and a front room which may at one time also have served
adobe house because positive alternative uses of the cost savings as a bedroom). The bricks for the house were shaped and burned
are either non-existent or they are difficult for the family as aby Carlos Córdoba himself, during evenings and weekends after
whole to chose them. The brick house may be, but does not his duties as a mechanic and electrician in a marginal mine out-
have to be, resold on a speculative real estate market in orderside the city; at this time Carlos was making, in Mexico, roughly
to stay ahead of inflation; durable construction may also rep-one-fifth of José Hernández' US income. He hired one assistant.
resent the preservation of a use-value, housing, in the face of The family hired a mason to lay the foundation, walls, and roof,
inflationary increases in house rentals. Faced with a paucitywhile Carlos and his sons did the finishing work inside and out.
of data throughout, we need research on both the economic andAt the time the Córdobas built the house, the oldest son had
social investment qualities of houses; we need to specify thebegun work at a lumberyard, and his income was substantially
alternatives available to the relatively powerless before we viewdirected to collective ends by spending on house materials (see
expensive house construction as irrational. below, on credit) and appliances for his mother.
Later on the same lot the Cordoba family built a two-room
Household Decision-Making: Two House Histories. brick house, occupied by a married daughter, a machine shop
House histories recorded in Agua Prieta indicate thatfor consid-
Carlos, and a small structure where a divorced son sleeps.
erations outlined above- collective consumption and inheritance, The Córdoba family told me with pride that they had helped
the pressure of wage-labor on available time, and lack all of of their six non-resident children own houses. At the same
alter-
native means of savings - all moved in the same direction, time, Carlos confessed that he worried how he was going to
toward
the use of durable and expensive materials, and thusbe
suggest
able to be fair in dividing up his house among his eight chil-
that the logic of capitalist development may enter natural dren
decision-
when the time came for (theoretically partible) inheritance.
making at several mutually reinforcing points. The oldest son who contributed so much, for example, no longer
The allocational crisis of which Wilk speaks had likelylives in the house.
already
occurred in Sonora (under the impact of vast industrial and The mi-
Hernández and Cordoba households differ in how they
gratory wage labor) before, families started coming to Agua Prietabricks- bought versus self-made- related to differences
acquired
in large numbers; my evidence for such disputes betweenin fathers
the relative balance of income versus free time on the part
and sons dates to the 1930s and likely the decades before this.
of the principle earner. Nevertheless, both households clearly
It also involved women in favor of collective household invest- operated in a wage-earning and not a cash-conserving context.
ments (Heyman 1990). When young households relocated to In both cases the families needed to pool major sources of cash
the growing border city, however, they recapitulated many of the income toward collective ends; both families thought of houses
allocational dilemmas of earlier generations. as lasting investments; and both families later used the houses as
José Hernández and Mercedes Romero de Hernández (pseudo- the major form of security transmission to the younger generation.
nyms) moved to Agua Prieta from the peasant village of Pivipa,
Sonora in 1941. In 1947, José and his father-in-law built two Dirt versus Concrete Floors. Houses in Sonora tra-
adobe houses on three lots in Barrio Ferrocarril. This arrange- ditionally had hard-packed dirt floors; only the elite would have

VOL. 53, NO. 2 SUMMER 1 994 137

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had wooden planks. Concrete has almost completely replaced
dirt in house floors in Agua Prieta. None of the 63 houses visited
in 1986 had dirt floors; only one of the same houses visited in
1982 by James Greenberg had a dirt floor and that family had
installed a concrete floor by 1986. The change has also happened
less completely in the countryside. In 1955 only two houses in
Marobavi had partial concrete floors; the rest were dirt (Owen
1959:17). In Cucurpe in 1980, two-thirds of the houses had con-
crete floors (Sheridan 1988:34).
Concrete for floors is expensive. A two-room floor in 1986
cost 44,800 pesos for concrete materials alone, a little less than
four weeks pay at one of the assembly plants. So why use con-
crete? This is a decision in which women are prominent. In order
to keep dirt floors hard and clean, my women informants re-
ported, one had to sprinkle water on it every three days, close
the windows and doors, tamp it down vigorously, and let it dry.
Not only was this hard work, it interfered with everything else
that had to be done in the home. A properly laid concrete floor
will last without maintenance for years.
