Urban Residence: Housing and Social Transformations in Globalizing Ecuador 9780857453723

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction: Urban Living and Architecture
1. Intermediate Andean Cities
2. Neighborhood Dialectics
3. Habits in House Building
4. Fashionable Homes
5. Transformations in Cuencan Architecture
6. Riobamba, Disordered City
7. The Ordinary City
Appendix: Ethnographic Urban Research
Glossary
References
Index

Citation preview

Urban Residence

Cedla Latin America Studies (CLAS) General Editor Michiel Baud, Cedla Series Editorial Board Anthony Bebbington, Clark University Edward F. Fischer, Vanderbilt University Anthony L. Hall, London School of Economics and Political Science Barbara Hogenboom, Cedla Barbara Potthast, University of Cologne Rachel Sieder, University of London Eduardo Silva, Tulane University Patricio Silva, Leiden University Cedla Centro de Estudios y Documentación Latinoamericanos Centro de Estudos e Documentação Latino-Americanos Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation Cedla conducts social science and history research, offers university courses, and has a specialized library for the study of the region. The Centre also publishes monographs and a journal on Latin America. Keizersgracht 395-397 1016 EK Amsterdam The Netherlands / Países Bajos www.cedla.uva.nl For information on previous volumes published in this series, please contact Cedla at the above address. Volume 98 Latin America Facing China: South-South Relations beyond the Washington Consensus Edited by Alex E. Fernández Jilberto and Barbara Hogenboom Volume 99 Foodscapes, Foodfields and Identities in Yucatán Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz Volume 100 Urban Residence: Housing and Social Transformations in Globalizing Ecuador Christien Klaufus Volume 101 Environment and Citizenship in Latin America: Natures, Subjects and Struggles Edited by Alex Latta and Hannah Wittman

Urban Residence Housing and Social Transformations in Globalizing Ecuador

Christien Klaufus Translated by Lee Mitzman

Berghahn Books NEW YORK • OXFORD

Published in 2012 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com



© 2012 Christien Klaufus All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Published in Association with the Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA), Amsterdam. The translation from Dutch by Lee Mitzman was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Klaufus, Christien. [Steden en de bouwers. English] Urban residence : housing and social transformations in globalizing Ecuador / Christien Klaufus ; translated by Lee Mitzman. p. cm. Author’s thesis (doctoral--Utrecht University, 2006) originally published under the title: De steden en de bouwers. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85745-371-6 (hbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-85745-372-3 (ebook) 1. City planning--Ecuador--Citizen participation. 2. Dwellings--Ecuador-Design and construction--Citizen participation. 3. Housing development-Ecuador--Citizen participation. 4. Urban anthropology--Ecuador. I. Mitzman, Lee K. II. Title. HT169.E24K5313 2012 307.1’21609866--dc23 2011040757 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 978-0-85745-371-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-85745-372-3 (ebook)

Contents List of Figures and Tables

vi

List of Abbreviations

ix

Preface xi Introduction. Urban Living and Architecture

1

Chapter 1. Intermediate Andean Cities

29

Chapter 2. Neighborhood Dialectics

63

Chapter 3. Habits in House Building

103

Chapter 4. Fashionable Homes

144

Chapter 5. Transformations in Cuencan Architecture

184

Chapter 6. Riobamba, Disordered City

221

Chapter 7. The Ordinary City

256

Appendix. Ethnographic Urban Research

284

Glossary 291 References 295 Index 311

List of Figures and Tables Maps 1. Ecuador 2. Riobamba and surrounding areas 3. Cuenca and surroundings 4. Cooperativa Santa Anita 5. Ciudadela Carlos Crespi

30 35 42 64 77

Illustrations   1. Former Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo, Riobamba   2. Chalet built according to a European model in the Bellavista neighborhood, Riobamba   3. Neo-classicist influences in Cuencan architecture around 1900   4. Neoclassicism in Riobamba: Colegio Maldonado   5. Sector 1 of Cooperativa Santa Anita, 2002   6. Minga in Cooperativa Santa Anita to build a water pipeline   7. Northern section of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, 2002   8. Sign marking the entrance to the neighborhood center   9. Workplace at home, Ciudadela Carlos Crespi 10. Artist from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi with a “museum” at home 11. Three types of homes 12. A villita under construction, Cooperativa Santa Anita 13. Avelina’s draft design 14. Map of Avelina’s home 15. Sitting room as a “place to relax” in Cooperativa Santa Anita 16. Comfortable interior in Cooperativa Santa Anita 17. Dining room furnished with care in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi 18. Family shrine in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi 19. First stage of construction: foundations and pillars 20. Roof-building minga 21. Home of a former transnational migrant in Cooperativa Santa Anita

35 36 43 51 65 65 78 78 88 88 111 111 117 122 122 123 123 129 130 133 153

List of Figures and Tables | vii

22. Homes of transnational migrants in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi 153 23. Village where Avelina was born, near Riobamba 160 24. Map of Avelina’s sister’s home 160 25. Adobe rural home, Ciudadela Carlos Crespi 161 26. Sloped façades and roofs, Riobamba 167 27. Old trends (left) and new trends (right) in window frames, Ciudadela Carlos Crespi 169 28. Finishing exterior walls 169 29. Decorated façade, Cooperativa Santa Anita 170 30. Home on commission, designed by Jaime Malo 188 31. Residence of Honorato Carvallo, based on his own design 189 32. Cuenca’s historic city center 192 33. Rural building traditions near Cuenca: adobe home with a tiled roof and balcony featuring wood carvings 198 34. New construction styles in the countryside 198 35. “Migrant architecture” as a symbol of family wealth 199 36. Turn-key house for a buyers’ market of transnational migrants 210 37. Street in the center of Riobamba 232 38. Modern buildings in the historic city center 232 39. Dávalos market 241 40. Contemporary housing construction in villa districts 250 41. Villa based on an American model in an elegant Cuencan neighborhood with detached houses 269 42. New home in Tunsalao, near Riobamba 269

Tables   1. Ranking by population of cities in Ecuador, 1950   2. Ranking by population of cities in Ecuador, 2001 and 2010   3. Inadequate housing, 2001   4. Duration of residence   5. Tenure   6. Average standardized household income as an index of the national minimum income   7. Poverty level of households   8. Type of home (as reported by the occupants)   9. Home furnishings 10. Construction materials

31 31 34 96 105 107 108 114 126 131

viii | List of Figures and Tables

11. Mingas and wage labor during the construction process 12. Residential architecture appreciation among residents of working-class neighborhoods 13. Architecture faculty students on first course by category of secondary education

133 175 192

List of Abbreviations BCE BEV CAE EMUVI ERPE IERAC IESS INDA INEC JNV MIDUVI PDUR SIISE SIV TBP UNESCO

Banco Central del Ecuador (central bank of Ecuador) Banco Ecuatoriano de la Vivienda (national housing bank) Colegio de Arquitectos del Ecuador (national association of architects) Empresa Municipal de Urbanización y Vivienda (municipal housing company Cuenca) Escuelas Radiofónicas Populares del Ecuador (radio station in Riobamba) Insituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización (national agrarian reform institute) Instituto Ecuatoriano de Seguridad Social (national institute of social security) Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo Agrario (successor to IERAC) Instituto Nacional de Censos y Estadísticas (national institute of statistics and censuses) Junta Nacional de la Vivienda (predecessor of MIDUVI) Ministerio de Desarrollo Urbano y Vivienda (ministry of urban development and housing) Plan de Desarrollo Urbano de Riobamba (urban development plan Riobamba) Sistema Integrado de Indicadores Sociales del Ecuador (social indicators database) Sistema de Incentivos para la Vivienda (housing program of MIDUVI) Taller de Barrios Precarios/Populares, municipality of Riobamba United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Preface On Sunday 27 December 1998 I began this study with my very first day of fieldwork as an anthropologist in training. I had arrived that day in Riobamba, a provincial city in the highlands of central Ecuador, and expected to find it bustling with Christmas activities. Nothing was further from the truth. Riobamba appeared desolate; I was the only guest at the hotel where I had booked a room, and all restaurants and places to eat in the center were closed. I knew nobody in the city yet and was hungry and felt out of place. Hoping to cheer myself up, I signed up for the tour of Chimborazo Volcano that a nearby hotel advertised. As I was registering, I struck up a conversation with José Ignacio, the desk clerk, who later turned out to be one of the owners of the hotel. He asked about the purpose of my trip, and I eagerly told him about my research plans. The exact study, on living in workingclass neighborhoods in provincial towns, had yet to be elaborated, but I had plenty of ideas, including some about the type of neighborhood where I hoped to conduct my research. A few hours later we climbed into a taxi together. Instead of heading for the volcano, we drove to one of the city’s suburbs at the foot of that volcano. José Ignacio had promised to introduce me to one of the hotel’s cleaning ladies, who lived in a neighborhood called Cooperativa Santa Anita. We arrived at a dusty hill, where ten small brick homes stood in the late afternoon sun. The neighborhood appeared serene and tranquil and reflected none of the chaos that I had imagined a Latin American working-class neighborhood would exude. We approached one of the houses and knocked on the door. The cleaning lady was not home, but we did find her niece, who lived in the house behind it. A woman in her early thirties, who had clearly been in the middle of an afternoon nap, sleepily opened a small curtain and asked what we wanted. I explained that I was a researcher, and during the hours that followed “Avelina” (as I will call her) showed me around the neighborhood.1 She talked about life there and told me about the houses and their occupants, about conflicts and friendships, about lack of water and excessive dust, about wonderful rural tranquility and about the nosiness of the municipal authorities. On this first day of fieldwork, I quickly filled my notebook. Cooperativa Santa Anita had become “my” neighborhood.

xii | Preface

Nearly three years later I met the residents of Cuenca’s Ciudadela Carlos Crespi neighborhood in southern Ecuador. This time I had traveled at my own initiative to a working-class neighborhood I had preselected, hoping to continue my research there. Municipal architects and planners had warned me that the residents of Cuenca’s working-class neighborhoods were tired of studies. They believed that my chances of success were slim, especially if I set out on my own. Besides, they explained, going there alone was especially dangerous for a woman, as working-class neighborhoods were zonas rojas, unsafe areas. Once again, my first impression was entirely different. Doña Julia, a friendly member of the local association, received me in her home in the center of the neighborhood. She proposed requesting permission from the residents to conduct my study in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. When I agreed, she excused herself and went upstairs. I had no idea what she intended to do, until she appeared on the roof of her house and called the residents via a blaring loudspeaker to come “down.” Within a few minutes, about thirty people came down from various hills to the crosswalk in front of her house. One of the local board members, a neat young man dressed in a suit and tie, read aloud my letter of introduction to the residents. Next, he told his listeners what he believed anthropologists did: “they study our own culture.” The audience responded with consenting nods and mumblings and welcomed me. Then everybody went home, climbing back up the hills. From that point onward, I was welcome in every home in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, and this neighborhood became my second research site. Ethnographic research in working-class neighborhoods remains subject to prejudices and misunderstandings—both in the cities studied and at academic institutions. No two working-class neighborhoods are identical. Nor are working-class neighborhoods in provincial towns the dangerous and disordered free states usually depicted in stereotypes. This book is specifically about building homes and living in working-class neighborhoods in provincial towns; part of the new urban middle class resides in these neighborhoods. But the book is also about the “other” middle class: educated professionals who operate as independent architects or work as municipal employees and apply their expertise to design and build houses and housing developments. My encounters with architects and urban developers were cordial from the outset, although I decided to include them in my research population only during my second fieldwork period. One of my first encounters with Ecuadorian architects was in February 1999. Three recent graduates and one experienced architect, who was an alderman at the time, were preparing a project about structuring and legalizing informal neighborhoods. They selected Santa Anita for a pilot project. Once we started working together and sharing information, I convinced

Preface | xiii

them to conduct detailed visits in the neighborhood to witness how people lived there. We quickly became close friends and saw each other outside office hours as well. They showed me their city and their province and told me about their ambitions, opinions, and experiences. Even though all five of us had studied architecture, I felt that I had to take a stand as an anthropologist and therefore sided with the neighborhood residents. In the papers I wrote based on this study, my fellow architects figured only as part of the context; they were professionals in a position of authority that I described from the perspective of the neighborhood residents. During my subsequent fieldwork period in 2001–2002 I met several friendly and very interested architects in Cuenca from the first day of my stay there. Some were familiar with the working-class neighborhoods that I sought for my case study. Others focused more on developing the inner city or on building housing in the countryside. I soon made friends with some of them. My major research breakthrough came when I started attending a course offered by Cuenca’s Colegio de Arquitectos about contemporary architecture with two women architects. During the sessions we talked about the attributes of European (including Dutch) and American architecture. The heated debates of the other participants about architecture on my continent came as a revelation. My Cuencan colleagues greatly appreciated the “earthly,” people-oriented designs by Alvar Aalto and Álvaro Siza, whereas the “cold,” minimalist buildings by Herzog & DeMeuron and my compatriot Rem Koolhaas’ Euralille project were less popular. “Sterile,” rationalist designs by architects who sometimes appeared more interested in making a statement than in serving were inappropriate for Cuencan culture, the participants decided. From that point onward, I no longer regarded my co-workers merely as experts with social prestige and control over urban development but also as urbanites and citizens in search of ways to live in comfort. I came to see them as “ordinary” people who lived and worked in the cities where I was conducting my research and decided to include architects and urban development professionals as a second research population in my study. Although it is often said that research is difficult to conduct among the elite, because members of the elite rarely welcome researchers in their social circle, this was no problem at all in Ecuador. On the contrary, architects invited me to come to their offices, to inspect projects with them, to attend lectures, to meet their families, and to accompany them to their holiday cottages on the weekend. My circle of architect friends grew and in fact complicated my research. In various ways I was part of the groups I aimed to depict, and this made it difficult to analyze the different social realities in which I operated individually and to compare them with one another: “reflection on social processes (theories, and observations about them) continually enter into, become disen-

xiv | Preface

tangled with and re-enter the universe of events that they describe” (Giddens 1984: xxxiii). Although this situation applies in every social-scientific study, an anthropologist who is basically involved in research twenty-four hours a day becomes especially aware of this fact. This study is based on data gathered between 1999 and 2009 (see Appendix for a detailed account of the methodology). Within this time span, countless research-related and other activities of interest coalesced. In the periods between my fieldwork, when I was in the Netherlands, one of my Cuencan architect friends brought groups of students and architects to Europe on five occasions. We met in Amsterdam and Barcelona, where we chatted and visited buildings. In Cuenca we organized the Dutch Architecture Week, in which three Dutch architects supervised design assignments during a five-day seminar. This fruitful week also comprised a complementary exhibition and three lectures. Still, some established architects were suspicious of this initiative, because it introduced new and in some cases European views on teaching architecture and eroded the existing hierarchy at the architecture faculty. Even more than my interactions with residents of working-class neighborhoods, these activities at the university and the Colegio de Arquitectos made me aware of my own position and the many hats I wore. Although I had started the study to learn about the building and living cultures in towns in the Andes, I acted in more capacities than simply that of an anthropologist the moment I entered “the field”: I was a Dutchwoman, was once married to an architect who accompanied me several times, was employed as a researcher but trained as an architect, in search of new contacts in surroundings that were new to me. Trust and respect provided the foundation for these contacts, with residents of working-class neighborhoods and professionals alike. Having a common intellectual background while supporting entirely different paradigms, however, affected my relationship with the professionals and made for a measure of ambivalence. In my interactions with residents of working-class neighborhoods, I remained first and foremost the foreign researcher who befriended them; no strings were attached to our loyalty to one another. With the professionals, despite our shared intellectual background, our different ways of interpreting and applying knowledge were always a factor. I regarded them as part of a cultural elite: actors with considerable power over the urban space and architectural representations, as well as over people whose views differed from theirs. At times I was one of those whose views were different; an outsider who did not understand (or refused to understand) how dramatically their culture was changing. Conversely, I realize that by depicting them in my writing as having different views, I exert power over their social environments. All these dilemmas that relate to describing “embedded” visions of the changing city among professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods and the distance

Preface | xv

that is critical for an anthropologist to interpret and assess these different visions converge in this book. My book also conveys the conflicting loyalties I experienced as a researcher. Although my friendships with several architects were closer and lasted longer than they did with most residents of workingclass neighborhoods, as an anthropologist I often felt a special obligation to make this second group heard in this book. I have tried to strike a balance and have learned a lot from the experience. In retrospect, I feel that all anthropologists should conduct research among several social groups at once, because precisely these dilemmas compel researchers to define their own position amid the forces of knowledge production and reproduction. In summary, this book derives from a deeply rooted interest in how people in different cultures and cities create living space—houses and homes, neighborhoods, domiciles. Some people are educated to perform this task: architects, urban developers, and planners. Others rely on their own resources or aim to be producers as well as users of their own home: self-builders, occupants, and managers of space. Sometimes these actors and roles mingle, and self-builders become influential experts and professionals vulnerable residents. Researchers negotiate the space in between. This book explains how professionals become involved, and how residents of working-class neighborhoods influence housing, architecture, and urban development in a mediumsized city via small-scale, daily interactions in their quest to bring about a worthwhile and meaningful living environment. They are the main actors in this story about making a residence. I therefore acknowledge first of all the residents and managers of Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, especially Delia Reyes, Yolanda Chimborazo, Daniel Ortiz, Fausto Navarrete, Milton Garófalo, Juanita Quizhpi, Luís Espejo, and Milton Quinde. Thanks are also due to the architects affiliated with the Taller de Barrios Precarios in Riobamba, in particular Edwin Cruz and Paúl Morocho; the professionals of the Colegio de Arquitectos de Chimborazo, including José Vélez, and of the Cámera de la Construcción in Riobamba for their help and support. In addition, I am grateful to the successive directors and associates at the Planificación department of the Municipality of Riobamba. In Cuenca, the professionals from the Facultad de Arquitectura, the Colegio de Arquitectos de Azuay, the local planning department, the Cámara de la Construcción, and the Facultad de Arquitectura at the University of Cuenca were extremely helpful as well. Augusto Samaniego, Boris Albornoz, and Vilma Villavicencio have greatly contributed to this study. Support from the faculty of architecture and the Colegio de Arquitectos de Azuay, provided by César Piedra and Marcelo Astudillo, enabled us to organize the week of activities in the Netherlands in 2003. Jos Demon, Doreyde Fonseca, the Yanquis, and especially the Rivera-Alvarado family made sure that I received a real home as well as accommodations in Riobamba and Cuenca.

xvi | Preface

The translation of this book has been made possible by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO grant P52-1129). I also thank the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University, the OTB Research Institute for The Built Environment at Delft University of Technology and the Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA) for their support, especially Michiel Baud, Arij Ouweneel, Kathleen Willingham, Talja Blokland, and Leeke Reinders, who helped me to refine my arguments and produce this English edition. I thank the two referees of the book manuscript, Felipe Hernández and Peter Kellett for their highly constructive remarks. Thanks to Lee Mitzman, the translation has become forceful, accurate, and compact.

Note   1. All names of the informants are pseudonyms, except when I refer to officials, who have made public statements in their capacity as professionals.

Introduction

Urban Living and Architecture This study is about intermediate cities in the Andes region and about how different groups of urbanites occupy urban space: the city envisaged by architects and planners and the everyday city of residents and users. These two urban manifestations are basically impossible to distinguish from one another. In everyday life the conceived space, the used space, and the experienced space become intermingled (Lefebvre 1991). After all, the conceivers and makers of urban space may also be residents and users and vice versa. This book revolves around the city as a tangled and layered social space that is depicted and used in different ways by different social groups. In this approach, the city is not only the location positioning relations between actors in time and space but is also the spot where an anthropological researcher inevitably participates in knowledge production about the city and consequently becomes part of the social reality (Giddens 1984; Marcus 1995). More of the world population now lives in cities than in the countryside. Contrary to what is often believed, over half the city dwellers in the world live in cities with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants (Satterthwaite 2006, 2007; UN 2008). Since the 1990s different international organizations (UN-Habitat, UNDP, UNESCO, and the World Bank) have called for policy that might promote sustainable urban development. Policy efforts are dedicated to curtailing additional growth of cities with over one million inhabitants and better steering the development of smaller cities. In the international urban planning debate, Latin American provincial cities are mentioned as examples of cities with urban quality of life and a human size (Scarpaci 2005; Herzog 2006). On the other hand, smaller cities—like metropolises—also experience rapid physical and social transformations as a consequence of globalization. Although urbanization processes in smaller cities tend to be manageable for city planners (Bolay and Rabinovich 2004; Satterthwaite 2007: 3), nearly half the growth of the urban population worldwide is expected to derive from the expansion of small and intermediate cities between 2007 and 2025, thereby increasing the pressure on urban facilities (UN 2008: 8). CEPAL has therefore stated with respect to Latin American cities that: “their intermediate size does not, in and of itself, guarantee them a bright future” (CEPAL 2000: 11).

2 | Introduction

Intermediate cities are difficult to define accurately. Population size may be an indication (Rondinelli 1983; Hardoy and Satterthwaite 1986), but because different definitions apply in different countries, a settlement of a few thousand may count as a city in one country, whereas in another country the minimum may be 20,000 inhabitants (Satterthwaite 2007: 7). Some authors therefore advocate a classification based on economic functions and ranking in the national hierarchy of cities (Lindert and Verkoren 1997). The cities featured as case studies in this research are Riobamba and Cuenca, two provincial capitals in the highlands of Ecuador. Riobamba is the capital of the centrally located Chimborazo Province and Cuenca that of the southern province of Azuay. Both cities are important provincial commercial centers, and both unmistakably joined global networks and economies at the end of the twentieth century. Based on their rankings in the national hierarchy of cities and on their size and functions, Riobamba and Cuenca are defined in the literature as “intermediate cities” (Bromley 1979; Larrea 1986; Lowder 1990, 1997; Schenck 1997). This study is focused on how different groups of citizens make the city their home.

Two Cities, Two Perspectives Like everywhere else, some people who live in Riobamba and Cuenca have occupations that involve making homes and arranging public space. In this study I describe them as professionals. They hold a university degree in architecture and are entitled to use the title Arquitecto before their name. They are architects, designers, urban planners, or urban developers, as well as politicians, entrepreneurs, university lecturers, or policy makers. Many registered architects do not derive their main income from producing designs, and many hold several paid positions at once. They tend to be high in the social hierarchy, in part because of the prestige associated with the Arquitecto title (Hirschkind 1981: 256). Professionals engaged in architecture and urban planning therefore often have the occupational authority to determine the appearance of important venues in the city, and how urbanites are presented in the built environment. David Harvey has asserted that ongoing progress in architecture and urban development gave rise to a planning elite that increasingly controlled the representation of citizens in urban space: [T]here arose a whole host of professionals—engineers, architects, urban planners, and designers—whose entire mission was to rationalize the fragments and impose coherence on the spatial system … . These professionals, whose role became more and more marked as progressive urban reformers acquired political power, acquired as deep a vested interest in the concept of homogeneous, abstract, and

Introduction | 3

objective space as their professional confrères did with respect to the concrete abstractions of time and money. (Harvey 1985: 14–15)

Considering this power is essential in examining the role of professionals in arranging the city. In addition to being professionals and makers of urban space, however, the members of this research group are citizens and residents of the city. They live, work, engage in leisure pursuits, and raise their children there. How they view the city in their work is thus determined in part by their personal experiences as residents and users of the urban space. At the other end of the spectrum are citizens who construct their own residential environment, as no other housing is available for them: they are residents of working-class neighborhoods. In addition to being residents and users of the urban space, they design and build their own homes, although they are rarely professionals. Residents of working-class neighborhoods come primarily but not exclusively from lower social classes. As citizens, they often feel overlooked by the government and sense that they have to make a far greater effort than residents from higher social classes to call attention to their residential environment. Still, they have acquired a certain power and say over their residential area, because they operate partially within and partially outside the local rules and regulations. Professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods encounter one another in their respective roles of professional designers, house builders and urban planners on the one hand and self-builders on the other hand, where—in controversial terms—the two groups face off as highly educated experts versus self-taught individuals with low levels of formal education. In addition, professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods engage as policy makers and implementers versus citizens with rights and obligations. The policy makers and implementers are responsible not only for formulating the rules but also for enforcing them. In practice, local problems arise with policy implementation and enforcement alike. Residents of working-class neighborhoods, as well as professionals, take advantage of this lack of enforcement in the building process, so that legal activities become intertwined with illegal ones. The legal status of buildings and the legal position of owners and residents are often complex and unclear. Both groups of urbanites try in their own way to improve residential quality in the city. They are all residents of the same city, although they come from different spheres, social networks, and cultural backgrounds. Architects tend to regard themselves as members of the local middle class or the elite, whereas most residents of working-class neighborhoods describe themselves as lower-middle class or as urban poor. Different balances of power and identifications therefore figure in the interactions between the groups. They are framed by the perception of social class differences in the Andes (Hirschkind

4 | Introduction

1981; De la Cadena 2000; Whitten 2003: 23–24), in which the class concept is not used according to the Marxist meaning based on division of production but as a constellation of different indicators relating social status groups to their chances in society (Portes and Hoffman 2003: 43). Sometimes the social worlds of architects and residents of working-class neighborhoods overlap. In one of the neighborhoods studied, for example, lives a young, locally trained architect who knows the established professionals in the center and consequently wears both hats: that of a neighborhood resident and that of a highly educated architect. In other cases, residents and professionals also turn out to know the same people through their work or via the organizations in which they are active. Because Riobamba and Cuenca are not metropolises but intermediate cities with a relatively small territory, interactions between the makers, residents, and users of the urban space occur inside a limited area, thereby intentionally or unintentionally leading to more frequent contacts than in metropolises. As a researcher, I enjoyed the benefits that the spatial scale of the provincial city offered, making research through participant observation among two groups of urbanites perfectly feasible. Understanding the developments in these cities required transposing the spheres of professionals onto those of residents of working-class neighborhoods. This yields an impression of a city where both groups either distinctly or interactively design places to live and attribute meaning to those places. The central question in this book is therefore as follows: How does the relationship between the views and approaches of professionals on the one hand and residents of working-class neighborhoods on the other hand influence the city as a place of residence? The double perspective of professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods and the choice of two case studies (Riobamba and Cuenca) allows for a glimpse across the social boundaries of one research group and across the physical boundaries of one city, in an effort to supplement broad knowledge about provincial cities in the Andes. This is theoretically important, because economic globalization and the influence of neoliberal policy have focused interest in urban studies primarily on what are known as World Cities and Megacities. The most and least functional cities receive academic consideration: functional, predominantly Western World Cities (e.g., Sassen 1994, 2002), and dysfunctional, predominantly non-Western Megacities are discussed the most in urban studies (e.g., Gilbert 1996; Caldeira 2000; Goldstein 2004; Koonings and Kruijt 2007, 2009). Cities that are less numerically remarkable are not addressed in the academic debate. This distinction coincides in part with the geographic distinction between Western and non-Western areas. The consequence is an imminent analytical dichotomy between social and economically prosperous cities in the West and unsuccessful or underdeveloped cities outside that area (Robinson 2006). Robinson’s recommendation in favor of studying “ordi-

Introduction | 5

nary cities” fits in a broader discussion framework in urban studies, which I will address when I describe how I conducted this study. The awareness that urban life is layered and complex raises the question of whether knowledge of and about cities, in addition to providing insight into sections of the city, may also be conducive to progressive and multi-disciplinary insight into the city as a model. Urban anthropologist Ulf Hannerz (1980) believes that this is certainly a worthwhile objective. He asserts that urban anthropology should be about anthropology of the city rather than anthropology in the city to gain insight into the roles people adopt in different social domains of urban life (Hannerz 1980: 102–5), and into how these social actions are situated in place, space, and time: The city is a piece of territory where much human interaction is crammed in. … [I]t is the cityscape we have to attend to, an environment which urbanites have created for themselves and each other. … [I]n addition, we should try to get a sense of how the cityscape spells out society in general and their own community in particular to the people inhabiting it, and how it facilitates some contacts and obstructs others. (Hannerz 1980: 305–6)

Based on my examination of human interactions in the urban landscape, I will attempt in this study to make clear the social reality in intermediate Andean cities. Around the visible and invisible facets of city life, the contours of a model city will be perceptible. If such a model city emerges in this study, then it is a provincial city in the highlands. The relatively small size of the cities that figure in this book is empirically relevant, because the different residential areas are in relatively close proximity. Since public transport is good and inexpensive in the cities studied, the poorer population is mobile and easily able to travel from the periphery to the inner city. In provincial cities, informal neighborhoods are not the vast, isolated areas found in cities such as Guayaquil and Lima. One of the consequences is that policy makers and politicians consider the problems related to housing and poverty to be less acute in smaller cities than in metropolises and are less inclined to design programs to address them. Basically, smaller cities often face an “inhibiting advantage”: social–spatial problems seem proportionately less serious there than in metropolises and are therefore less likely to be addressed. The societal relevance of this study is the contribution to local policy debates about the social sustainability of cities. An awareness of urban transformations in a rapidly changing world may figure in policy decisions with the potential to protect smaller cities from becoming unlivable as a consequence of rapid growth or the major impact of economic globalization. Understanding the mechanisms of social and spatial transformation not only in metropolitan areas but also in non-metropolises is therefore important from a scholarly and societal perspective.

6 | Introduction

My decision to study Ecuadorian provincial cities took me to areas that usually exceed the scope of interest of urban studies. As a country, Ecuador is rarely a central academic focus (Whitten 2003), and studies about urban development and housing revolve primarily around Quito and Guayaquil. But the smaller cities in Ecuador offer an accurate impression of life in a society experiencing rapid economic and cultural changes influenced by globalization. This is because of the recent turbulent course of events in the country. The years 1999 and 2000 marked a turning point in this recent history: following a severe economic recession in 1999 and a coup in 2000, in which the president was deposed, the dollar became the legal currency. This impacted the everyday life of the urban middle class. The national policy based on neoliberal principles coincided with decentralization of government responsibilities. Cities had to raise their profile to attract events and tourists. Due in part to the political and economic recession, migration to the United States and Europe increased, together with an influx of Peruvian and Colombian migrants to Ecuador. The outflow of labor migrants also coincided with an influx of foreign exchange, products, and ideas. Some foreign products and customs that migrants brought back home were absorbed in local ways of life. The urban middle class adopted a cosmopolitan lifestyle. In response, the cultural elite endeavored to protect national and local standards and values. Because of the extensive changes in the architecture and arrangement of the city, I will revisit ideas about urban space in various chapters. I will start with a review of relevant literature relating to anthropology of residential space, architectural theory, and urban studies.

Theoretical Framework The Built Environment as a Social Phenomenon The built environment is both a medium and an outcome of social intervention. The relationship between people and the built environment is dynamic and reflexive: we build the things we conceive, and our structures lead us to new ideas and approaches (Parker Pearson and Richards 1999). Examining processes for making and using buildings and spaces gives anthropologists insight into the cultural features of societies. In his theory about proxemics, for example, Edward Hall (1974, 1990 [1966]) has explained how interhuman distances in public spaces are constructed, and what this reveals about a society. Richardson (1982) describes the phenomenological experience of being-in-the-world for selected public spaces in Costa Rica. He reveals “how people incorporate material culture into the situation they are creating so that they can bring about unity between the situation and the material setting” (Richardson 1982: 423). Some authors (Humphrey 1988; Amerlinck

Introduction | 7

2001; Vellinga 2005) believe that anthropologists should focus more on how social interactions are embedded in certain places and in building than they do at present. This is especially true for Latin America, where, as Hernández postulates: “the fact that numerous socio-cultural differences coexist in the urban space of Latin American cities is a condition pregnant with opportunities for architectural exploration” (Hernández 2005: xiv). If we want to know how intermediate cities changed in the late twentieth century because of the increasing international contacts, then examining the built environment, especially the residential environment, is a useful approach: “The house … is an extremely important aspect of the built environment, embodying not only personal meanings but expressing and maintaining the ideology of prevailing social orders” (Duncan 1981: 1). Considering the control that individuals have in a society over the architecture and use of space and the freedoms and limitations they have in making their residential environment a place of value provides insight into broader patterns of city life. In addition, local authorities deliberately depict provincial cities in the Andes as pleasant places to live, thereby making the residential environment a logical location for research on everyday life in such cities. Accordingly, this study addresses the social domain of living and the expectations and opportunities that the makers and residents in provincial cities have in this respect. Research on the built environment has always been deeply divided by discipline. While architecture and art history deal primarily with exceptional and unusual forms of architecture, anthropology and geography focus mainly on traditional, broadly based, and everyday building methods. The interest of anthropologists in the built and inhabited space began in the nineteenth century with studies on the relation between use of space and social interactions in small residential communities, as exemplified by Morgan’s study on domestic life among American Indians from 1881 (Morgan 1965 [1881]). With the rise of the Chicago School in the early twentieth century, ethnographic interest in inhabited space started to include urban studies and the changing social composition of residential neighborhoods. Early studies about everyday architecture mentioned the merits of building traditions that had evolved from within the society, because they were often better suited to daily life than buildings designed on the drafting board (Rapoport 1969; Oliver 1975, 2003; Glassie 1975, 2000; Bourdier and AlSayyad 1989). The architect determines the forms that seem appropriate to the needs of a particular building or building complex within a society … . The individual within a tribal or folk culture does not become the form-giver for that society; instead he employs the forms that are essential to it, building and rebuilding within determinants that are as much symbolic as physical or climatic. (Oliver 1975: 12)

8 | Introduction

Anthropological study of popular architecture has benefited greatly from the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss. He became renowned for his structuralist analyses of indigenous architecture and residential buildings, which he interpreted as a representation of superior religious and social orders: a microcosm. In his definition of sociétés à maisons, he associates the home as a material and social unit with kinship relations (Joyce and Gillespie 2000). Later structuralists elaborated on aspects insufficiently addressed in his work, such as the role of architectural design in cultural dynamics (Bourdieu 1977, 1990; Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995; Waterson 1997; Joyce and Gillespie 2000). In addition to the cultural analysis of building traditions and architectural designs, American researchers focused mainly on the psychological, symbolic, and emotional meanings of residential settings (Duncan and Duncan 1976; Duncan 1981; Altman and Low 1992). James Fernandez regards the built environment as “a physical stimulus coupled with associations, recollections, recallings, memories of the past which arise by means of significant activities that take place in that space or by means of signs that are in some way attached to it” (Fernandez 1992: 216, see also 1984). Unless we understand the emotional and symbolic connotation that physical surroundings have for residents and users, he believes that we will be unable to fathom the social life. He uses an analytical distinction between metaphors and symbols to differentiate active from passive forms of non-verbal communication. Residential architecture may be regarded as a metaphor for social relations and lifestyles, as they are mediated through designs. Mendoza’s (2000) anthropological study on dance in Peru is based on Fernandez’s insights. She invokes design associations between ritual and everyday attire to argue that dance performances are a metaphorical arena for social claims. By the same token, I regard architectural statements as a performance asserting status claims or expressing social distinctions.

Architecture as a Cultural Representation In the West, architecture is often associated with a specific quality standard. References to Architecture (with a capital A) concern an art, distinguishing it from building designs that are “ordinary” and are therefore not labeled as Architecture. In social science texts, art and refined cultural products are identified as high culture. High culture comprises sophisticated forms of art and culture, such as classical music, theater, literature, and architecture, where aesthetic and style principles are paramount. These are distinguished from less exclusive, everyday products considered to be popular culture. The analytical distinction between high culture and popular culture has deeply influenced ideas about culture in Latin America.

