There would be eight, a dozen, or twice that many men down below cutting the grass to length with their machetes, tying it into bundles as thick as a butcher’s forearm, and tossing it to the men up on the rafters, who would catch and tie and catch another. It was like a game, like boys playing, and they’d taunt and laugh and shout, but more than anything, it was the simple joy of working with a group of men, playing catch and seeing the whole thing begin to take shape. There were always bottles of aguardiente, fire water, that got thrown about as well, which added its own flavor to the event. They started at the bottom, usually in a corner, and worked their way up and across the rafters, overlapping the bundles of grass row after row. The way it usually worked, between the effects of the intensifying sun and the influence of the fire water, the roof thatching would start off down there in the bottom corner looking all nice and even and brushed like a schoolboy’s head of hair heading off to class, but by the time they reached the top and opposite corner, well, it looked a lot more like a schoolboy’s hair coming home.
They’d usually finish roofing in a day, and all day the wife of the new house and her kin would prepare food. A turkey would be slaughtered, heaps of tortillas were made, fresh ground salsa, and there were foamy cacao drinks in the morning. The walls of earth and wood, the foundation stones, going out and collecting the materials: it was all done the same way by this team of relations. It didn’t cost anything to build your house other than the food put on the table and the investment of your time.
“Back then there were lots of strong arms, the freedom of time. We hardly knew money, but barter was honed into an elegant system. Of course it was all reciprocated, the shared labor. When one of them needed to build his house or re-roof it in ten or twenty years, you would go and throw your arms and liver into it.”
“It’s not like that anymore. As people started earning some money and wanting concrete houses with concrete roofs and metal-framed windows, they had to start paying masons to build their houses. Now no one has the obligation to pay back the building favor so that time is freed up. But what freedom, if they are working all the time now to buy all those shipped-in materials that cost more than a man around here can reasonably earn?”
“We gathered the long grass where it still grows to make this roof. But the men won’t work for a meal and a trade anymore. The system is broken. Still, I wanted my roof of cooling grass. It is quiet in the rain and lets the smoke of the cooking fire seep out. I paid men to work, it’s the custom of the time, but I spent no money on concrete, sheets of tin and rebar.”
She paused, went quiet for a moment and turned inward. Was it nostalgia, perhaps grief that showed on her silent face for a fraction of a moment? But then a subtle smile appeared. Really more just a feeling than an actual smile, and she said, “But here is what I did do. I made food for all of them. Good food. Some ways should not die.”
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This tale is an excerpt from Oaxaca Stories in Cloth. Thrums Press 2016. Eric Mindling
It is experiences like this that have inspired me to create and guide a new kind of tour experience in Oaxaca in January of 2025 called The Offering. Craft of Reciprocity.
In Arroyo Zapotillo, one hundred curves down the road from San Bartolome Ayautla, the benefits of a roof made of leaves has not been forgotten.
Crispana's roof rests like a hug