Why might women conserve on labor time and effort? There
has been a long-lasting trend in working class Sonora, and more
recently in rural Sonora, for women to use new technologies
to reduce the drudgery of housework. They are not reducing
overall effort but reallocating their time to cover for the assis-
tance lost when children (especially daughters) stay in school
for much longer periods, and while husbands are away from
home working in the US and in mines (Hey man 1991:136-145,
Simonelli 1985). The case of women's work on floors suggests
that the time/money tradeoff should not be restricted to direct
wage-earners, but rather extended to cases when cash expen-
ditures can be used to relieve the pressures of changing time
allocation within the larger context of capitalist development.
Certainly with respect to the elimination of dirt floors one has
to consider the alternative hypothesis that ideologies of hygiene,
propagated in school and on television, have made dirt in the
house abhorrent. One woman interviewee did describe modern
houses with concrete floors as more "hygienic" and "scientific."
Research Proposition Three: Availability of Resources
The historical shift from the rural economy to the urban and
wage-earning economy causes a shift in the availability of con-
struction materials which favors purchased over gathered ma-
terials. This shift is due to three factors: the extremely dense
concentrations of population in urban centers; the direct com-
petition for resources between the external and the regional econ-
omies; and the penetration of a new network of credit and man-
ufactured supplies.
Lumber. The first case is the replacement in post and roof
beams of raw timbers (vigas) by sawed lumber (madera). No
one I spoke to who built a house later than 1940 in an urban
area used raw timber. In the 1986 survey no house had visible
timbers protruding from its roof frame, although conceivably
some may have been hidden inside adobe walls.
From its beginning, the mine economy competed with the
local economy for the lumber supply found in the high mountain
ranges. American mining engineer Morris B. Parker, who worked
in the large industrial mine of Pilares de Nacozari around 1902,
wrote:
138 HUMAN ORGANIZATION
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During this time and for years thereafter, power for all purposes was
dependent on cordwood from the surrounding hills. Thus the country-
side for fifteen to twenty five miles in all directions was entirely de-
nuded of trees, and later along the railroad for forty miles north as fer
as Cos, an equidistance on either side (1979:79).
Construction-quality timber was used for the enormous number
of mine posts in underground operations.
Around 1925, the Meza family started their first commercial
sawmill, in the mountains above the village of Bacadehuachi.
The mill moved several times as it stripped timberland around
itself. The Meza family moved to Agua Prieta after 1940 to market
the lumber produced by their nearby mill. In Agua Prieta the
Mezas and their in-laws the Terans sold construction supplies
in this rapidly growing city. We shall look shortly at several
house histories which involve the marketing of lumber on credit
arrangement to prosperous working class families.
Roofing Materials. The vernacular roof began with a
ceiling of sahuaro ribs laid across the parallel timbers of the
roof frame, then numerous layers of earth interlaid with cane
(i carizzo ), sahuaro ribs, or ocotillo , and a final heaping of dirt
(Owen 1959:17, Hunt 1978:19). One of my informants described
the cane as being woven into a mat (sahuaro ribs are unavailable
at Agua Prieta and the higher elevations of the Sonoran sierra).
The manufactured, purchased alternatives are cartón , water-
proofed corrugated cardboard roofing, and lámina , galvanized
sheet metal. Because cartón , which is less durable, has fallen
out of favor, I will concentrate on the choice of dirt versus metal.
In terms of functioning at a given time, dirt and metal each
have strengths and drawbacks as roofing materials. Sheet metal
is blazingly hot. A ceiling dropped beneath a sheet metal roof
offers only slight relief. Layers of dirt and cane, on the other
hand, are a superior insulator, well-suited to the climate. A dirt
roof, writes Owen, "sheds water until it reaches the point of
saturation, then it begins to leak continuously, often after the
rain has stopped" (1959:17). However, Owen noted (personal
communication) that this leakage was rare, since it could be
reduced by the installation of drain pipes (canales) of wood or
tin. Sheet metal also leaks if it is second-hand (as it often is),
or amateurishly installed. One of my first, and indeed most sat-
isfying, interviews was held during a driving rain, dodging the
waterfalls emerging from ceiling below a second-hand tin roof
held down with scrap iron. Dirt could not have been worse;
certainly it would have been cheaper for this very poor family.
I actively searched for dirt roofs in Agua Prieta, and there
were none. Seventy-seven percent of all roofs in the 1986 re-
survey were sheet metal; the remainder were tarpaper and cartón.