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The difference between culture qualified as high and that qualified as popular is based on an evolutionary culture model that derives from Enlightenment thought. Culture and civilization in Western societies were regarded as superior to those in non-Western societies. This hierarchy was introduced not only between but also within societies, based on values presumed to be universal. A hypothetical division existed between refined and sophisticated art on the one hand and popular or “primitive” expressions on the other. Kantian ideas about the autonomy of cultural activities and individuals have fostered the idea that true artistic experience consists of an autonomous form transcending the function of objects. Conversely, forms arising from purely functional considerations are not art. High culture has used art as a key distinguishing mark, with the judgement that the aesthetic productions of the popular sectors do not qualify as art. Indeed the term “aesthetic” has been denied to works of popular art, given their embeddedness in ritual and other uses. (Rowe and Schelling 1991: 197)

Popular culture covers a far broader conceptual scope than high culture. A broad range of cultural expressions and products is attributed to popular culture, varying from craftsmanship, soap series, and pop music to tawdry art. This conceptual category depicts culture as being accessible to a general public, because no prior knowledge is required, regardless of whether such culture is produced through craftsmanship or industrially. The only element that these products have in common is that they do not meet the academic standards and values required of art but pertain to a residual category. That is also the analytical problem with this concept (Rowe and Schelling 1991: 2). As stated, the continuum from “high” to “low” culture applies to architecture as well. Architecture with a capital A is associated with complex societies that have become highly specialized and is regarded as an exceptional cultural achievement exceeding the mundane and juxtaposed against structures regarded as mundane and “ordinary,” as popular architecture. Whereas artistic architecture is a paragon of exclusivity, popular architecture exemplifies everyday traditions and routines. While artistic architecture may supersede its surroundings, popular architecture is embedded there. Old temples, medieval cathedrals, and contemporary monuments such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, are regarded as high quality architecture. Farms, self-built homes in working class neighborhoods, and indigenous architecture from non-Western countries tend to be labeled as popular architecture. The distinction is packaged in normative and ideological qualifications, which have been addressed at length in academic debate, and which I depict here as the most important points of view. Architecture originated as a superior artistic or scientific discipline in Paris during the eighteenth century. The École des Beaux Arts and the École Poly-

10 | Introduction

technique are considered the first two formal institutes of architecture instruction (Benevolo 1971: 5–9; Rabinow 1989: 47–57). The Beaux Arts program highlighted aesthetic refinement in architecture, while the polytechnic one stressed the technical and scientific design aspects. Classical views on beauty as a universal doctrine that links perception of beauty to the construction and function of a building thus countered the Kantian view, according to which beauty is a subjective perception allowing the idea and the expression of that idea in a building to prevail over its utility. These two views have alternated over the course of architecture history. The focus on building as an artistic pursuit or alternatively as a technical skill that benefited society defined university architecture curricula that emerged later on in Europe and served as models for architecture programs elsewhere in the world, including Ecuador. An inventory of a few leading architecture books from recent decades reveals how embedded this distinction is in Western ideas about building. In the renowned series Weltgeschichte der Architektur edited by Nervi, the distinction between “primitive” and “sophisticated” architecture figures explicitly. The first volume in this series describes early high cultures in the West, followed by volumes dedicated respectively to trends in Roman and Byzantine architecture, books about medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture, as well as architecture from the modern period. The final volume, which differs somewhat from the rest of the series, is entitled Architektur der primitive Kulturen (Guidoni 1976). Since these books were published in the 1970s, the dominant paradigms in social sciences and humanities have changed. If published today, the title would probably be different. Still, the selection available in architecture bookshops tends to comprise two distinct categories that accommodate the interests of scholars in the discipline. On the one hand, there are studies on the art history or art theory of architecture in the West or about Architecture with a capital A exported from the West to other parts of the world. These studies relate to the Western canon of architecture history (Crysler 2003: 33). This segment rarely includes anthropological reflections. Paul Rabinow’s (1989) analysis of nineteenth-century French architecture and James Holston’s (1989) study of Brasilia’s modernist architecture are the best-known exceptions (see also Fraser 1990; AlSayyad 1992). At the other end of the spectrum are a great many anthropological publications about “traditional,” “indigenous,” and “unofficial” architecture in non-Western countries. Most specifically concern housing and domestic life. Rudofsky’s (1998 [1964]) authoritative book Architecture Without Architects from the 1960s elicited widespread interest in cross-cultural inventories of indigenous architecture. Popular architecture all over the world was examined, but which selection criteria were applied? Rudofsky refers very generally to architecture “without a pedigree” to denote buildings by designers or builders

Introduction | 11

who are unknown or in any case not famous. Jean-Paul Bourdier and Nezar AlSayyad have used the term “traditional” as a comprehensive concept. They define traditional architecture as comprising both rural popular architecture and urban self-built homes. They argue that the term traditional eliminates the need for specific designations, such as vernacular, indigenous, primitive, folklorist, anonymous, and popular. The authors describe the traditional built environment as encompassing: “dwellings and settlements whose form originated out of cultural processes rather than specialized aesthetic judgments” (Bourdier and AlSayyad 1989: 6). Bourdier and AlSayyad do not deny, however, that the concept of traditional architecture also has shortcomings. Paul Oliver, one of the best-known authors on popular architecture, does not take issue with the categories “high” and “popular.” He distinguishes between “architecture of the people, and by the people, but not for the people” (Oliver 2003: 14; also see Storey 1994: 5). Oliver bases his distinction between popular architecture and professional architecture in part on the type of society in which architecture originates. According to his classification, indigenous architecture exists primarily in tribal societies, and he argues that societies with a planning elite no longer have “true” vernacular architecture. He acknowledges that some types of architecture are difficult to classify based on that model, but this observation is of no consequence for the distinction he applies. His book Dwellings: The Vernacular House Worldwide, for example, contains a chapter about self-built homes in working-class neighborhoods in large cities (Oliver 2003). Oliver asserts in this chapter that self-built homes may be regarded as architecture of the people, but that they cannot be labeled a “new vernacular,” as Lisa Peattie (1992) had suggested in an article. In response to her view that self-built homes also qualify as authentic popular architecture, he writes: If the waste products and discarded materials of the city are regarded as the “local materials and resources” some may consider these factors as justifying such an argument. However, though some settlements may have a phase when traditional houses are built on the fringe of a city, the majority of squatter houses are erected without a tradition. (Oliver 2003: 225)

Without a building tradition, there is no authentic popular culture, Oliver reasons. While there is a lot to say about the concepts of authenticity and tradition, addressing them in depth would exceed the scope of this book. All that matters in this context is that some authors have a rather evolutionist view of popular architecture. Amos Rapoport disagrees with Oliver’s approach. He believes that selfbuilt homes in working-class neighborhoods are indeed specimens of vernacular design. He postulates a modeled continuum, extending from traditional, indigenous building styles (traditional vernacular architecture) to international, academically conceived construction methods (high architec-

12 | Introduction

ture). Along this continuum, explains Rapoport (1988: 55): “spontaneous settlements [are] closer to traditional vernacular than to any other type of environment and farthest from professionally designed, or ‘high-style,’ environments.” Peter Kellett and Mark Napier (1995) elaborate on this view, warning readers against classifying architecture based on social typologies, as Oliver and Rapoport both do. They also regard self-built homes as a specific form of popular architecture, albeit from the perspective that owner-occupants have erected the buildings themselves in a setting that is not centrally planned. My objection to all the preceding definitions of popular architecture is that they rule out the involvement of professionals. In my study, I will reveal that self-builders often hire professionals at certain stages in the building process. The distinction between “of,” “for,” or “by” the people is thus not always possible with self-built homes. Nor is it always relevant for understanding the development of popular architecture. Henry Glassie’s description best approximates the Ecuadorian situation. Glassie (2000: 20) writes: “we call buildings ‘vernacular’ because they embody values alien to those cherished in the academy.” Self-builders do not always design their houses according to an academic theory of ideology but may also use their personal ideas, desires, and needs. The definition provided by Glassie differs substantially from that of Bourdier and AlSayyad. Bourdier and AlSayyad argue that popular architecture does not derive from aesthetic ideas. The position that self-builders are driven exclusively by functionalist considerations has been adopted by Bourdieu (1986) as well and was later criticized for being deterministic. This study will reveal that Ecuadorian popular architecture does not correspond with the views of intellectuals and yet it is based on aesthetic ideas. I agree with Kellett and Napier that social typologies cannot serve as indicators of popular architecture. Their suggestion that morphological features receive more attention does not seem like an adequate solution. Analyses according to this alternative method would also entail the risk of overlooking the social construction of categories. I therefore advocate greater consideration for the role of agents (self-builders, professionals) in the processes of building and living, including consideration for impressions and procedures alike. This brings to mind debates from the 1980s over the extent to which self-built homes were equivalent to DIY ones. At the time, Peter Ward (1982: 200) argued that self-built homes might involve different degrees of paid labor and did not exclude commissioning expertise. In my view, the same holds true for the notion of popular architecture: popular architecture in urban settings does not rule out involvement from professionals. The degree to which architecture is qualified as high or popular or as artistic or traditional is a social construct of both intellectuals on site and scholars in international academia.

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Balances of power obviously figure in the social construction of architecture. The makers and public of high culture generally have a privileged social status, commensurate with an advanced education and socioeconomic prestige. High culture thus pertains to the elite: This [high] culture differs from all other taste cultures in that it is dominated by creators—and critics—and that many of its users accept the standards and perspectives of creators. It is the culture of “serious” writers, artists, and the like, and its public therefore includes a significant proportion of creators. (Gans 1999: 100)

Exhibiting good taste in cultural products may be an important mechanism for retaining control over resources and over symbolic representations of power. The cultural elite comprises architects and artists, “who as the inventors and professionals of the ‘stylization of life’ are alone able to make their art of living one of the fine arts” (Bourdieu 1986: 57). Because the cultural elite is regarded as a group of experts knowledgeable about good cultural representations, they ultimately determine what is labeled as cultural heritage as well (Bourdieu 1986; Garcia Canclini 1995: 109–15). This system perpetuates itself through refined forms of expression that impart codes understandable only to insiders. In other words, members of the dominant social classes devise strategies they apply to monopolize knowledge of higher culture forms. Abner Cohen (1981) has postulated that the elite tries to keep knowledge of codes and use of symbols among its own to mystify its identity as a power group. As a consequence, these forms of expression are hard to fathom for people who do not associate with the cultural elite. While this does not make high culture impossible for a general public to appreciate, a public of non-insiders will probably perceive art differently from connoisseurs. Assessments of “beautiful” and “ugly” relate to what is familiar to the beholder. Applying knowledge about aesthetics thus gives rise to a social distinction between “connoisseurs” and “lay people.” Good taste creates and represents the social hierarchy. Prior knowledge necessary to comprehend high culture is derived in part through education and in part through gradual familiarization with the codes. A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded. The conscious or unconscious implementation of explicit or implicit schemes of perception and appreciation … is the hidden condition for recognizing the styles. (Bourdieu 1986: 2)

The educated cultural elite thus obtains a monopoly on making and consuming high culture, as well as a symbolic means for distinguishing itself from the people. Less educated groups lack the knowledge to draw a qualitative distinction between expressions of the mundane and the sublime. As a consequence, Bourdieu believes that their aesthetic taste reflects “a systematic

14 | Introduction

reduction of the things of art to the things of life” (Bourdieu 1986: 5). The utility of the products they make and consume is presented as their main concern. This deterministic perspective, which also appears in the work of Bourdier and AlSayyad (1989), has been debated in social science because of the lack of interest in the performative nature of taste constructs (see Hennion 2007). Perceiving popular and high culture forms in different gradations nurtures political ideals. The civilization notion that characterizes social-democratic and Christian-democratic ideology is based on the idea that promoting the dissemination of high culture may give rise to a better society. If those lower down in the social hierarchy become familiar with sophisticated cultural expressions, they will have greater freedom and will be able to make their lives more meaningful (Blokland 1997). The rise of Cultural Studies as a discipline in the twentieth century, for example, aroused new interest in the analytical distinction between high and popular culture and in the social issue of disseminating culture (Storey 1994). Early twentieth-century conservative and Marxist scholars based their positions on the civilization ideal. They argued that popular culture and mass culture comprised unauthentic manifestations alienating humanity from “true” culture, which was why people needed to be protected from themselves: “The Lords of kitsch … exploit the cultural needs of the masses in order to make a profit and/or to maintain their class rule” (Macdonald 1957: 60). The idea that society needed to be protected from cultural homogenization was adopted by architects all over the world (Ellin 1996). In the 1980s and ’90s academic interest shifted from cultural products to the social groups that constructed the distinction between high and low and the processes constructing or neutralizing that difference. In addition, scholars emphasized increasingly that the analytical distinction between high and popular culture has shortcomings, not only because it implies a social hierarchy, but especially because researchers are often lured into a form of social messianism: identification with people from lower social classes to whom they attribute popular culture. Social messianism in fact covertly adds emphasis to the hierarchical distinction: “the opposition high culture/popular culture is not symmetrical, and simply reversing it does not help in getting rid of the distortions it generates” (Rowe and Schelling 1991: 197). Identifying with the marginalized does not enhance understanding of social relations, according to these critics. Considering shifts in how popular architecture is conceptualized makes sense not only from a policy perspective. There is an ethical connotation as well. Emphasizing the distinction between “architecture with architects” and “architecture without architects” romanticizes the latter and makes it more exotic (Crysler 2003: 20). On this subject, Nezar AlSayyad wrote the following in the 1980s:

Introduction | 15

There is an implied bias in our work toward preserving what can still be preserved of traditional dwellings and settlements. This bias seems to stem from the fear that if these settlements change, as some of their residents may desire, we will lose our research subjects and hence our means of livelihood. As a discipline, the study of traditional dwellings and settlements, no matter how young, seems to have fallen into the trap of constructing a social reality dependent on its own particular jargon. (AlSayyad 1989: 530)

Studies about vernacular architecture have changed little over the past decade. Independently built, traditional architecture remains the main focus, perhaps even more so than in the past (Vellinga 2005). However important these studies are for preserving and imparting indigenous building traditions in danger of disappearing due to globalization, new types of popular architecture merit consideration as well. Irene Cieraad (1999), who conducted anthropological research on Western domestic space, has deplored the minimal anthropological interest in housing in Europe. She believes that unilateral Western interest in non-Western houses entails the evolutionist assumption that in modern Western societies the relationship between citizens and their architecture and use of space has disintegrated. I argue that the same holds true for the minimal anthropological interest in Western-looking houses elsewhere in the world. Homes that look “international” or Western are often automatically dismissed by researchers as “unauthentic” and consequently as not worth researching. The social and cultural shifts underlying the new design therefore tend to be overlooked. This is still truer in smaller towns than in metropolises. Some authors believe that the distinction between high and low culture presents special problems for cultural analysis of Latin America, because aesthetic and use quality usually coincide in artistic expressions there (Rowe and Schelling 1991; García Canclini 1995). High culture and popular culture are so intertwined there that conceptual distinction becomes impossible: “Just as the opposition between the traditional and the modern does not work, so the cultured, the popular, and the mass-based are not where we are used to finding them” (García Canclini 1995: 2). García Canclini therefore labels these mixed varieties as hybrids. His theory about hybrid cultures has elicited extensive criticism as well. If all culture in Latin America is hybrid, individual assessments become impossible to make. Moreover, his theory reflects evolutionist principles, because he regards hybridization as a progressive process of intermingling, in which previous stages were by definition less sophisticated (Ouweneel 2005: 124). The general observation is that while hybrid culture specimens are easy to identify in Latin America, they are difficult to define (Salman 1996). In this study I use the concept of architecture in a general sense that encompasses both the design and the physical structure of buildings according

16 | Introduction

to the broadest scope of the term: Architecture with both a capital A and a lower-case a. To provide the most equivalent possible descriptions of the views of different actors on residential environment, I note which design elements were fashionable at a specific point in a certain social circle, and how this fashion was created or transformed. That relates to my theoretical approach of the city as a social-symbolic arena, which I will explain below. Architecture is never timeless (Rybczynski 2001: 47). Because architectural design depends in part on the technological means and cultural standards and customs, architecture is associated with the period and society where it is produced and used. In societies where people have little knowledge of each other’s activities, they derive information primarily from material signs and performative relations (Veblen 1957 [1899]; Bourdieu 1986; Colloredo-Mansfeld 1999: 200). By regarding architecture as a contingent activity, the urban space may be viewed as a medium and as the outcome of social action, with specific consideration for the expressive and dramaturgical aspect of architecture as a performance. This enables architecture trends to be placed at a certain juncture in time and the actors and ideas or ideologies behind the manifestations to be visualized. Architectural changes are of special anthropological interest, because they denote social transitions. Like dress and dance, architecture is an effective identity marker that is sensitive to fashions and trends. [F]ashions are the obvious example here of the way tendencies toward competition stimulate cultural flux, in many fields ranging from clothing to the latest in intellectual -isms. What is sought here, obviously, is often less a sense of absolute originality than that of belonging to the select, or at least not to a hopelessly outdated minority. And when one no longer shares a fashion only with the right people, it is time to move on. (Hannerz 1992:135)

People who (temporarily) conform to shared expression forms exude a non-verbal collective identity. Those introducing variations to the conventional pattern contribute to changes and innovations in the conventional fashion trends. If the deviations from the norm become excessive, individual conduct may be corrected by the rest of the group, until a new norm emerges. In addition, a group may decide collectively that the time has come for innovation. They are the avant-garde. In modern, urban societies, architectural design trends succeed one another fairly rapidly: “It is not buildings that change, but architectural fashions” (Rybczynski 2001: 50). Architectural standards that prevail for a while as a convention and subsequently remain recognizable are referred to in the literature as architectural styles. Rybczynski asserts: “If style is the language of architecture, fashion represents the wide—and swirling—cultural currents that shape and direct that language” (2001: 51). Style denotes a transcen-

Introduction | 17

dental idiom, fashion a variable cultural context, in which morphological conventions and innovations come about. The variable nature of fashions reveals nothing about how long a given trend will last. Some expression forms last for generations or return regularly, because they keep coming back into style (the prefix “neo” is added to the name of the style in such cases). Some styles last so long or return so many times that they ultimately become part of the cultural heritage. Certain buildings and design perspectives are preserved and remembered, while others are intentionally or unintentionally forgotten (Hernández 2005; see Shore and Nugent 2002: 13). Crysler (2003: 7) has written that “in the grand narratives of architectural history, certain buildings are excluded as ‘real’ architecture (vernacular or otherwise), and become invisible,” although he adds: “Decades or centuries later, they are recovered because they are viewed as ‘important’ within a different discursive system.” The leading notions and built representations determine architectural standards in a society. Such standards may limit individual makers and users of the urban space, as I will demonstrate in the following chapters.

Latin American Cities and Social Inequality Twentieth-century geographers and sociologists have conducted extensive studies on Latin American urbanization patterns, uncontrolled urban growth, and the advantages and disadvantages of self-building as a housing option. The urbanization model of Griffin and Ford (1980), which was based on models from the Chicago School, has guided ideas about Latin American cities. Their model diagrams the organization of Latin American cities. The central business district, the residential neighborhoods of the elite, and a commercial axis are the core elements. Around these elements other neighborhoods are concentrically situated, with the poorest and most recent ones farthest from the center. In a revised model from 1996, the authors have distinguished the historic inner city, which has a classical market function, from the central business district. They identify middle-class neighborhoods, gentrification processes, and shopping malls as well. This model has instigated debate over whether the development of Latin American cities differs from that of North American ones. While some authors note an essential distinction between cities in the United States and cities in Latin America (Ward 1993; Scarpaci 2005), others perceive only gradual differences (Barros 2004). Interest in urban growth, informal neighborhoods, and self-built homes peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, thanks in part to the work of the architect John F.C. Turner (1968a, 1968b, 1976) and the anthropologist William Mangin (1967). Turner described settlement patterns of rural–urban migrants and argued that they compared the benefits of the location, the degree

18 | Introduction

of input they had about their home, and the residential attributes. According to Turner’s theory, the individual housing decisions by large groups of rural migrants influenced the transformation of the city. Together, they believed, small-scale activities might help new neighborhoods consolidate. The consolidation concept figures prominently in neighborhood studies. Consolidation entails expanding facilities and social networks, in conjunction with more solid legal claims to land and home (Keivani and Werna 2001). The design thus comprises a physical-spatial, a social, and a legal component. The physical-spatial component involves building homes (spatial densification) and installing basic facilities. The origins of neighborhoods help determine the pace of physical consolidation: an illegal invasion neighborhood develops differently from a site that was purchased legally but has been divided into lots and built up illegally. The legal status of land ownership, user rights, and ownership of buildings is highly complex and often obscure in practice, rendering the distinction between legal and illegal far from straightforward (Hardoy and Satterthwaite 1989: 25–29). The attitude of the local authorities determines the development opportunities of a neighborhood, as they decide whether to oppose, tolerate, or assist neighborhood residents in legalizing and installing basic facilities. The consolidation process is also influenced by the actions of a neighborhood organization and by social relations between neighbors. Neighborhoods where many households are related to one another or come from the same village function differently from neighborhoods with households representing a variety of backgrounds (Kellett 1999). All these factors combined determined the pace of neighborhood consolidation. In their texts about informal neighborhoods, Turner and Morgan emphasized the benefits of self-building. They were criticized for abetting a neoliberal policy approach (Burgess 1982; Mathéy 1997). Researchers following in Turner’s footsteps analyzed the emancipatory effect of having a say about housing. Many authors used models comprising multiple stages to explain how simple, temporary abodes were transformed into comfortable homes suitable for permanent habitation (Ward 1982; Gilbert and Ward 1985; Wiesenfeld 1997; Kellett 1999; Gough and Kellett 2001). In the models, stages of consolidation are distinguished according to the quality of building materials, the functional arrangement of the home, and access to basic facilities (Drummond 1981). Some include indicators about consumption and lifestyle. Individual scores are aggregated to reflect the consolidation level for the neighborhood as a whole (Ward 1982; Kellett 1999; Gough and Kellett 2001). This interest in progressive housing was paralleled by a school of researchers that focused on community participation as a decisive factor for a livable neighborhood (Gilbert and Ward 1985; Gough and Kellett 2001). The leading paradigms in urban research of the 1970s indicate that a strong sense of togetherness exists among residents of working-class neighborhoods. The

Introduction | 19

authors suggested that residents of poor neighborhoods were more socially cohesive than residents of wealthy ones. According to this idea, poor neighborhoods were imbued with “neighboring,” a neighborhood sentiment in which neighbors felt a common bond (García et al. 1999; see Forrest and Kearns 2001: 2130). This idea was based on various explanatory models. Anthropologists following the tradition of Oscar Lewis attributed this bond to a shared destiny, arguing that residents of poor neighborhoods were stuck in a vicious cycle of cultural values, customs, and practices, perpetuated from one generation to the next—the “culture of poverty” paradigm (Lewis 1970). According to another, more structuralist explanatory model, the structure of urban society is the main reason why poor urbanites rely on each other. Lacking access to regular sources of subsistence, they are forced to form their own, informal society-within-the-society, even though that distinction between formal and informal is untenable in daily life (Perlman 1976). In these approaches, residents of working-class neighborhoods came to be regarded as group members, who formed a type of parallel society. This biased and romanticized image of residents of working-class neighborhoods has elicited criticism (Forrest and Kearns 2001: 2131). The capricious sociopolitical processes that influenced urban development and the agency of residents started to receive greater consideration (Burgwal 1995; García et al. 1999; Greene and Ortúzar 2002; Greene 2003; Hernández et al. 2009). The health and environmental issues that complicated sustainable urbanization received greater consideration from the 1990s as well (Hardoy et al. 1990; Hordijk 2000). By the end of the twentieth century, the urban space was taken for granted less and came to be seen more as a complex phenomenon, of which the social components needed to be identified. One of the dominant approaches, which derived from Marxist ideology, was the late-twentieth century city as the stage of a symbolic struggle: [T]he city and its periphery tend to become the arena of kinds of action that can no longer be confined to the traditional locations of the factory or office floor. The city and the urban sphere are thus the setting of struggle; they are also, however, the stakes of that struggle. (Lefebvre 1991: 386)

The city was perceived not only as the scene of a struggle between social classes, but the space itself became the stake of that struggle. According to Lefebvre’s theory, social and capitalist relations come about via the social production of space. In addition to Lefebvre, sociologists and geographers influenced by him, including David Harvey, Edward Soja, and to some extent Manuel Castells, emphasized the reproduction of unequal political, economic, and social relationships in the late-twentieth century city and investigated how this inequality might be resolved.

20 | Introduction

The City as an Arena Lefebvre used the analytical distinction between lived, perceived, and conceived space to pave the way for a layered view of the contemporary city. His theory, however, is abstract and complex and is difficult to apply in ethnographic research. Based on Lefebvre’s triptych, Setha Low (2000) introduced the dual concept of “social production” and “social construction” of space. That dual concept enables anthropological identification of the urban space as a social-symbolic arena. Low defines social production of space as “all those factors—social, economic, ideological, and technological—that result, or seek to result, in the physical creation of the material setting” (Low 2000: 127–28). Physical space arises from this process. She reserves the social construction concept of space for “the phenomenological and symbolic experience of space as mediated by social processes such as exchange, conflict, and control” (Low 2000: 128). These are the experiences of users who make physical space a meaningful place in daily life. According to her definition, social production thus basically reflects the macro processes determining physical space, while social construction denotes space as perceived in everyday use. These two concepts allow us to analyze the city as an arena and architecture as a social medium and outcome. The built environment expresses identifications and generates social interactions. Richardson has asserted that “material culture is our intersubjective world expressed in physical substance” (Richardson 1982: 422). For a long time, theories on social interactions and identity theories were two separate disciplines that were considered incompatible. Early theories about social interaction primarily highlighted the strategic aspects of social action, whereas the identity theories related mainly to cognitive aspects and attribution of meaning. Ervin Goffman, as an exponent of the former group, analyzed the dramaturgical aspects of social interactions, revealing how individuals in interactions, despite social conventions, accommodate improvisation (Goffman 1990 [1959]; see also Biddle 1986; Holstein and Gubrium 2000: 35–37). As an eminent scholar of identity theories, Anthony Cohen formulated the following critique of Goffman’s theory: Goffman’s legacy to identity studies was intellectually seductive and profoundly damaging, because it overstated … the extent to which individuals and groups can control their own destinies. … It ignores self-consciousness, and the commitment made by individuals and, perhaps, groups to views of themselves which, contrary to another horrendously overused term in identity studies, they do not regard as “negotiable.” (Cohen 2000b: 5, emphasis in original)

By highlighting social interactions, as Goffman does, Cohen argues that people are regarded too much as strategic operators and not enough as purposeful beings.

Introduction | 21

Other critics have noted the unclear definitions of concepts such as role, consensus, conformism, and role conflict. Lack of consideration for the contextual limitations of the theory, and the failure to make the links explicit between cause and consequence, between expectations, role, and conduct have elicited criticism as well (Biddle 1986). Giddens (1984) has noted Goffman’s major contribution to understanding how “discursive consciousness” relates to “practical consciousness” but has argued that he insufficiently addresses subconscious and unexpected aspects of human action. Giddens emphasizes that people, despite being “knowledgeable agents” are not always in control of the consequences of their activities. The course of history is made up in part of these unintended consequences of human action. I agree with this line of reasoning. Although I regard my informants as people who know how to cope with ordinary situations, this does not mean that they are in control of the outcome of their actions. Nor does it mean that they can always explain their conduct in words. But even though actions may have unintended consequences, people always retain a certain measure of agency, leeway, and opportunities for selfdetermination. By verbalizing the intentions and outcomes of actions, they tend, for example, to state their self-images or images of the Other verbally in firm and essentialist terms. They use essentialist language, as if a reality exists outside social constructs. This enables them to control social differences. According to authors such as Baumann (1999) and Eriksen (2002), this does not compromise the constructivist nature of the processes mediating perceptions and mutual positions. Baumann mentions a “dual discursive competence,” where an essentialist discourse that informants use and the procedural nature of their identity constructs may converge analytically, assuming that “people know when to reify one of their identities, and they know when to question their own reifications” (Baumann 1999: 139). According to Baumann, we therefore need to take care not to depict our informants as victims of static impressions. The problem with the constructivist approach is its excessive emphasis on narrative discourses and the consequent reduction of the culture concept to language and identity constructs (Bader 2001). Another question is whether informants are always aware of their reifications, as Baumann states. The Modernist discourse in architecture is an example of subconscious reification. Here, an architectural object is attributed a transcendental and autonomous status. The object takes on an inherent significance that is disassociated from its cultural and historic context (Lefebvre 1991; Ellin 1996; Crysler 2003: 58). A self-affirming discourse thus arises, in which architects and architecture critics associate the meanings they construct as autonomous qualities with artifacts. Such approaches are commonplace among architecture profes-

22 | Introduction

sionals, even though they are unable to justify in words why they subscribe to this view. In this study I juxtapose the experiences of two different groups of informants (professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods) to have them comment on each other’s interpretations in the ethnography, so to speak. I describe the identification underlying their actions, their role in a given situation (for example as a designer, a builder, a resident, or a user), and how they perceive themselves there. What professionals view within their conceptual framework as an “inherent” spatial quality is often perceived by residents of working-class neighborhoods as constructed power symbols. The city is thus visualized as an arena, where residents of working-class neighborhoods and professionals operate from various backgrounds and in various capacities. This approach reflects consideration for both the strategic aspects of social action and processes intended to attribute meaning. Perceiving the city as an arena allows us to analyze how actors influence social patterns in the Ecuadorian provincial city. Architecture and use of space allows us to mediate and challenge social positions, self-perceptions, and images of the Other. Viewing informants according to their roles in the social hierarchy of the city and the groups they identify with depicts the professionals in this study not merely as experts and residents of working-class neighborhoods not merely as indigent citizens but presents them as “knowledgeable agents,” with an understanding of housing construction. In some cases professionals speak in their occupational capacity as architects, while in others they express themselves as members of the elite, as instructors, as residents of the city, and so forth. Residents of working-class neighborhoods are not exclusively (or primarily) poor citizens: they are also designers and builders with their own ideas and ideals, heads of households, spouses, urbanites, and rural or transnational migrants. In the chapters ahead I will describe several specific situations that I consider typical of the course of neighborhood and urban development. Studying two groups in two different locations simultaneously compels researchers to engage in self-reflection. During my various stays between 1999 and 2009, the houses where I lived were between the geographic and social spheres of both groups of informants. In Riobamba I rented a room in the home of a Dutch acquaintance in a northern part of town, approximately ten minutes by bus from Cooperativa Santa Anita and a twenty-minute walk from the downtown area. In Cuenca I rented a small studio on the patio of a middle-class Cuencan family close to the northern ring road, also a tenminute bus ride from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and a twenty-minute walk from the Alcaldía or the University of Cuenca. These arrangements facilitated my mobility and personal safety while at the same time enabling me to invite neighborhood residents and architects to my home (see Appendix for the methodology).

Introduction | 23

In the preface I have explained that my contacts with architects differed from those with residents of working-class neighborhoods. Basically, my interactions with residents of working-class neighborhoods were more straightforward, precisely because our lives were so different. In addition to relating to professionals as a researcher would to study subjects, I addressed them as friends and colleagues. In Cuenca my contacts with professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods alike were closer than with the two groups in Riobamba. The difference made me more sensitive to my own position and preferences. Interacting with architects—people whose education was similar to mine but had a different cultural background—confronted me with the similarities and differences in our ideas about architecture. Research among elite groups, according to Shore and Nugent (2002: 2), “obliges us to position ourselves more self-consciously in relation to the wider systems of power and hierarchy within which anthropological knowledge is constructed.” The different ways that Ecuadorian professionals, self-builders, and I evaluate architecture are attributable in part to the knowledge systems in which we have been raised. Disciplinary differences between architects, artisans, and anthropologists, as well as differences between the academic traditions in Ecuador and the Netherlands, permeate our respective approaches. Some authors emphasize that ethnography embodies an inherently unequal balance of power between subject and object, and that this imbalance manifests in relations with fellow intellectuals. They are easily reduced to informants, rather than being regarded as partners in a scholarly or social dialogue (Mato 2003; Mosse 2006). Other authors postulate that relations between Western researchers and their counterparts in other countries are not by definition hierarchical (Hendry 1997; Martinez 1997). Intellectuals, wherever they are, these authors argue, are “representatives of the system of epistemic domination. Location, here, is always crossed, and crisscrossed” (Moreiras cited in Baud 2003: 73, n.56). European and American intellectuals studying Latin America should therefore not automatically be differentiated from Latin American intellectuals examining their own society (Baud 2003). In all cases, the positions of those concerned relate to the people who are the subjects of their statements. This takes me back to the relationship between researchers, professionals, and residents of working-class neighborhoods, between representation and self-representation. Anthropologists have long assumed that researchers empower socially more vulnerable informants by giving them a “voice” in ethnography. Conversely, anthropologists conducting research among elite groups often encounter filtering and self-censorship, in an effort to exclude undesirable information from the research (see Mosse 2006). In this study my fundamental principle has been to give equivalent representation to residents of working-class neighborhoods and professionals. As explained in note

24 | Introduction

1 in the Preface, I have applied this principle by anonymizing informants from both groups in the text wherever possible, except where official statements on record were concerned. The ethical and epistemological problem with conducting research among architects, however, is that authorship of their buildings is an important professional value. Refuting this value in an ethnography would be unethical. I have therefore attributed double identities to some architects in this book. As authors of a building or an article, they appear in their own name, whereas in all other cases I have given them an alias. I have made my own roles and views explicit wherever possible. Although I will not discuss exhaustively different theoretical debates on role and identity theories in anthropology, sociology, and psychology, a few basic concepts require brief explanations. In this study I have used these concepts to disclose the nature of the social interactions. Roles are alternately regarded as representations of standards, attitudes, and social positions. A role is defined in general terms as a certain conduct by an actor in a specific situation and the expectation of this actor regarding the conduct of others. An actor’s conduct is indeed related to his or her social identity. The role concept is defined in the literature as behavior actually exhibited; as a script for appropriate conduct; or as the figurative act in the metaphorical play, in which the actors perform (Hannerz 1980: 101–2; Biddle 1986: 71; Goffman 1990 [1959]). In this study I define the role concept as exercising rights and obligations compatible with a certain position during a social interaction. A role comprises different components and is carried out through verbal and non-verbal cues. Individuals do not passively perform the roles they are assigned but add substance to their roles during the interaction (Holstein and Gubrium 2000: 36). The script of a role is the routine pattern of action the actor is presumed to follow (see Goffman 1990 [1959]: 27). Deviating from the routine of the script may give rise to false expectations, and conflicts may ensue. In some cases conflicts are resolved verbally, without leading to any activities. In other cases, those concerned pay lip service to a prevailing routine, although their actions differ in practice. To disclose the social production and social construction of space, I discuss the social and cultural identifications of those concerned, the roles they play, the routines they are expected to follow, their actual performance, and its consequences for the built environment. The city thus becomes a symbolic stage (Goffman) or an arena (Lefebvre, Low), where the actors continuously seek out new positions, depending on their role, and on how they view themselves and the Other. My interpretation of the social production and construction of space concepts differs from the one originally proposed by Setha Low. This is because I focus not on inner-city public space but on the residential function of the city and on the process of developing homes. Another difference is that rather

Introduction | 25

than focusing primarily on the verbal facets of the struggle for space (Low 2000: 37), I also address attitudes and modes of action. Precisely because people’s words often differ from their actions and vice versa, verbal aspects need to be related to non-verbal ones in an urban culture. The substantive areas I emphasize are different as well. In my view, Low regards social production of space too much in terms of abstraction and structure; in her definition, for example, she refers to “factors” rather than to “actors.” She considers social construct to be the side where the actors become visible and refers to “experiences” there (Low 2000: 127–28). My approach depicts interactions between those concerned during both the social production of physical space and its social construction. The difference between the two concepts in this study does not lie in the level of abstraction of the forces (macro/micro, structure/actor) but in the role they assume at that moment or the identity from which they operate. The ideas and intentions projected onto a physical space or building during the design and construction process by professional designers and by lay people and selfbuilders are the sphere of influence of the social production. The reactions of the surrounding residents and users to an architectural design, possible adjustments to the space used, and different meanings attributed to space figure in the social construction of space.

Structure of the Book In the following chapter I review the history of the heydays and growth of cities in Ecuador and begin my exploration of the cities of Riobamba and Cuenca. That chapter is followed by five empirical ones. The sequence of the empirical chapters starts at the lowest scale, consisting of homes and public spaces in the two neighborhoods, and progresses to a higher scale, at which the neighborhoods are considered in their urban context. First, I describe life in the working-class neighborhoods and the opinions and attitudes of the residents. I then focus on the operational sphere of the professionals: the municipal scale. This sequence arises from my conceptual decision to start close to daily life, homes, and residential environment. But it also results from the course of my fieldwork. My insight into the goings on behind the scenes among the professionals came later than my insight into the course of events in the neighborhoods. The structure of the book therefore basically parallels the course of my research. The process extends from the emphasis on making space to thinking and depicting the city and living; from social production by self-builders and professionals to the social construction of space by members of both groups.

26 | Introduction

In chapters 2, 3, and 4, I review the origins of the two neighborhoods and describe how neighborhood residents build and view their residential surroundings. Chapter 2 is about the physical and social development of Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. I relate how individual households, the residents as a collective, and external concerned parties influence that process. Patterns of cooperation and resistance determine the social and legal consolidation of the neighborhoods. This consolidation is not always progressive, as my reconstruction of neighborhood histories reveals. Cooperation and togetherness are important values in the social production and social construction of residential neighborhoods. Ceremonies and neighborhood festivals figure in constructing a group spirit. Because residents of working-class neighborhoods are concerned primarily with building their individual accommodations, however, and because individual interests may at times conflict with collective interests, the symbolic cohesive forces were challenged in both neighborhoods as well. In chapters 3 and 4 I describe how neighborhood residents build their houses, and how they view the physical surroundings of their home. Chapter 3 is about the social production of houses. I describe the virtually continuous process of building and rebuilding and the rituals that attribute meaning to the process at certain stages of construction. In Chapter 4 I highlight the social construction of a comfortable and respectable home, addressing architecture as a vehicle of communication and representation. I describe how neighborhood residents assess each other’s houses, and how they use the design to make their home and their immediate residential surroundings a meaningful composite. I convey diagrammatically how architectural components are generally appreciated, and which architectural styles are in fashion. In chapters 5 and 6 I describe the debates that engaged the professionals in Cuenca and Riobamba. These debates shed light on prevailing views about the city and about housing. Chapter 5 features the debate about what is known as “migrant architecture” in the Cuenca region. I relate the opinions and manner of the debate to the two hats professionals wear as experts and as members of the cultural elite. Their idealized impression of the city and of the social-geographical distinction between city and countryside is changing rapidly due to globalization. In the outlying areas of the city, emancipated transnational migrants have built comfortable and in many cases striking houses, which the professionals believe compromise the landscape attributes. At the same time, professionals view this practice as eroding their monopoly on architectural representations. They propagate a different architecture. In Chapter 6 I address professional debates in Riobamba about the disordered city. The quest for an urban form that represents the multicultural society coincides with the fear of rising visibility of indigenous groups in the city. I relate the lack of clear spatial policy to the ideological and political divisions

Introduction | 27

among the professionals. In the final chapter I revisit the theoretical debates. In conclusion, I elaborate on the construction of local identities and the relation to the urban territory and residential architecture. I summarize how the relationship between professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods furthers the development of provincial cities as residential ones, and which opportunities are available to poor groups of residents there.

1

Intermediate Andean Cities

Riobamba and Cuenca are two in a chain of intermediate cities (not including the capital Quito) in the Ecuadorian highlands, which are in the Andes. This mountain chain extends from the border with Colombia in the north to the one with Peru in the south. Riobamba is in the central part of Ecuador, south of Quito, about a four-hour bus ride from the capital. The city is situated at an altitude of 2,750 meters (9,022 feet), on a plateau surrounded by various mountains and volcanoes. The air is thin, the sunshine brighter than in the valleys, the nights are cold, and when the wind picks up, the gusts are very strong. Riobamba is popularly known as La Sultana de los Andes, a name of unclear origin that the inhabitants and the municipal authorities use to express the serene, stately bearing of their city. Only the center of Riobamba is crowded during the day. Vendors and people visiting the market, including many Quechua, flock to the local markets, where regional products are purchased and sold. Because Riobamba is the urban center of an agrarian region, the pace is adapted to rural life. In the daytime the city center is lively and colorful, but in the evening it appears deserted. Restaurants close at the end of the afternoon, as the almuerzo (lunch) is the main meal for Ecuadorians. Riobamba is a city with the ambience of a village. Cuenca is different. This city is about seven hours south of Riobamba by bus and is situated at an altitude of 2,500 meters (8,202 feet). Cuenca is in a valley, surrounded by hills and bisected by four rivers. Rather than having a harsh highland climate and being surrounded by high mountain peaks, Cuenca lies in a green, hilly setting and has a mild climate. The city is a popular tourist venue, thanks to its well-preserved monumental edifices in the center. Cuenca does not seem larger, although it is more cosmopolitan and wealthier than Riobamba. Its inclusion on UNESCO’s world heritage list and improved accessibility have boosted international tourism. Airplane travel has recently become an alternative to the lengthy bus rides. Planes now fly daily from and to Quito and Guayaquil, making the journey to Cuenca in less than an hour. Cuenca, which is a service center rather than a market town, is populated by office workers during the day. In the evenings, tourists and locals enjoy the many restaurants and cafes in the city center. Contrary to Riobambans, who often apologized to me for the circumstances in the city, most Cuencans take pride in their city, as conveyed by its nickname Atenas

30 | Urban Residence

del Ecuador—a bold reference to the valuable historic architecture in the city center and to the artists and intellectuals who abound in the city. The nickname corresponds with the image exuded by the elite, who depict Cuenca as a civilized and culturally sophisticated society and believe that its cultural refinement give it a European ambience. In this chapter I will describe a few characteristics of intermediate cities in the Ecuadorian Andes in general and of Riobamba and Cuenca in particular. First, I will review the administrative, legal, and historical context of cities in the highlands. Next I will describe Riobamba and Cuenca in more detail. In the paragraph about urban development, I consider current trends arising from globalization. I also describe international influences, for example that of tourism on ideas about the desired cityscape and the built environment. My description of historical and current trends provides the context in which professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods operate. Afterwards I address local working-class housing, as a framework for the circumstances of working-class residents. I explain how national public programs for social housing construction are implemented locally. Since even working-class housing policy is implemented by individuals, I conclude the chapter with an impression of the views of the municipal authorities on working-class neighborhoods. The programmatic image, together with the impressionist view of Cuenca and Riobamba, are an introduction to the empirical chapters that follow.

Map 1. Ecuador*. Graphic design and cartography by Rien Rabbers and Margot Stoete (Geomedia, Utrecht University); © Christien Klaufus. *The Galapagos islands are not included in these data.

Intermediate Andean Cities | 31

Table 1. Ranking by population of cities in Ecuador, 1950 Rank

City

Population 1950

 1

Guayaquil

258,966

 2

Quito

209,932

 3

Cuenca

39,983

 4

Ambato

31,312

 5

Riobamba

29,830

 6

Manta

19,028

 7

Portoviejo

16,330

 8

Loja

15,399

 9

Ibarra

14,031

10

Milagro

13,736

Source: CEPAL (2001)

Table 2. Ranking by population of cities in Ecuador, 2001 and 2010 Rank in 2001 City

Population 2001Annual growth rate % Population 2010 1990–2001

 1

Guayaquil

1,985,379

2.50

2,291,158

 2

Quito

1,399,378

2.18

1,619,146

 3

Cuenca

277,374

3.20

331,888

 4

Machala

204,578

3.18

241,606

 5

Sto. Domingo * 199,827

5.54

305,632

 6

Manta

183,105

Unknown

221,122

 7

Durán

174,531

Unknown

235,769

 8

Portoviejo

171,847

2.33

223,086

 9

Ambato

154,095

1.96

178,538

10

Riobamba

124,807

2.53

156,723

* classified as an urban area from 1974 Source: INEC (2001, 2003, 2011: 11), Gobierno de la Provincia Pichincha (n.d.)

Cities in the Ecuadorian Highlands Urbanization in Ecuador Ecuador comprises twenty-two provinces, which are administered by consejos provinciales. Each province is subdivided into territorial units called cantones. These cantones are known in political and administrative terms as municipios. Municipios are subdivided into urban parroquias, which together constitute the urban area or the city (even if their size, morphology, or ambience may not seem “urban”), and rural parroquias outside the city limits (INEC

32 | Urban Residence

2002). Municipalities are run by councils, comprising a mayor and aldermen. Officially they are in charge not only of their city but of the surrounding rural parishes as well, where they work with the juntas parroquiales (village councils). The parishes inside the city limits, however, have no administrative status (Bolay et al. 2004: 63). Organizations of city dwellers tend to be district rather than parish-based, and most districts belong to the local Federación de Barrios that exists in each city. Ideally, the Federación de Barrios helps plan and implement district and neighborhood projects. The actual practice is often different, as I will explain in the chapters ahead. Ecuador’s present urban constellation goes back a long way. During the colonial period, the Andes mountains were pivotal in the Real Audiencia de Quito. The small and medium-sized towns in the resulting chain were the country’s most important urban centers until the end of the nineteenth century (see Map 1). The rural areas in the highlands were run from the cities that the Spaniards established, usually on pre-Incan settlements. The highlands, with their temperate climate, became the national center of agricultural and textile production. With the increase in exports of cacao, which was grown on plantations along the coast, the coastal region became dominant from 1880 onward. In the early twentieth century migration began from the highlands to the coastal region, where sufficient employment opportunities were available on the plantations (F. Carrión 1986). The coastal cities expanded rapidly. Around the mid-twentieth century, the country experienced an economic recession related to the worldwide recession arising from the First and Second World Wars, the decline in cacao exports, and the deterioration of the agricultural system of large landownership (F. Carrión 1986). In the 1950s and 60s these developments gave rise to a policy based on import substitution. Revenues from banana and oil exports were invested in local industries. As a consequence, demand increased in the large cities and in lesser measure in the provincial cities for factory workers, and migration flows got under way from the rural areas to the cities. The agricultural reforms in the 1960s and ’70s influenced this migration as well. Pressured by the United States, a military junta that had come to power in 1963 introduced two reform acts. These measures reflected the American Alliance for Progress agenda intended to eliminate the communist threat in Latin America. The agricultural reforms served to alleviate social unrest and modernize production in the countryside. In addition to agricultural reforms, which were coordinated nationally by the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria y Colonización (IERAC) (Navas 1998), the program comprised various measures to promote construction of inexpensive housing (Pike 1977: 303–38; Handelman 1981: 70; Garcia 1987: 104; Glasser 1988: 150; Ward 1993: 1144). The land reforms were not a great success, due to opposition

Intermediate Andean Cities | 33

from powerful and well-organized large landowners. The output from the resulting minifundios was often insufficient for basic subsistence. Inheritance led the small plots of land to become still more fragmented and increased the pressure to grow the output. Rural poverty deepened, especially because the government kept incomes in the agricultural sector artificially low to curtail the cost of living of the expanding urban population. This boosted seasonal and permanent migration from the countryside to the cities (Handelman 1981: 63–81; Schodt 1987: 122; Corkill and Cubitt 1988: 33–37). Urbanization in Ecuador is relatively recent (see Table 1). Until well into the 1980s, the majority of the population lived in the countryside, and in 1990 this share remained 45 percent (CEPAL 2001). Only over the past two decades has urbanization truly advanced and are urban growth indices high, especially in intermediate cities (see Table 2). In the second half of the twentieth century the port city Guayaquil and the capital Quito ranked at the top in terms of population. Between 1950 and 2001 the population of Guayaquil grew from over 250,000 to nearly two million inhabitants, while the population of Quito increased from over 200,000 to more than a million during this same period (see Tables 1 and 2). Guayaquil and Quito are now home to over one third of Ecuador’s population. Uncontrolled expansion of these cities has given rise to unplanned residential areas, where rural migrants settled without basic facilities or property deeds. These areas, where living conditions were far from ideal, arose spontaneously or informally. During the second half of the twentieth century smaller cities also experienced an influx of migrants, who settled along the periphery. Around Cuenca and Riobamba, dozens of working-class neighborhoods arose following the sale—in some cases illegal—of the territory from former haciendas. Those purchasing the tracts of land were largely uneducated migrants from surrounding villages and other parts of the country. Many of these buyers believed that they had bought the land legally. They would build their home there without an official permit, hoping that the district, together with the buildings, would soon acquire official authorization. Since the status of land and homes in working-class neighborhoods is highly complex and not necessarily illegal (I will elaborate on this in later chapters), I refer to them as informal districts. Some residents have improved their living conditions over time, despite minimal government support. Residents of working-class neighborhoods in the provincial towns in this study in fact represent a socioeconomically diverse group and are not always in need of assistance. Designations such as slums or villas miserias do not in my view do justice to the somewhat modest but still respectable abodes that my respondents built or are still building. I prefer the term working-class neighborhood, which is hopefully less pejorative.

34 | Urban Residence

In recent decades one important difference has materialized between the intermediate cities in the coastal region and those in the highlands. The coastal cities have experienced a massive influx of new residents, and the annual population growth of cities such as Santo Domingo and Machala exceeds that of Guayaquil and Quito (CEPAL 2001; Ortiz 2003: 253). In the national urbanization pattern, Riobamba and Cuenca are generally regarded as experiencing steady, controlled growth. The figures also show, however, that even cities experiencing a drop in ranking, such as Riobamba, expanded over the course of a few decades from centers with a few tens of thousands of inhabitants to areas with over 100,000 people. A relatively steady increase in population therefore does not mean that this growth is negligible. Informal neighborhoods in cities without explosive growth are rarely designated by the national government and by development aid organizations as target areas. The emergence of new, affordable housing developments therefore depends primarily on the efforts of local authorities, professionals, and especially current and prospective neighborhood residents. Table 3. Inadequate housing, 2001 Riobamba Canton %

Chimborazo Cuenca Province % Canton %

Azuay Province %

Ecuador %

Share in physically 19 inadequate homes

36.9

12.2

17.3

18.3

Share without adequate basic facilities

56.9

26.1

38

46.1

32.9

Source: SIISE 4.5, based on data from the INEC 2001 census

The housing shortage in Cuenca and Riobamba is not cause for serious concern, given the figures for the country as a whole (see Table 3). According to the SIISE figures, which are based on the census from 2001, about one-fifth of the population in the Riobamba Canton (comprising the city and a few surrounding rural communities) lived in housing that could be described as physically inadequate, for example due to the inferior construction materials. Nearly one-third of the population lacked basic facilities, such as running water and electricity. Living conditions were worse in the rest of the province. The housing shortage in the Riobamba Canton equalled the average for Ecuador as a whole. Cuenca is regarded as a city where urban planning and housing policy are properly institutionalized by Ecuadorian standards, as apparent from the figures (Lowder 1990). In the Cuenca Canton 12 percent of the population lived in inadequate housing, and over a quarter lacked access to basic facilities. Cuenca scored better than the average for the Azuay Province in this respect and was well above the national average as well. Riobamba and Cuenca therefore do not seem like bad places to live.

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Map 2. Riobamba and surrounding areas. Graphic design and cartography by Rien Rabbers and Margot Stoete (Geomedia, Utrecht University); © Christien Klaufus.

Illustration 1. Former Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo, Riobamba

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Illustration 2. Chalet built according to a European model in the Bellavista neighborhood, Riobamba

Riobamba Riobamba is the capital of the homonymous canton, which is subdivided into eleven rural and five urban parroquias, and is the capital of Chimborazo Province.1 Of all provinces in Ecuador, Chimborazo has the largest share of indigenous inhabitants (Campaña 2000).2 The Quechua population figures prominently in the city, in part because the Quechua dominate the market trade. Another important factor in daily life is Riobamba’s geographical location at the foot of the Chimborazo volcano, which at 6,310 meters (20,702 feet) is Ecuador’s highest volcano. Around thirty-five kilometers northeast of the city is the very active Tungurahua volcano. If it erupts, large parts of the city are likely to be buried under volcanic ashes. In November 2002 the locals thought that the volcanic eruption they had feared for so long had taken place and fled en masse. Rather than a volcanic eruption, however, the explosion turned out to have come from the munitions depot at the Brigada Blindada Galápagos army barracks, situated in the northeast within the city limits. Projectiles exploded there for obscure reasons, blowing up the entire storage site. Seven people were killed and nearly 600 injured. The explosions severely damaged a large surrounding area, culminating in countless collapsed buildings—estimated at over 10,000 homes and a few monumental government buildings—and many homeless families. Very little of the aid promised in the wake of the disaster was forthcoming, and people lost much of their confidence in the civilian and military authorities. The remnants of

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this disaster visible to this day include torn walls and streets and makeshift restorations of buildings. Riobamba has suffered several disasters over the centuries and even attributes its existence at its present location to a natural disaster. In 1797 the original city was destroyed by a severe earthquake. The old city of Riobamba had been situated about twenty kilometers (twelve miles) southwest of its present location, at the site of the present Sicalpa near Cajabamba (Ortiz 2005). In 1575 the Spaniards had founded the old San Pedro de Riobamba on the Puruhá settlement Liribamba, after they had established Santiago de Quito a few kilometers away in 1534. Santiago de Quito had been intended as the capital of the Real Audiencia of Quito. That same year, Quito was transferred to the north, and Riobamba expanded into the most important city in the center of the country. Around the mid-eighteenth century, Riobamba, with a population of about 8,000, was the third-largest city of the Real Audiencia of Quito, after Quito and Guayaquil. As the capital of a corregimiento, it was soon designated as a villa, a small city with certain rights to self-government (Bromley 1979). In 1799, following the destructive earthquake, the Spaniards decided to rebuild Riobamba at a different site and moved it to the Tapi highlands. In the new Riobamba, developers designed wide avenues (wider than necessary under Spanish law), low buildings, and a continuous series of parks and squares, to provide sufficient escape routes in the event of another earthquake.3 Many citizens who had survived the disaster nonetheless settled elsewhere. Only toward the mid-nineteenth century did the population of the new Riobamba equal that of the old city shortly before the earthquake (Bromley 1979: 36). Accordingly, the perception that Riobamba came into existence only “recently” influences ideas about the city. In the nineteenth century, when Riobamba’s population had been restored to the old level, a few major political events occurred that made the city the center of the nation again. In 1830 the constitution of the new republic was signed in Riobamba, which is therefore also known as the cuna de la nacionalidad, the cradle of the present Ecuador. Upon independence, much of the colonial administrative division was perpetuated, and Riobamba became the capital of Chimborazo Province. At the end of the nineteenth century the city had an estimated population of 10,000, making it the fourth-largest city in the country after Cuenca, until the nearby city of Ambato became the new hub in central Ecuador, thanks to the increase in trading at the end of the nineteenth century (Bromley 1979: 36). In the early twentieth century the Republic of Ecuador experienced rapid changes that affected the position of Riobamba. Around this time cacao exports raised the level of affluence and increased consumption in the coastal region, from where a “Liberal Revolution” got under way. The market-oriented elite from this area elicited support from the farmers to topple the

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power of the conservative and religious elite from the highlands. A coup enabled liberal leader Eloy Alfaro to become president briefly in 1895. Between 1897 and 1908, thanks to political liberalism and the desire for economic modernization, a railway was built straight across the Andes extending from Guayaquil to Quito. The railway was intended to promote unity and economic growth in the republic comprised of regions that operated relatively independently. According to a contract from 1897, the main railway would pass Riobamba. In 1905, once the most difficult stretch through the mountains had been laid, Riobamba was connected via a branch of the railway. The people of Riobamba were not pleased with this indirect railway link and wanted to be connected to the main line in the interest of urban development, as provided for in the original contract. This desire was so strong that an effort was made from Riobamba to unseat the president who had succeeded Eloy Alfaro, with a view toward restoring Eloy Alfaro to power, so that the railway might be completed as agreed. Only in 1924 was Riobamba connected directly to the route from Quito to Guayaquil (Deler 1986: 209; Clark 1998: 192, 202–3). This direct connection enabled Riobamba to reclaim temporarily its status as a regional hub at Ambato’s expense. The new railway connection provided the coastal region with agricultural products from the haciendas in the highlands. New factories opened in the cities situated along the railway, but new banks were the main drivers of economic and social affluence. Riobamba was a strategic link along the Quito–Guayaquil railway. In the early 1920s two banks set up operations in the city: the Sociedad Bancaria del Chimborazo and the Banco de los Andes (Clark 1998: 115; C+C Consulcentro n.d.: 19).4 The former was especially important for urban development. The increase in circulating cash set various urban development processes in motion, such as investments in elegant buildings and construction of infrastructure and city parks intended to give Riobamba a modern, stately look, as befitted the desired status of an economic hub (Machado et al. 1989; Burgos 1997; Ortiz n.d.a). A stately office complex was designed for the Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo (see Illustration 1), and some fincas adjacent to the city were transformed into modern residential neighborhoods, of which Bellavista was the best known. In 1924 the three Levy brothers purchased the hacienda La Trinidad and obtained funding from the Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo to build the most sophisticated housing development in South America. The Bellavista neighborhood was equipped with a plumbing system, electricity, telephone lines, a park, a swimming pool, and sports facilities. The homes were designed to resemble European chalets, so that the architecture would reflect how modern the neighborhood was (see Illustration 2) (Machado et al. 1989: 173). They were purchased by wealthy Guayaquileños, who used them as country homes to escape from the tropical coastal climate during the hot

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season (Ortiz n.d.a). In 1925 Guayaquil’s newspaper El Telegrafo published the following about the neighborhood: Bellavista, the hope of Ecuador, is reminiscent of the loveliest cities in Europe. The chalets are a delight to behold. They are lovely and surrounded by gardens; very comfortable and clean, with all the necessary amenities. Although only a few have been built so far, they offer a glimpse of the poetic value of this neighborhood. (El Telégrafo, May 1925, quoted in Ortiz n.d.a: 20)

The project was very ambitious: the intent was to make Riobamba the third most important city in the country. Unchecked issue of currency, financial speculations, and inflation, however, drove the banks into bankruptcy (Deler 1986: 226–27; Corkill and Cubitt 1988: 12). When the Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo failed, operations ceased on construction projects financed through bank loans. Bellavista was among them. Wealthy Guayaquileños abandoned their chalets, and the neighborhood lapsed into decay. Sports fields were used to cultivate grain and animal feed. Construction on the prestigious premises of the Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo was halted as well. Prominent citizens left the city, and cultural endeavors were discontinued. In 1933 the Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo building was completed by a different architect and is now regarded as a relic of this infamous period (Machado et al. 1989: 181; Ortiz n.d.a). During the decades that followed, the city tried to recover from the socioeconomic damage, but the process was difficult. The old elite was gone, and no new one took its place. The 1960s brought new social changes. Agricultural reforms coincided with an ideological turnaround within the Roman Catholic Church. In the Riobamba diocese, the Roman Catholic Church had figured prominently in urban development there over the centuries. While at first the diocese was a conservative force in collusion with the hacendados, by the mid-twentieth century it had become a strong advocate of improvement for indigenous groups in the countryside. As a consequence of the Second Vatican Council, conservative theology in Latin America made way for liberation theology dedicated to the struggle against social inequality and exploitation. In the Riobamba region Bishop Leonidas Proaño incorporated the liberation doctrine in his policy. In the 1960s Proaño became known internationally as “el Obispo de los Indios” [the bishop of the Indians] (Lyons 2001). In the agricultural province of Chimborazo conservatives felt betrayed by this change in policy, since they no longer received support in preserving established social differences between the wealthy, white/mestizo upper crust and the poor mestizo/indigenous masses. Proaño’s policy catered primarily to the rural, indigenous communities in the region, where his activities included setting up literacy programs. He encountered some competition from Protestant Evangelical congregations,

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which kept expanding their following (Muratorio 1981; Stoll 1990: 266– 304). Proaño fiercely opposed North American capitalism and development projects with external funding. The Protestant congregations had a broad following, however, precisely because US funding enabled them to launch projects that rapidly yielded visible results. The Evangelical prohibition on alcoholic beverages and the abolition of the traditional fiesta-cargo system, regarded by many as financing the established hegemony, increased support for Protestant congregations as well. In the end, Chimborazo Province had the largest share of Protestants in the Ecuadorian highlands (Muratorio 1981; Lyons 2001). Development efforts on the part of Roman Catholic and Protestant religious institutions alike raised ethnic self-awareness among the indigenous communities in the province, as expressed through new formulations of their ethnic identity and greater participation in city life, even without commensurate political representation. Even though the urban elite ignored the indigenous locals, manifestations of indigenous identities via language and attire are inextricably linked with the city. Riobamba now has an estimated population of approximately 160,000 and is the thirteenth-largest city in Ecuador (see Table 2). Slightly less than 5 percent of the inhabitants view themselves as indigenous (INEC 2002– 2004), although the crowd of vendors and visitors arriving daily from the villages to visit the markets raises this share for all practical intents and purposes. White and mestizo residents strenuously resist the presence of the indigenous population. A remark by a radio host about annual Independence Day parades on 21 April reveals how difficult white and mestizo residents find it to identify with indigenous culture: We [white and mestizo Riobambans] are so contradictory! When they tell us to have a parade, we all dress up as Indians. We rent Indian outfits for ourselves and our children. Once the parade is over, we take off the fancy dress and hate the Indians. Even though [indigenous culture] is our main cultural expression. We have had the same parades every year on 21 April for a century now and keep dressing up as the people we hate. What kind of people does that make us?5

Who are we? This question shows that Riobamba’s multicultural society has made for complex relationships between population groups and their cultural expressions. Participants in debates about urban planning and development, for example, mention the negative impact of a “ruralizing” city and attribute this effect to the temporary and permanent presence of indigenous and mestizos from the surrounding countryside. In this discourse an ethnic and class conflict is addressed as a geographic and architectural problem: Riobamba’s bearing as a culturally sophisticated city with state-of-the-art architecture is in jeopardy because of different building traditions and lifestyles among rural migrants. The architects I interviewed believe that the quest for

Intermediate Andean Cities | 41

balanced representation of the population in the built environment is the most important mission for professionals today. Riobamba’s inhabitants rarely express pride in their city. In fact, many apologized for their city’s purported lack of identity. Without any prompting, they drew comparisons with Cuenca, which Riobambans describe as an elegant city with a pronounced identity. The lack of a positive identification of Riobambans with their city is mentioned in speeches or publications as well. In an article from the early 1990s, for example, Mancero Logroño, a former mayor of Riobamba, wondered: Do we respect the cultural characteristics of our city and province here in Riobamba? I believe that in Riobamba, unlike anywhere else in the republic (although perhaps Guayaquil is the second city struggling with its cultural development), we tend to imitate everything, and that this cripples us. Citizens of this province, like those of Guayas, want TO BE LIKE OTHERS. This effort erodes their personality and authenticity. All “virtues” of Riobambans may at this time be summarized in four very simple terms: negativism, abstinence, indifference, and imitation. Even though this assessment is harsh, we cannot ignore it: we repudiate our traditions, our glorious achievements, our spiritual value, OUR EXCEPTIONAL NATURAL SURROUNDINGS, our heritage. And no “aristocrat” can claim that we have “inherited all this from Spain.” (Mancero Logroño 1991: 22, emphasis in original)

Although cultural and spatial values are highlighted in ceremonies, as the radio host observes in the passage quoted above, Riobambans are less unanimous in everyday life. The city has an image problem. As the capital city of a predominantly indigenous province, where over half the population works in agriculture, Riobamba is the administrative center of one of the poorest provinces in the country; over 80 percent of the rural population lives below the poverty level (Consejo Provincial de Chimborazo 2002; Martinez 2002). It is also the city with the most non-governmental organizations (NGOs): one fifth of all NGOs active in Ecuador is based there (Bretón Solo de Zaldívar 2002: 50–51; Martinez 2002). They conduct most of their projects among the indigenous, Quechua-speaking population in the surrounding rural areas. Riobamba’s international reputation is therefore probably more attributable to the city’s function as a center of development organizations than to its economic performance or tourist appeal. Because this does not correspond with the image that the city aims to exude, local policy is dedicated in part to changing this image. The municipal Department of Tourism has spared no effort in presenting a “different” cosmopolitan Riobamba, able to compete with other medium-sized cities in the highlands, such as Loja and Cuenca, to be designated as a site for major events. Riobamba’s attributes as a place to live are highlighted in the media as well, with a view toward mitigating this negative image. During my stay

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the municipal website featured the results of an INEC study, indicating that Riobamba ranks second among all communities in Ecuador as a place to live. According to this study, Riobamba scored higher than Cuenca. The municipality stepped up its promotional activities as a consequence of these findings and has posted the following message on its website: “The Sultaness of the Andes is thriving and aims to reclaim its status as the country’s center of history and development” (Municipalidad de Riobamba n.d.).

Map 3. Cuenca and surroundings. Graphic design and cartography by Rien Rabbers and Margot Stoete (Geomedia, Utrecht University); © Christien Klaufus.

Cuenca Cuenca is the capital of the homonymous canton and of Azuay Province, which is separated from Chimborazo Province by tiny Cañar Province.6 With a population of almost 350,000, the city has ranked third in the country for over a century (see Table 2). Cuenca, which derives from the colonial period, was established in 1557 by the Spaniards on the Cañari settlement Guapdondélig, which before that had been taken by the Incas and renamed Tomebamba. The Spanish viceroy of Peru then renamed the city after his domicile Cuenca in Spain. Like Riobamba, Cuenca was the administrative center of a corregimiento during the colonial era and from 1771 onward that of a gobernación comprising the area of what is now Azuay and Cañar. In 1779

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Illustration 3. Neo-classicist influences in Cuencan architecture around 1900

it also became the center of the archdiocese of Cuenca, enabling the Roman Catholic Church to perpetuate its dominance in the region (Lowder 1990; Jamieson 2000: 39–43). The city subsequently evolved along the same lines as many colonial cities. Built in the pattern of a chess board around a central plaza, with parallel, bidirectional streets, the geographic structure of Cuenca long reflected locally prevailing ideas about social and ethnic hierarchy. Most homeowners in the heart of the city were whites and mestizos, while the indigenous population groups settled mainly in the semi-rural parishes of San Blas and San Sebastián (now two city districts) (Poloni 1992: 296). In the republican period from 1830 the colonial architecture in the inner city was largely remodeled or replaced by neo-classicist-style buildings (see Illustration 3). The transformation led to more spaces overlooking the street, façades with a symmetric structure, and gable decorations, such as columns, friezes, and frontons. The introduction of neo-classicist decorations in local architecture was a consequence of the ties of Ecuadorian tradesmen with Europeans and especially with France (Kennedy and Ortiz 1990; Espinosa Abad and Calle Medina 2002). In tourist guides, Cuenca is usually described as a “colonial city,” although most buildings now designated as monuments are from the republican period (Jamieson 2000: 46–47). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Cuenca grew steadily, although the morphological changes from the sixteenth to the twentieth century were relatively minor

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compared with the ones in the following period. In the mid-twentieth century Cuenca had 40,000 inhabitants, but the city expanded rapidly due to the influx of migrants from the surrounding countryside. From over 60,000 inhabitants in 1962, the population increased to over 100,000 in 1974 and to over 150,000 in 1982 (Lowder 1990; Villavicencio 1990). The cityscape underwent major changes in the mid-twentieth century. Progressivists dominated the era. In international architecture the modernist “international style” prevailed, with figureheads such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. In Quito the Uruguayan Gilberto Gatto Sobral helped modernize architecture and urban development (Benavides Solís 1995: 67–80). Emulating their Quito counterparts, the Cuenca municipal authorities commissioned Gatto Sobral to design a new city hall. He oversaw the introduction of “straight-line architecture” (Estrella Vintimilla 2000; Rivera Muñoz and Moyano 2002). The University of Cuenca opened a school of engineering around that time. Most buildings constructed toward the middle of the previous century were designed by civil engineers. Accordingly, the heyday of rigid, modernist architecture is known in Cuenca as the architecture of the engineers. During this trend colonial and republican buildings in the heart of the city were replaced by concrete geometric structures that expressed Ecuadorian progressivist ideas. Gatto Sobral conceived the first expansion that started on the drawing boards. South of the Tomebamba River in the area known as El Ejido, a lush, spacious villa development was built, based on the English garden-city concept.7 The elite moved from the inner city to this new neighborhood, while migrants arriving from the countryside moved into the vacant buildings in the inner city. While the suburban neighborhoods thrived, the inner city became run down (Villavicencio 1992: 51, n.47; Estrella Vintimilla 2000: 13). Thanks to the oil “boom” in the 1970s, the new class of entrepreneurs invested increasingly in real estate. High, semi-modernist office complexes and hotels were built in the center. Investors cared more about commercial considerations than aesthetics; the architecture of the offices and hotels was not designed to match the appearance of the historic inner city. Local architects today have harshly criticized commercial buildings from this period. The architect Simón Estrella, who published about this subject, has asserted that this architecture did very little for urban society (Estrella Vintimilla 2000). Interest in the local architectural heritage arose in the 1970s. The University of Cuenca had opened a faculty of architecture, and the first cohorts of new architects were very interested in local building traditions. In addition, the authorities became increasingly aware of the value of the historic premises that remained in the inner city. In 1982 the historic inner city was designated as national cultural heritage. Since December 1999, when Cuenca was included on UNESCO’s prestigious World Heritage List, the city has consis-

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tently been propagated in official reports as Cuenca, Patrimonio Cultural de la Humanidad. This world heritage title has become the city’s calling card. The city has a small, cohesive elite that invokes purported descent from Spanish ancestors and has remained dominant over the centuries (Hirschkind 1981; Miles 1997). Members of this group hold important posts in government institutions and influence local policies. In the 1960s the former hacienda owners among them initiated the establishment of the faculty of architecture, as architects and urban developers from their ranks would enable them to retain control of all aspects of urban development (Lowder 1989, 1990). They expressed their ideas about spatial use in architecture styles. Before the faculty of architecture existed, and before the elite moved out of the inner city, these people lived in the French neoclassical homes there. When villa districts were built, and the wealthy moved out there, some of them liked rigid, modernist villas but the majority switched to styles based on local building traditions. The different stages in ideas about architecture and urban construction remain clearly visible in the city. The dominance of a cohesive, socially “white” elite has helped make the presentation of the city and surrounding areas more coherent. The cultural elite depicts Cuenca to outsiders as a city of hard workers who excel at several trades. This is clear from a passage quoted in a book published in the run-up to the inclusion on the world heritage list: “Cuenca has retained its vocation for Art and Culture. Cuenca, city of industrious people, of creative artisans, refines and strengthens popular art” (Aguilar Aguilar 1998: 54). Craftsmen—ironsmiths, shoemakers, and others who process materials into finished products with their hands—are glorified by the elite, while at the same time this is a way of distinguishing them as highly educated intellectuals from people who work with their hands. The distinction between city and countryside and the landscape attributes of the canton are the second important element in how the elite depicts Cuenca. Cuencans are said to differ from other Ecuadorians in their close ties with the landscape in and around the city. We constitute a type of indivisible unity with the landscape that is expressed in our actions and reactions, in our social structure and artistic capacity. … Cuencans do not live in the landscape: they inhabit the landscape, just as a snail carries a small, calciferous home on its shoulders. (Jara Idrovo 1998: 20)

The four rivers, which include the Tomebamba, in addition to their value to the cultural landscape, are regarded as local symbols of that fertile landscape. Glorification of the landscape figures within a depicted local identity, where city and countryside form a duality. The border between them is represented as a sharp line; a border that has social and cultural connotations in addition to physical-spatial ones.

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In everyday life the border between city and countryside is a discursive construction. While the elite regards itself primarily as white, it often designates rural dwellers in the vernacular as cholos and farmers. The term cholo, which denotes people of hybrid ethnicity born in the countryside, also figures within a complex construction of local identity. Cholo has a more negative meaning as a pejorative term denoting the rural population in general and female market vendors (cholas) in particular. Farmers or indigenous people regarded by the urban elite as putting on airs are also known as cholos (Kyle 2000: 60; Miles 2004: 201, n.1; Pribilsky 2007: 39–42). Paradoxically, though, the strongest symbol of the Cuenca Canton is also a chola: the Chola Cuencana (Weismantel 2003). The Chola Cuencana is an archetypical woman of mixed Spanish and indigenous heritage, who embodies all the positive attributes of Spanish-colonial and indigenous culture, of city and countryside. She symbolizes fertility and exudes the rural qualities of the region. The chola retains her original beauty: Creole with delicate features, slightly tan, with a clean face, owner and bearer of what is native to her country. She reveals the landscape, the flowers, the rivers, the beauty of Cuenca. (Editores y publicistas 1990: 264–65)

At all official events a doll or person in fancy dress personifies the Chola Cuencana, and a statue of the Chola is positioned at a busy intersection in the city. She is depicted clad in an embroidered blouse and a colorful, manylayered skirt. Her shoulders are covered with a shawl, and she wears her hair in two long braids. On her head is a Panama hat, an important regional export product. A local folk song about the Chola Cuencana played at all municipal festivities proclaims: “With your charm and pleasing appearance you evoke Andalusia, but your Cuencan identity blossoms in all your feelings.” The Chola Cuencana has evolved into a symbol of Cuencan identity rooted in the nostalgic image that the Cuenca elite has about the countryside, even if it changed a long time ago. The constructed inequality between the urban and rural inhabitants, between those who look European and those with indigenous features, between intellectuals and artisans to this day makes for a coherent but dichotomous image of the Cuenca Canton—divided into city and surroundings—and of Cuencans. This image does not reflect reality. Approximately 3,500 people living in the city regard themselves as indigenous. While their number is admittedly less than in Riobamba, they are still a substantial group (INEC 2002–2004). Men and women identified as cholos based on their attire are treated with far less respect than the symbolic Chola Cuencana. Miles has noted:

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As long as the peasants remain in the rural areas, producing crops and artisanry, they are viewed as important symbols of Cuenca’s rich cultural heritage. Once they enter the city and begin to alter the social and physical landscape, their ethnicity becomes a burden. (Miles 1994: 138)

Nor are the rural villages idyllic communities of farmers and artisans that the elite has constructed in its image of city and surroundings. Many former farmers and villagers emigrated abroad in the second half of the twentieth century. The relatives they left behind have had new homes built, purchased consumer items, and changed their lifestyle, making even the countryside appear urban and cosmopolitan in some cases. Especially during the previous decade, transnational migration has become visible in the city and the surrounding villages. Much of the local—and national—economy subsists from remittances from transnational migrants in the United States and Europe. The new patterns of consumption that have resulted influence not only retail trade but also the construction industry. Many migrant families have used the money they receive to have impressive homes built that symbolize their—aspired—social mobility. In the villages around Cuenca, as well as in various residential neighborhoods within the city, are impressive buildings that Cuencans describe as migrant homes. Established architects disapprove of this opulent architecture, labeling it as inappropriate for Cuenca. Discussions about new building styles figure in a broader debate about the local impact of globalization.

Recent Urban Development Processes Local Effects of Globalization During my first period of field work in Ecuador in 1998–1999, President Jamil Mahuad was in office. His neoliberal economic policy led to rampant inflation and ultimately to the collapse of the banking system. Overnight, major banks such as Filanbanco failed. Many thrifty Ecuadorians lost their savings. The economic policy failure of Jamil Mahuad plunged the country into the deepest economic slump since the 1930s. In January 2000 President Mahuad was deposed in a brief coup carried out by Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez (who was later elected president) and indigenous leader Antonio Vargas, assisted by former Supreme Court Justice Carlos Solorzano. Following the transfer of power to Vice President Gustavo Noboa, the economic and monetary policy of Jamil Mahuad was largely continued. Noboa also carried on the plan to convert to a dollar economy. In 2000 the dollar replaced the sucre as the sole legal currency. Prices of staples continued to rise, and basic necessities became unaffordable for many people. Growing numbers of Ecuadorians ran into financial difficulties. Prior to these economic problems Ecuador

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had suffered different types of disasters. In 1997–1998 El Niño had caused major damage to some parts of the country, affecting thousands of people (Vos et al. 1999). The country experienced political turbulence as well, having had five successive governments in five years. The 1999 recession exacerbated the problem, depleting the coping reserves of most Ecuadorians. They lost confidence in the future and decided to leave the country, instigating a wave of migration. Transnational labor migration from Ecuador is not a recent phenomenon. Back in the 1970s, hundreds of low-level workers from southern Ecuador moved to the United States illegally. Their numbers increased in the 1980s. Especially from the provinces of Cañar and Azuay, greater numbers departed, turning the central-southern highlands into a labor export center, with Cuenca as the hub (Kyle 2000: 33; Jokisch and Pribilsky 2002: 78). One of the main reasons for the exodus was the collapse of the trade in panama hats, which from the nineteenth century had been the foundation for the regional economy in that part of the highlands. Because of the existing trade relations between the central-southern provinces and New York, New York was the main destination of job-seeking workers, farmers, and middlemen at first. After a while, other cities in the United States, including Chicago, attracted migrants as well (Kyle 2000: 58, 65). The gradual increase of transnational migration to the North was followed in the late 1990s by an unprecedented massive exodus as a consequence of the problems described. This exodus, which Jokisch and Pribilsky (2002) have labeled “new migration,” differs from the preceding migration wave in several respects. First, more migrants than ever before have left the country since 1999. Second, the destination has changed. Rather than the United States, Spain and Italy became the main destinations (Jokisch and Pribilsky 2002: 83). In 2003 Ecuadorians were the largest group of immigrants in Spain; they outnumbered Moroccans, relegating them to second place. The main destinations are Madrid, Barcelona, and Murcia. In Madrid the Ecuadorian community grew from 5,000 in 1999 to nearly 150,000 in 2003 (INE 2004). In 2007 about 370,000 Ecuadorians were registered in Spain (INE 2008). In addition to the large number of migrants that suddenly left, other things have changed with respect to the previous period. Unlike in the previous migration wave, when those who left were mainly men, most Ecuadorians leaving for Spain now are women. And rather than consisting primarily of poor farmers migrating from the southern highlands to the United States, the new exodus was set in motion by people from all segments of the population and all Ecuadorian provinces (Jokisch and Pribilsky 2002: 83–87). Nobody knows exactly how many Ecuadorians live in the United States and Europe at this time, but estimates range from 400,000 in the United States and nearly

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400,000 in Spain to a total of two and a half to three million Ecuadorians in the different destination countries combined (Jokisch and Pribilsky 2002: 82, 89; ILDIS 2003: 4; ILDIS 2006: 3).8 The exodus had an unprecedented positive impact on the domestic economy. Export of labor and import of foreign exchange helped stabilize the fragile dollar economy. Unemployment rates declined, because many unemployed moved abroad, artificially reducing the official figures. In 2003 remittances from abroad to Ecuador totaled one and a half billion dollars and were the second-largest source of incoming exchange after oil exports. They exceeded 7 percent of the gross national product (Solimano 2003; Sánchez 2004). In 2007 this amount reached more than three billion dollars (BCE 2007). The government thus had ample reason to perpetuate this source of income. In 2001 “globalization” was the main conversation topic. In addition to the symbolic impact of the US dollar as the national currency, what were known as migradólares, sums of money that migrants sent home, had a far greater impact on consumption than in 1999. Emigration had given rise to new patterns of consumption and changed lifestyles. Internet cafés catered not only to tourists but also to family members of migrants, while courier companies that shipped money and packages proliferated like mushrooms. Many Ecuadorians started to feel that their country was overrun by outside influences. Debates about globalization and authenticity of domestic culture surfaced in national and local media. Visible expressions of “imported” culture were taken to task. On 28 October 2003, for example, the minister of Education appeared on television to proclaim that on 31 October, like every year, secondary school students should celebrate the Día del Escudo Nacional, rather than the increasingly popular Halloween: “We are not eschewing other festivals, we are part of globalization, but we must never forget our heritage and the symbols of the homeland.”9 My Cuencan landlady, who taught secondary school, also condemned students for celebrating Halloween. Like the minister, she believed in protecting “native” traditions from “outside” cultural influences. On the Día del Escudo Nacional students traditionally parade through the cities bearing the coats of arms of Ecuador and the provinces. Special foods and beverages, including colada morada, are consumed on and around this day. A small boy is quoted in a newspaper saying: “My teacher has told us that colada is intended to preserve Ecuadorian values and traditions. And that the festival of Halloween is a foreign custom.”10 A columnist for El Comercio, however, wonders about the coats of arms: “Are ‘our’ symbols inspired by the French Enlightenment truly ‘ours’?” His answer: “Yes and no” (Arauz Ortega 2003). In a period of rapid cultural change, national and local symbols may be the most likely subject of a polemic (Cohen 2000a: 44).