A similar pattern emerges in rural Sonora. In 1955 Owen re-
ported that only two buildings in Marobavi had tin roofs: the
wealthiest house and the largest store (1959:17). Owen told me
that on a revisit in 1985 he saw only six or seven houses without
sheet metal roofs, and that in his opinion they were worse, being
much hotter. Sheridan in Cucurpe in 1980 reports that 78% of
all roofs were lamina , and 18% cartón. Only three houses there
still had earthen roofs.
This shift may have taken place both because of maintenance
time and availability of supplies. Although I was not able to
get any estimates on the repair of dirt roofs, it is likely to have
been very frequent. Wet earth accelerates the decay of wooden
roof beams that hold up the structure. Furthermore, as McGuire
and Schiffer point out, insect infestation of earth loaded dwell-
ings may make them unlivable even before wood decay sets in societies imitate some things, resist others, and often act with
(1983:291). Sheet metal costs quite a bit up-front -113,000 pesos, reference to their peers. I suggest that we specify our models
nearly ten weeks in the factory, for the two-room house example - of "status." I propose that each region has a major historical axis
but if it is well-maintained by tarring leaks and rusty spots, it of inequality. Status is a socially cognized model of inequality
has an indefinite life. that fixes on a very small number of material features to rep-
In addition, it is worth suggesting that the riverside sources resent the polar contrast in each historical epoch of inequality.
of reeds harvested for mats would have been quickly exhausted I draw on Stanislaw Ossowski's work (1963) on folk classifica-
by a city the size of Agua Prieta (over 40,000 people) . It is worthy tions of inequality; Pāvlides and Hesser (1989) emphasize the
of note that I have interviewed two men who made earth and historicity and external contexts of vernacular architecture. Re-
cane roofs in Agua Prieta during the 1930s and 1940s (when gional axes of inequality change as fundamental socio-economic
its population was around 6,500). They lived on the ejido of transformations take place. These rearrangements are linked to
Agua Prieta which controlled access to the damp bottomlands the world economy, so that delocalized goods versus vernacular
southwest of the city. I argue, therefore, that the economic forces goods come to represent new poles of inequality.
which bring people together in unprecedented urban units may In order to understand status not as imitation but as action,
outstrip older uses of regional resources, and force reliance on we must ask how subordinate groups come to obtain the cash
manufacturers which can be supplied in large quantities. needed to purchase some of these external material symbols.
A key figure in the history of sheet metal for Agua Prieta was Sidney Mintz, in Sweetness and Power (1985), suggests that capi-
a second-hand goods dealer, now retired. He began in 1956 by talist consumption gives the sense that previously exclusive status
tearing down a house he bought in Los Angeles "for a dollar," goods can be bought by all, even if in small amounts: the idea
taking the doors, windows, and roofing paper to resell in Agua of democratic participation by which the market society is sold.
Prieta. He soon made a practice of attending auctions in the
US, and buying construction and consumer goods. He allowed Roof Shapes. In northeastern Sonora before the industrial
me a quick look over his books, being somewhat suspicious of epoch the main axis of inequality lay between the native American
my intentions. It was clear that by far his highest volume was Opata and the mixed race but Euro-cultural mestizo Mexicans
in the sale of used sheet metal. Furthermore, the notations in who were moving into the area and aggressively capturing local
his books demonstrated that he sold much of the sheet metal resources such as river water, bottom farm land, and upland
on credit, accepting payment in installments. pastures (Sheridan 1988, Spicer 1962: Chapter 3). (See also Dun-
House histories among my principal informants make clear nigan 1969 for the nearby Lower Pima area.) Owen in Marobavi
the importance of credit and commercial channels of supply in in 1955 heard the echoes of this stratification when people dis-
their choice of materials. Beginning in 1965, the Córdoba family tinguished between families that had "always" lived in the village
obtained a revolving line of credit with the hardware store of (sometimes called indios but never to their face) and wealthier
Decorson, owned by Gustavo Teran, while their son Jorge worked " blancos " (whites) whose families had moved there within re-
in the woodworking factory of his in-laws, the Mezas. Jorge cent memory.