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In Cuenca and Riobamba everyday experiences with the consequences of globalization have instigated discussions about cultural authenticity and have revived interest in “native” local traditions. The most vocal debate in Cuenca was about houses that migrant families built in the suburban districts and villages thanks to remittances from abroad. These homes, which are often striking in their size, materials, and color combinations, instigated several discussions among professionals about cultural uniqueness. Some of these discussions were conducted in public, but most were private exchanges. In a few articles and reports architects and scholars published their views on the new construction styles, which in most cases were regarded as tasteless and as architecture that was unsuitable for the presumed lifestyle of the inhabitants. In chapters 4 and 5 I will elaborate on this debate. In Riobamba the emigration wave got under way later than in Cuenca. The consequences are not as visible as they are in Cuenca, but the trend exists there as well. According to Holston and Appadurai (1999: 3), there is “a growing number of societies in which cities have a different relationship to global processes than the visions and policies of their nation-states may admit or endorse.” This certainly holds true for Cuenca, which following the massive labor exodus and the economy of migradólares has become the most expensive city in the country. During the period I conducted my research, prices of plots suitable for construction and the cost of building a home were higher than elsewhere in the country. Housing construction grants for people from the poorer classes, however, were the same everywhere in the country, making housing disproportionately expensive for poor city dwellers (families without income from abroad). Since the national government does not modulate housing policy to accommodate regional differences, local authorities and citizens have to find ways to improve their housing and living situation on their own. That is the disadvantage of emigration, which while raising consumptive affluence for some has placed others at a relative disadvantage. In this process, authorities often feel differently about the pros and cons of globalization than do citizens trying to make ends meet in difficult economic circumstances.

City Marketing Since 1997 the administrative decentralization act has been implemented in Ecuador (Frank 2003). This means that the highly centralized government in Quito has to cede local development funding and decision-making authority to the local authorities in the cantons. Progress is slow, especially in terms of decentralizing power and authority. All the same, cantonal councils now have more funding available than they did in the 1980s. Given the national field of forces, where the cities of Guayaquil and Quito are still in economic and administrative control and claim funds from national sources, the other lo-

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Illustration 4. Neoclassicism in Riobamba: Colegio Maldonado

cal authorities have to try hard to promote their city and canton to compete nationally and internationally. Increasingly, cities have become competitors. The struggle to raise national and international funds, to attract tourists and international events, and to obtain a special status, such as inclusion on the UNESCO world heritage list, is a municipal effort. Interest in actively promoting an individual urban identity, often referred to as city marketing in the literature, seems to have become an economic necessity (Ashworth and Voogd 1990; Paddison 1993). The competition between Ecuadorian cities in 2004 over a visit from the Miss Universe pageant participants exemplifies this practice. For months the municipal departments of tourism and public relations in Cuenca and Riobamba worked overtime to spruce up their city for this international event. On 1 June that year the winner was to be selected at a site near Quito, and until then the participants would stay at a hotel in Quito, from where they would go on excursions. In the two weeks prior to the event the participants visited various sights throughout the country. In the struggle between the cities hoping to figure in the program, Cuenca and Riobamba were among those selected to host a festivity in addition to Quito and Guayaquil. In late 2003 an architect acquaintance introduced me to a fellow architect who was the head of Riobamba’s Unidad de Turismo. At the time, his duties consisted mainly of preparing for the arrival of the Miss Universe delegation. From January 2004 they were instructed to focus exclusively on revitalizing the historic inner city. The streets would be lit and the façades of buildings

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were to be painted in a range of colors to be determined, and any colors outside that range would be prohibited. One of the organizers from Quito had also told them to make the informal street vendors disappear, as he felt they marred the general appearance of the streets. All subsequent projects were intended to make Riobamba look as clean and as elegant as possible. The national newspaper El Comercio reported: “The urban regeneration plan has been instigated by the visit that Miss Universe 2003, Amelia Vega, and a few journalists will pay to the city.”11 This was a perfect opportunity for the authorities in Riobamba to boost tourism and promote the city. The reigning beauty queen Amelia Vega arrived in the city on 31 May 2004. This visit was a major disappointment. Instead of staying in Riobamba for four hours as planned, she left after an hour and a half and skipped over half the program. After a brief eighteen-minute drive and a half-hour meeting with the local authorities, Miss Universe returned to Quito, foregoing all other activities planned. The lunch for the international guest with a few hundred guests of honor (and ninety-five journalists who were to report on the visit) was cancelled at the last moment. The visit scheduled to Riobamba’s showcase the Museo de la Concepción, which had been rearranged especially for this purpose, did not take place either. The reason for cutting the trip short was never made clear. Approximately 13,000 dollars had been invested in the event, but the results were disappointing. It had not even drawn any tourists or journalists.12 Riobamba suffered a blow to its image, and the city’s PR staff saw the event as a failure. In Cuenca the opposite was true. Seventy-three of the eighty candidates and Miss Amelia Vega visited the city on 16 May 2004. In addition to several meetings with guests of honor, she went on a tour of the city, cheered on by many tens of thousands of Cuencans who had been waiting for hours. The newspapers reported this visit as a major event that happens only once in several decades. According to the media, the candidates were delighted at how the day went: some even promised to return soon. The people of Cuenca spared no effort. There were performances featuring women in traditional folkloric garb, “reminiscent of the Cañari tribe and the Inca Empire.”13 A local newspaper reported: “the city that is part of world heritage … had prepared like no other to showcase itself to the world.”14 Some 35,000 onlookers lined the route the candidates would walk, bands played the local folk song Chola Cuencana, and balconies were adorned with flowers and other decorations. The Cuenca authorities, unlike the Riobamba ones, had managed to convey the desired impression of their city: “Many of the beautiful ladies that livened up the city yesterday, admired Cuenca, the hospitality of the people, and its landscape.”15 The newspaper report ended with: “What happened yesterday in the city is already part of our history.”16 The visit to Cuenca was described in the media as a huge success. Although shop owners

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had hoped for more tourists and higher revenues, the event had been a coup for city marketing.17 In promoting tourist attractions and services that may be used for major events, special buildings or city districts (especially historic ones) are featured as calling cards. This practice has led renovation and reconstruction projects to be highlighted at this time. Authorities in Riobamba and Cuenca are improving various city districts as part of this regeneración urbana. This effort is often described in the literature as gentrification and entails making rundown neighborhoods more attractive to new groups of residents or users (Smith and Williams 1988; Jones and Varley 1999; Scarpaci 2005; Swanson 2007; Bromley and Mackie 2009). The covert terms used to mention, for example, that street vendors make Riobamba’s inner city appear messy, reveal that the purpose of regeneration is not merely physical and economic but can be social as well. Cuenca Mayor Fernando Cordero had explicitly designated enhancing the city image as one of the policy objectives during his second term of office (Municipalidad de Cuenca 2003). In pursuit of this objective, he carried out high-profile projects, such as renovating the central park Abdón Calderon and El Sagrario Cathedral, restructuring three market sites, and renovating and rebuilding several other monuments, parks, and city squares. He also launched the Megaproyecto El Barranco to develop and rearrange the river zone, with a view toward attracting additional tourists. Although the mayor and aldermen commissioned various projects in the twenty-one rural parishes in the Cuenca Canton, the inner-city prestige projects received the most media coverage. Dividing the projects geographically according to the inner city, urban residential districts, and outlying areas yields a financial contribution of three and a half million dollars toward the inner-city projects dedicated to image enhancement, one and a half million dollars toward neighborhood provisions in the urban zone, and four million dollars toward neighborhood provisions in rural areas (not including thirteen and a half million dollars that the municipality spent on infrastructure in the program “Mejora tu barrio”) (Municipalidad de Cuenca 2003). More funding was thus allocated toward inner-city facilities than toward facilities for urban and suburban districts and nearly as much as toward constructing facilities in the canton’s vast outer areas. In Riobamba similar projects received priority during the same term of office. The director of Riobamba’s Planning Department identified four highpriority projects in the 2000–2004 period: restructuring the daily markets, improving the traffic infrastructure, revitalizing the inner city, and implementing a new land register system as agreed nationally between all municipalities. According to the director, the purpose of this policy was to revitalize the city to attract more tourists. To this end, he aimed to curtail informal trading at the daily markets, regulate parking in the inner city, and enhance its appear-

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ance. In Riobamba projects intended to make the inner city more visually and economically appealing therefore received special consideration as well. Interest in developing areas outside the city in the canton (including workingclass suburbs) was minimal. Residents of the rural parishes in the canton had the same impression. On 7 May 2004 members of the Canton’s indigenous communities occupied the monument dedicated to the local celebrity Vicente Maldonado in the homonymous park to protest national and local development policy. They issued a communiqué demanding a cantonal development plan and improved allocation of local expenditures among all parishes.18 In some cases developments in the urban periphery compel administrators to act. When issues relating to poverty and lack of social safety spread from the periphery to the center, for example, authorities may perceive this as a threat to the carefully constructed image of the inner city and may have an incentive to improve the quality of underprivileged residential neighborhoods. This happened in the metropolis of Guayaquil, where even though Mayor Jaime Nebot conducted several inner-city improvement projects, the poor residential conditions and quality of life in the working-class neighborhoods affected the city’s image. His Proyecto de Regeneración therefore included improvements for selected working-class neighborhoods. In provincial cities, however, working-class neighborhoods may easily be overlooked by the authorities, because the problems are not so serious that they become a nuisance to people in the center. In such cases, district residents have to go to a lot of trouble to get municipal agencies to address their problems.

Social Housing Like other countries in Latin America, Ecuador introduced social housing policy relatively recently. The first national initiatives were launched in the 1960s, when the American Alliance for Progress encouraged Latin American countries to take measures to reduce the discontent among the growing group of rural–urban migrants. These measures, such as the promotion of housing cooperatives and the establishment of national agencies for public housing, were intended to curtail sociopolitical unrest among the city’s poor to suppress revolutionary, communist trends (Pike 1977: 303–38; Gilbert and Ward 1985: 177–79; Garcia 1987: 104; Glasser 1988: 150; Ward 1993: 1144). Within that context, the Banco Ecuatoriano de la Vivienda (BEV) was established in 1961. This financial institution was responsible for enabling and coordinating social housing construction (Landivar 1986; Klak 1993). In 1973, when a military junta had seized power again, the Junta Nacional de la Vivienda (JNV) was founded to complement the BEV. The JNV was to coordinate implementation of national housing policy and encourage private-sector construction of social housing, in addition to building inex-

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pensive housing itself, while the BEV would provide loans to individuals. In 1994 the JNV became part of the new Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (MIDUVI), and in 1998 the BEV was converted into a second-tier bank, geared to refinance the mortgage portfolios of private-sector financial institutions (Gobierno del Ecuador 1994). Until then, social housing policy achieved a very limited impact. Applicants to the BEV programs had to be creditworthy, which was not the case for most people from the lower classes in need of a home. Likewise, the later JNV projects tended to be accessible only to members of the urban middle class (Bastidas 1989). Moreover, most homes were built in the two major cities Quito and Guayaquil, even though affordable housing was seriously lacking in intermediate cities as well (Schenck 1989: 46; C+C Consulcentro n.d.: 135). In 1998 MIDUVI introduced a new grant program, the Sistema de Incentivos para la Vivienda (SIV). Figuring within the general neoliberal trend in politics the SIV program was supposed to make the grant system more efficient, purposeful, and transparent (Acosta Paredes 2001; Frank 2004). Unlike previous programs, in which the government assumed the responsibility of developer, this program issues the grants directly to poor families in need of affordable housing. The SIV program offers two types of grants: one for new residential construction and the other to improve existing homes. Applicants for a grant to build a new home may purchase it ready made from a project developer or arrange construction themselves on their own land. The money is not paid directly to the applicant but is disbursed to technical intermediaries (for example architects), who ensure that it is indeed spent on the home. The technical intermediaries charge the applicant a percentage of the contract amount, which equals approximately three hundred dollars for a new home and slightly over one hundred dollars for home improvement jobs.19 What remains after covering the charges and application fee is the income of the intermediaries. Because the application entails a lot of administrative work, the compensation for these services is modest. In addition, many grants are disbursed only after several months. During the process, construction fees are likely to have increased so much that the original design is no longer feasible. Incentive and means to realize a good residential design are therefore often lacking. The SIV program is based on three principles, known as “ABC”: Ahorro, Bono, Crédito, meaning savings, grant, and loan. Applicants require a minimum savings balance to qualify for the grant. For applicants from urban areas, the savings and the grant may be supplemented by a loan. Applicants from peripheral and rural areas do not have the same options. They are required to perform community services, and their credit options are limited. Before 1998, MIDUVI ran collective programs based on a geographic distinction between urban areas, urban-marginal zones, and rural areas, offering differ-

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ent house types for each area. The SIV program seemed an improvement, because it gave individual applicants a greater say in the design of their home. The latest version of the program, however, once again distinguishes between applicants form urban areas and those from suburban and rural ones, attributing different sets of rights and obligations to each group. Grants are approved based on a point allocation system, depending on how acute the housing need is. The reimbursements have developed as follows: in 2003, for a new home, costing anywhere from 2,400 to 8,000 dollars to build, the maximum grant was 1,800 dollars. Applicants were required to have savings equaling at least 10 percent of the construction costs. To remodel an existing home, of which the costs were not to exceed 3,500 dollars, the grant was 750 dollars, with a required savings balance of 100 dollars (MIDUVI 2000, 2003). In 2007 the rates were increased to a grant of 3,600 dollars for new construction and 1,000 to 1,500 dollars for home improvement (MIDUVI 2007; Klaufus 2010). Although the SIV grant amount and the program terms are identical throughout the country, the cost of land, construction materials and labor varies depending on the region. In Cuenca the prices of construction materials were by far the highest in the country in 2001.20 Building new homes for 8,000 dollars was impossible there, which is why very few grants were issued for building new homes in Cuenca. Some NGOs and municipalities tried to compensate. Compared with the number of self-built homes, however, the influence of MIDUVI and other organizations remained minimal in both districts. As Table 3 indicates, Cuenca’s and Riobamba’s overall housing quality scores reasonably well, compared with the national average. Yet, the lack of importance of MIDUVI’s housing program forced the residents of informal settlements in Riobamba and Cuenca to become self-reliant and creative.

“We have no suburbios here” In smaller towns, the need for policy dedicated to neighborhood improvement and inexpensive housing is often downplayed, because the figures compare favorably to the metropolises. Small and intermediate cities do not face the same social problems as cities such as Guayaquil or Rio de Janeiro. Poverty may be less desperate and in any case less visible; crime rates are lower, and opportunities for improving individual residential and living conditions are probably better. These districts have in most cases materialized differently from squatter settlements in cities with over one million inhabitants. I selected the two working-class districts in Cuenca and Riobamba for my research not to identify the “worst” forms of poverty but to shed light on the residential and living conditions of fairly average citizens, who tend to be overlooked on the grounds that their circumstances are not “dire enough.”

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As has been stated in the debate, we also need an impression of current urban planning dilemmas in ordinary cities (Robinson 2006). Professionals in Riobamba and Cuenca tend to criticize the spatial distribution of what they call barrios precarios. They believe that self-built homes erode the cityscape. This embodies a class-related discourse about architectonic representations, which I will review in the following chapters. Architectonic-determinist ideas remain commonplace in policy documents. Anticipating this discourse, see the following section from a report of the Riobamba municipality about Cooperativa Santa Anita, which states: Because the settlement is illegal, the cityscape appears irregular; each owner builds his home on his plot oblivious to the basics of architectonic design, let alone urban planning design, leading to a total lack of values (Municipalidad de Riobamba 1999: 36).

Architects at the planning departments criticized the messy appearance of self-building in general and illegal self-building in particular. As law enforcers, they were responsible for ensuring that construction conformed to the zoning plan criteria, as well as structural and other requirements for residential building. In practice, however, the municipal authorities made few enforcement efforts, and countless cases are known of architects who did not apply for permits either, in turn discouraging working-class district residents from taking the regulations seriously. Professionals working for the government take little interest in human suffering in the districts. They regarded inadequate neighborhood development as an abstract planning problem, which they blamed on either “the system” or “the population.” Joaquin, an architect from Riobamba, for example, attributed the problem of districts without basic facilities to the unchecked growth of housing cooperatives during the 1970s and ’80s. These associations purchased land everywhere but failed to meet their stated objectives: These cooperatives are a disaster. They serve no useful purpose. … Anybody who founded a cooperative received funding from one or both sources—from the national or local authorities—to build sewers and sidewalks, to make whatever, and to have his own site. And what is the outcome? A kind of speculation has materialized, along the lines of “I have obtained a site and have made all those famous sacrifices by participating in mingas,” supposedly, since they did not join mingas at all, no, they paid! A fine, yes, so in the end they owned their plot, and once they had that plot, they did not use it to build their mediagüita on, but they would leave the site vacant to speculate on the land. So they were investing, but at whose expense? At that of the national and local authorities. As far as I can tell, the cooperatives are not serving their purpose.

In his view the popularity of cooperative housing construction had become excessive, leading the authorities to lose control of town and country planning. The shortcomings he identified are recognizable, but because he

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focused on the shortcomings of the cooperative system and accused members of abusing public funds, he failed to mention that district residents often face a long, hard struggle to bring about a comfortable home environment. Professionals simply explained away the problem. Negative impressions of working-class neighborhoods were reinforced by professional disinterest, as most architects and authorities were more involved in prestigious inner-city construction projects and commercial urbanizations for the middle class. Many architects at the Planificación department in Cuenca and Riobamba had no idea where my research districts were, or how many people lived there, as they had never visited them. One architect, who as an alderman in Riobamba in 1999 had been involved in the project to regulate informal districts, told me four years later that my research in Cooperativa Santa Anita had convinced him to go see the district for himself. That visit changed his view of the neighborhood and of how the city was dealing with urban development. He explained that often such projects are conceived on the drawing board, without the architects ever visiting the site. Architects believe that since working-class neighborhoods have materialized spontaneously and without any intervention from professionals and authorities, they do not need to consider these residential areas. They argue that district residents have knowingly disregarded the regulations in building their homes and should be left to manage on their own. The general view of working-class districts is that they are zonas rojas, dangerous areas, inhabited by uncivilized folk. A helpful architect from Cuenca’s planning department told me during my orientation visit that they had little information about the informal districts on the urban periphery, because these areas were “not a political priority.” What he knew about the districts north of the city was that they had materialized a few decades ago, when the eastern region of the country (the oriente) was doing poorly. At the time many people had moved to Cuenca from the eastern lowlands and from Quito. He went on to explain that this was why this zone of working-class districts, which he described as a zona roja, had such a high crime rate: the inhabitants were a different class of people. Impressions about working-class districts, often based more on rumors than on experiences, have directly affected policy enforcement. The head of Cuenca’s Control Urbano Department, the architect Camilo, who was responsible for enforcing building regulations, told me that for years his staff have deliberately avoided the northern zone of the city, where Ciudadela Carlos Crespi is situated. We stepped up our inspections in this part of the city, when it was flooded repeatedly in 1990. … In addition to floods in the homes located by the riverbed, landslides affected the homes at the top. … This was about ten years ago. Since then, we have focused more on these inspections, because—to be honest—we hardly

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ever went there before then. First, because we knew the district was just taking shape, and also because of what I just told you, that the district was inhabited by people of ill repute, so we kept our distance.

The tales about the zonas rojas became exaggerated and influenced the attitudes of professionals and authorities and consequently affected their actions as well: they avoided working in suburban working-class districts. The disinterest of politicians and professionals at the municipality thus gave rise to a loophole in planning and legal affairs within which working-class districts evolved. In Cuenca the Control Urbano service now regularly performs inspections, including in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. Builders caught violating regulations are fined. Camilo acknowledges, however, that the inspections could bear improvement. The limited funding available to the Control Urbano service and the unqualified staff make for inadequate inspections. Few inspectors know how to read blueprints, and if no company car is available— as is often the case—the weekly building inspections simply do not take place. In Riobamba the inspections are even less thorough, as the Control Urbano is merely a formality there; no actual inspections are conducted. Despite the inadequate enforcement of construction policy, professionals clearly have explicit views on the design of homes in working-class neighborhoods. But even though professionals may disapprove of the houses built, residents of these neighborhoods still have an electoral value. The resulting paradox is that outside the official regulations, public funding was still allocated toward district facilities, especially by candidates for political office. Architect Xavier of the planning department in Cuenca explained the procedure, confusing Ciudadela Carlos Crespi with the adjacent district Ciudadela Jaime Roldós: At some point [the residents of working-class neighborhoods] became potential voters. ... Between 1980 and 1990 the national parliament gave [provincial] representatives money, as funds earmarked toward provincial causes and the like. They were allocated certain funds, and I know that many public works projects were conducted with the monies for provincial causes, without the municipality knowing about them. Unplanned facilities came about that way in our country during that period. They [working-class neighborhood residents] benefited from this situation. I know of other cases where Ciudadela Jaime Roldós obtained such funding. Eventually, they became the voters electing the politicians that succeeded one another.

Illegal investment of government funding in districts where the municipality did not authorize development was reinforced by the lack of central steering from the government, which pitted various government institutions against one another. Xavier: Unfortunately our legal system abounds with contradictions. The municipal regulations act prescribes standards and inspections of physical development,

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both in urban areas and elsewhere in the canton, in the urban and rural parroquias alike. But problems still occur, because land subdivisions were approved by entirely different institutions than the municipality. Christien: Such as? Xavier: They were approved by the IERAC; previously there was an Institute for Settlement and Agricultural Reform. Christien: I see. Xavier: The [IERAC staff] acted without authorization. For example, they had to regulate the agricultural plots, and these agricultural plots had to be subdivided into plots of at least 2,500 square meters [almost 3,000 square yards]. They approved plots for habitation nonetheless ..., without caring that they had an area of less than two hectares [five acres].

Xavier told me that owners of haciendas were selling sections of their land without requesting permission from the municipal authorities. If they requested such permission, they would have to contribute toward the development costs of public facilities. That was why they preferred to sell sections of their land privately. As Xavier reveals, lack of direction from the government caused institutes to work at cross-purposes, allowing personal and political interests to frustrate official policy. These and other experiences will be analyzed in later chapters to understand how professionals have deliberately or subconsciously helped create the leeway available to working-class neighborhood residents to develop residential areas. Although working-class neighborhoods are not a microcosm for a provincial city as a whole, they are not isolated territories to be regarded as distinct from the rest of the city either.

Conclusion The developmental dynamics of provincial cities depend on local, national, and international forces. In this chapter I have described a few distinctive forces that have made Riobamba and Cuenca as they are today. International influences obviously did not become perceptible locally overnight. I mentioned that for a long time European architecture influenced building styles in the two inner cities. The influence of globalization on the built environment is more recent. Transnational migration led to changes in building. Homes became more expensive, and demand increased for land on which to build them. New patterns of consumption changed the cityscape as well. National forces, such as decentralization of policy implementation, had the local effect of heightening competition between cities, for example in the struggle to be designated as a site for major events. At the same time, the national government became so influential in housing policy that many

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construction programs failed to accommodate local situations. MIDUVI’s SIV program, for example, did not allow for the steep construction costs in Cuenca, reducing the appeal of the grant to those in need of a home. Many municipalities turned a deaf ear to the fairly spontaneous emergence of working-class districts, even when they disapproved. In Cuenca the head of Control Urbano even mentioned that his service had avoided inspecting certain districts for ten years because of their unsavory reputation: they were said to be zonas rojas. When the municipal legalization formalities were tedious, it was not always because professionals refused to be accommodating. They also faced massive administrative red tape and a lack of central guidance. For example, the IERAC (the national institute coordinating the reforms) authorized the sale of hacienda land to housing cooperatives, over the objections of the municipal authorities. Election candidates illegally awarded public funds to working-class neighborhoods under construction to obtain votes. The resulting confusion in legal affairs and urban planning obstructed district development in some cases and furthered it in others. Working-class neighborhood residents were skeptical about their rights and obligations as citizens. Their experience was that requests for government funding toward building their residential district stood a far better chance of being granted in the run-up to elections, but that commitments made failed to be fulfilled afterwards. National and international development organizations catered to the impoverished Quechua population in remote villages or operated in “truly” underprivileged districts in the metropolises but did little in relatively “normal” working-class districts in cities such as Cuenca and Riobamba. As a consequence, residents of such districts in these cities were deprived of stable, regulated support from outside. They relied on their own resources, especially as individual families. The dynamics of these processes in the two research districts and the problems and tensions that resulted are the subject of the next chapter.

Notes   1. The rural parroquias in Riobamba are: Cacha, Calpi, Cubijíes, Flores, Licán, Licto, Pungalá, Punín, Químiag, San Juan and San Luis. The urban parroquias are Maldonado, Lizarzaburu, Velasco, Veloz, Yaruquíes (INEC 2002).   2. According to the VI Censo de Población from 2001, 38 percent of Chimborazo’s population reported that they were “indígena” (INEC 2002–2004).  3. Architect Carlos Velasco, presentation at the Colegio de Arquitectos del Ecuador, Riobamba, 31 October 2002. Little has been written about the early years of the new Riobamba. The historian Carlos Ortiz has observed based on archival research that the new urban expansion consisted of 368 manzanas measuring four solares, of which 124 manzanas were intended for the indigenous population (Ortiz n.d.a, n.d.b).

62 | Urban Residence   4. By the late 1920s twenty banks had opened: nine in Guayaquil, seven in Quito, two in Riobamba, one in Cuenca, and one in Ambato (Deler 1986: 231, n.20).  5. Host Antonio Fierro, Senderos y Baches, Escuelas Radiofónicas Populares del Ecuador ERPE, 1 June 2004.  6. The rural parroquias of Cuenca are: Baños, Cumbe, Chaucha, Checa, Chiquintad, Llacao, Molleturo, Nulti, Octavio Cordero Palacios, Paccha, Quingeo, Ricaurte, San Joaquín, Santa Ana, Sayausí, Sidcay, Sinincay, Tarqui, Turi, Valle and Victoria del Portete. The urban parroquias are Bellavista, Cañaribamba, El Batán, El Sagrario, El Vecino, Gil Ramírez Dávalos, Huayna Cápac, Hermano Miguel, Machángara, Monay, San Blas, San Sebastián, Sucre, Totoracocha and Yanuncay (INEC 2002).   7. This model is from the early twentieth century, when Ebenezer Howard designed a city with individual homes along green strips connected by wide avenues and boulevards. The city blocks were interspersed with parks, offering the residents light, air, and space (Curtis 1996: 243).   8. The exact number of migrants is impossible to calculate. Illegal migrants are difficult to count, and overlaps arising from return and remigration are inevitable. In addition, census data may convey a distorted impression. In the United States this has resulted in underestimations (Suro 2002).   9. El Comercio, 1 November 2003. 10. El Comercio, 1 November 2003. 11. El Comercio, 7 May 2004. 12. El Comercio, 4 June 2004. 13. El Comercio, 17 May 2004. 14. El Mercurio, 17 May 2004. 15. El Mercurio, 17 May 2004. 16. El Mercurio, 17 May 2004. 17. El Comercio, 4 June 2004. 18. El Universo, 10 May 2004. 19. Architect Jenny Albuja (personal communication 2004). 20. El Mercurio, 4 November 2001.

2

Neighborhood Dialectics

In 1999 Cooperativa Santa Anita (Riobamba) did not seem like a neighborhood yet. It was basically a collection of stone “boxes” in the sand. The homes consisted of four walls, a flat roof, and lots of protruding steel reinforcements, heralding new construction operations. On the vacant stretches in between the homes, cows grazed, and pigs wandered about. Most of the people I saw were at the two central water taps, where groups of women gathered throughout the day to do their laundry in turns—they did not have running water at home. The streets were deserted and dusty. Ciudadela Carlos Crespi (Cuenca) made a livelier first impression, not only because of the wide variety of homes but also because of the traffic racing through the neighborhood. There were always people about in the street. Far less livestock was visible, and there were no central water stations: most households here did have running water. This neighborhood had clearly existed longer, but I wondered how it had materialized. I discovered the answer over the years that followed. Over the course of my research, the appearance of both neighborhoods evolved considerably. The “boxes” in Cooperativa Santa Anita were expanded into houses comprising multiple stories, while in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi the dusty, dirt paths became asphalt roads. In a continuous process of construction and remodeling, residents and professionals conceived, built, and adapted private and public spaces. Like a home, a neighborhood is never finished. In this chapter I review the emergence and development of Cooperativa Santa Anita in Riobamba and of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi in Cuenca and the respective roles of the individuals involved in the process. I am primarily interested in the initiators and the first generation of residents and landowners, who did the pioneering work. In addition, professionals and authorities figure prominently in the neighborhood development, as their policies and legislative and regulatory amendments may promote or block these changes. Based on conversations with residents and professionals, I have reconstructed various moments in the development of both neighborhoods to shed light on the housing issues and urban development in provincial cities. I describe how individual houses are built and expanded, and how collective services are installed. In doing so, I explore in what measure the development of individual homes relates to that of the neighborhood as a whole,

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and whether the neighborhood is progressively consolidating. Do residents in Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi invest in their homes only once the most necessary services are in place, or the neighborhood is on the verge of being legalized by the authorities, as is often claimed in the literature, or do they do so earlier? Because consolidation also affects the social “growth” of the neighborhood community, I examine how physical consolidation relates to social cohesion in the neighborhood. In other words, does social identification with the neighborhood community strengthen commensurate with improvements to the facilities and the quality of homes and public spaces? To answer these questions, I examined both the scale of individual households and homes and that of the neighborhood community and the influence of professionals. I have also addressed the differences between Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. Because Cooperativa Santa Anita is a relatively new neighborhood, for which documents about the origins appear in the archives, and for which legalization remains an ongoing issue, most descriptions in this chapter concern Cooperativa Santa Anita.

Cooperativa de Vivienda Santa Anita, Riobamba Establishment of the Cooperativa “Santa Anita” is the name of a housing cooperative in Riobamba that thirteen people established on 23 January 1990. Over a decade later, there were

blocks of houses collective neighborhood facilities

Map 4. Cooperativa Santa Anita. Graphic design and cartography by Rien Rabbers and Margot Stoete (Geomedia, Utrecht University); © Christien Klaufus.

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Illustration 5. Sector 1 of Cooperativa Santa Anita, 2002

Illustration 6. Minga in Cooperativa Santa Anita to build a water pipeline

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about five hundred members.1 Housing cooperatives are encouraged and monitored by the government and are intended to help citizens from socially vulnerable groups obtain affordable housing. Ecuador’s Ley de Cooperativas stipulates: “that in countries such as ours, which are developing, cooperativism is important for realizing social improvement programs; ... that cooperativism is moreover an adequate system for bringing about these lasting changes through orderly and democratic means as our Country needs” (Gobierno del Ecuador 1966). Cooperative types of organization have been popular among people from the lower social classes ever since. In a country where the government’s housing policy functioned poorly for decades, membership of a housing cooperative was one of the few means available for the urban poor to obtain inexpensive land for construction. Guidelines for the operation of housing cooperatives were set forth in separate legislation and regulations intended to prevent abuse and land speculations. In practice, however, violations are commonplace. In Cooperativa Santa Anita the founders and board members of the cooperative have violated the regulations for housing cooperatives more than once. As a consequence, the neighborhood got off to a bad start, and there was a long aftermath. The basic idea of a housing cooperative is that members contribute their own labor instead of money by serving on crews known as mingas. Mingas are a traditional form of reciprocity in the Andes and entail an exchange of labor. In the Ecuadorian sierra, however, institutions use this cultural custom to keep project costs low. In the highlands, citizens have an implicit obligation to participate in mingas of neighborhood and government institutions, and sanctions are often decreed to compel people to participate. This institutionalized practice has made the basic Andean value of personal reciprocity disappear. People participate only if they feel like it and otherwise prefer to pay the fine. This principle of the “mandatory” minga also figures in housing cooperatives. By agreeing to contribute their labor when they register, members curtail the costs of building the neighborhood. Three groups in Cooperativa Santa Anita helped arrange the housing environment: owner-occupants, landowners living outside the neighborhood, and tenants. The first group comprises lower-middle class people who have joined the cooperative because it was virtually the only way they could obtain land for construction. They paid two hundred dollars for a plot on the area that the cooperative owned and converted this space into a residential neighborhood as a group effort. Most owner-occupants are from the villages around Riobamba. They moved to the city hoping to find work. Many started out renting a home in the city center. The second group consists of people who live elsewhere but joined the cooperative to profit from land being resold or to build and rent out the plot purchased as an additional source of income. These members may be landowners but are not neighborhood

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residents. Although this practice is legally prohibited, they were admitted to the cooperative by the first board. In addition, some living in Santa Anita are tenants or occupy a home under different conditions. They are not members of the cooperative and do not own land or a home there, but they do use the neighborhood facilities. They are the most vulnerable in terms of control over the area where they live. In this study I deal only with the people living in Santa Anita: the owner-occupants (members) and the other residents (non-members). Like the organization, the area where the neighborhood is being built up is called “Cooperativa de Vivienda Santa Anita.” Most residents simply refer to their neighborhood as “the cooperative.” The neighborhood was established in 1990, when the housing cooperative purchased a site covering twenty-three hectares in the rural parroquia Licán northwest of the city for about 47,000 dollars. In the past the site was part of the Santa Ana hacienda, situated outside the Riobamba city limits but within the canton and the urban sphere of influence. According to the municipality, Licán is part of Riobamba’s jurisdiction and is therefore subject to the regulations of the Plan de Desarrollo Urbano de Riobamba.2 This means that the land for the cooperative has been purchased legally (so it is not a squatter settlement), but that subdividing, developing, and building on the site require permission from the local authorities. The site, which members call “Sector 1,” is relatively far away from the Panamericana. Getting there involves crossing the territory of another cooperative. It is situated from 2,860 meters (9,383 feet) altitude on the city side to 2,940 meters (9,646 feet) at the northernmost edge and borders on an older suburb, Santa Ana. The other surrounding sites are vacant; they are vast sand flats, with a group of Eucalyptus trees here and there. In May 1991, several housing cooperatives from North Riobamba, including Santa Anita, submitted a request to the Riobamba authorities, hoping to obtain joint authorization to develop the sites. The Riobamba authorities rejected this request, emphasizing that each housing cooperative, prior to dividing up a site, is required by law to verify whether basic facilities can be built there. Because part of the site is situated at 2,940 meters (9,646 feet), the land was automatically deemed unsuitable as an area of residence, because water pipelines and sewers cannot be built at that altitude (Municipalidad de Riobamba 1991).3 The local authorities therefore concluded that they would not support developing the cooperative sites. The board of the cooperative submitted a similar request for authorization in 1992 to a different government agency, the Consejo de Coordinación Agraria, a body that monitored development of rural areas back then under the Agricultural Reform Act. The request stated that the area was to be divided into 304 plots, intended for the construction of rural homes. This agency did authorize development of the site, so that the cooperative board

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felt more confident about its plans. These conflicting decisions illustrate how two government agencies may contradict each other’s decisions on urban development plans, because legal authority is not clear: the national Consejo de Coordinación Agraria is responsible for developing rural areas, while the local Riobamba authorities are in charge of developments in the canton (including the rural parroquias). This problem with overlapping jurisdictions has also surfaced in other cities. In addition to problems with the authorities, the residents in Cooperativa Santa Anita experienced their share of internal irregularities and tensions. Despite the lack of municipal authorization, plots sold like hotcakes in the years that followed, but land transactions were not consistently recorded in the books, and the umbrella organization of cooperatives known as the Dirección Nacional de Cooperativas soon became concerned. In late 1990 this organization audited the books and identified various instances of misconduct. The next year some worried cooperative members reported new financial irregularities, and the umbrella organization announced a second audit, which was conducted in March 1992. Still, the board members of the cooperative continued selling plots, often to disadvantaged families. In early 1992 the cooperative purchased five and a half additional hectares, which were adjacent to the first site, and called “Sector 2.” This site is close to the Panamericana and borders on Sector 1 (see Map 4). Sector 2 is flatter, smaller, and more accessible than Sector 1 and was built up faster. The Consejo de Coordinación Agraria once again approved the request to divide the site purchased for construction of rural homes. There would be 125 plots. Both sectors were to be developed according to a very general urbanization plan, indicating the plots planned and a few sites for greenery, a primary school, a daycare center, and a church. Like Sector 1, Sector 2 “was immediately divided into plots and sold to any random person with money with no consideration for the membership conditions” (Correa n.d.: 2). By law, some members would have been ineligible for admission, for example because they already had a place to live, or because someone else in their family was already a member. The manager in charge of operations in the cooperative, César Escalante, was decisive in the early stages of the neighborhood’s development. He initiated the establishment of the cooperative, arranged the purchase of the two sites, and subsequently appointed himself manager. The cooperative’s board of leaders consists of an elected president, who is required to be a member of the cooperative, an appointed manager who does not need to be a member and is paid for managing the daily operations, and a few other board members elected from within the cooperative. In addition, there is a supervisory board, consisting of an elected president and a few members of the cooperative. As the self-appointed manager, Escalante charted the course

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of the organization and the neighborhood’s development. He had close ties with some high-ranking officials, although he was known as a land speculator within the municipality. The financial irregularities raised concern among a growing group of residents, who were worried they were being duped. One woman, who had served on the cooperative board for a long time, Avelina, and her niece Margarita described the early years as follows: Avelina: Because it was illegal here, there were buyers who wanted to [build] something and buyers who did not. People like us wanted to build a home here. But people merely seeking to get rich, to put it bluntly, purchased three or four plots, even though they already had a house in Riobamba. In addition to the [members of the] cooperative, the sellers, the board of leaders, and the manager responsible for the sale were to blame. That is the problem. Margarita: The Ley de Cooperativas states that people who do not have a home yet are entitled to purchase a plot. But since this was unauthorized, the manager let everybody who was willing and able buy [a plot]. Avelina: Arbitrarily. Well, he put them up for sale when he felt like. He could do that, because it was unauthorized. It was not the fault of the buyers; the board of leaders was to blame, especially the manager, who did it to get rich. We poor people paid what we could, because we moved here with all we had. We came here because we did not have anything yet and noticed that everything was in short supply here. But people who already have [a home], what do they need? The site comes with no obligations and increases in value. They come when they feel like and sell whenever they want. And they make money from the deal, through the increase in value, whereas we suffer from the [lack of] water, we lack everything. Everything, everything, everything. … There is great inequality, but that is no coincidence, no, it is because of the board that simply did as it pleased. And when we realized that, when we wanted to take them to court, so many problems arose that things became as they are now, with a paralyzed cooperative.

Many regulations from the cooperatives act were disregarded: members sold plots privately, they exchanged plots without registering the transaction, some members owned multiple plots, the president of the Supervisory Board was not even a member of the cooperative, and no financial statements were ever submitted to the umbrella organization. The first irregularities were followed by an extended course of administrative inspections and interventions by inspectors from the Dirección Nacional de Cooperativas. Over the following years manager Escalante remained in charge and—according to inspector Correa from the Dirección Nacional de Cooperativas—became a true despot. Members who questioned or criticized him were expelled from the cooperative. According to the inspector, the other board members were degraded to puppets. By 1997, 475 plots had been sold, with or without the required deeds of ownership. Many families had started building their home, and a few dozen already lived there. Proper development of the area had become more important on social grounds, and

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tensions between members escalated. Many members sided with or against señor Escalante. Those who stood by him thought he had achieved major progress, despite the bribes they had paid him and others for this purpose, whereas his opponents felt that they had been taken for a ride. Arguments regularly erupted, especially at neighborhood meetings, which sometimes culminated in fist fights. Inspector Correa presented his report in July 1997. It was a scathing review of the manager’s operating style. Fearing arguments and threats, Correa requested police protection during his presentation, but César Escalante and his supporters did not show up. Meanwhile, Escalante used his connections with political figureheads to have Correa dismissed from his job, launching a smear campaign against the inspector. But the content of the report achieved its purpose. In early 1998 the umbrella organization commissioned an external auditor to conduct another thorough inspection of the financial records from January 1992 through June 1997. Like his many predecessors, he observed serious irregularities in the books. He determined that over twelve million sucres were missing (about 3,000 dollars in 1997). Following all the negative reports, the leaders were strongly pressured to resign, and new, democratically elected ones were appointed. A few former board members sold their plots and disappeared from the cooperative. Others, including César Escalante, kept their land but rarely came to Cooperativa Santa Anita anymore. The resignation by the board of founders was viewed by increasing numbers of members as confirmation that their leaders had deceived them for years. In late 1998 the new board of the cooperative tried to recover part of the suspected financial loss. After carefully inspecting the financial records, they calculated that the shortfall was far higher than the auditor had determined: not twelve million but over 500 million sucres (nearly 47,000 dollars in 1998). They sued and pursued the case all the way to the Supreme Court. César Escalante retaliated by suing his successor for damaging his reputation, but the Supreme Court deemed his complaint inadmissible. In May 2003 he was sentenced in absentia to four years imprisonment for defrauding the cooperative (Gobierno del Ecuador 2003). He is said to be living in the United States today.

Differences of Opinion within the Neighborhood The origins of Cooperativa Santa Anita are by no means unique. Various studies mention land speculators who abuse the legislation on housing cooperatives (Garcia 1987; Glasser 1988). They undermine the few housing initiatives. How could a manager like César Escalante have had his way without any opposition for so long? When I first visited the cooperative in early 1999, I found so many arguments and problems that I had trouble understanding

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the complexity of the social relations. Years later, when I spoke with the residents about this period, I understood that some had in fact believed in the benefits of Escalante’s administrative style. During his years as a manager, César Escalante had an important network of social contacts at several government agencies. His administrative style revolved around patron–client relations with the coop members and private deals with the authorities. This approach was effective in some cases: Escalante’s achievements included installing electric power, which gave residents the impression that their manager was taking action. In retrospect, neighborhood resident Jorge believes that neighborhood development has stopped since the departure of manager Escalante: “we are no further than we were when that man was interrogated, because he was suspected of stealing money and stuff. Well, I think all authorities steal, some more than others.” Because corruption is widespread in Ecuador—in 2003, Ecuador was among the fourteen most corrupt countries in the world and in 2009 it was number 146 on a list with 180 countries (Seligson and Recanatini 2003; Transparency International 2003, 2010)—and the urban poor stand to gain more from somebody who knows his way around and how to get things done than they do from somebody who observes the law but gets bogged down in red tape, he does not understand why the manager was dismissed by the coop members, “just” for embezzlement. Most residents looked back on the turbulent period with mixed feelings. They had the impression that much was being done to help the neighborhood improve, but that the price was high, possibly too high. Vilma said: “when Escalante was still here, he got things done, but he exploited us, because he gave half to the cooperative and kept the other half for himself. Yes, he really exploited us. He got things done, but he charged us double.” Thinking back, resident Marisa believed that the members were partially to blame for the mess, because they let the manager do as he pleased. She attributes the problems that existed years later with legalizing the neighborhood in part to the poor imago that the neighborhood had acquired. Marisa: [B]efore, when we had just started the cooperative, we accepted whatever the manager told us. If he said: “we will bribe them to give us this or that,” we did it. Christien: Who was the manager back then? Marisa: Licenciado César Escalante. Christien: I see. Marisa: Yes, it was him, and we all believed what he told us. The consequence was— not so much because of him as because we simply took everything for granted— that we now have the plots in their present unauthorized state. We are neither part of the city nor part of the countryside, we are urban-marginal. The problems we have with the municipal authorities, because they do not provide water, because they give us nothing, may be the result of our taking for granted whatever Licen-

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ciado Escalante told us. He is not the only one to blame, we deserve most of the blame, because we accepted everything and did not tell him “no.”

Any positive retrospective assessments of his work were because César Escalante gave the new neighborhood residents a sense of togetherness, for example by organizing neighborhood festivals. These festivals boosted confidence in each other and in the leadership. Ana and her neighbor Maria said that there had been far more neighborhood festivals during Escalante’s tenure. They even celebrated the anniversary of the neighborhood’s establishment back then, since the previous manager initiated things like that: he would say “let’s celebrate.” Maria said that while these festivals obviously cost money, at least everybody in the cooperative was involved. Social relations between the residents and the manager reflected a clear hierarchy, where the manager rewarded the most loyal supporters, as señor Salazar confirmed. He explained that under the aegis of Escalante there had been a type of “oligarchy” in the neighborhood, to which he belonged as well. The spread of negative rumors deepened the rift between loyal and mistrusting members. One of the women in the coop was said to have had to pay the cost of her plot twice, because Escalante threatened that otherwise he would take the land away from her. The trust initially established was transformed into a dichotomy between “friends” and “enemies” of Escalante. This dichotomy persisted for years after he resigned. In 1999 I experienced an incident that illustrates how strongly people still felt two years after his departure. On April 12 of that year, the examining magistrate adjudicating the lawsuit filed by the cooperative against señor Escalante came to inspect Cooperativa Santa Anita to assess the contribution from Escalante as a manager. César Escalante was present in person, accompanied by a large group of family and friends not related to the cooperative. Escalante and his supporters were clearly in the majority and were highly confrontational; they shouted and challenged a few bystanders. This inspection by the judge meant a lot to Escalante: in addition to hoping that he would be acquitted from the charges filed by the cooperative against him, he had submitted a claim for two million sucres (about two hundred dollars at the time) in damages. In a loud, clear voice, Escalante told the judge and the crowd about the major accomplishments under his leadership. He mentioned a kindergarten, the community center, the sports field, and the “church” (an empty structure with three walls and a roof that was supposed to become a church but was never completed). A heated exchange ensued between supporters and opponents. The supporters called out that at least Escalante had launched the projects, whereas the current board had yet to take any discernible action. They also blamed the unfinished church on mismanagement by his successors. The opponents responded that the buildings he had just identified were not his work but that of the members and residents, who had built them in mingas.

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They said that Escalante had left the cooperative nearly bankrupt, so that no money remained to finish projects like the church, and that this was obviously not the fault of the present board of leaders. They were especially bitter that Escalante was presenting their joint accomplishments as his personal achievement and was attempting to conceal his own misconduct. Each group interpreted the course of events differently. Whenever the discussion turned to the former manager, conflicting interpretations came to a hilt, although relations between the two groups had improved since his departure. Marisa explained that tensions between neighbors had eased considerably since 1999. Eva said that Escalante still visited regularly following his dismissal, and that each time arguments erupted between supporters and opponents. After a while, he stopped coming, and the arguments became less frequent. When the most serious conflicts between Escalante’s supporters and opponents had subsided, the new board members and new problems soon instigated criticism. Most of Escalante’s supporters lived in Sector 1, the area where various common facilities were built under his management, such as the community center and the sports field. The residents of Sector 2 felt shortchanged for years. Even though they participated in mingas to build these facilities, none were ever installed in their part of the neighborhood. In response, they increasingly organized their own mingas, even after a new board was appointed. Some Sector 1 residents were angered by the separate activities, whereas others found the proactive approach in Sector 2 appealing. Old oppositions have acquired a new impetus and a new format but were in effect perpetuated in some respects. Dolores told me about the divisions between the residents of the two sectors. She had not lived there when Escalante was in charge but had heard plenty about the internecine strife. She considered the constant arguments to be so counterproductive that she regretted moving into Cooperativa Santa Anita. Dolores: We had no idea about cooperatives. If we had, we would have purchased [our home] elsewhere. Perhaps [something] smaller, I don’t know. We bought here mainly because it was cheap, but we never lived in a cooperative before and did not know what it was like. The organization is a mess. Nobody agrees. … Few people have good ideas that are feasible in practice, although everybody’s help and involvement is needed. To get anything done—suppose the president of the cooperative wants to submit a request to the municipal authorities—one person may show up, perhaps two or three. At the neighborhood meeting they say “we will go to the municipal authorities on this or that day” to complain about something. But not everybody comes; very few do. The no-show fine is five dollars, but they still don’t come, very few do. It is totally disillusioning. My uncle, who knows about cooperatives, has said “in a cooperative, things work better and much faster.” And now we say “why did he tell us that? He shouldn’t lie.” … Some people here argue with people from there [Sector 2], and they are the worst, they are the biggest troublemakers. They say that the people from there are trying

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to seize control, but that is not true; I think they just dislike them. As a result, the situation deteriorates, and everybody loses. Christien: Is it because of that other manager? Dolores: No, because the past lies behind us, and besides they say that the majority of the residents here liked him. But the fighting continues. I don’t know how people feel about it over there, but here they defend him. There are groups. Groups of people that disagree. … Some support the former manager, and others do not. That is still true; nothing has changed here. They disagree. Others do agree. But since we moved here, we have become disillusioned, because things really could have improved. Now twenty years might pass, and we still won’t have anything, nothing! I told my husband that we should sell this [house], if it is legalized. At least we will try. But legalization is practically out of the question. Those are the prospects we face.

Many explanations were provided for the differences of opinion. Don Pedro from Sector 1 attributed the lack of unity not only to the arguments that señor Escalante instigated but also to the fact that the current neighborhood president was from Sector 2. He believed that the residents there were more united and more “rational.” Ana (Sector 1) thought that the differences between the two sectors had arisen because the Sector 2 residents cared only about their own interests. She said that differences of opinion existed within her sector as well, especially between people living higher up the mountain and those living lower down, since the ones higher up felt disadvantaged because they had to walk further to reach facilities. The residents basically wanted the same facilities in “their” area. Eva (Sector 2) attributed the differences between people in Sector 1 who lived “up above” and those who lived “down below” to the impossibility of installing a water system because of the altitude. The people at the top of the hill had to pay for a municipal tanker to come fill their water reservoir, at a cost of up to forty dollars a month. In her sector, people would solve such problems together. Each household might pay ten dollars toward a water hose. But the residents at the back of the cooperative did not like to participate in such neighborhood initiatives, she explained. There had been an initiative to stop a wave of burglaries by starting a police patrol in the neighborhood. The police insisted that a few neighborhood residents accompany them on their neighborhood rounds to determine who did, and who did not belong in the neighborhood to prevent new burglaries. But none of the residents was interested, so the police patrol never started. Several residents distinguished good personal contacts from a cohesive neighborhood community. One is not necessarily the outcome of the other, as I will show for Ciudadela Carlos Crespi below as well. In early 2003 the differences of opinion and antipathies between the residents of the two sectors and lack of confidence in the newly elected board of leaders for the cooperative (this time consisting mainly of Sector 1 resi-

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dents) led Sector 2 to secede. The members decided that they could invest their money and energy more effectively and cancelled their membership of the cooperative to form their own neighborhood organization. The new neighborhood, which was called Urdesa del Norte, was established in March 2003. (In this and subsequent chapters the entire neighborhood comprising both sectors, including what later became Urdesa del Norte, is referred to as Cooperativa Santa Anita.) The renamed neighborhood, which was not acknowledged by the municipality either, joined the Federación de Barrios in Riobamba, which protects the interests of neighborhood organizations. When they seceded, the residents and landowners of Sector 2 forfeited their entitlement to their share of the general cooperative funds, although they remained liable for any outstanding debts of the exiting members. Canceling their membership of the cooperative membership and the course that the new neighborhood leaders pursued instantly gave rise to new conflicts between the sectors.

Legalization of Neighborhoods and Contacts with Professionals After several board members tried in vain to get Cooperativa Santa Anita legalized in the 1990s, 1999 marked the start of a new era. That year the municipal authorities established the Taller de Barrios Precarios (TBP). At the initiative of an architect who served as an alderman and a few young architects who had studied in Quito, this working group followed up on the successful urban planning policy in Quito by investigating whether the illegal neighborhoods in the suburbs might be legalized and integrated in the city. Mayor Abraham Romero (1996–2000) approved the plan, and the department of urban planning supervised its implementation. The objective of the working group was to set up a participatory project of town and country planning for urban-marginal neighborhoods within the Plan de Desarrollo Urbano de Riobamba (PDUR). The PDUR is an urban development plan drafted from 1988 onward at the request of the municipality of Riobamba by a Cuenca consulting firm under the aegis of the subsequent Cuenca mayor Fernando Cordero Cueva. In 1997 the development plan was approved for implementation and has been the main written development review criterion in Riobamba ever since (Municipalidad de Riobamba 1997). The TBP working group designed a plan comprising multiple stages to enable restructuring and legalization of the suburban neighborhoods. Thirtyseven neighborhoods within and outside the city limits that were eligible for restructuring were selected (Municipalidad de Riobamba 1999). The first stage of the plan was a pilot project elaborating the restructuring of Cooperativa Santa Anita and the adjacent area Santa Ana. A chart was compiled of the situation inside the cooperative, including topographically, since no decent

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map of Cooperativa Santa Anita existed yet. All houses and plots were recorded in detail on land register cards, to be entered later on in the municipal land register as part of legalization. In October 2000 the municipal authorities decreed that aid to working-class neighborhoods and social housing projects should be encouraged (Municipalidad de Riobamba 2000), giving the residents of Cooperativa Santa Anita new reason to hope that their neighborhood would be legalized. Because the cooperative became involved in the project, and sufficient political support was available, the residents were confident that this endeavor would be successful. But political changes often compromise policy continuity in Ecuador. Following the change of office in 2000, the new mayor had many of the architects at the urban planning department replaced, and the TBP working group was disbanded. The group’s records were placed in storage, and the drawings and maps were lost. For a while it seemed that intervention by MIDUVI might enable the process to continue, but ultimately the municipality abandoned the legalization process altogether. By that time the militancy of the manager who succeeded Escalante had all but disappeared. The cooperative board of leaders had commissioned an engineer in 2002 to compile more accurate topographical maps of the neighborhood, depicting all plots, buildings, and levels of altitude for the legalization process, as the municipality had rejected the existing drawings. Neighborhood residents put up the money for this work. Manager Ortiz presented the drawings to the municipality, where they mysteriously disappeared. The engineer who had the originals had moved away and was untraceable. This sloppiness, both on the part of the manager who should have submitted copies, and on the part of the civil servants who had failed to take proper care of the documents, meant that the members of Cooperativa Santa Anita were back at square one. After Sector 2 seceded in 2003 and became Urdesa del Norte, things improved within the downsized cooperative. Manager Ortiz was replaced by manager Garófalo, who reactivated the organization. He had gained experience as a manager at a housing cooperative to which he belonged, and which had also developed the neighborhood. He attributed the new zeal to his good contacts with the vicealcalde (the deputy mayor). Like in the early tenure of César Escalante, the new manager’s ties with influential persons within government agencies constituted valuable social capital, which in addition to generating new developments enhanced internal cohesion. New hope of legalization fostered unity within the downsized cooperative and led members to participate in mingas again, yielding a few concrete results. Once their confidence had been restored, residents participated more actively, and a trend of improvement was set in motion. After manager Garófalo arrived, another architect made new topographical maps of the neighborhood. This time copies were submitted to the municipality rather than the originals.

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Residents and members of the downsized cooperative continued to pursue legalization and neighborhood development. In the meantime, residents of the seceded Urdesa del Norte did exactly the same, operating under their new name. Cooperativa Santa Anita has been through some rough times since it was established in 1990, alternating small steps forward with periods of decline. While the appearance of the neighborhood changed rapidly, because residents built and remodeled their homes, little legal progress was achieved during the thirteen-year period. o ev nu s no re mi aflo a c ir aM

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Map 5. Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. Graphic design and cartography by Rien Rabbers and Margot Stoete (Geomedia, Utrecht University); © Christien Klaufus.

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Illustration 7. Northern section of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, 2002

Illustration 8. Sign marking the entrance to the neighborhood center

Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, Cuenca Barrio San Francisco becomes Ciudadela Carlos Crespi Ciudadela Carlos Crespi in Cuenca, in addition to being much older than Cooperativa Santa Anita, originated entirely differently and has a different organizational structure. The oldest residents report that the neighborhood emerged in the middle of the previous century as a spontaneous rural settlement outside the city limits. Because the neighborhood was not officially es-

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tablished but arose spontaneously, no deeds of establishment exist. Nor does a central neighborhood archive exist, and files on pending matters, such as building or improving infrastructure in the neighborhood, are held by various current and former board members. Less has been written about the neighborhood’s history than in Cooperativa Santa Anita, and the few written records are not centralized. Fortunately, at the time of this study, there were still about five families who had lived in this area since “the beginning.” Based on their stories, I reconstructed much of the origins of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. In the mid-twentieth century the southern part of what is now the territory of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi belonged to two adjacent haciendas of the Delgado family, of which the main buildings were outside the neighborhood. The land containing the northern part of the present neighborhood had been part of a farm owned by a spinster. From the 1950s onward, tracts of land were successively sold to agriculture companies and individuals, who bought them with the intention of building a home. Each family built its own home. Over the years, when the children married, they moved to an adjacent or nearby plot. Thanks to this gradual expansion, a few families still have several relatives living in the neighborhood with their families. The homes from the early period are made of large adobe blocks. Since this construction method is no longer used, the first generation of homes is easy to recognize. The rest of the residents arrived in the decades that followed, as the hacienda owners progressively sold off tracts of land from their property. The geographical area that is part of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi today consists of two hillsides facing one another, with the small Río Milchichig running in between (see Map 5). Previously the two hills were connected by a path to the village of Sinincay and a bridge named San Francisco. The path is now called the old road to Sinincay, and the bridge was later replaced. Residents who have lived there since those days remember the San Francisco Bridge as a wooden bridge with roof tiles overhead. The settlement around the bridge was soon popularly known as San Francisco and was officially part of the rural parish of Sinincay, within the Cuenca Canton. When the population grew, a president was appointed to represent the settlement. No formal neighborhood organization existed yet, but the president did launch some initiatives to develop the area. The elderly don Ricardo was one of the first neighborhood presidents. He claimed that under his aegis mingas built a new, unpaved road. Later, electricity and water pipelines were added. He remembered that during the first few decades he lived there, the neighborhood had only three public water stations. As the population grew, this was nowhere near enough, and mingas built a water pipeline. Doña Lorena and her husband also remembered that when they moved here about twentyfour years ago, they had to fetch water from the public water stations. They did their laundry in the river at first, and later, when it became polluted, at

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public washing sites. Because all residents used these washing sites, they often wound up doing their laundry in the middle of the night, just as people still did in Cooperativa Santa Anita in 2003. In the mid-1970s, when the area became more densely populated, development slowly began. The housing cooperative Llacta Huasi, established in 1975, purchased land northeast of the settlement. In 1976 a group of former students from the Salesian technical institute purchased a site southeast of the settlement to build a housing development and a school there. This middleclass housing development was systematically planned and named Urbanización Carlos Crespi, after a cherished Italian priest from the Salesian congregation known throughout Cuenca as “the priest of the poor.” When the former Salesians named the area where they lived Carlos Crespi, the residents of the settlement that had been called San Francisco voted to adopt an official name for their neighborhood. The residents from the southern section suggested Barrio Carlos Crespi, while the president at the time, who lived in the northern section, proposed Barrio San Francisco, because the settlement was already popularly known by that name. Barrio Carlos Crespi received the most votes. With this new name, the existing neighborhood was “officially” established. Don Ricardo confirmed the baptism of the village by placing a sign featuring its name in the center by the bridge (see Illustration 8). In the 1980s differences arose between the residents of the two sections on opposite banks of the river, and the neighborhood was divided into Carlos Crespi 1 and Carlos Crespi 2. Each sector had its own president and its own neighborhood festivals. The social dichotomy became an administrative one as well, when in 1983 the southern sector was incorporated into the city and officially became one of its districts, while the northern sector remained a rural area that was part of Sinincay. At a certain point the residents of the two sectors reunited and once again held their neighborhood assemblies and celebrations together. In the 1990s some of the residents from the northeast part broke away from the neighborhood. They were dissatisfied with the slow neighborhood development and felt the neighborhood president had abandoned them. They continued as Los Pinos. Around the same time the residents decided to change the name Barrio Carlos Crespi to Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. Don Ricardo explained: “because by now there were very elegant buildings … . The intention was to urbanize this, so that it would no longer be a barrio but a ciudadela.” In 1993, the municipality added the part north of the river to the urban area as well, and the neighborhood finally joined the Federación de Barrios de Cuenca. Unlike the registered geographic territory of Cooperativa Santa Anita and the notoriety (or infamy) of that area with the municipality of Riobamba, Ciudadela Carlos Crespi is a variable social-geographic construct of the residents and hardly known to the municipality. The municipal planning service

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divides the area differently. In addition to the professionals, even residents often had no idea of the extent of their neighborhood: what one regarded as Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, another might think was part of an adjacent district. They perceived no major differences between themselves and residents from adjacent neighborhoods and therefore considered the exact demarcation of their neighborhood to be irrelevant. Because the neighborhood board was equally unclear about which houses were, and which were not, part of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, the exact population is impossible to indicate. In 2001 there were probably 130 to 140 households.

Administrative Problems Because of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi’s loose organizational structure, which was the consequence of the neighborhood’s spontaneous emergence, residents suffered no consequences from the possibly fraudulent actions of the founders. Still, periods of internal dissent in this working-class neighborhood have compromised cohesion. The temporary division in Carlos Crespi 1 and Carlos Crespi 2 and the secession of Los Pinos exemplify this. The neighborhood organization in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi now consists of a board to which members are elected every two years, and which is chaired by an unpaid president. This organization has no legal status. Nor is there a separate office for storing documents. Each neighborhood president therefore keeps his or her own records, passing on only the financial records and deeds to the next board. This may cause confusion about arrangements believed to have been made by predecessors. Don Ricardo, who had lived between forty and fifty years in the neighborhood (longer than anybody else at the time of my study), served as the neighborhood president for years. Thanks to the good contacts he says he had with a former provincial prefect, he has managed to have a sports field built in addition to basic infrastructure. In 2002 the board members of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and adjacent neighborhoods did not know which neighborhood actually owned the sports field. Residents of the adjacent Urbanización Carlos Crespi claimed that the field belonged to their neighborhood, while the municipality believed that it belonged to all neighborhoods combined. At a board meeting don Ricardo turned out to have documents in his archive indicating that the sports field belonged exclusively to Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. Because he was initially unwilling to hand the documents over to the incumbent board, the president at the time was unable to deal with the conflict, and the board of leaders risked losing control of the sports field to the adjacent neighborhood. The friction between the former and incumbent neighborhood leaders escalated for a few weeks. Julia reported that don Ricardo had authoritarian ten-

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dencies. At one point, for example, he claimed his position as neighborhood president based on being one of the few to have grown up there. For years the presidency had rotated among members of his family without any elections. She considered his leadership to be undemocratic and illegitimate. Although the present neighborhood board members were elected, and don Ricardo was not among them, he continued to interfere in these affairs. The power struggle revolved around the question as to whether residents derived authority from their seniority in the neighborhood, as don Ricardo maintained, or from democratic election by fellow residents, as the board members believed. The well-known social-scientific debate over whether leadership was ascribed or achieved was conducted daily here. Although the difference of opinion was not as pronounced here as in Cooperativa Santa Anita, some residents found the interfering behavior of the former president and the bickering within the board irritating. An ambience of hostility ensued. Like in Cooperativa Santa Anita, the social hierarchy in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi has a geographic component. Both the former president and his family, as well as the incumbent president, vice president, and secretary, live near the bridge. That section counts as the administrative center of the neighborhood. Next to the bridge was the sign welcoming visitors, which don Ricardo placed there in the 1970s. A bit further down by the roadside was a blackboard announcing neighborhood meetings. On the roof of the secretary’s home was a loudspeaker proclaiming important news. Because Ciudadela Carlos Crespi does not have a separate community center (meetings are held at a nearby school), residents gathered at this site to discuss important topics. That section of the neighborhood had nearly all basic facilities. Residents who lived far from the bridge, in an area where the ground was subsiding, felt neglected by the neighborhood leaders. Claudia told me: Divided, we are divided in this neighborhood. They do not consider us over there. That is why when they call us to attend the meeting, we sometimes object and say “if we see no improvement at all here, only there, why go?” Sometimes they want money, but what is the use, if we do not share in the benefit here. We are isolated here. They have always neglected us. It has been this way for years, and we derive no benefit whatsoever, so what is the use? They keep calling us to attend the meetings, but when they call me, I don’t go; I don’t go because there is really no point.

She and many of her neighbors had the impression that the neighborhood leaders cared only about building facilities in “their part” of the neighborhood. Maria Caridad explained how she perceived the situation: Fairly recently, we replaced the electricity network. We all worked together, the entire neighborhood, because it benefited all of us. Since then, however, there have been certain programs, some things do in fact happen in groups.

Emilia and Esteban had the same experience:

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A few days ago they came to collect money for a lunch for the men doing work here—architects and engineers. They solved the problem over there and forgot this area here. What a shame that the river divides the neighborhood in half; only the problems on the other bank are solved.

They did not agree that the uneven neighborhood development was attributable to geographic shortcomings, such as land subsidence in the southern section; on the contrary, this should have been cause for additional concern on the part of the board (and of the municipality) regarding their section of the neighborhood. The development was so lopsided, they felt, that since the facilities on the side where the board members lived were nearly finished, neighborhood meetings were not being held anymore. I cannot tell whether that was indeed the case, but that was how they perceived the situation.

Maneuvering an Unwieldy Bureaucracy Neighborhood leaders have a tough time pleasing everybody. The members depend on assistance from professionals working for the municipality. They deliberately present themselves there as needy citizens requiring government support. During my stay, the president and secretary of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi spent months trying to get municipal support for various temporary facilities, including a retaining wall intended to prevent landslides on the south side of the neighborhood. But they were unable to get the bureaucracy to cooperate at city hall. Several times a week they visited the architects at the municipal planning department and the engineers at the Ministerio de Obras Públicas and the utilities company Etapa. Each time, they were sent from one department to the other and from one company to the other. Because the residents kept hearing that the city planned to do something, but nothing happened, some lost faith in the neighborhood board of leaders and in the municipality. In this neighborhood, too, one part of the community felt underprivileged with respect to the residents on the “other side.” They stopped paying their dues and contributing their labor. The collective activities ground to a halt. Working-class residents understand that building infrastructural facilities without help from the municipality is next to impossible. They do their best to bring problems in their neighborhood to the attention of the professionals and authorities, but their efforts are usually in vain. Amalia: Building this path caused everything else to subside, and landslides started, as you can see. … Telerama [a local television station] was here, people from the radio came, they interviewed us and all, but it did not get us anywhere. We asked the mayor to help us with this situation, but no, no. No, they don’t care, because we are poor folk, because they live elsewhere. If they lived here, the mayor and the like, we would have it much better, we would have a road. But no politicians live here. They are not interested.

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Rafael: As has been said: “nobody important lives here.” … Amalia: That’s right. Rafael: Take the roads, for example. If you go to Avenida Don Bosco on the other side of town, behind the stadium, all the way over there, you’ll see guards on every street corner. Amalia: It’s different over there. Rafael: Because the delegates live there, as well as the mayors, all “owners” of the City of Cuenca live there. More accurately: only us “indios” live here.

Only when elections are approaching do the candidates appear in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. They make promises they never keep or cannot deliver, such as that they will advocate building facilities that never materialize for lack of money or political interest, or because the projects turn out to be more technically complex than expected. In many cases, the inner city is the top priority in development policy, as is the case in Cuenca, explained mother Monica and daughter Noelia: Noelia: The mayor is not interested [in us]. He cares more about the center, not about this section, so all surrounding areas have been completely overlooked. Especially here: hardly any of the mayors ever comes here… None of them has ever shown the slightest interest. Look at the state of this place, abandoned, yes that’s what it looks like here. This is what they do. Monica: Even though this is a big city… Noelia: Look, this is supposed to be an urban area! It is urban, but it looks rural. Here, for example: I wanted to build myself something here, but that’s impossible—look at this area.4 To this day, they have not fixed it up, they never built the retaining wall they said they would. … This area has been forgotten for about twenty years now. And each time they start their political campaigns… Monica: … they show up here. Christien: Really? Noelia: They say they will do this and that. You wouldn’t believe it! For that, they’re perfectly happy to walk over here and take a look. But afterwards, once they’re in office, they forget all about it.

Even though Ciudadela Carlos Crespi has officially been part of the City of Cuenca since the 1990s, the residents still thought that assistance came only in the run-up to the elections. Once elected politicians entered office, they would forget about the promises they had made. Considering the minimal interest among policymakers in this type of neighborhood, there is little difference between the two neighborhoods I studied in this respect. I often accompanied the neighborhood officials of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and Cooperativa Santa Anita on their visits to municipal institutions. They kept being sent from pillar to post and had great difficulty reaching the right person. Professionals employed by the municipality were superficially courteous, but this courtesy concealed an authoritarian attitude indicat-

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ing that they could not or would not change anything about the situation. In some instances the treatment the neighborhood residents received was downright condescending. On 4 November 2003 I accompanied Ciudadela Carlos Crespi president Pablo to the Public Works department of the City of Cuenca. For a while the municipality had been paving the through road to Sinincay with asphalt. The last few hundred yards were taking months to cover. Pablo wanted to ask the engineer in charge whether they could finish the last section soon, as the diverted traffic, primarily trucks and buses, was a nuisance to the residents. I was present at the conversation, although I did not participate. The engineer assumed that I was a foreign student who knew hardly a word of Spanish and spoke freely in my presence. After a long time, the neighborhood president got his turn. He explained to the engineer that failing to lay the asphalt surface on the last part was causing major traffic problems on a different, much narrower road. Moreover, the neighborhood residents were concerned that all the trucks were causing this other road to subside. The engineer openly laughed at the neighborhood president and said that the gabions supporting the road could not possibly subside, because they were designed to give with the surface. He added that if there was already any subsidence, it was because the land in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi was unsuitable for construction, emphasizing that the neighborhood was unauthorized. The asphalt paving would not be completed any time soon, because by law the last few hundred yards still had to be tendered. Two contractors would have to be found, each one for a small section of the road. The Public Works engineer concluded that the neighborhood residents were to blame for the problem, because they had rejected his proposal for an alternative diversion. The neighborhood president observed that buses had briefly driven the route proposed, but that this road was so steep that one bus had rolled backward, running over a small child, who was seriously injured. The engineer laughed uproariously for the benefit of the others in his office, and said that bus drivers nowadays no longer even knew how to drive their buses. The others present politely laughed with him. Since the conversation had taken an unpleasant turn, the neighborhood president got up to leave, thanking the engineer for his time. The engineer responded: “Don’t mention it, we’re here to serve you.” We left his office. This conversation leads me to a few important observations about social interactions and the roles people play. In formal interviews with me, the professionals employed by the municipality were always polite and frank, at times even self-critical. This was the first time I noticed that a civil servant was condescending, even though the neighborhood residents had complained to me about that on other occasions. His non-verbal cues and body language exuded more condescension than his words. By ridiculing every sincere remark from the neighborhood president, he made the neighborhood presi-

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dent feel uncomfortable. Three specific parts of the conversation made clear that the engineer felt superior. He depicted himself as an expert with respect to the “layman” Pablo by pointing out the structure and effect of gabions and by ridiculing the neighborhood president for his ignorance about the subject. In his role as a policy implementer, the engineer remarked that the neighborhood was unauthorized, which was completely irrelevant as far as asphalt paving for the through road (the project we came to discuss) was concerned. And the engineer blamed the neighborhood residents for the traffic problem, suggesting that they were not receptive to diverting traffic along a different route, as well as on the bus companies, which supposedly employed inept drivers. At no point in the conversation did he disclose an expected time frame for finishing the asphalt paving on the last section of road surface or discuss any opportunities for accelerating the process, even though the neighborhood president had asked about those subjects. The engineer’s conduct was effective. Pablo grew discouraged by the attitude of the civil servant and left the office, at which point the engineer confirmed his superiority by stating the opposite: “We are here to serve you.” In addition to the influence of individual professionals on the course of projects, lack of coordination between the different municipal institutions impedes neighborhood development. The moment an institution agrees to build a given facility, a series of “unforeseen” problems arises and renders the entire project impossible. The south side of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, for example, needed a sewage system, which could be built only once the road under which the pipes were to be laid stopped subsiding. To prevent subsidence, the institution commissioned to provide the sewage system recommended building a retaining wall, which would have to be ordered from another institution. This other institution maintained that a retaining wall would not solve the problem, because the soil was too weak and unstable. The neighborhood board members were sent from one department to another looking for a solution, with none forthcoming. Ultimately, the residents devised their own provisional solution to the waste water problem, although in the meantime they were charged on their monthly utilities bill for using a sewage system that did not exist. Emilia and Esteban, a married couple, told me that the monthly charge for water consumption on their utilities bill was increased by half for their use of this non-existent sewage system. They paid eighteen dollars a month to the Etapa utilities company—six dollars too much, in their view. Lack of central control at the municipality can lead to unpleasant situations, for example when residents are accused of living in an unauthorized housing development that the municipality has facilitated. Emilia told me, for example, that a building permit had been issued for her home, but that the plot later turned out to be unsuitable for construction.

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Emilia: One day a guy [from the municipality] came to me and said “Madame, why have you purchased this plot, which used to be a ravine?” He said that this had once been a ravine with a stream at the bottom water flowed through, and that they had simply thrown soil on top of it. I asked him: “In that case, why did the municipality issue me a permit?” Esteban: After all, we did not know about that. Emilia: I did not know about that, I just heard, but I already had a building line permit. And the municipality had given me permission to build the house, so I told him, “It looks like the municipality is making a mistake, because if you had told me that I was not allowed to build here, I would have asked the man who sold me the land for a different plot, but you gave me permission, and now I no longer have any recourse to the man who sold me the land. And see what the house looks like.” But he said there was nothing they could do. That’s how it went here.

Aside from the residents bearing the brunt of these miscommunications among the different municipal institutions, they need to invest tremendous efforts in getting projects that are approved to be fulfilled. As the parties applying for a project, they are responsible for the costs of construction. If a sewage system is built in the street, the households that are connected share the cost: that is the official rule. In addition, all neighborhood residents are expected to pay for meals provided to the professionals in charge. In most cases they have to help do the work as well. These are the unofficial rules. Emilia explained how the system worked: Everything is a team effort here. That is not the case in the oriente.5 So when they started installing electricity, they got together with us and asked: Who will provide the soft drinks? Who will bring beer? Who will arrange the meal? … Some people had to help carry cables, others the tools. That’s how it worked. So I said: “No, I have to pay. Why should I help do the work as well?” I told the electrician: “I can’t do that, I don’t know about that.” No look, this is how it happened: one man came to carry—no, he did not carry a thing, he just gave orders. One woman had to get the electric wire, another woman had to carry something else, still another woman had to carry a shovel. They all followed the man responsible for the installation. That’s how it went. And if you did not give them soft drink or anything else, they skipped your house. We did not see why we should give them anything, which is why they hooked our place up to the electricity network last.

In the highlands, participating in mingas organized by neighborhood and government institutions is regarded as a civic duty. People from other parts of the country, such as this couple from the oriente, do not take this obligation for granted. The lunches provided to the architects and engineers were regarded by the board members as an important overture intended to ensure that they would enjoy their work in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and would do a good job. In the Ecuadorian sierra these forms of patronage are part of everyday life. People not originally from the highlands, such as the couple quoted above, however,

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would prefer not to partake in these modes of interaction, since they are citizens and paying customers; after all, they are paying for the project to be implemented. The neighborhood board members are more pragmatic. Like in the early years of Cooperativa Santa Anita, patronage is perpetuated in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, because it is the fastest way for the organization to achieve progress. Depending on their tenacity, resolve, and willingness to oblige, residents may or may not get government agencies to contribute their expertise and materials toward facilities in the neighborhood, which residents must help build.

Neighborhood Development Processes Neighborhood residents try both independently and as a group to find solutions to problems they face in their surroundings. They need each other, but that does not mean that they feel a strong bond. Good relations between neighbors do not automatically make for neighborhood cohesion (Greene and Ortúzar 2002; Greene 2003). Conversely, bad relations may undermine collective efforts and consequently the chances of achieving progress. Comparing Cooperativa Santa Anita with Ciudadela Carlos Crespi enables me to examine the features of social relations in working-class neighborhoods. I describe how social relationships are determined by the space in which they are situated, how a symbolic community spirit is constructed, and whether residents feel emotional ties to the neighborhood. This reveals how the social factor figures in the consolidation process.