bought the sawed lumber, sheet metal roofing, windows, doors, This alignment of stratification was associated with different
and cement that he, his father, and his brother, as well as hired forms of houses. The upper, white or mestizo level was affiliated
help, used to build the house. Plumbing and electrical supplies with the flat roofed northern Mexico vernacular house, which
were bought with cash in the US. is a rectangular house with a single roof, sloping from the front
The Durazo (a pseudonym) family used a 7,800 peso credit, to the back at a very gentle angle (in English this is called a
worth $902 in 1952, to buy sheet metal, concrete, and building "shed" roof). The other house, called the casa de dos naves (the
materials. They were given this credit by the Meza company house of two church naves, or figuratively two pitches), was
without interest as long as it was spent at that firm. It is worth associated with autochthonous Opata ancestry. It has six posts:
mentioning that Pedro Durazo was an active and loyal member four shorter corner posts and two higher center posts which define
of the PRI, Mexico's governing party, with which the Meza family a central roof ridge. It therefore had a roof with two equal slopes,
was associated. Again, the plumbing and electrical material was called in English a gable roof, somewhat obscured by the great
bought in Douglas, Arizona. masses of dirt piled on the earthen roof. The floor was excavated
The lines of supply in border Mexico were rearranged so as some twelve to eighteen inches below ground level, a device
to make it difficult for a person to choose anything but a man- well-known to the indigenous people of the area as a way of
ufactured commodity. The Mezas and others like them played keeping the structure damper and cooler (Hinton 1959). (The
the smaller part, making an unprocessed regional product into houses and their social associations are discussed in Owen
sawed lumber; the larger part was played by the power of the 1959:17, 39; illustrations of each type are found in Figures 2
North American economy, which supplied mass manufacturers and 5. An even older photograph of an Opata house in nearby
both through US stores and via intermediaries in Mexico which Tuape, Sonora, taken by Ales Hrdlička in 1898, appears to have
resold them.
six beams and thus a similar shape, a brush or thatched roof,
and ocotillo instead of adobe walls as were found in Marobavi
[Hinton 1983:326].)
Research Proposition Four : Status Systems With the advent of capitalist industry and agriculture, the so-
cial structure of Sonora began to change to one of non-racial
Houses may change because new materials and forms are in- social class. In 1985 Owen reported in Marobavi the advent of
troduced which have higher "status." This proposition is not as "a much more open class system" (personal communication).
obvious as it may seem. We cannot assume without proof that According to my oral histories, the supersession of race by class
people simply imitate the next higher status; people in stratified occurred much earlier in the mine and border cities. With re-

VOL. 53, NO. 2 SUMMER 1994 139

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spect to prestigious house forms, we must pay particular atten- materials in the transformed regional economy
tion to the Sonoran elite. As we have noted, the regional elite If natural materials are scarce or unobtainable,
turned their own reference system northward, toward the US. lie only among varied manufactures. Only in ca
New house styles drew on the bungalows of the American west. versus bricks, where the natural materials are
The gable and hipped roof forms (two and four sided, respec- housebuilders move on to decisions possibly
tively) ironically became more prestigious than the older Mexican sitions one, two, and four.
flat-roofed vernacular house. Propositions one and two, although they appe
The shift in house style set up a permeable social distinction distinct, are in fact mutually reinforcing sinc
in which people could assert status claims by building more com- erally implies greater initial cost and longer life-
plex roof types. The shape of roofs in two Agua Prieta neigh- problems both of maintenance time and of inves
borhoods is recorded in Table 3. The older Barrio Ferrocarril that we investigate if there is a threshold incom
has more flat Mexican roofs whereas the newer Colonia Ejidal making sequence, above which all decision-mak
manifests a trend toward gabled roofs. I found no examples ofuse of durable, purchased materials, thus accou
the casa de dos naves. for what we might assume is a causal relation
terials with social status via income level. With
The question of roof types is not one of simple social reflec-
tion. A more complex roof style requires more materials and osition four, we need to isolate key historical di
nacular architecture and elicit responses
greater skill in framing the roof. It was the consensus of builders
with whom I spoke that single-sloped roofs (called un agua homebuilders,
) rather than working with gro
could be framed by the houseowner himself, since one simply to the status of total house appearance and p
assumptions about sources and paths of statu
lays a set of parallel beams across from the higher to the lower
wall, nailed to a roof plate on each end. This is the modern
thermore, the treatment of proposition four shi
from the status of the good itself and toward co
equivalent of the timber and adobe construction of older Mexican
vernacular houses. On the other hand, a peaked roof presents the new economies of households which make
a greater challenge. Depending on the skill of the homeowner, mocratization of cash-consumption in socie
it may require a professional carpenter. A central beam must boundaries have been ostentatious and bitterly
is, I suspect, that we find much house construc
be raised, and rafters with cross-ties run up to it. This structure
must rest on a set of ceiling joists, since unlike the flat-roofed
among international migrants returning with cas
house the rafters stand above the ceiling line. The additional to places in which there were previously vast r
Even at the preliminary stage of inquiry, how
lumber forms two sides of a triangle whose base is the flat roof, so
that a peaked roof requires more cut lumber than a flat roof.