Illustration 9. Workplace at home, Ciudadela Carlos Crespi

Illustration 10. Artist from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi with a “museum” at home

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Social-Geographic Aspects of the Neighborhood Community Comparing Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi is useful for determining in what measure the features of the neighborhood territory influence how residents identify with their neighborhood. After all, both neighborhoods consist of two distinct geographic areas: in Cooperativa Santa Anita the two areas are separate, and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi is bisected by a river. These striking geographic features reinforce the perception among residents that their neighborhood is not a single community but comprises two or more groups. The physical separation between Sector 1 and Sector 2 in Cooperativa Santa Anita gave rise to a social division that extended beyond a dichotomy between the sectors. The residents from Sector 1 turned out to be divided into groups as well: people who live “at the top of the hill” distinguish themselves from the residents “down below.” Every group activity could in effect turn into a sensitive issue, with one group feeling at a disadvantage compared to the other. The social dichotomy between the sectors led to a rift there, and the former Sector 2 became the new neighborhood Urdesa del Norte. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi a similar rift occurred between the north and the south sections of the neighborhood, but both parts later converged and united to form a single neighborhood organization. The subsequent secession of Los Pinos had nothing to do with the geographic features of the site but was instigated by the overwhelming sense of disadvantage among a group of residents. Researcher Yvonne Riaño (1993) relates community spirit in workingclass neighborhoods to physical location. She believes that the residents of her research neighborhood in Quito identify closely with their neighborhood, because most of their daily activities occur there. She argues that clear territorial demarcation reinforces identification and observes that the neighborhood residents in her study feel little or no sense of identification with the actual city or with the suburban ring of working-class neighborhoods but identify specifically with their own territory and neighborhood community. In Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi these territorial ties are not that pronounced yet. Despite the difference between the neighborhoods in terms of clear neighborhood boundaries, ties with the territory are not strong in either neighborhood. The borders of Cooperativa Santa Anita are set forth in the deeds of purchase for the two sites, whereas the borders of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi are subject to various interpretations. But this does not mean that the neighborhood community in Cooperativa Santa Anita is more cohesive than in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. In fact, the sectors in the Cooperativa are deeply divided. In the less clearly demarcated neighborhood Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, however, nearly 30 percent of those questioned in the survey mentioned good contacts with neighbors as a positive attribute of the neighborhood, placing this response at the top of the list of most appreci-

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ated neighborhood features. This might suggest a relatively strong identification with the neighborhood community, even though nobody knows how far the community extends and despite the discontent over inequities in building neighborhood facilities. Although many residents regard the neighborhood as where they live, they rarely work or engage in leisure pursuits there. Many neighborhood residents spend part of the day in the city center, where they work, shop, or take care of administrative obligations (such as submitting applications or making payments). Most of the men and a smaller share of the women worked in the city center, and many children attended school there. Some families worked from their home, but that did not compromise their freedom of movement. The man in Illustration 9, in addition to trimming hats, drove a cab, for example, and therefore worked at home part of the time and elsewhere in the city the rest of the time. The man in Illustration 10, in addition to having his place of work and a “museum” (that was not open to the public) at home, had a shop and place of work in the city center. On weekends families would visit parks and squares in the city center or participate in sports competitions in nearby neighborhoods and villages. Intermediate provincial capitals, such as Riobamba and Cuenca, have decent bus service between the city center and the suburbs, enabling residents to operate throughout the entire city and part of the surrounding countryside. Residents felt no particular ties to the neighborhood territory. If they identified with any part of the city, it was with the suburban area, with the area between the city and the countryside. Many respondents appreciated the space, the relative calm, and the natural surroundings, together with the urban facilities available to them. In interviews and photo elicitations I often heard about the lovely views of trees and fields that made living in this section of the city preferable to the densely built-up middle-class neighborhoods in the center. They felt like “suburbanites” without experiencing any specific ties with Cooperativa Santa Anita or Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. If they saw opportunities for social advancement, residents moved away from their neighborhood, either temporarily or permanently. Family members of transnational migrants were especially willing to move: either they followed their family member, or they used the money from the remittance to purchase a house in a different neighborhood. Julia, the strongest advocate of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi’s neighborhood organization, had a husband who had lived in the United States for some time. Despite being very active in the neighborhood organization and having achieved modest successes for the neighborhood, she stopped focusing on its future in 2002. That year, she announced that she would be joining her husband and sisters and the rest of her family in New York. By the fall of 2003, when I rang her doorbell, she had moved, and only her elderly mother and youngest niece still lived there,

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the only two members of a large family of which everybody had settled in New York. Ivon and her husband (who had emigrated to the United States) had different relocation plans. They purchased a tract of land in another expansion area of Cuenca. Her shanty made of boards was at the edge of the abyss overlooking the river embankment. In addition to all the noise from the neighbors, her home was gradually slipping into the ravine behind it. She and her husband hoped to build a new, stronger home on the new plot and to sell their present one. Thanks to the money that her husband made in the United States, they were able to carry out this plan. Her husband would return to Cuenca as soon as the new home was finished. She had no regrets that she would be trading Ciudadela Carlos Crespi for a different suburban neighborhood in the future. Faced with opportunities to improve their living conditions elsewhere, most residents will leave their neighborhood. Their ties to their land are not strong enough to stop them from moving. There is a different spatial principle that does structure the community in both neighborhoods, and that characterizes the geographic unity: the perceived contrasts between “up above” and “down below,” “front” and “back.” In both neighborhoods, in addition to the physical dichotomy, a social construction of contrasting subcommunities exists. In Cooperativa Santa Anita these subcommunities are known as Sector 1 and Sector 2, and within Sector 1, those living “up above” differ from those living “down below.” In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi residents also categorized themselves as “front” and “back.” In interviews, neighborhood residents distinguished themselves from “others,” who lived on the other side of the neighborhood, and who were better off: residents living “up above” compared their situation with that of the people “down below,” “front” residents distinguished themselves from the “rear” residents and vice versa. A remarkable comparison with the hanan/hurin polarities principle from traditional Andean culture comes to mind here. Gade has described dual organization of space as one of the most important features of Andean culture (Gade 1999). Named after an old battle between the residents of Hanan and Hurin (Cuzco), the hanan/hurin duality is a model encompassing the cosmological polarities associated with “up above,” the sun and the male (hanan) on the one hand, and on the other hand “down below,” the earth and the feminine (hurin) (Moore 2004). In rural, indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian highlands, the distinction between people living “up above” and those living “down below” is labeled by residents as hanan and hurin (Cruz 1997: 7). Although I have not heard anybody use the terms hanan and hurin, this structuring element of Andean culture may have persisted in working-class neighborhoods, albeit in a reversed way with “up above” as the least favored position. At any rate, the polarity between the subcommunities still exists in the vernacular and is the foundation for identifying with the neighborhood territory.

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Symbolic Construction of the Neighborhood Community Another feature of indigenous culture that figures in the symbolic construction of the neighborhood as a community is the fiesta-cargo system, a hierarchy of ceremonial tasks dating back to the colonial era. This system originally applied to the organization of lay fraternities and to the careers of the members within the fraternities. In this system, members took turns performing certain functions in the organization, which was dedicated to arranging religious life within the community. Anyone performing a function in the fraternity was investing time and money (cargo) and in exchange acquired a certain standing within the community. Local indigenous leaders, caciques, often held the highest function in the hierarchy (Abercrombie 1998: 291–304). After the colonial era the fiesta-cargo system continued in various formats. Both research neighborhoods had similar ceremonial systems for years. Neighborhood festivals, religious ceremonies, sports tournaments, and beauty pageants were the perfect moments for cultivating a sense of togetherness (see Cohen 2000a: 50–51). These events, which were usually organized by the neighborhood board, were also where the personal domain of individual residents and their families overlapped with the collective, organizational domain of the neighborhood. Neighborhood residents have told me, however, that neighborhood festivals have been fading fast in recent years, and that the fiesta-cargo system has disintegrated. Residents in Cooperativa Santa Anita fondly remember the days when their former manager Escalante organized festivals. He pioneered the annual celebration of neighborhood establishment day—a celebration that was discontinued after Escalante’s departure. Around that time Christmas was also celebrated far more elaborately than it is nowadays. Each year residents would organize a Pase del Niño, a procession from the neighborhood to the city center, bearing a sculpture of baby Jesus. Ana reported: Before, when the neighborhood had just started, we all joined, and everyone helped. The Pase del Niño continued to the city center. We might be divided according to manzana or lot. They might cluster three manzanas and decide that those [residents] would build the float together. Another group from three or four buildings might organize a dance performance, and so on … . Everybody helped, but we did it together.

A disc jockey or fanfare provided the music. Bullfights even became part of the Christmas festivities, although the cost became prohibitive after a few years. Manager César Escalante made a lot of money available for the festivals. To demonstrate his personal involvement, he donated the main symbol of Christmas: a sculpture of baby Jesus, dressed in lovely velvet clothes covered with sequins. In the days leading up to Christmas, the statue rotates among the residents, who build a family shrine for it in their home. This custom, the novena, is one of the few ceremonies that continued after Escalante left.

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In the Andes, Christmas ceremonies have traditionally been thought to bring good fortune in the New Year. The fiesta-cargo system served to rotate the responsibilities for organizing the Christmas celebration. The cacique, who was at the top of the local hierarchy, presided over these ceremonies. The role that César Escalante assumed in the neighborhood ceremonies in Cooperativa Santa Anita and the way he had them organized closely resembled the style of the caciques in the traditional fiesta-cargo system. After César Escalante left, most festivals were discontinued, because of all the arguments and the serious financial problems of the cooperative. At Christmas the only event is an open air mass, which hardly anybody attended anymore in 2001. After Escalante left, the annual novena instigated debate between the residents from both sectors. The main subject of contention was who would get the sculpture and when. In the end, the residents from Sector 2 took up a collection and purchased their own statue. In Sector 2 the private statue still rotates, while the statue of the cooperative stays in Sector 1. The neighborhood festivities, which at first served to unite the residents of Cooperativa Santa Anita, have lost importance over the years. Still, many residents regret that the traditional neighborhood festivities have ceased. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi the dire economic straits that many households are experiencing and the massive migration of neighborhood residents abroad has also changed or reduced the popularity of some traditional celebrations. The community celebration of Mother’s Day, for example, has been abolished. Traditionally, on that day a Madre Simbolo was elected, a woman who, as the “best mother in the neighborhood,” symbolized goodness and caring in the neighborhood community. Other festivals that used to be organized by and for the entire neighborhood, such as New Year’s Eve and Mardi Gras week, are no longer community events but have become private family celebrations. The only community ones that remain are the annual novena and a public Christmas celebration with a sculpture of baby Jesus donated by a neighborhood resident who emigrated. The other festivals from the old fiesta-cargo system have disappeared from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi as well. As a result, there are fewer shared symbolic occasions enabling residents to construct or reconstruct their community identity. In addition to ties with the territory, the contrasting link between subcommunities and the symbolic construction of the community via festivals, sharing experiences and memories of the establishment and construction of the neighborhood is mentioned in the literature as an important factor for cultivating a sense of togetherness. In his study about a working-class neighborhood in Quito, Burgwal argues that mutual solidarity is based on [t]he collective memory that through collective organization and action the poor are able to advance” (Burgwal 1995: 189). He has observed that the experience of building a neighborhood and living environment together makes for

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greater cohesion and attachment between the residents. García et al. (1999) also argue that the daily memory of this joint effort cultivates close ties between residents and leads them to identify with their neighborhood and the neighborhood community. In Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, however, the memories of building the neighborhood together are not a strong enough cohesive force to preserve the sense of togetherness, especially because some first-generation residents have left the neighborhood by now or do not get along anymore. Even if residents have common memories of how their neighborhood came about, they are more likely to interpret the neighborhood community as being formed for the occasion than as a group with a shared identity of which they feel they are part. Because many neighborhood ceremonies have disappeared, and the group of residents has become diversified, residents perceive their personal domain as drifting away from the collective one. Neighborhood participation, empowerment, and the pursuit of a common objective have become disassociated from personal contacts between neighbors, in which values such as mutual trust, reciprocity, a sense of safety, and shared standards come into play. Marisol from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, for example, explained that everybody got along well with each other, but together were not able to work together effectively. She expressed what most of the Ciudadela Carlos Crespi felt: they were satisfied with their personal contacts with neighbors but unhappy about the lack of cooperation in mingas and at meetings. Whereas in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi 30 percent of those questioned described good contacts as the neighborhood’s strongest attribute, 15 percent responded that lack of cooperation was the worst shortcoming of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. Good contacts therefore do not necessarily guarantee a smooth working relationship. Conversely, personal contacts are not necessarily affected by a poor working relationship. Even if ties temporarily weaken between the people living “up above” and those “down below” or between those in “front” and those at the “back,” small groups of residents may still feel they can count on each other. In the separate sections of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and in Sector 2 of Cooperativa Santa Anita, residents have considerable faith in their immediate neighbors. This is because many neighbors are related. In Sector 1 of the cooperative, however, a sense of mutual mistrust exists. This mistrust makes for a genuine or imagined sense of insecurity. Good personal contacts may thus coincide with poor collective working relationships without neighborhood residents needing to worry, but bad personal contacts lead to social insecurity. Paradoxically, this sense of social insecurity makes residents feel forced to be friendly toward everybody in public to avoid becoming victims of theft or other crimes. Claudia from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi explained:

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Claudia: This neighborhood is a zona roja. Christien: What does that mean? Claudia: A zona roja is where people live who do bad things, who harm others by stealing. Yes, this is a zona roja, that’s why I say that all of us need to pay attention to our belongings. Christien: And do these thieves live in the neighborhood, or do they come from elsewhere? Claudia: Yes, they live here. Down there, they live down here in [the neighborhood] Jaime Roldós. The people who live there are nearly all from El Vecino. They know us all and won’t do a thing to us, they see us but don’t hurt us, because we know them. It’s better to get along with each other than to make enemies there. Yes, you need to get along. So this is a zona roja, the neighborhood is a zona roja. Sometimes we need police support, but they won’t come. Christien: They won’t? Claudia: They are afraid to come here. Christien: Are you afraid to live here? Claudia: No, no, because, like I said, we have lived here so long now, and nobody has ever hurt us. This is because we don’t bother them either. No, I’m not afraid.

When residents don’t know each other, if unpleasant incidents occur with fellow residents, or if there are prejudices, mistrust may arise. People moving in and out of the neighborhood, for example, leads longstanding residents to be more cautious, especially if the newcomers are from a different region. In Cooperativa Santa Anita, where most residents are first generation, this turnover has materialized only recently, especially because more homes and sections of homes are being rented out. Several residents from Sector 1 in Cooperativa Santa Anita told me about a wave of burglaries a few years ago, in which neighborhood residents were suspected to be the perpetrators. Christien: Are these people from the cooperative or from elsewhere? Janneth: They don’t know. From here. After all, who else lives here? From here. Christien: How can that be? Have new people moved in here? Janneth: There are some new people. Back there are a lot of new people we don’t know well. They move here from other areas. Some rent, so you just don’t know who they are.

Many first-generation residents from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi have since moved to other homes in Cuenca or have moved abroad in search of work. New owner-occupants and tenants have replaced them (see Table 4). People from poorer parts of the country have found Cuenca, soaked with migrant dollars, especially appealing. These new residents from other regions did not always receive a warm welcome. Marisol explained that the money from emigrants was often used to build new houses with a view toward renting them out. “Sometimes they rent out these houses, and people move there from

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the city center and from the costa,6 such as there—I don’t know whether you know that lady, the house back there—morenitos [dark people from the coast] live there now.” She saw these newcomers as an asset and a disadvantage at the same time. On the one hand, they could use the additions to their neighborhood organization, but on the other hand, more and more “bad” folk were settling in the neighborhood and setting the wrong example for her children. Doña Soledad also told me that she believed that Ciudadela Carlos Crespi had been deteriorating since the arrival of some new residents, who in her view had different standards. These people are from the coastal region. They are not originally from Cuenca, and that is the problem, because as you know the people who live here are not exclusively locals but have become a hybrid group, comprising immigrants from the sierra, the costa—people who are not from here. If all the newcomers were from here, how could they harm their own kind? After all, many say that Cuenca is a Maria city, which means that Catholicism has always prevailed here. And the Catholic religion teaches us: Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not envy others for their possessions! So how could we harm ourselves? People from other areas do that, those are not people from Cuenca.

Residents were initially very suspicious of the newcomers with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, but they were in the minority. By showing their good will, both in personal interactions and by participating in the collective activities of the neighborhood organization, they established themselves in the neighborhood community. Table 4. Duration of residence Years residing in the neighborhood

Cooperativa Santa Anita, Established between 1990 and 1992 (1999 survey)

Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, originated between 1950 and 1960 (2001 survey)

30 Total

13 100 % (n = 41)

100 % (n = 72)

Source: Household surveys 1999, 2001.

Course of the Consolidation In a country such as Ecuador, where the housing policy targets home ownership, only citizens who own their homes truly matter. Most people in the two working-class neighborhoods covered in this study owned their homes.

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In Cooperativa Santa Anita over 90 percent of the households were owneroccupied, and in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi close to 60 percent were. Raised according to this tradition, most neighborhood residents were happy to have their own home where they could do as they pleased. They saw their present home as a major improvement over their previous one (possibly one they rented), because owning a home provides a measure of freedom, and nobody can criticize your behavior in your own home. Diego, a young, married man with three children, who lived in Santa Anita, told me about the restrictions that tenants often face. Diego: Of course owning your home is wonderful, since living in a rented one is very annoying. Christien: Why? Because you have to keep paying rent? Diego: No, not because you have to pay rent, but because the owner keeps coming to bother you. Because they shut off the electricity. Christien: Really? Diego: Oh yes, they shut off our electricity a few times. Or sometimes when you had been away, they would make trouble. They might lock up the front door to prevent you from getting in again, and you would have to knock. Landlords were irritating. Christien: Does that always happen when you rent? Diego: Yes, we had the same experiences in nearly all homes we rented. Of course some owners simply gave us the keys, so that we did not always have to bang on the door or ring the bell. They would give us the keys, and we could enter. In another home they refused to let me in, because they had already given me notice on the room…, they no longer let me in, even though I had not yet found another room. I wasn’t even allowed to come get my things. Christien: How odd. Diego: Yes, it was. Some guy owned the place. I stayed with my aunt for three days and found another room from there. It took nearly three days to get my stuff out. They wouldn’t let me in anymore. They said, “We gave you time, why don’t you leave?” They locked the door and wouldn’t let me in anymore. That’s what happens in other people’s homes; that’s why I really like having my own home. You don’t need to worry about anything, like when will they cancel my lease, when will I have to leave, where will I go to find another room? You don’t need to worry about that anymore.

I realized how controlling landlords could be when I was visiting a girlfriend living in an inner-city working-class neighborhood in Riobamba. Her landlord shut off the water every day from six o’clock in the morning until late in the evening. The whole family had to rise at five to shower and do the dishes and laundry. Diego was referring to these kinds of restrictions as well. Despite the lack of basic facilities and the social problems in working-class neighborhoods, home ownership and the freedoms that come with it signify major progress for families used to living in rented quarters. The sense of

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belonging somewhere relates primarily to family situations. When their family members are free to live in peace and without being bothered, most residents of Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi feel at home in the neighborhood. When individual interests clash with collective ones, residents defend the interests of their household and family. This means that if they have to choose, they prefer to invest their time, money, and labor in their own home than participate in the compulsory neighborhood mingas for building neighborhood facilities. Don Pedro and señor Salazar from Cooperativa Santa Anita, for example, told me that they deliberately kept their distance from the events in the cooperative, because there were so many disagreements. They rarely attended the mandatory neighborhood meetings, opting to pay the subsequent fine instead. They spent all their free time rebuilding their home. Señor Salazar had expanded his home considerably over the years. In addition to a shop and a party hall, his home contained a dining room and kitchen, with an open area above that was partitioned into four sleeping areas. In 2003 I noticed that he was busy expanding the upstairs, where he intended to build several bedrooms and bathrooms. He described his house as “a casa that would eventually be a villa” and had all kinds of plans to rebuild his home into that luxury dream villa. One of the facilitating factors was that in the meantime his wife had migrated to Spain to work there. This modest additional income available helped them achieve their ideal home. Collective projects that fail due to differences of opinion and bureaucratic hurdles may succeed in smaller groups or as individual endeavors, because they can be realized outside the official, legal channels. According to those I interviewed, for example, in 1999 a resident of Cooperativa Santa Anita was the only one who already had a telephone, because he knew people at the local telephone company. The rest of the neighborhood had to wait until 2004. Another family in Sector 1 of the cooperative used remittances from family members abroad to have a well built on their plot. They installed a boiler in their house as well. As a result, this family was the first to have hot and cold running water. Since the members of this family no longer depended on being connected to the municipal water system, they did not need to participate in mingas anymore. In Sector 2 a few families built a water system together as well. In this case, they made headway on a new level: by steadily continuing to build, they hoped that the authorities would acknowledge their home ownership, basically by confronting the municipality with a fait accompli. Eva told me that the municipality still seemed to regard the neighborhood as a phantom manifestation. Once it was entirely built up, however, the municipality would no longer be able to avoid legalizing it. The authorities say that they are on our side. City hall, however, is not cooperating. They don’t like us. They say that this is a phantom manifestation, and that our

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papers are invalid, things like that. There is no support. … That is why we have built so many houses here, because they say we have property rights, because we have lived here so long by now.

The discrepancy between individual and collective interests may therefore lead residents to form groups dedicated to obtaining certain facilities or municipal acknowledgement that the neighborhood board is unable to achieve. In these cases, independence and self-sufficiency have replaced joint action and have reduced formal participation levels (see Gilbert and Ward 1985: 246). The residents do not behave as needy citizens toward each other—as they do toward professionals and authorities—but act as self-sufficient individuals. Neighbors compete in the design and comfort of their respective homes, to demonstrate that they are in charge of their household and are respectable citizens. As I will show in the following chapters, the symbolic strength of architecture is an important force in their reciprocal impression management (Goffman 1990 [1959]). This relation between individual and collective action reveals that the consolidation is less straightforward than the consolidation models presume. Individual investments do not arise from greater security for the neighborhood as a whole, as Baken et al. (1991) assume, but may generate neighborhood progression, when the municipality responds to the building developments by legalizing the neighborhood after all. In both neighborhoods featured in this study, consolidation is a dialectical process, with individual and collective progress occurring in fits and starts. This holds true for physical-spatial, legal, and social aspects of consolidation. Families who own their home regard the transition from a rented home to their own home as a giant leap forward. To rebuild that house into the dream villa they envisage, they team up with others to build facilities with varying measures of success. They also seek opportunities within their household or in their personal circle of family and friends to improve their quality of life. If better prospects materialize elsewhere, they will move away from the neighborhood. Interactions with neighbors and neighborhood residents outside their social circle tend to be friendly but instrumental. In other respects, everyone protects his or her own interests, or, as doña Soledad from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi stated: “Each family is a family, is a separate world.”

Conclusion In this chapter I have described how informal neighborhoods at the edge of the city materialize and expand into city districts. I have described social and spatial developments based on interactions among working-class neighborhood residents and between neighborhood residents and professionals. I have divided the domains within which these contacts occur into the per-

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sonal domain of individual residents and the collective, organizational domain of the neighborhood organization and the neighborhood community. The story of how the two research neighborhoods originated made clear that residents distinguished between subcommunities that faced each other geographically. The distinction between residents in “front” and residents at the “back,” between residents “up above” and residents “down below” resembles the polar relationship between hanan and hurin characteristic of the Andes. During periods of arguments and discontent or when consensus was lacking, groups that felt they were at a disadvantage seceded from the neighborhood to form a new one. Within each geographic entity, however, new distinctions kept emerging between groups of residents on either side of the territory. The distinction between hanan and hurin persisted. Mutual relationships were determined in part by the location of the neighborhood where the residents lived. The contrast between the parts influenced identifications with the neighborhood as a whole. Still, working-class neighborhood residents can hardly be said to feel strong ties with the area where they live. In provincial cities most residents of working-class neighborhoods engage in their daily activities in other parts of the city. Their sphere of action extends considerably beyond the neighborhood. Contrary to what is written about residents of working-class neighborhoods in major metropolises, neighborhood residents in provincial cities do not predominantly feel they belong there and nowhere else. They came to the edge of the city to build a house where the land was affordable, where it was quiet, and where they could build a new life. They appreciate the tranquility, the space, and the surrounding greenery still present at the edge of the city. Proximity of family members often adds to their appreciation of a location. Home ownership, however, is the main force that binds residents of Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi to their neighborhood. Their emotional ties with the neighborhood are not strong enough to deter them from moving, if they can get a better house or a higher standard of living elsewhere. Working-class neighborhood residents in this study are therefore more accurately described as “suburbanites” than as members of a cohesive neighborhood community. The course of development in the neighborhoods reveals that neighborhood representatives have difficulty striking a balance between smooth organization of projects and a pleasant ambience in the neighborhood; between the collective-organizational and the personal domain. Successful projects increased confidence in the organization and made for a higher turnout at the mingas, enabling more work to get done. Still, some of the residents felt they were at a disadvantage compared to the others, even when progress was achieved. Unpleasant personal contacts between neighbors were another impediment to collective performance. Lack of social safety was a sign that

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neighbors could not even trust each other anymore. Often the incentive to team up was minimal. If residents felt that the neighborhood board of leaders was not making sufficient progress, participation levels decreased, and residents would pursue improvements individually or in separate groups. During such periods, residents devised individual strategies to advance, as did the family who had their own well built in Sector 1 of Cooperativa Santa Anita. They preferred to invest all their energies in their own home and their own family life. Other neighbors did have strong ties with each other, often because they were relatives. In these areas there was both social cohesion and social control, which benefited safety and cooperation. When contacts were good, neighbors would team up to build new facilities, such as a water pipeline. Households that were unable to improve their financial situation or form alliances with neighbors, however, remained dependent on what the neighborhood organization could achieve. To preserve a pleasant ambiance in the neighborhood, neighborhood representatives had to complement their pursuit of lasting quality of life improvements with cultural enhancement of the community. Manager César Escalante of Cooperativa Santa Anita had done this. Even though he had been convicted of defrauding the cooperative, most residents did not condemn his actions in retrospect. He had brought about something that vanished afterwards: community spirit. When his role became controversial, this perceived unity was lost and was replaced by a dichotomy. Likewise, in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, lack of money within the organization, disagreements, generally deteriorating household finances, and cultural changes led fewer neighborhood celebrations to be organized. The sentiment became one of everyone for himself, both in everyday life and on holidays. Individual and collective activities thus continued to alternate over the years. The model from the consolidation literature, which depicts social, spatial, and legal neighborhood “maturation” as an upward trend, in which progress by the neighborhood was linked with that of individual households, is an overly simplistic representation of a provincial working-class neighborhood. According to this literature, families invest more in their homes, if progress is achieved in the neighborhood as a whole, and if safety improves. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and Cooperativa Santa Anita these processes were disjointed and sometimes even counterproductive. Depending on the individual opportunities and mutual trust, residents might devote their time, money, and labor to the collective cause, whereas in other situations they might give their individual interests precedence at the expense of the neighborhood as a whole. Residents would remodel their homes with the financial means available to them, despite lack of prospects that the neighborhood would be legalized, and even though parts of the neighborhood had yet to be developed. Ongoing construction of homes was in effect the sole constant in the neighborhood development.

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Nor did the legal consolidation advance consistently. Successful legalization depended on help from the municipality, but in interactions with professionals residents of working-class neighborhoods were the dependent party. They operated as residents in need of assistance, while the professionals behaved as figures of authority and highly educated experts, two roles that placed them in a position of power. Sometimes they manifested as friendly but authoritarian public servants, who said that they could do nothing to change the course of events but promised they would do their best. Occasionally, they were downright deprecating and disinclined to be helpful. Amicable interactions between neighborhood officials and authorities were therefore essential. Only such contacts would get working-class neighborhoods on the political agenda, as part of the municipal interest. Such interest was always fleeting, however, as became clear when the City of Riobamba simply abandoned a project to legalize informal neighborhoods, because the political interest had disappeared. In relations among the residents and in those between the neighborhood and the professionals, periods of cooperation alternated with ones of obstruction. However slow the progress at collective levels might be, neighborhood residents preferred to tell each other about their individual successes and self-sufficiency. In the next two chapters I will examine the role of residential architecture in conveying the individual successes and residents’ ambitions with respect to social mobility.

Notes   1. Because registrations and changes in the cooperative have not been recorded accurately over the years, this is an estimate. In 2003, 565 plots were counted, divided between the two sectors in the neighborhood. Not all plots were sold, about 80 were still owned by the cooperative in 2003.   2. Municipalidad de Riobamba (1998), Art. 5.   3. Glasser (1988: 152) reports that in Quito 2,850 meters (8,465 feet) above sea level is the highest altitude to which drinking water can be pumped.   4. Noelia is referring to the progressively sinking land, which makes the buildings subside as well.   5. Oriente refers to the geographical part of Ecuador east of the Andean highlands.   6. Costa refers to the geographical part of Ecuador west of the Andean highlands.

3

Habits in House Building

In 1999 Yadhira had a house built for her elderly mother on a lot in Cooperativa Santa Anita. In purchasing this lot, she violated official regulations (because she and her husband already owned one) to have her mother live nearby. The day Yadhira organized a minga to build the roof, her home was abuzz with activity by early morning. Relatives from her husband’s village had come to the neighborhood. As the minga organizer, Yadhira was responsible for providing her helpers with two nutritious meals that day. While the crew got to work on Yadhira’s mother’s plot, Yadhira and her mother started preparing soup, rice with noodles, and sauce for lunch. On the construction site preparations for pouring the concrete were in progress. The maestro mayor and a few helpers were finishing the frame, and others were carrying cement in wheelbarrows to an open spot, where they added sand and stones to the cement. At midday they sat down to a hearty lunch in the living room at Avelina’s house, next door. After lunch some of the women stirred water into the concrete mixture. The men took turns pushing a heavy wheelbarrow loaded with mortar across a walkway onto the roof, where the maestro indicated where to pour the material. Yadhira handed the workers cups of chicha, a fermented sugar cane beverage, to quench their thirst. There was also sugar cane brandy to ease the work a bit. The day of hard labor ended with a wonderful evening meal consisting of soup, rabbit, and potatoes. Afterwards the relatives returned to their villages. The casing was finished. Nearly all homes in Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi are self-built: the owners of the lots build or have these houses built on their allotment, usually with the intention of living there. Self-building comprises a broad range of activities. Some owners design their own house or do the construction, possibly assisted by others. In other cases, owners tell architects or builders what they want and commission others to do all or part of the job. Self-builders thus participate in various ways throughout the different stages of design and construction (see Ward 1982: 200). With self-building, design, construction, and occupancy overlap. In the course of construction, design receives consideration. As soon as the structure has four walls and a roof, it becomes habitable and may be completed later. The process and the artifact are therefore inextricably linked.

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This chapter is about how homes come to be: designing, building, and moving into self-built homes in working-class neighborhoods. I will address the social production of a house and the social construction of a meaningful place—one that feels like home. The main characters oversee building a house to obtain a home of their own. This includes virtually all households in Cooperativa Santa Anita and nearly 60 percent of the households in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi (see Table 5). Residents are not alone in regarding a home of their own as a basic need; the government feels the same way. Since the 1960s, when public housing was designated as a subject of national policy, efforts have been focused almost entirely on home ownership. After programs implemented under previous governments with varying measures of success, the Ministry of Urban Development and Public Housing (MIDUVI) introduced the Sistema de Incentivos para la Vivienda (SIV, Housing Incentives System) program in 1998. The SIV program allocates grants directly to people from socially vulnerable groups in need of housing. Later in this chapter I will address this program and its minimal use in the neighborhoods reviewed for this study. Because the majority of the residents arranged their accommodations independently, most of this chapter is about self-built homes. Two factors matter in designing, building, and taking up residence in homes. First, many neighborhood residents have moved there from rural villages. When they build homes in the city, they may integrate certain cultural traditions and customs from their villages of origin. Some activities in the construction process entail rituals that are still observed in the countryside but no longer in the cities. Building a roof with a team (minga) and blessing the house (huasipichana) are the most important examples. During these activities reciprocal relations with relatives, friends, or neighbors may be reaffirmed and traditions perpetuated or adapted. In some cases building a home is not just a major personal acquisition for the future owner-occupants but is also an important social event. Acculturation and modernization come into play, and one wonders whether a specific building culture has materialized in these types of neighborhoods combining rural customs with current urban practices. Second, socioeconomic opportunities and the social class with which neighborhood residents identify are important factors. Precisely because of their limited socioeconomic options, inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods wind up in areas that are not built up yet along the periphery of the city. In the literature social class is often associated with inadequate accommodations in working-class neighborhoods, occasionally with rather blunt assertions that self-builders are unable to produce genuine architecture because of their humble socioeconomic status. This debate will figure in subsequent chapters. In this chapter, however, the socioeconomic situation is an important context, because even neighborhood residents believe that their housing arrangement primarily reflects their financial situation, and that their

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cultural background is of no significance whatsoever in the construction process. Transnational migration and increasing income gaps have influenced this self-image. I will therefore start with a sketch of the socioeconomic situation of the households in the two neighborhoods. Table 5. Tenure Cooperativa Santa Anita % (1999)

Ciudadela Carlos Crespi % (2001)

Owner

98

58

Tenant

2

25

Sharer

16

Other

1

Total

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72) Source: Household surveys 1999, 2001.

Standard of Living and Cultural Characteristics of Working-class Neighborhoods Poverty Most residents in the two neighborhoods where I conducted my research regard themselves as lower middle class. Some describe themselves as gente humilde, modest people of humble origins, which in the local vernacular is synonymous with poverty. Compared with other population groups in the city, though, they present themselves as people with average means, neither among the very poorest, nor as part of the upper middle class. Many have difficulty making ends meet, but they manage to conceal their poverty from outsiders. Their homes appear neat and cozy at first, although some cannot even afford to prepare a decent meal or to pay tuition for their children. Others are slightly better off and possess consumer items and a comfortable house to prove it. In collective manifestations at the city hall, neighborhood residents present themselves as poor, marginalized city dwellers, hoping to call attention to their plight. In our conversations, however, they repeatedly told me where they believed that the “really” poor lived. Working-class neighborhood residents in Cuenca and Riobamba deal differently with economic hardship. Whereas even the very poorest Cuenca residents do their best to keep their economic predicament to themselves, Riobambans from the lower social strata are more assertive than their Cuencan counterparts. Thanks in part to the emancipationist efforts of the Roman Catholic Church and NGOs in the province, they have learned to speak up for themselves and to request money or aid directly from authorities, orga-

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nizations, and foreigners without hesitating. Cuencans, on the other hand, consider themselves to be highly self-sufficient and always try to solve problems on their own before turning to others. The wealth of artisanal workshops and small businesses at home and the massive exodus of transnational migrants from this region are believed to “attest” to this. I observed differences in attitude as well. Nobody in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi ever asked me for financial assistance, whereas the residents of Cooperativa Santa Anita did expect me to donate money to their neighborhood. People there asked me to do so on various occasions. At first, Ciudadela Carlos Crespi appeared more affluent than Cooperative Santa Anita. Because Ciudadela Carlos Crespi was older, had better infrastructure, and contained several large houses thanks to the transnational migrants, the neighborhood seemed more like a middle-class neighborhood in physical and spatial respects. Even in the seemingly well-organized households in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, however, I encountered desperate poverty. When nursing students surveyed the health of neighborhood residents there in 2002, they discovered several poverty-related diseases. An apparently healthy one-year-old proved seriously malnourished, and other people who looked healthy had TB or scabies or were alcoholics. These nurses came to view Ciudadela Carlos Crespi as one of the most backward areas of Cuenca. Architects employed by the city rarely notice the hidden poverty. They base their assessments not on the standard of living among the residents but on the visual quality of the homes, which they compare with that of homes in informal neighborhoods in Quito or Guayaquil. Based on this comparison, they conclude that poverty is not such a serious problem in their city. Xavier, an architect at the Planning Department in Cuenca, described the city’s physical-ecological attributes as follows: The city of Cuenca, as you may know, has a wealth of urban landscapes, especially the four rivers, except for neighborhoods such as Jaime Roldós and Las Pencas. Even they, however, are heaven compared with similar informal neighborhoods such as the ones in Quito.

A woman architect responsible for processing funding applications related to the MIDUVI housing construction program expressed a more qualified opinion. She had visited a great many homes and had heard a lot of stories about poverty while reviewing applications for grants. In her view, the architects for the city visited these areas too infrequently to have a sound basis for judgment. Nor did she believe that poverty was always visible from the appearance of the home. Poverty definitely exists here, although there are no slums. When [the municipal authorities] refer to poverty, they mean only slums, such as in Guayaquil. Here, poverty means that they... Here there are no bamboo huts floating on the water,

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since that is what they regard as poverty, but they should visit the neighborhood we saw ..., if that isn’t poverty, then what is?

The impression that professionals have of the working-class neighborhoods obviously matters, as it influences their involvement in neighborhood developments. This example also reveals how quick people are to assess the standard of living of others based on the exterior of their home, on the construction materials, and on the size of their home. Architects who never enter people’s home assess neighborhoods on that initial, superficial impression. This adds to their ambivalence. On the one hand, they justify their lack of professional interest in such neighborhoods by asserting that conducting inspections would be too dangerous there. On the other hand, they belittle the problems by arguing that they are far less serious than the ones in workingclass neighborhoods in Quito or Guayaquil. Table 6. Average standardized household income as an index of the national minimum income Index

Cooperativa Santa Anita % (1999)

Ciudadela Carlos Crespi % (2001)

0 – 0.5

29

11

0.5 – 1

49

32

1– 2

10

39

2– 3

7

11

>3

5

7

Total

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72) Source: Household surveys 1999, 2001

To understand more about poverty and development opportunities, I estimated the average monthly income available to households and divided this amount by the number of people in the household. The average monthly per capita income is depicted in Table 6 as an index of the national minimum income. In 1999 the INEC determined that an average family comprising two adults and three children required a minimum of twenty-eight dollars per capita per month.1 In 2001 the INEC determined that an average family comprising two adults and two children required an average monthly income of fifty dollars per capita.2 Table 6 reveals that the disposable income of nearly 80 percent of the households in Cooperativa Santa Anita was below the national minimum. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, the situation was slightly better: over half the households there disposed of the national minimum or more. Ciudadela Carlos Crespi residents do not have better jobs; the more favorable results are probably attributable to massive migration by neigh-

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borhood residents abroad and to the inflow of foreign exchange, which has doubled or tripled the income of some households. Table 7. Poverty level of households Cooperativa Santa Anita % (1999)

Ciudadela Carlos Crespi % (2001)

Extreme poverty

76

53

Poverty

12

14

Above the poverty level

12

33

Total

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72)

Source: Household surveys 1999, 2001

The official poverty level set by the government is another standard. This threshold is based on the cost of a monthly package of food and fixed expenses (canasta básica) required for basic subsistence. Everybody unable to afford this package is officially living in poverty. People unable to afford even the basic food basket for a month (canasta alimentaria) are described as living in extreme poverty.3 In 1999, based on the standards for determining poverty, over three quarters of the households in Cooperativa Santa Anita lived in extreme poverty (see Table 7). Twelve percent qualified as “ordinary” poor. Their income was just enough to purchase food for the family but insufficient to cover other monthly expenses. The remaining 12 percent lived above the poverty level. In 2001 in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi over half the households surveyed lived in extreme poverty. Fourteen percent were poor but had enough income to purchase food, whereas one third of the households were above the poverty level. To place these figures in the proper context, in the first years of this century over half the Ecuadorian population lived below the poverty level, which makes these figures less meaningful (UNDP 2001: 12–13; ILDIS 2002a). Generally, however, urban poverty has decreased from 61 percent in 2001 to 42 percent in 2004, and to 33 percent in 2010 (INEC 2004, 2010). This overall trend is likely to have shifted poverty levels in both neighborhoods as well. Visual impressions of both neighborhoods in 2007 and 2009 suggested that living conditions in Cooperativa Santa Anita had not changed much, whereas the houses and infrastructure in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi looked more developed than around the turn of the century. Because the cost of living in Cuenca has been higher than in Riobamba for years, the poorest families in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi suffer more—in relative terms—than the ones in Cooperativa Santa Anita (ILDIS 2002b). These are the families that do not receive dollars from abroad but nonetheless face constantly rising costs of living. Paradoxically, the outlying areas of Cuenca have

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the largest share of people living in poverty—compared with other cities in the Andes. On the one hand, the suburban and rural areas of Canton Cuenca may have received the highest inflow of foreign dollars in the country. On the other hand, the level of poverty there is unparalleled in other cities (Bretón 2002: 51). It is hardly surprising that people without relatives abroad consider having somebody emigrate. As a consequence, transnational migration has become a self-perpetuating phenomenon in recent years. Households in Cooperativa Santa Anita averaged 4.8 persons in 1999. About half the heads of households were forty or younger, and nearly half of all residents in the survey were under eighteen. Most heads of households in Cooperativa Santa Anita were men, largely employed as drivers of taxi cabs and other vehicles, construction workers, mechanics, or in agriculture. Many of the women who worked did so from home, for example from a store or as seamstresses. There was also one serviceman, one former policeman, and an engineer employed by an NGO. Twelve percent of the heads of households came from Riobamba, nearly 60 percent from the other, rural areas of Chimborazo, and the remainder was born elsewhere in the country. The cooperative thus appears to be a new neighborhood with many rural migrants, who have irregular jobs. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi the households averaged 5.4 inhabitants each and were thus slightly larger than in Cooperativa Santa Anita. This neighborhood was older. Many families were at a more advanced stage of their lives than the families in Cooperativa Santa Anita. As a result, more households comprised extended families: 11 percent of all households had nine members or more. Here too, however, 45 percent of the neighborhood residents were under eighteen. Unlike in Cooperativa Santa Anita, nearly one third of the heads of households in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi were female in 2001. This may also relate to the high rate of male emigration. Throughout the Cuenca region, women have increasingly replaced the head of the household since their husbands emigrated (Carpio Benalcázar 1992; Miles 1997; Kyle 2000). In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi the male heads of households worked for small artisanal operations or factories; or were self-employed as construction workers, or in crafts such as hat making; or worked for companies, or as mechanics, or drivers. There was also a former serviceman who had taken up other paid work after retiring from the armed forces. Aside from the families being supported by emigrant husbands, the female heads of households worked largely as street vendors, washerwomen, or cleaners. Three-quarters of the heads of households had been born and bred in Cuenca, while 18 percent came from another—rural—part of the Azuay Province and the rest from elsewhere in the country. In this neighborhood residents worked irregularly as well. The neighborhood being older and the inhabitants having lived there longer thus did not mean that their income was more stable.

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Residents used all kinds of inventive approaches to curtail their expenditures. One of the women I spoke with in Cooperativa Santa Anita, for example, ran a shop from home. Immediately across from her, her neighbor had the same type of shop. Because I kept seeing people in the neighborhood entering her neighbor’s shop, I asked her whether the competition was a problem. She explained that even though she did not make much selling products, she could at least take food from the shop, so that her family did not go hungry. The shop was more like a large pantry that provided her with a diversion during the day than a regular source of income. Single-parent families with children had difficulty making ends meet. In both neighborhoods there were families where poorly educated women were in charge and were responsible for the children’s subsistence. They might support their families by doing laundry for others or by cooking or cleaning— irregular jobs, at which they earned a few dollars now and then. Doña Blanca from Cooperativa Santa Anita, who lived with her two teenage children in a small stone hovel measuring six by nine feet, had supported her family that way for years, without being able to improve their accommodation. In 1999 she told me that the three of them lived in that one tiny, windowless room, without indoor plumbing. A low wall of bricks piled on top of each other screened off the outside area, giving them a bit of privacy when they relieved themselves outside. At the time she made money by cooking and cleaning. Four years later she still did. This family did not even have enough money each month to cover the most basic facilities, such as installing a latrine. To get by on a low income, many families grew crops next to their home or raised small quantities of livestock on vacant lots. Over one-fifth of those surveyed in Cooperativa Santa Anita kept a produce garden, where they grew corn, vegetables, and fruit. Ten percent owned small animals (for example rabbits or guinea pigs) to slaughter, while others had cows and pigs. Over 40 percent of those surveyed reported having both animals and a garden. This was clearly visible throughout the neighborhood. Produce gardens and pigs and cows tied to ropes appeared here and there among the homes. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi over one-third of the households kept animals, and over 8 percent grew produce. Cultivating crops and raising animals not only helped them curtail expenditures but was also part of the semi-rural lifestyle so appreciated among the neighborhood residents.

Chicha Culture? Residents of urban working-class neighborhoods with roots in the rural highlands have various cultural repertoires that are mixed in everyday practices such as building a house. This observation has led some authors to wonder in what measure a “typical” working-class neighborhood culture exists. The

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Illustration 11. Three types of homes

Illustration 12. A villita under construction, Cooperativa Santa Anita

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question is whether the fact that residents of working-class neighborhoods have different repertoires is expressed in recognizable styles. This discussion arose in the 1970s in Lima, where several scholars examined how rural Quechua migrants influenced certain aspects of city life, such as language, music, social interactions, and architecture. Migrants combined original rural Andes traditions with elements from Lima’s criollo heritage. The result was termed the chicha culture (Burga Bartra 1993; Thieroldt Llanos 2000; Matos Mar 2004). Scholars have argued that the acculturation processes gave rise to new forms of expression, of which the best known is chicha music. I will summarize some arguments considered relevant to building culture in working-class neighborhoods. According to Cornejo Polar (2000), rural migrants in Lima do not combine the different repertoires into a harmonious synthesis but have retained two separate and sometimes schizophrenic cultural constellations. Rural migrants in the big city thus live in two separate, superimposed worlds. De la Cadena regards this conceptual dichotomy as an “and–and” situation rather than as an “either–or” one and mentions an “inclusive otherness” (de la Cadena 2000: 35), indicating that people in different situations invoke different cultural repertoires without feeling torn between them. Hannerz perceives creolizing or hybridizing processes in metropolises primarily as a potential source of cultural innovation and as an expression of new social identities that rural migrants develop in the city: The very fact that newcomers are newcomers may indeed contribute to their involvement in cultural innovation; again, where social relationships have to be achieved, as is so often the case in city life, but in particular with regard to those more recently arrived, innovation may serve as a kind of personal currency through which individuals draw attention to themselves. (Hannerz 1992: 199)

José Matos Mar (2004) elaborates and postulates that chicha culture has contributed toward constructing a new national identity, which he believes appeals to large segments of the population. But Jesús Martín-Barbero (1993: 197, 200) views chicha culture in Lima primarily as a cultural feature specific to working-class neighborhoods. Within this debate, the Peruvian architect Jorge Burga Bartra introduced the concept of chicha architecture, which he defined as an intermingling of modern artifacts with indigenous elements from the highlands (Burga Bartra 1993). But there is no general agreement among experts about the morphological characteristics that characterize chicha architecture. Authors differ in their views of the influence and elaboration of cultural transformations associated with rural–urban migration. I will elaborate on the analytical aspects of this concept in the final chapter. Based on my empirical data about the gradual changes in building processes and residential architecture that occurred in Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciu-

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dadela Carlos Crespi over the course of the last two decades, I will argue in the sections below that old customs have acquired new meanings, and that new cultural repertoires have been invoked. Yet, I do not believe that a distinctive semi-rural chicha culture exists. The intertwinement of influences is too subtle and too varied, partly due to the introduction of new cultural repertoires related to globalization. If any difference between working-class neighborhood residents and other city dwellers dominates, it relates to their average socioeconomic status and the stigmatization of their neighborhoods. Within the working-class neighborhoods new social divides are appearing between migrant families and non-migrant families. The houses of transnational migrants attract attention because they symbolically challenge an ascribed marginal position. However, the architecture of those houses is not confined by old rural traditions and can therefore not be considered as a part of chicha culture.

Houses Types of Homes Most people living in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and Cooperativa Santa Anita moved there after purchasing a plot of land on which they built a house. A few individuals moved into homes subsidized by the government or an NGO. Many start with a simple stone one- or two-room home off a courtyard, known as a mediagua. In a mediagua, the doors open onto the courtyard, which thus serves as a connecting space (see Illustration 11). In the next stage additional rooms are added off the courtyard, or another story accessible via an outdoor staircase is built. Most people long for a “real” house (a casa), where you walk from one room to another from within and have more privacy. In Ecuador a casa is considered superior to a mediagua, not only by the occupants but also by official agencies, such as MIDUVI. Neighborhood residents define a casa as a home with two or more stories and more space than a mediagua, with a solid concrete structure and a flat concrete roof (losa) or a roof with multiple surfaces. If a mediagua is expanded into a casa, the arrangement often needs to be changed to form a central corridor between the rooms. The support structure needs to be improved as well, to add a story and build another roof. In addition to casas, which tend to be associated with the city, villas are considered to be an improvement over a mediagua. Professionals describe a villa as a home in the middle of a large plot of land and surrounded by plants and trees. A villa often has a sloped roof consisting of several surfaces and is associated more with the countryside than with the city, although in semi-rural working-class neighborhoods the terms casa and villa are used interchangeably. The INEC also regards casa/villa as a single category. Some

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neighborhood residents describe their home as a villita, because they regard it as a modest abode, slightly better than a mediagua. Other residents define villa the same way as the professionals, as a spacious home on a large lot. Truly elegant homes are identified as mansiones. In addition to being large, expensive houses, most are surrounded by huge tracts of land, featuring additional facilities, such as sports fields or swimming pools. Table 8. Type of home (as reported by the occupants) Cooperativa Santa Anita % (1999)

Ciudadela Carlos Crespi % (2001)

Mediagua

28

31

Casa

53

64

Villa

20

6

Total

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72)

Source: Household surveys 1999, 2001

Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi have only mediaguas, casas, and villas (see Table 8). Unlike the area along the coast and the oriente, homes are rarely made of bamboo (ranchos) in the towns in the highlands because of the climate. Nor did the neighborhoods where I conducted my research have any rural huts with thatched roofs (covachas). In the past, self-built homes tended to be made of unbaked clay (adobe), sometimes together with wood, straw, or other additions to make the structures more solid. Nowadays, though, everything is made of brick or more inexpensive concrete blocks. The technique for building adobe homes has gradually disappeared. Most residents consider building with adobe to be excessively strenuous and time-consuming. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi a few dozen adobe houses were built in the mid-twentieth century and are regarded by the residents as traditional casas de campo (rural homes), although two-thirds are made of brick and/or concrete. In the Santa Anita neighborhood, which was built up far more recently, only bricks and concrete blocks have been used for construction from the outset. Even though the houses are still under construction or being remodeled, homes there do not look like the “improvised abodes” made of temporary materials that the literature describes as the first stage of neighborhood development. At the time of my first visit, most homes consisted of only an area on the ground floor—onequarter fit the mediagua designation—although a few years later additional stories were under construction everywhere. In the period covered in this study, MIDUVI was involved in housing construction in both neighborhoods. In Riobamba MIDUVI agreed with the municipality that money would be made available to build homes in

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urban-marginal areas, including Cooperativa Santa Anita (MIDUVI n.d.). The conditions that apply under the national SIV program allow individual residents to submit a request for a subsidized home. Although the program included a clause entitling residents to a say in the design of their home, all those built in Cooperativa Santa Anita were a standard design that was easy to distinguish from the other homes. These standard homes, often referred to by the residents as “Banco homes” (referring to the Banco Ecuatoriano de la Vivienda, which used to commission construction of such homes), are simple four-room dwellings. Measuring thirty-six or forty-two square meters (forty-three or fifty square yards), they consist of a living room, an eat-in kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. Their structure is made of concrete blocks and their roof of asbestos-cement sheets. The occupants ordinarily remodel the homes the moment they are finished. MIDUVI staff assume this will happen. The homes are not finished on the outside and are immediately recognizable by their style and materials as government-subsidized owneroccupied homes, which in some cases has negative connotations. Many complain that the MIDUVI homes are poorly insulated and “cold” and therefore inappropriate for the climate in the Andes. Opinions of the quality and the model varied among neighborhood residents. In a few nearby neighborhoods, where two NGOs built subsidized homes, the homes by the NGOs not only cost less but also turned out to be made of more durable materials than MIDUVI ones. MIDUVI homes are therefore not always appreciated. In 2001 MIDUVI completed ten homes in Cooperativa Santa Anita. Two years later, only a few were occupied. The rest was still vacant. The door and window frames had been stolen from one of these empty houses. Victoria and Jorge told me how this project had failed. They complained that people receiving help from the government with a new home do not even seem to appreciate it. They rent or own a home in the city center and let their subsidized home in the neighborhood become dilapidated. At the same time, families who truly need such homes, such as their neighbor doña Blanca, who lives with her children in a tiny home without plumbing, are ineligible for the program, because they do not meet the basic requirements. They are not creditworthy and have no savings. Nor do they have the necessary deed to prove that they own the land or their home in many cases. It is well known that the very poorest are therefore often excluded from social housing projects in Ecuador and other countries in Latin America (Kubale Palmer and Patton 1988; Bastidas 1989; Mathéy 1997). Conversely, people who are allocated subsidized housing apparently prefer to remain in the city. The first democratically elected neighborhood president of Cooperativa Santa Anita, for example, applied to MIDUVI as well. When his home was finished, he remained in his rented home and rented out his place in Cooperativa Santa Anita. Because these cases come to light only in investigations to determine who actually lives

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in the homes built, the number of subsidies granted is not a reliable criterion for concluding that the SIV program is a success (see Frank 2004). Nor can the MIDUVI program be described as a success in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, not because project homes are still vacant there, but because hardly any grants are allocated. In 2001 two MIDUVI staff members visited the neighborhood to explain the SIV program to the residents. Because most people in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi had already built on their lot, very few were interested in the grant toward building a new home. Many residents were interested in the home improvement grant. During the first home visits by staff, however, most people proved ineligible for this grant, because they did not have deeds to prove that they owned their home. In other cases the original lots had been subdivided and built on without authorization, rendering the deeds inaccurate. A young married woman from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi described the problems that ensued from poor registration of her lot. This mother of two wanted to request a MIDUVI subsidy to build a new house on a lot she had purchased. She and her husband were renting a home from her in-laws for fifty dollars a month. This was practically unaffordable, especially when their son needed an operation. To apply for the subsidy, she had to prove that she paid municipal taxes, which she had never paid. She wanted to settle the account but discovered at the town hall that there were some problems with the notarized deed of purchase for her lot. Her lot was officially still part of a much larger site belonging to the original owner. The subdivision had never been entered in the land register. Moreover, the site measurements listed on her deed of purchase did not correspond with the property she owned. So the site had to be measured again to be entered in the land register, and this registration was necessary for her to request a MIDUVI subsidy. She had to purchase expensive forms for recording the new measurement and had to commission an architect or engineer to take the measurements. In 2003 she had started building the house. As far as I know, she never got the subsidy. This held true for most of those interested. Even though after the first inventory by the MIDUVI staff, about ten families still seemed to be eligible for a subsidy, by 2003 only one or two families remained that had not been deterred by all the bureaucratic red tape and were still trying to obtain the subsidy.

Self-builders Most residents prefer to use their own resources to build their home without becoming involved in complex, time-consuming bureaucratic procedures to obtain loans and subsidies. Nor do they appreciate the potential architectural restrictions of MIDUVI homes, which often need to be remodeled after completion. Although their economic options are few, self-builders approach

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these projects with boundless energy. Some owners have clear, preconceived ideas about how they want their home to be, while others leave everything to the builders or envisage the outcome only once the construction is in progress. Often there are no sketches. Instead, people simply use their imagination. Avelina from Cooperativa Santa Anita is an exception: she carefully designed and drew her plans (see Illustration 13). She wanted the additional story to have a roof with two ridges (four roof surfaces), with one section shorter than the other, allowing her a rooftop terrace to do the laundry. This design was modified during the execution stage, and only one peaked

Illustration 13. Avelina’s draft design

roof was built, but the drawing reveals how self-builder Avelina conveyed her ideas to the maestro. Most self-builders work according to a certain preconceived ideal. The outcome is not simply a dream but materializes in stages. On several occasions I have been surprised at their tenacity in realizing this ideal. The original design may undergo adjustments during the course of the construction, for example because new products and construction techniques become available, or because tastes change over the years. Still, not all aspects of self-building are ad hoc. The first time I visited Avelina, for example, she sketched her detailed plans for the additional story, of which she hoped to decorate the exterior in specific shades of purple and green. A few years later she did this and rented the white/purple/green story to a family with two children. Señor Salazar also spent years working diligently on his plan to turn his casa into a villa, with the money his wife sent him from Spain. Even one of

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the poorest families in Santa Anita, a family with seven children, built a new abode within a few years. In designing their homes, self-builders focus mainly on the subdivision into rooms, the shape of the roof, the façade ornamentations, and the color schemes. The occupants may base the desired outcome on homes they have seen elsewhere. Neighborhood residents who work in construction usually look at the houses they have built for others. Marisa explained that her husband had designed their own home: [My husband] did this; it was his idea. Because he always worked in construction—he was a construction worker—he built several houses, often for people with money, engineers and such. That’s how he came up with the design. He made the drawings first and then built this model. Yes, my husband did this.

A few based their designs on examples from local magazines or pamphlets, without copying anything literally or entirely. After all, self-builders produce individualized versions. If somebody finds a color scheme he or she likes, they may reverse the foreground and background color scheme, copying a peachcolored house with green trim as a green house with peach-colored trim. Families who have members living abroad often copy examples from those countries. The men and women who send money from the United States or Europe to help those left behind build a house often include a photograph of a house or building they saw, hoping to replicate it, sometimes without considering whether their idea is feasible. Nancy explained how she had a house designed and built in Cooperativa Santa Anita, while her husband worked in the United States to raise the money. Nancy: The [contractor] who accepted the commission pretty much drew and built it as well. He did not make elaborate blueprints, not that. He just drew it for himself. Christien: Based on your ideas? Nancy: Yes. Based on my idea. Because I saw a house “down below.” Christien: In the center? Nancy: Yes. And I told him to make it similar to that. Christien: Where exactly? In the historic center or in a residential district? Nancy: In the Ciudadela Cemento Chimborazo. I saw a house by an architect there. The same man who built that one did this house as well. So I asked him to make it this way, and he did it. Christien: So he already knew the other house? Nancy: Yes, he already knew it, except that the finishing touches are much more elaborate there than they are in my place. [This is a] second-degree finish.

Nancy’s story reveals that architects and contractors become involved to varying degrees. Her contractor had sketched the house, but did not produce

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detailed blueprints. So no official building permit was requested. This kept the house affordable for Nancy and her husband, although it was also informal. The design, in addition to anticipating aesthetic effects, reflects consideration for functional aspects and enhanced comfort. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, for example, Rafael and his wife had a workshop in their home. They put the finishing touches on Panama hats for export. After the hats were woven and shaped somewhere else, they were responsible for drying them and cutting off the frayed ends. Rafael had adapted his house for this work. The model we built, I thought about that in connection with the work, our work. We built a flat roof to be able to dry the hats here. That’s why we didn’t build a sloped roof. This model has been of great use to us.

They were placing the hats to dry on the flat roof every day. Other neighbors who worked in the hat industry as well had to let the hats dry in an open field or on the street and risked getting the hats dirty. Rafael’s hats stayed clean and dried quickly on the sheltered roof. His functional adaptation of the home was carefully thought out and effective. This shows that residents of working-class neighborhoods think about the best way to build their house. During the execution stage all kinds of other things may be conceived or changed, because they turn out not to be feasible, or because the owner changes his mind. Avelina from Cooperativa Santa Anita at first planned to have seven windows in her house, with windows at the front and the side. She had planned this in advance with the builder who was going to do the work. But the result was different. They had forgotten about future buildings on adjacent lots and learned about this by coincidence. Christien: Did the construction worker tell you it would be better to do this? Avelina: To close the windows at the side? Christien: Yes. Avelina: No, not the construction worker. The idea came from a lady who came to see the site, because she has a lot here too. We started talking about that, and she said: “But why are you putting the windows there? If another member of the cooperative comes and builds a fence there, it will be sealed off,” she said. “You should put [the windows] only at the front and not on this side. And you should leave ten centimeters [four inches] of space.” So I said: “No, how can they seal off the [window], if those ten centimeters are mine. How can they seal that off?” But she said: “Too bad there are only ten centimeters. If the water splashes, it will end up there. Any garbage will pile up there. Because all these apertures need to be retained, how will you remove it? Installing the windows next to the walls [of the neighbors] is much riskier. It causes problems, so I would close them. I am saying this in good faith, seal them, because you are doing yourself harm.” When I thought about it, I realized: “She is right.” So I closed them.

She then had part of the front wall that was already there removed to add a window at the front to allow enough daylight to penetrate. This example

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reveals how the design of a home may change during the course of construction, if the consequences have not received careful consideration. If the construction workers hired are unable or unwilling to execute the plans or—as in the previous example—the self-builders know too little about the trade, owners may be dissatisfied with the outcome. Victoria and Jorge from the cooperative adapted their house as soon as it was finished, because the original arrangement proved inconvenient. Some maestros build only one model, while others build as they please, with no regard for their clients. Vilma from Cooperativa Santa Anita explained that in fact she wanted a different model, but that the maestro imposed his own ideas during the construction process. Christien: Did you design the house yourselves? Vilma: Yes, I basically did. My husband did not, because he doesn’t have time; he has to work, he left it to me, he said, “Do what you like.” That’s why it’s mostly my design. Of course the house did not turn out the way I wanted, for lack of knowledge. Christien: How did you want it? Vilma: I wanted it to be very large. I wanted the living room to be different, but that’s not how it worked out. I lacked experience. It’s unfortunate that when you don’t know, the construction worker says, “This is how it should be,” and you take their word for it. But if you know about these things, you tell [him], “This is how you do it.” Period. But if you don’t know, they do it the way they like, not the way the owner wants it. At least that’s what happened with me.

The project of Don Luis did not turn out as planned either. On his lot, which was on an incline, he at first wanted a split-level house with a flat roof, but the maestro was unable to build that. He used this maestro, because this person owed him money. Having him build his home seemed like a good way to settle the debt, but he regretted it later on. Don Luis: At first my oldest son-in-law drew a design. But the contractor who built the house couldn’t work according to the plan sketched… Christien: No? Don Luis: He couldn’t. Christien: Why not? Don Luis: Because he didn’t know how. He knew how to build houses as a square divided in four parts, nothing else. He built this part at my initiative [with a living room and dining area], but he couldn’t do the rest. He told me he couldn’t do the rooms like that, because there were no pillars. You have to divide the rooms according to where the pillars are, so here he wanted to build the same type of room as this one there [points to it], and another room, and here just the living room. And there would be no kitchen here, but only bedrooms, which in fact have yet to be finished. The maestro didn’t know how to do it. Had he known how to do the job, it would have turned out better.

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Christien: What would it have looked like? How did your original ideas differ from this version? Don Luis: This did not turn out the way I wanted, because I wanted plumbing fixtures here, and because I wanted a flat roof, and he couldn’t do that either. So I should have used a different contractor, but I chose this maestro, because I had lent him money. … He was unable to repay me. He said he would repay me this way, with the house.

Instead of the split-level home in the design, a 1.9 meter (seventy-five inches) high retaining wall was built. With no money left to finish the walls and build a concrete roof, he decided to build a simple sloped roof of asbestos-cement corrugated sheets, hoping that someday he would be able to replace it with a concrete roof. Differing views among household members may also determine whether occupants are satisfied with their house. Gender relations are a major factor. Sometimes women complain that their husbands have designed and furnished the house without considering their needs. Men who work in construction (about 11 percent of the heads of households in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and 20 percent of those in Cooperativa Santa Anita) particularly tend to design and build their homes without asking their wives or children what they want. Eva’s husband, a construction worker, designed and built their house. He built the house with a sloped roof, while she would have preferred a flat one. He painted the walls a color he liked, even though Eva had a different one in mind. Only the living room was as she wanted: “Everything in here is my taste, yes, that is my taste. All the rest is his idea and his taste. More his taste than mine.” A few years later, some of Eva’s wishes were granted, when the sloped roof was replaced with a flat concrete roof, and an additional story was built. Yadhira’s husband, even though he did not work in construction, also decided how their house would be built. When they were building it, she wanted the same style as their neighbor Avelina, with a corridor down the middle. But her husband found Avelina’s house too small and inconvenient. So in the end their front door opened into a small dining room, blowing all the dust onto the dining table. Later, when they expanded their house, they made some adjustments and enlarged the living room to include a sitting area and a larger dining area, to Yadhira’s delight. In addition to the men actually living in the neighborhood, husbands abroad supervise construction from a distance. Marisa’s husband instructed her about the construction process over the phone for years. Architects and construction workers may become involved in the process in different ways. Sometimes an architect will draw plans based on the idea of the owners, but in most cases construction workers produce the drawings or proceed based on consultations with the occupants. Most owner-occupants who want to do everything themselves, without involving architects or of-

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ficials, are building without permits. In such cases the structure is unlikely to be legalized later on, because the required drawings are missing. Building and rebuilding takes a long time and happens in several small steps, enabling residential modifications to be accommodated during the construction process. So while self-building entails a situational approach, many self-builders deliberately work toward a certain idea they envisage. This approach, which combines situational action with a long-term vision, characterizes self-building in working-class neighborhoods.

Illustration 14. Map of Avelina’s home

Illustration 15. Sitting room as a “place to relax” in Cooperativa Santa Anita

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Illustration 16. Comfortable interior in Cooperativa Santa Anita

Illustration 17. Dining room furnished with care in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi

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Interior Comforts The first home I entered was Avelina’s (Illustration 14). Through a wooden front door I entered a central corridor, leading to the living room and kitchen on the left. To the right were the bedrooms. At the end of the corridor was the bathroom. At the time her bedroom was the coziest part of the house, where we chatted or watched television together with her niece. In addition to her bed, this room contained a small television and VCR, a wooden wardrobe, two chairs, and a sewing machine. It had a hardwood floor. Her living room contained only a simple kitchen table with a stool and a chair, on a bare concrete floor. The rest of the room was empty, except for a radio. If more than two people came to eat with her, a jerry can used for drinking water (the house did not have running water) served as an additional seat. Her kitchen consisted of a concrete counter covered with tiles and a refrigerator. She used a bucket to flush the toilet, and the shower did not work. The next time I visited her, in early 2002, she had purchased some additional furniture that made the living room look entirely different: it had couches and a coffee table. The windows had curtains, and the floor was covered with tiles. On her roof was a water storage tank, which was connected to the public water supply. Since she was able to store enough water for a few days of household use, she could shower at home now. Some families’ homes had more Spartan interiors. The smallest home in Cooperativa Santa Anita contained little more than a bed. The occupants had no indoor plumbing or separate bedrooms. They had a radio to receive messages about neighborhood meetings, since there was no telephone system for a long time. The houses of families with husbands or children living abroad contrasted sharply with these homes. As I mentioned earlier, one family in the cooperative had a well built for pumping water that was heated with a boiler, so that they could take hot showers. Other fairly affluent families owned one or more television sets, music systems, VCRs, cellphones, and other consumer items. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi residential standards varied considerably as well. While the simplest homes resembled a barn or stable, where people shared their accommodation with animals, other families lived in fully furnished homes, equipped with hot water and in some cases even several telephone lines. Average homes in the two neighborhoods consisted of a living/dining room, a kitchen, one or more bedrooms, indoor or outdoor plumbing (a bathroom with a toilet connected to a septic tank or a latrine). In modern homes, children ideally have a bedroom separate from the main living area. Only the very poorest families live in one or two rooms, where the beds are positioned alongside the stove and among the pots and pans. Sometimes chickens or other animals roam freely about the house, and the poverty of

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living in such confined quarters affects the health of the occupants. Living room furnishings ranged from a simple wooden table with wooden benches to luxurious sofa sets, matching dining tables and chairs, and decorative cupboards (see Illustrations 15, 16, and 17). The poorest families had only a wooden bench and a bed, while the furnishings of the wealthiest families matched the standard of those found in European middle-class homes. Many families owned homes somewhere in between these two extremes, such as the woman in Illustration 15. She explained that although her family was not well-to-do, she cared a lot about her living room, where she loved to relax in between her busy schedule of household chores. Use and furnishing of spaces in the homes is determined in part by social relations between men and women, parents and children. In both neighborhoods, men and women alike still regard the kitchen as the woman’s territory. The traditional distribution of responsibilities, in which women prepare the meals, has enabled some women in the neighborhood to furnish this space exactly as they wish. To Dolores from Cooperativa Santa Anita, for example, the kitchen was her favorite room in the house, because it was arranged entirely according to her taste. She loved her territory so much that she did not want her husband to enter it, for fear that he would upset her system. The kitchen served as the sole living area in the house for Soledad from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and her family comprising three generations. I spent many hours with Soledad and her elderly mother seated at the kitchen table next to the dirty dishes surrounded by flies. Soledad was a nurse and did her best to keep diseases out. Still, even here, the limited space jeopardized the health of those who lived there. Inhabitants tended to follow fashions and trends in arranging their interiors, for example in how they furnished their kitchens and living rooms and in their ideas about use of space and light. Many indicated that they found the dark rooms with small windows that were common in adobe houses in the countryside dated. New techniques for gluing glass panes together have made large corner windows popular. Demand for stained glass is high as well. Large windows symbolize modernity. Over the years, interiors have become lighter and more colorful thanks to new types of windows. Nancy and Vincente from Cooperativa Santa Anita, for example, put in orange Plexiglas skylights in the apartment they rented out on the top floor. This feature added a special glow intended to exude a sense of modern comfort that would appeal to potential tenants. Janneth, who lived in the same neighborhood, was building an additional story and proudly showed me the open connection between two rooms, eliminating the need for a corridor that would merely waste space and radiating light and open space. Clearly, residents experimented with interior uses of space to give their homes a modern, contemporary look.

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In Latin American working-class neighborhoods there is no rigid dichotomy between private and public. The individual domain encompasses the entire lot, which may accommodate several buildings alternating functions over the course of the day or over an extended period. Shops or workplaces may serve as a work station, bedroom, or living room; functions and arrangements are flexible. Nor is a shop always a public space. A shop at a private home may be a semi-public space overlooking the street during the day and a bedroom at night. When the shop is open, customers may place orders with the salesperson from across a gate and pay through a hatch. At night somebody usually sleeps in the shop to deter burglars. Two families from Cooperativa Santa Anita, for example, had arranged a place to sleep that the husband usually occupied to prevent others from breaking in. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, an elderly couple had expanded their shop by building a wooden hutch fixed up as a sleeping area. At the time their son and his family were living in the stone house at the rear of the lot where they had once lived. One family from Cooperativa Santa Anita proved that members of a household may disperse across a larger area: during the week the husband and his two sons lived at their place of work in another part of town, while the women in the family formed a household in the neighborhood. The men came to the home in Santa Anita only on Sundays. The spatial domains relating to private and work-related activities may mingle or may change over time. Table 9. Home furnishings Cooperativa Santa Anita Ciudadela Carlos Crespi % (1999) % (2001) Sitting area Matching living room set

28

40

Table and individual chairs

30

15

No sitting area

43

44

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72)

Matching set

31

38

Table and individual bench or chairs

62

40

No dining area

8

22

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72)

0

10

7

1

83

65

2

5

22

>2

3

5

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72)

Total Dining area

Total Television sets

Total

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Table 9 – continued Refrigerators 0

24

28

1

76

68

>2

0

4

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72)

No

100

48

Yes

0

52

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72)

Total Telephone

Total

Source: Household surveys 1999, 2001.

Nor is the distinction between private and public straightforward for the exteriors. Families living in a one-room home or families working outside under a shelter basically use exterior areas nearby as additional living space and spend part of the day there. Family members who own homes on one or more adjacent lots often do not place partitions between the lots and walk from one house to the other via a common passageway. People do, however, respect the private domain of strangers. Neighbors never enter each other’s homes unannounced, and many households put up a fence or wall around their lot, turning the separation between the property into both a physical and a social barrier (see Fletcher 1999: 97). How do people make these ambiguous spaces meaningful? According to Witold Rybczynski (1987: 20), people feel at home in a setting that they perceive as cozy and comfortable. In its contemporary meaning, comfort relates to both the physical wellbeing of the occupants (protection from cold, heat, precipitation, and wind) and to the enjoyment of the company of others and convenience. Physical wellbeing is an important concern in working-class neighborhoods. As described previously, Avelina had a water tank installed, so that she could shower, and the nurse Soledad tried to maintain hygiene in her home. To residents of working-class neighborhoods, comfort means that they have—or receive—the opportunity to lead a clean and healthy life. In the dusty working-class neighborhoods, where not everybody has access to running water, this cannot be taken for granted. Everybody tries hard to obtain these conveniences though, not merely for their personal wellbeing and that of their family members but also to avoid being regarded as “filthy” rural dwellers. In Ecuador, cleanliness is associated with modern city life. Conversely, rural dwellers are often accused of being lax in their personal hygiene. Later on I will elaborate on the vast discourse about cleanliness and filth that is used to construct social categories. Comfort in the sense of corporeal wellbeing thus has physical and social aspects that are each equally important to neighborhood residents.

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In addition to the basic facilities required for personal care and good health, domestic comforts depend on the spatial features that may enhance living comfort, such as having enough space for all family members to live and sleep and seeking a balance between open and closed spaces. People who live too close together or have nowhere to be alone find their home uncomfortable (Rybczynski 1987: 228). Residents of working-class neighborhoods mention this subject a lot. Their ideal home offers warmth, privacy, intimacy, safety, and basic comforts. Neighborhood residents define comfort as a home large enough for people to live and sleep in separate spaces; a home with basic facilities, such as water and electricity; and a home where they live in health and safety, without having to tolerate dust, mud, noise from neighbors, or crime. In addition, several consumer items may enhance domestic comfort by making leisure or housekeeping easier or more enjoyable, such as radios, television sets, refrigerators, telephones, or water heaters. In the neighborhoods where I conducted my research, certain consumer items, such as radios and television sets, were regarded as standard appliances in every home (see Table 9). In more affluent houses, children might even have their own television set or audio system in their bedroom. Standard kitchen appliances usually included a refrigerator and a blender. In some cases material objects in the home evoked memories and had emotional connotations, as with Eva from Cooperativa Santa Anita. To her, the refrigerator brought back nostalgic thoughts about her wedding day, when she had purchased the appliance with her husband, as well as less pleasant memories of the day that various other valuables, including an audio system and a television set, were stolen from her home. After returning from work that day, she discovered that somebody had broken into their house. Since then, her husband had not let her work outside the home, and her world was reduced to the lot on which she lived. The theft thus affected emotional, relational, and practical aspects of her domestic life. In addition to reminding her of her wedding day, the refrigerator symbolized the period before the burglary. Don Luis, who lived in the same neighborhood, was very fond of the framed items decorating his wall, which featured his diploma as a driver and a few portraits. One was a painting of him and his wife when they were young. Next to it was one of his son as a youth, which reminded don Luis of the days when his son was a bachelor and still lived at home. Now that his children had left home, and he and his wife were an elderly couple living on this bare, arid hill, these visual memories made their house feel like home. In addition to memories and emotions, objects may have special or supernatural strengths and religious connotations. Many Roman Catholic residents had a special place for a family shrine inside their home. They had deep faith in the idea that the power of images of saints would protect it. Women especially

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Illustration 18. Family shrine in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi

indicated that they believed in the power of saints. Their faith was a source of comfort and strength to them and the family shrine an intimate part of this (see Illustration 18). Family shrines were usually located in the living room or bedroom. The statuettes tended to be positioned side by side, together with other significant objects, such as a television set or stereo system. In addition to a family shrine and religious scenes on their walls—such as paintings of the Last Supper or in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi photographs of Father Carlos Crespi—residents used other types of objects to protect their home from evil spirits. Some hung an aloe vera leaf on their wall (preferably from a red ribbon) or placed an aloe vera plant by the front door in the garden, as this plant is considered to have a purifying effect. They believed that such plants warded off evil spirits. One family in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi hung a small bag of water over their front door, as this was believed to have the same effect. Amulets and religious symbols were a natural presence in the home.

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How families distribute their limited means and energy in the interior and exterior areas of their home reveals the social and personal meanings of these settings for the occupants. The two general operating principles are from the exterior inward and vice versa. Avelina, a divorcee, had worked hard to expand and finish the exterior of her home and therefore started on the interior much later. For a long time, her bedroom was her only living area. While an additional story was under construction and the façade already painted, her living room remained unfurnished. Outsiders were impressed, as others in the neighborhood saw a lovely house that was already “largely finished.” Inside, however, her house had few comforts. That part came later. Conversely, the home of don Luis was very comfortable inside, even though the exterior was still bare and unfinished. While the exterior suggested a humble abode, the inside radiated domesticity. A fully furnished living room, a dining area, a bookcase filled with books, an audio system, and some wall decorations made the interior look very appealing. The outside would be finished later.

Illustration 19. First stage of construction: foundations and pillars

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The Construction Process Builders Self-builders perform the initial steps in the construction process with little help from others. The first step involves pouring concrete for the foundation beams on a flat surface, on which reinforced concrete pillars are built to support the structure (see Illustration 19). Once these pillars are in place, the walls may be run up between the pillars. The owner either does this himself or herself or commissions a maestro. With the pillars in place, the wall is the next step, and additional workers are needed. In Cooperativa Santa Anita most roofs are made of concrete (see Table 10). Concrete needs to be poured within a day, otherwise it hardens. Most roofs in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi are made of corrugated asbestos cement. People buy these boards ready made and simply attach them, although additional assistance often facilitates this process. While some owners hire help throughout, many neighborhood residents prefer to organize a minga to build labor-intensive sections. Selfbuilders usually do so to build the roof, relying on family members (even if they live elsewhere), as well as neighbors in some cases. These individually organized mingas differ from the collective, compulsory mingas that neighborhood authorities assemble, as described in the previous chapter. Table 10. Construction materials Cooperativa Santa Anita % (1999)

Ciudadela Carlos Crespi % (2001)

Brick

85

36

Concrete blocks

5

24

Brick and concrete blocks

2

6

Wood

5

6

Adobe

0

22

Various materials

2

7

Total

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72)

Asbestos-cement corrugated sheets

15

56

Roof tiles

5

18

Concrete

56

6

Corrugated steel sheets

24

15

Corrugated plastic sheets

0

1

Various materials

0

4

Total

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72)

Walls

Roof

Source: Household surveys 1999, 2001.