guments extend importance well beyond house t
All this pretension to fancier roofs is thus more costly;moditization"
it of material cultures. Such a term g
provides an opportunity, if the money is there, to buy upwarda spurious uniformity that anthropologists res
less highlights a strikingly repetitive set of e
in the class system. I therefore suggest that it is no accident
scale. Some of the complexity can be restored by
that peaked roofs are spreading in Agua Prieta: first, because
money is available to the working class from work in the US, model of households making decisions among a
smuggling, assembly plants, and broom factories; second, inevitably
be- varying considerations and resource
tion is, does capitalist development change the lo
cause Agua Prieta is largely a self-built city, permitting people
to act on their mental models of inequality insofar as their To
in- the extent that the four propositions will
come allows.4 true, and that they interact together, I suggest tha
perhaps even coercive, logic to the derealizat
tion in the world around us.
Conclusions The novel equation of time equals money forces a series of
subsidiary judgements including those of replacing effort with
The research propositions highlight our need for more directexpenditures, and investing against the national economy over
ethnography of household decision-making and house historiestime. As people spend less time in unpaid labor on vernacular
in order to go from abstract logic to actual choices about con- products (thus not including commercialized crafts), complex
struction. Throughout the text I have noted empirical lacunae. skills, such as the woven-cane and mud roof, fall by the way-
Here I will sketch one model of possible steps between contingent side. This loss becomes acute at the point of transmission be-
decisions for further investigation. First, all the decisions are tween generations. Once skills are lost, then manufactured goods
based on proposition three, the question of the availability of (in which the knowledge of production is deposited in special-
ized sectors of the world-economy) have to be used, for there
are fewer and fewer alternatives. The regional network of flows,
Table 3 Roof Týpes in Two Agua Prieta Neighborhoodsboth environmental-economic and social-conceptual, becomes
polarized in a well-defined alignment which limits the available
Data
choices. Anthropologists have long observed the reorientation
1 slope 2 + slopes missing
of regional material cultures in the world economy, yet we have
Barrio Ferrocarril post- 1940 20 18 0 had little to say about it beyond lamenting the loss of the past.
Colonia Ejidal post- 1975 5 18 2 It is, however, too important a dimension of human lives to con-
tinue to skirt; whether these propositions are correct or not is
Chi-square test of non-independence significantless important than that we begin systematic work on this topic.
at .025.

140 HUMAN ORGANIZATION

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 NOTES 4 James Duncan (1981) would link
tion in a different manner. He pai
1 In addition to the changes discussed in detail in ization. A collectivistic social struc
the text, numerous
other elements of house construction have changedthey served
in northern Sonora. purely functional purp
Fences used to be bound together from the tall, thornydren were
stalks kept. As an individualist
of the
ocotillo , which is gathered from desert hillsides. Ocotillo
with has been par-
materials of varying expenses i
tially replaced by wire fences, in some cases madeencesof chain in
link.resources.
Win- In this case, the
dows and doors had been used sparingly; those thatin existed were closed return. Unfortunately
a market
wood. Now glass windows, often used American ones, are purchased,
pothesis to Sonora, northern Mexic
while doors may be made of locally worked decorative verycast-iron. In
individualistic ethos concerni
addition, the lintel above the window and door has (Sheridan
shifted from wood,1988:144-45). Neverthele
which corresponded with adobe construction, to sure concrete reinforced
the display of wealth in house
with iron bar, which binds better to brick walls. Reinforced
investigated concrete in historically and eth
is also used to strengthen the corners and top of the first floor in brick
construction when a second floor is intended; second floors are rare
in poor Agua Prieta neighborhoods, however. Manufactured plumbing
and electrical supplies are purchased; this is not a case of the replace-
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VOL. 53, NO. 2 SUMMER 1994 141

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