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In general terms, a minga is an original indigenous form of collective labor, based on reciprocity. Mingas have traditionally been part of the social organization in Andean communities. Especially in small, rural Quechua communities, organized forms of reciprocity serve an important social purpose and may be conduits for status, power, and economic means (Alberti and Mayer 1974; Aguiló 1992: 100–2). The literature contains several references to voluntad or the voluntary aspect of assistance or labor that relatives give each other, for example in building the roof of a new home for newlyweds (Mayer 1974: 45). They receive a meal in exchange for their assistance. The synonyms ayni and waje-waje are described in the literature as a reciprocal exchange of comparable labor between members of a community that are not relatives of each other. Here, too, the organizer always provides the helpers with food and drink, but the reciprocity consists primarily of exchanging labor: the organizer is expected to reciprocate by participating in an ayni of his or her helpers. Various authors write that a minga or mink’a differs from the above forms of reciprocity in that participants are compensated for their work with a lavish and festive meal comprising drinks and in some cases additional items, without the organizer needing to compensate the participants for their time and labor by providing a commensurate amount of time and labor (Mayer 1974; Orlove 1974; Arnold 1991: 12; Martínez Borrero and Einzmann 1993: 86–87). Peter Gose writes: “[I]n its most generic sense [mink’a] denotes exchanges of work for food and drink…. [Mink’a] does not require the host to return an equivalent day’s labor to the worker, and stresses remuneration through consumption instead” (Gose 1991: 47–48). The distinction between the different forms of social reciprocity is complex and subtle, and since terms such as voluntad, ayni, and waje-waje are not used in my research fields, I shall disregard them. All forms of reciprocity are identified as minga. Instances of family members helping each other voluntarily in building the roof were described as a minga de familiares (a minga of family members). This chapter opened with a brief description of the minga that Yadhira organized to put a roof on the home she had built for her mother. In exchange for a day of work, helpers received two hearty meals. In both neighborhoods, roof-building mingas involve a direct reciprocal exchange of labor for food and drink. This reciprocity usually continues for an extended period, and hosts and hostesses are expected to join the mingas of their helpers, especially those of relatives. Slightly over half the inhabitants of Cooperativa Santa Anita built part of the house with a minga of relatives or neighbors (see Table 11). The rate in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi is about a third. Contemporary building methods have added new meanings to the traditional minga. Because concrete hardens quickly, many workers are needed to prepare the concrete and to distribute it evenly across a large surface before

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Table 11. Mingas and wage labor during the construction process Cooperativa Santa Anita Ciudadela Carlos Crespi (1999) % (2001) % Minga

51

30

Help from non-family members

24

8

Help from both non-family members 27 and paid labor (construction workers)

22

No minga

44

39

Exclusively self-build (relatives)

7

10

Exclusively paid labor (construction workers)

37

29

Don’t know*

5

31

Total

100 (n = 41)

100 (n = 72)

Source: Household surveys 1999, 2001. * This response came from people who had bought a house from a previous owner and from tenants.

Illustration 20. Roof-building minga

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the hardening process begins. It could even be argued that building concrete roofs would be impossible without the minga tradition in Cooperativa Santa Anita, as few inhabitants can afford to hire ten or more construction workers for a day. Still, mingas are not necessarily low-cost solutions. Many residents save for a long time to prepare one or two nutritious meals for a large group of people. With some steps in the building process, hiring one experienced construction worker costs less than feeding a group of helpers. Of course the amount of manpower required depends on the building system selected: laying a concrete roof requires more hands simultaneously than placing readymade roof tiles. People unable to afford the meals resort to a simpler construction method and rely on members of their immediate family. At one end of the socioeconomic spectrum are the residents who have done as much as possible on their own, possibly with help from family members, while at the other end are those who have hired construction workers to do as much as possible. Many residents continue to rely on relatives or neighbors to help them with specific labor-intensive jobs.

Huasipichana Inauguration Ritual To conclude the minga and inaugurate a new home, rural Quechua communities used to conduct a ceremony known as a huasipichay or a huasipichana. In Riobamba it is called a huasipichay; in Cuenca it is a huasipichana. Relatively little has been written about this ritual, which is practiced throughout the Andes. In Quechua, huasipichana means “sweeping the house clean” (Aguiló 1992: 310, n.46; Pribilsky 2007: 109).4 It is described in various regional accounts as a ceremony in honor of completing the roof (Ramón 1985; Arnold 1991; Gose 1991; Cruz 1997). Nowadays the urban middle class also uses the term outside the context of building a house to describe a housewarming party. A compadre or comadre (godfather or godmother) is invited to the ceremony. In some regions he or she is expected to give the owner a roof cross and to arrange for it to be placed on the new roof. A lot of hard liquor is served on this occasion, and people become inebriated. Many deliberately forego this festivity for this reason. In the Andes, ritual inebriation has traditionally served an important social and cosmological purpose. Among the Quechua and Aymara communities in the Andes, ritual inebriation is regarded as a type of ontological journey across time and space, in search of the origin of being. Denise Arnold, who conducted research in Qaqachaka in Bolivia, has written that in building houses, ritual inebriation acquires significance at different levels. By sharing the memory of the process of house construction on each of these occasions, Qaqas reconstruct not only space, but also time, as they remember the past, ancestral genealogies, and their mythic and historical origins. The house thus

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serves as a mnemonic backdrop upon which the collective memory of the ancestors and the dead is overlaid. (Arnold 1991: 6)

In the context of the inauguration ritual, communal inebriation confirms the relationship between the new building, the community, their ancestors, and Mother Earth (see Abercrombie 1998). In old Peruvian and Bolivian communities, the rituals described relate closely to the socio-ethnic identification of the members. They confirm their ties with each other as Quechuas or as Aymaras and with the cosmos and the surrounding landscape. In the two neighborhoods where I conducted my research, the importance of ethnic identity was negligible. In Cooperativa Santa Anita four respondents to the survey described themselves as indigenous or “natural,” as did a few in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. If language and clothing may be regarded as identity markers, women from two families in each of the two neighborhoods wore folkloric garb rather than Western-style attire. A few families spoke Quechua. These families did not have crosses on their roof, which suggests that expressing an indigenous/ethnic identity does not relate to the building traditions I am describing here. Religious conviction carries more weight. I do not have statistics for the numbers of Roman Catholics and Protestants in the neighborhoods. Still, a great many rural inhabitants in Chimborazo Province are known to have become Protestant (Muratorio 1981). A few inhabitants of Cooperativa Santa Anita stated that they were Evangelicals and therefore had not conducted Roman Catholic inauguration rituals. In Cuenca, a Roman Catholic bastion, the percentage of Protestants is lower than in Riobamba, although some people in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi indicated that they were Evangelicals. The huasipichana or huasipichay is hardly celebrated at all anymore in the two working-class neighborhoods. Some inhabitants did so in the past or knew about the ritual. In Cooperativa Santa Anita the ritual was regarded as the traditional conclusion of the roof-building minga but did not relate to placing a cross on the roof. No crosses appeared on the roofs in Cooperativa Santa Anita. Residents of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi did associate the huasipichana with placing a cross on the roof. Some respondents also mentioned differences in the traditional meal served during the celebration. In the Cuenca region the meal has traditionally consisted of roast guinea pig (cuy) with large white corn (mote). Residents from Cooperativa Santa Anita reported being served pork or chicken and potatoes. In Cooperativa Santa Anita few residents knew the term huasipichay. Most referred to the celebration as the “roof festival” or as la borrachera (the drinking binge). Like the people in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, they regarded it as a rural ritual that was no longer celebrated in the neighborhood. Avelina was one of the few people from Cooperativa Santa Anita who had celebrated a huasipichay. In the mid-1990s,

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when she had her house built in the cooperative, she organized a minga to build the concrete roof. Family members from the village where she lived at the time joined this minga. After the work was done, they took a bus back to their village, where they slaughtered a pig, prepared a banquet, and celebrated all night long. That festival was in the village where she lived at the time. To my knowledge, nobody else in the cooperative had experienced this celebration. Marisa from Santa Anita explained why nobody put a cross on their roof in Cooperativa Santa Anita. As far as she knew, the huasipichay used to be celebrated in the rural village of her parents just north of Riobamba: “In the past, where my parents lived, they celebrated it, but not here. And it was not for [building] a concrete roof but for [one with] roof tiles. After placing the roof, they had a party, because they were so happy that they had laid the roof tiles.” Because crosses were placed only on sloped roofs, and many homes in Cooperativa Santa Anita had flat ones, the ritual roof cross was never introduced there. The expense of the celebration and the abundance of Protestants in the region were similarly conducive to the disappearance of the tradition. In 1999 Yadhira and Diego told me that these celebrations had become unaffordable and might require two years of savings, although they remembered many from “the past.” Since then, the celebration has gradually lost importance, and minga work has turned into a functional exchange of labor, without ceremonial ado. As soon as the roof is built—which means once the concrete has been poured, or the roof has been covered—most people return home nowadays. In addition, many people, especially women, abhor the drunkenness associated with the celebration. When I asked Marisa whether she had a party when the roof was finished, she apologized, saying she did not care for liquor. She believed that it was only proper to offer paid construction workers and minga participants alcoholic beverages “as it invigorates them.” But she felt that parties were only for people who enjoyed hard liquor. Victoria and Jorge circumvented this problem by only serving the non-alcoholic version of maize beer known as chicha de Avena during the minga. This beverage is made from Quaker oatmeal. After the minga they did not have a party: “people in other places may sometimes drink [alcoholic beverages]. Because of the tough economic times, though, few people serve hard liquor. The only thing that matters is that they come do the work.” In the cooperative people regarded the party and the alcoholic beverages served there as additional factors that merely increased the cost of construction and delayed the process unnecessarily. While the formal exchange of labor for food was perpetuated, the ritual celebration afterwards had been virtually discontinued, and people progressively tried to curtail the cost of the meals. In modern-day industrialized construction, where everything is expensive and needs to happen rap-

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idly, such a party was just another obstacle, since: “what you spend on a party could pay for a window,” as Marisa explained. Roman Catholics in Cooperativa Santa Anita have resolved the huasipichay dilemma—high costs and drunken visitors in exchange for the inauguration—by rescheduling the blessing. The celebration or service need not take place immediately after completing the roof but may be held years later, when another suitable occasion occurs, and a priest visits the area. A child’s first communion or a wedding is often an occasion for having a priest consecrate the home as well. Marisa answered as follows when I asked whether her house had been consecrated: “I had the [house] consecrated, as they say, because a priest from our parish came here. I invited him for coffee that evening and asked him to say a blessing, but that was all. Three or four people attended, but nobody else. It was not a celebration.” Other residents did likewise. Vilma had their house consecrated during a mass for the first Holy Communion of one of her children. In 1998 Nancy asked the priest who came to dedicate a New Year’s Eve mass to consecrate her house. Still others reported that it was a personal decision and had not had this done or had done it their own way. Señor Salazar had anticipated the day his house would be finished with a “pre-inauguration”; finally, Lourdes had mopped her floor with holy water. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, where crosses appear on some roofs, they seem to be most common on the older adobe homes in the neighborhood. The home of don Francisco is one of them. He built his house in the early 1960s, one piece at a time. When the roof was finished after two years, he held a huasipichana that lasted two days. In those days, neighbors were often invited as compadres. They would give each other a roof cross to denote the close ties in the neighborhood that was still a rural community in those days. In Cuenca, roof crosses are usually made of stone, with a stone pigeon or a stone pigeon’s egg on each side, symbolizing peace and fertility. Placing the roof cross is the most important part of the huasipichana ceremony. The compadre places the cross on the roof ridge and tosses coins (capillos), which bystanders catch. Sometimes the festivities include fireworks. Claudia remembered the ritual from her childhood. She used to love attending the “festivals of the cross” held by people in her neighborhood: “we were little and used to catch a few coins.” Catching money was the most exciting part for neighborhood kids. There is also a story attached to the cross on the old adobe house of the architect Paco, since it was initially placed there by the woman who owned the nearby hacienda. Neighbors no longer give each other roof crosses. Ciudadela Carlos Crespi has become urbanized. As in Cooperativa Santa Anita, collective rituals have made way for individual celebrations. But even though the huasipichana is no longer a neighborhood festival, it continues to be celebrated. On 2 April

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2002 don Gabriel celebrated the completion of the frame of his house. At that point the house was not yet finished, since he installed the windows and doors only afterwards. Gabriel had asked a comadre to provide a cross. As the owner of the new home, Gabriel did not attend that part of the ritual. The “godmother” purchased the cross, arranged for a priest to consecrate it, and placed it on the roof. The party afterwards lasted through the night, to the immense annoyance of his neighbor don Bolivar, who described the huasipichana as “what people from the countryside do.” He associated the festival with Quechua community culture and felt considerably superior to that. He found the huasipichana inappropriate for “civilized” city folk. Aside from regarding the custom as boorish, he found it to be un-Christian, since “you call on Christ without such a raucous hullabaloo.” A devout Protestant, don Bolivar felt that drunkenness violated his religious principles. Gabriel, however, was not from the countryside. He had spent his entire life in the neighborhood, where he shared the family estate with six heirs. He associated the celebration as much with Cuenca’s suburbs as with the surrounding villages. To some residents, the power of the cross extended beyond its Roman Catholic connotation. When I asked fellow neighborhood resident doña Lorena about the significance of the roof cross, she told me: “It is to ensure that God blesses the house and some people have metal objects [on their roof] to avoid being struck by lightning.” The cross thus served a practical purpose as well, as it invoked God’s protection and warded off natural disasters at the same time. Although the roof celebration was no longer a communal event, neighborhood residents continued individually or in family groups to seek ways to obtain God’s blessing for their house. Moreover: “the cross basically wards off evil forces and devils,” as Soledad put it. Some residents preferred to distinguish official religious worship from what they considered to be religious folklore. My questions about the roof cross and celebrating the huasipichana instigated discussions about the religious significance of this ritual. Doña Monica and her daughter Noelia discussed these issues when I asked them about the significance of the roof cross. Doña Monica, a pious woman who regarded her family shrine as her most valuable possession and taught catechism to teenagers, regarded the huasipichana as a folk custom unrelated to Roman Catholic rituals. Her daughter emphasized the blessing by the priest. Neither of the two was certain of the Quechua term for the celebration, which varied in every sentence of their explanation about it. Monica: You know, people put up a cross, I don’t know, I think it is something traditional as well, something from…. Noelia: It is something traditional. They place the cross and celebrate mass, so that God will bless the house and all those living in it. [Mother looks surprised.]

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Of course! Why else do you think they would put up a cross and have a party and consecrate the house? Monica: But which mass is celebrated? No, child, it is a tradition. Or rather: it has a name often used in this area: it is called the Guasapichana. Christien: The what? Monica: Guasapichana. Noelia: Huasapichan! Monica: Huasapichan? Christien: What does that mean? Monica: It is a celebration about finishing the house. Because the house is finished. Christien: I see. Is that Quechua? Monica: Yes. Noelia: Huasipichama. Monica: I think they dance, party, light fireworks, and so on. It’s a tradition. I don’t think you should confuse religion with such things. Suppose I were religious and celebrated mass and had my house consecrated by bringing a priest here…. Noelia: That’s how most people do it! In the countryside they do it, mama, I’m certain they do it. In the countryside they usually celebrate mass and bless the house. [Mr K] also celebrated mass and consecrated his house. Monica: Yes, but without the festivities and fireworks! Noelia: No, but in the countryside…. Monica: [Firmly, hoping to drop the subject.] So that is the Huasipichan!

Monica clearly regarded placement of the roof cross and the consecration as two separate affairs. A ritual celebrating construction of the roof, ritual drunkenness, placement of a roof cross by a compadre, or the priestly consecration of a new house—in both neighborhoods these events were not or had ceased to be celebrated by all the residents and had been discontinued in part. Local residents did not feel that their personal practices and customs relating to the construction process were special: they believed that real house-building traditions existed only in the countryside. One of the inhabitants from Cooperativa Santa Anita suggested after an interview that construction styles in the indigenous communities might interest me far more than the houses in their neighborhood would, as “cultural affairs received no consideration” in Cooperativa Santa Anita. In city neighborhoods, everything depended on money, according to the residents, and the design or furnishing of spaces was now devoid of any cultural connotation whatsoever. Old customs have acquired new meanings and new cultural repertoires have been invoked. The inhabitants regarded their houses as more modern than those in the villages, but they did not regard their homes or lifestyles as anything typical of urban working-class neighborhoods. There was no self-

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identification with a presumed chicha culture, neither in the house-construction process nor in the architecture of their homes. Such a distinctive culture did not exist because the intertwining of influences was too subtle and the cultural repertoires were too varied. The most prominent difference between working-class neighborhood residents and other city dwellers was a difference in socioeconomic status. The various descriptions and interpretations above, however, reveal that although old building traditions have taken new forms and acquired new meanings in the urban context, belief in the influence of divine forces and natural powers remains omnipresent. New standards of decency and changed religious views have not affected beliefs in good and evil forces as much as they have the way that people protect their home and household against them.

Conclusion In this chapter I have described how working-class neighborhood residents build their houses according to the restrictions imposed by their financial means, knowledge, and cultural practices and customs. Examining the different identities that neighborhood residents have and the roles they assume in certain situations provides insight into the meanings expressed via the construction process. I have reviewed the priorities that self-builders set during this process and the duties they take on as designers, builders, family members, neighborhood residents, and city dwellers in this chapter. In provincial working-class neighborhoods, building houses is more an individual matter than a community one. While the per capita income in nearly 80 percent of the households in Cooperativa Santa Anita is below the national average, some households are able to spend several times that amount. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi the differences are more pronounced because of the many transnational migrant families. The financial means of wealthier families and their ability to hire professionals and construction workers and install individual facilities have diminished the need to team-up and have increased differences in individual housing comforts. In self-building, designing, building, and taking up residence there are three connected processes. Self-builders work systematically toward a certain idea they have envisaged, but adjustments are made at the construction site. This method, where situational intervention coincides naturally with a longterm vision, is an important feature of self-building in working-class neighborhoods. The second feature is the overlap between individual actions and recruited expertise. Self-building, which occurs in part independently and in part in mingas, was commonplace until a few years ago. But organizing a minga is not necessarily an inexpensive solution, since large banquets are very

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costly. Nowadays, those who have the financial means commission experts to design and construct their home. In these cases, producing houses through private commissions has become more common than self-building. Prioritization varies throughout the construction process. Some households invest more energy at first in interior residential comforts, whereas others finish exterior construction as quickly as possible at the expense of the interior. Focusing on interior comforts makes living more enjoyable, whereas emphasizing the exterior may enhance the owner’s social standing. Social and personal differences are therefore manifested not only in the quality and comfort of the homes but also in the actual construction process. The head of the household usually determines how this construction process happens. In families where the husband does construction work, he designs and builds his house. Women whose husbands live abroad are often instructed over the phone about how to proceed and about the desired outcome. In specific domains of the house, such as the kitchen or the bedroom, women are often in charge of the furnishings. Because several activities are carried out simultaneously in self-building and may involve various parties, the outcome may not be as hoped. Complaints about stubborn or ignorant maestros, assessment errors by self-builders in producing the design, and differences of opinion between spouses or family members regularly figured in the experiences of the occupants. The third characteristic of self-building in working-class neighborhoods is that residents build and live according to different cultural repertoires. Many neighborhood residents were born in the countryside or lived at their present abode back when it was a rural area, as in the case of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. Building in mingas and inaugurating a new home with a rooftop celebration (huasipichana/huasipichay) are both regarded as generally characteristic of rural—often indigenous—communities in the Andes region. In the cities the original, social, and cosmological meanings of these rural traditions are transformed. Because the duration of construction needs to be limited for financial reasons, and because concrete hardens rapidly, mingas have become largely practical arrangements in both neighborhoods. Capitalist labor relations and the industrialization of building products have made modern construction methods (recruited construction workers, pre-fab construction components) faster and in some cases less expensive than traditional ones. The ritual celebration of the huasipichana/huasipichay, placing the roof cross, and ritual inebriation have become rare; libations are no longer a deeply rooted social experience, and neighbors no longer give each other roof crosses as gifts. In both neighborhoods, Protestant residents reject the blessing of the house, placement of a roof cross, and ritual inebriation. Roman Catholics prefer to have a priest bless their house on a different occasion. In addition, many residents prefer a flat roof, as it facilitates expansions

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to their house. Roof crosses are hardly ever placed on flat roofs, being more usual on sloped ones.5 Still, many people in both neighborhoods believe that material objects have the power to protect their home and hearth: if there is no roof cross, they will have aloe vera in their house, a bag of water at the front door, or a family shrine inside. Amulets capable of warding off evil spirits, ranging from diseases and lightning to devils and demons, are permanent fixtures in the home. Practices and customs from the urban or rural surroundings are not the only examples available to neighborhood residents. Since transnational migration got under way, many have derived inspiration from buildings and lifestyles abroad. The significance of this with respect to architecture will be addressed in the following chapter. Consumer goods are central to interiors. Each family has a radio, and nearly every house has at least one television set. Ideas about domestic comforts are expressed through home furnishings. But comfort also means that residents have sufficient living space and basic facilities to ensure the health of family members. The ongoing prevalence of poverty-related diseases indicates that such facilities are not available to all families. And although many households nowadays have several television sets, VCRs, DVD players or computers, living-room or dining-room furniture is a major investment for many people. Policy makers and politicians often refer to residents of working-class neighborhoods as a homogeneous, identifiable, and “difficult” social group. As the survey data make clear, however, socioeconomic opportunities vary considerably between households, and not all family members are needy or poor. Nor are the working-class neighborhoods of Riobamba and Cuenca characterized by a distinctive chicha culture. Recently, however, discussions about new lifestyles and patterns of consumption in suburban areas have become commonplace as a consequence of modernization and globalization. The general sentiment here is that, especially along the urban periphery, the culture is becoming more “vulgar” and is affecting the image of the city as propagated by the cultural elites. This subject will be addressed in the following three chapters.

Notes   1. In 1999 the national minimum monthly income (based on a household comprising 5 persons) was defined as 1.6 times the minimum wage of 1,025,003 sucres a month (ILDIS 2005).  2. In 2001 the national minimum monthly income (based on a household comprising 4 persons) was defined as 1.6 times the minimum wage of 125.20 dollars a month (ILDIS

Habits in House Building | 143 2002a). Why INEC adjusted the standard from five to four persons is not explained in their methodology. According to an ILDIS report (ILDIS 2002a: 20), however, this does not correspond with the average family composition in Ecuador and might be an arithmetic trick to make the poverty rate appear lower.   3. In 1999 the poverty level was 603,432 sucres (about 38.5 dollars) per person per month and the extreme poverty level 301,716 sucres (about 19.3 dollars) (CEPAL 2003: 284). In 2001 the poverty level was 77.55 dollars per person per month and the extreme poverty level 58.82 dollars (Montalvo n.d.).   4. In Chimborazo Province the Puruhá term buluhay denotes this ritual (Aguiló 1992: 82; Cruz 1997: 7).   5. In 2009 I encountered a modern white villa with a flat roof in an upper-class area, on which a cross with two doves and two eggs had been placed.

4

Fashionable Homes

Gabriel from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi is a hat maker. Like some of his neighbors, he spends his days trimming stacks of panama hats intended for export. He was born and bred in the neighborhood. On the site owned by his family, which he shares with other heirs, he is building a new home, as we observed previously. In 2003 that house was inaugurated with a huasipichana ceremony before it was finished. At the time he still lived with his wife and children in a small mediagua at the back of the plot of land. He says that the new house under construction, which features a bright blue façade and stained glass windows, will be a “traditional” home. Non-traditional homes are elegant, and Gabriel cannot afford elegant. Only the families of transnational migrants can, he explained. They can afford to have homes “with striking architecture” built, so that the outside world notices their social and financial progress. Residential architecture accommodates, presents, and represents. Self-building allows the makers a measure of control over all three functions: they build their own private space, they present their views about living to the outside world, and they represent selected social standards and values. In the following pages I address the house as an artifact. As in the building process, social relations and identities are mediated via the expressive attributes of the building. In their pursuit of social standing, architecture is an important vehicle of communication for self-builders: People in poor autoconstructed neighborhoods are especially sensitive to domestic architectural signs, and their houses are especially eloquent, not only because they build houses, and therefore have considerable technical knowledge about them, but also because they talk about them passionately in terms of a system of aesthetic judgments. To understand these judgments is to grasp the relationship between their exterior concerns as visual discriminations and the sense of self and society they occasion. (Holston 1991: 457–58)

Architectural shapes are imitated or presented in new compositions, while parallel discussions determine which architectural shapes are approved as suitable, and which are deemed inappropriate. Verbal and non-verbal communication coexist in expressive culture: “If the symbolic value of a built structure is recognized as something special to the society which builds it, there seems ample linguistic evidence to show that it may still be conceptual-

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ized in a linguistic framework which is itself of a different order of emphasis and signification” (Oliver 1975: 30). Different verbal and visual systems of significance therefore become intermingled. The aesthetic and moral categories constructed in this manner provide a framework for social and cultural distinctions between persons and groups. On the one hand, a home encapsulates the most personal lives of the occupants, while on the other hand architecture is also a clearly visible and public medium for conveying messages about who the occupants are, and how they would like others to perceive them. Some authors describe this as a social-semiotic system, in which the built environment is regarded as a system of meaning, loaded with context-dependent meanings that may be “read” to penetrate the underlying social system. This approach builds on a tradition that arose in the 1960s and 1970s, pioneered by structuralists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Umberto Eco, and Roland Barthes. In analyzing use of space, they applied the linguistic semiotics of Ferdinand de Saussure, especially his distinction between langue, a grammatical system, and parole, the individual meanings expressed via language. Others considered these semiotic analyses overly static, because they treated architecture as a spatial text that needed “only” to be decoded to penetrate the deeper structuring principles of a society, leaving the reciprocal relations between people and their built environment outside their scope (Ellin 1996: 247–69; Leach 1997). I regard residential architecture not as a passive vehicle of meaning but as an interactive medium, which self-builders, neighbors, professionals, and authorities use to construct social distinction and cultural identities. That social distinction concerns economic capacity and is usually related to transnational migration. Cultural identities are about lifestyles and about how local, national, and international culture elements become intertwined with these lifestyles. Active mediation via architecture is particularly noticeable when new architectural elements are introduced: sometimes residents adapt their behavior to the new architecture, and sometimes the architecture is adapted for daily use; for example, if a house turns out not to be functional after all. Architectural style enables residents of working-class neighborhoods to show that they are in control of their household, that they are economically better off, or that they have adapted a certain social status or identity. Expressing personal taste and a sense of style are important as well. Others respond to the expressions of self-builders by showing their approval or disapproval, sometimes in words, but often through architecture as well. How daily use mediates meanings of residential architecture is the main focus of this chapter. I will begin with a brief review of international influences in local architecture. Next, I describe how transnational migration has influenced local building economies and styles of architecture, before exploring appreciation of various styles of architecture.

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International Influences in Local Architecture Leading architecture traditions in Ecuador have always reflected foreign influences. Spanish influences in colonial architecture are an obvious example, but European trends in architecture and urban development remained very pronounced during the republican period after 1830. Until the mid-twentieth century, Ecuador had no academic architecture programs, and most architecture commissions were entrusted to foreign architects. English, German, and Italian architects were recruited to design government buildings, urban development plans, and estates for wealthy individuals. Young Ecuadorians interested in studying architecture attended universities abroad, where programs in architecture were offered from the late nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, wealthy merchants traveled to Paris to learn about the latest fashions in architecture and residential decoration. The Cuencan elite was very French-oriented at the time. Architects were commissioned by their wealthy clients to include art deco and art nouveau features in their buildings to enhance their aura. Homes of wealthy merchants and exporters were equipped with salons filled with mirrors and chandeliers and covered with Persian carpets and wallpaper imported from Europe (Estrella Vintimilla 1992; Krüggeler 1997). At the start of the twentieth century, a prominent family even brought French architects and artisans to Cuenca to teach local construction workers the tricks of the trade. Artisans in Cuenca were assigned to copy elements from images brought in from Europe. Over time, they mastered the new construction techniques and incorporated them in their work, giving rise to local versions of the neoclassicist style (Espinosa Abad and Calle Medina 2002: 29–34). In Riobamba, Francisco Durini, a Swiss architect of Italian descent, designed the central Parque Maldonado, which was inaugurated in 1928, as well as the statue honoring Pedro Vicente Maldonado in that park. His designs for private clients included an elegant, eclectic mansion for the prominent citizen Julio Salem (1919). In Cuenca, Durini designed an elaborately ornamented building, the Hotel Internacional (1932) (Cevallos Romero and Durini 1990). Other well-known architects from that period include the Italian brothers Pablo and Antonino Russo. In 1921 in Riobamba they built the monumental Colegio Maldonado in neoclassicist style, which has become one of the most impressive buildings in the city center (see Illustration 4) (Ortiz n.d.a). Architects from abroad thus helped bring about the cityscapes in the two cities and set an example for local artisans and builders. But demand for architects of local origin grew. In the 1940s an architecture program was introduced at the Universidad Central in Quito, with assistance from the Uruguayan architects Gatto Sobral and Altamirano, who launched a Uruguayan-style curriculum. Based on the one at the Ecole des

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Beaux Arts in Paris, this curriculum highlighted the aesthetics of architectural designs. In 1946 the Escuela de Arquitectura opened, and in 1959 the program was transferred to a separate architecture faculty. Other universities followed suit a few decades later. Thanks to the introduction of engineering and architecture programs at Ecuadorian universities, the country had a contingent of planners that set their own priorities in the second half of the twentieth century. They had attended a European-style curriculum that did not properly accommodate the needs of Ecuadorian society. While the cities pursued their unplanned growth, the first generations of architects focused mainly on homes, housing developments, and office buildings for the cultural and economic upper crust in the center and in the newer suburbs (Benavides Solís 1995: 67–80). In the mid-twentieth century, when the modernist style started to penetrate Ecuadorian architecture, Gatto Sobral was commissioned to design some government buildings in Cuenca. By the 1970s, the buildings constructed in the city as modernist and postmodernist were despised by those affiliated with Cuenca’s architecture faculty. Local traditions and artisanal construction processes were reevaluated. Following the path of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright and joining the emerging school of “critical regionalism,” which rejected universalist views and the eurocentrism of the “international style,” the first locally trained architects derived inspiration from artisanal construction processes, elements from colonial architecture, and local natural resources (Andrade 1999: 32–33; Estrella Vintimilla 2000). The first generation of locally trained professionals in Cuenca developed a special style that was considered more compatible with local building traditions, thanks to the construction materials selected and the design. This architectural style became known as arquitectura cuencana (Municipalidad de Cuenca 1997: 43–47; Andrade 1999). Despite the lack of a uniform construction style, it became a movement in local architecture, as the architects who applied this tradition—and in some cases still do—shared the same outlook. They had in common that they used natural building materials from the region as much as possible and tried to innovate artisanal construction techniques. Many homes they designed have walls with visible bricks or stones, sloped, tiled roofs with large awnings, striking chimneys, and umbrageous gardens. This building style is neo-vernacular, entirely in the critical regionalist spirit. Homes with these features are known throughout other cities in Ecuador as arquitectura cuencana. Although the professionals in Cuenca aimed to conform to popular building traditions, they ended up creating their own elite architecture, which differed from that used for the homes of ordinary Cuencans by virtue of its size, complex layouts, and sophisticated building techniques. The detached houses they designed in the spirit of arquitectura cuencana were not homes

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“of and by the people,” as Paul Oliver has defined vernacular architecture, but elegant mansions for the elite. The Cuencan professionals thus made ample use of knowledge, experience, and architectural debates from abroad. International stylistic trends and technological advances influenced buildings in the inner city, as well as the urban planning and development of the outlying areas. Riobamba does not yet have an architecture program like the one in Cuenca. The majority (probably about 90 percent) of the professional architects there were educated in Quito, where modernist ideas dominated the program. Architect Pedro Arias from Riobamba described this architectural design as follows: “These [architects] from Quito tend to specialize in American-style structures, featuring straight lines and the like. In Quito, for example, roofs are not sloped, everything is straight, in keeping with the American style.” Because Riobamba’s cityscape is determined in part by architects trained in Quito, rectangular, flat-roofed houses are fairly common. The shapes and colors of some of these buildings reflect North American art deco, while many buildings from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s have elaborate façades reflecting international postmodernist architecture. Tall buildings alternate with low ones, as architectural restrictions do not exist in the city. Some architects deplore the lack of cohesion in urban architecture and would like the physical city to convey a recognizable local identity as Cuenca does. Other architects, builders, and clients, however, use this freedom to build as they please, often with no regard to the rules. The outcome is a lack of consensus about the desired cityscape. Many debates about the desired cityscape in Riobamba and Cuenca revolve around design features of formal and informal architecture. Since the aforementioned examples reveal that in nearly all cases municipal authorities have used foreign architectural influences to visualize local progress, current complaints from professionals about the “import architecture” of migrant families may seem hypocritical. The debates reveal, however, that this symbolic struggle conceals sweeping social changes, in which self-builders and professionals meet in different capacities. Accordingly, this chapter will address verbal and non-verbal aspects of ideas about architecture.

Migrant Dollars in the Construction Industry Over two decades of transnational contacts have left particularly strong traces in the built environment of the Cuenca region. Cuenca is the center of a labor-exporting region from which approximately 150,000 people have moved abroad in the past decades. The number of transnational migrants was considerable, given that the canton as a whole had a population of 400,000

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(INEC 2002–2004; ILDIS 2004c). From the end of the previous century, as described above, a new migration wave got under way and had a visible impact on Cuenca as well. The large remittances from abroad to those left behind boosted consumer spending and consequently retail trade—greatly increasing, for example, the number of shops selling appliances and electronics. Travel agencies and courier services thrived as well, thanks to the divided families. Many migrant dollars were used to purchase cars and luxury commodities, as well as new homes and real estate (Bendixen and Associates 2003). Humberto Cordero, president of the Cámara de la Construcción in the Cuenca region told me in 2002 that in 2000 alone 300 million migrant dollars were spent on housing construction. On the one hand the construction industry was revitalized, but on the other hand the trend caused a shortage of land suitable for building and labor, since an estimated 70 percent of construction workers from the southern Andes had moved abroad. The result was a steep rise in construction costs.1 Land speculation increased, and wages for construction workers followed suit. This attracted Peruvian and Colombian construction workers, who undercut the legal rates. Price discrepancies between the regions increased: in 2002 a construction worker in Cuenca earned about 120 dollars a week, whereas his counterpart in Riobamba made only half that amount. As a consequence of the price increases, rates per square meter (1.2 square yard) of land in the city of Cuenca exceeded 300 dollars that year (Serageldin et al. 2004: 10). The new migration wave coincided with a slump in the construction boom in Cuenca, which lasted a few years. The new dollar economy made investments in Cuenca less lucrative. In addition, more flexible regulations enabled illegal migrants to open bank accounts in the United States and reduced their need to invest their dollars in real estate. Many Cuencans who emigrated opted for savings accounts in the United States over risky projects in Cuenca’s overpriced construction economy (Orozco 2004). Housing construction in Cuenca stagnated, although price levels remained the highest in the country for years. In 2003 in Cuenca a canasta básica costs forty dollars more than the national average.2 The price increases widened the gap between migrant families and the rest of the population, forming a new social distinction that transcended the old social class structure. The relative wealth of successful migrant families became a universal standard. Increasing numbers of people considered moving away. The visibility of new patterns of consumption, manifested by homes and fancy cars and the relative poverty of those unable to partake in them, made transnational migration self-generating (this process is called the “demonstration effect” by Georges 1990: 209). Successful migrant families were regarded as the nouveau riche class of the country. Studies indicate that most families with members abroad were receiving 100 to 300 dollars a month around that time (Bendixen and Associates 2003;

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ILDIS 2004a, 2004b; Serageldin et al. 2004). In some cases, this amount doubled their monthly disposable income. But not all stories from compatriots who moved away are tales of success. Newspapers regularly feature articles about the hardships of Ecuadorians along their journey and in their destination country. Many have difficulty living as illegal aliens and suffer from discrimination and homesickness. Those remaining behind have a hard time as well. When one or both parents leave, children often have to fend for themselves. Studies have attributed emotional problems among children and the rise of youth gangs to migration (Pribilsky 2001; Castillo, Patiño and Pesántez 2003). Moreover, many of the family members left behind have run up huge debts with loan sharks to pay for the journey and use remittances to repay these loans. If migrants are unable to find work in their destination country, their families in Ecuador often wind up in serious trouble as well. Some migrants eventually returned to Ecuador. In both research neighborhoods, I found men who had come back after spending several years abroad. Vicente from Cooperativa Santa Anita was one of them. He used some of the money he earned to improve his home and hoped to open a small business with what remained. Gustavo from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi is another example. He had returned with little to show for the year he spent working in Valencia and Murcia. Every day he sat under an awning in front of his house trimming panama hats and was barely able to make ends meet. Men and women had left both neighborhoods with no intention of returning, because they had started new lives elsewhere. Monica and Maria Caridad from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, for example, knew that their husbands did not plan to return from the United States. Except for a few brief visits, these men had left their home permanently. Every migration story had a sad angle to it, even though outsiders see mainly the benefits. However, difficult the lives of many transnational families may be, most Ecuadorians regard this step primarily as a reflection of new opportunities for themselves.

Domestic Architecture as a Form of Communication Architecture: Acts Speak Louder than Words Building is a public matter. Everybody sees the outcome of the construction. Still, the architectural attributes of the homes of others are a sensitive issue in both neighborhoods. Neighborhood residents told me over and over that they could not share opinions about homes in their neighborhood, because they felt they should mind their own business. When I asked which houses she liked, doña Soledad from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi responded, sobre gustos de colores no discuten los doctores, in other words, “there’s no accounting for taste.” She was adamant about this and took this interview question,

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which was intended to obtain general information, very personally: “Since everybody has their own opinion about home architecture, you can’t say ‘this house is ugly,’ or ‘look at the color they painted it: they have no taste!’ No, that won’t work, since everybody has their own ideas. I may think this is pretty or ugly, but who cares about my opinion?” Others dismissed my questions with a phrase meaning that we have to settle for what God gives us in this life; so we should not talk about other people’s houses. Working-class residents were not the only ones who found this a sensitive issue. Architects hardly ever criticize each other’s designs or remarkable homes in the city in a public lecture, especially not if the occupants are prominent citizens. After the architect Carlos Velasco from Riobamba critiqued several early twentieth-century buildings in the city, he stated that he would not discuss contemporary architecture “because those architects are still alive.” He considered it inappropriate. Architects and residents of working-class neighborhoods, however, do comment openly about the homes of the nouveau riche in the countryside, although their remarks are cloaked in abstractions and urban myths, as I will demonstrate below. They also describe how attractive they find certain homes in elegant neighborhoods with detached houses and express very favorable views about the stately historical mansions in the center, premises that figure on UNESCO’s world heritage list. Provided that their remarks reflect general public opinion, they are happy to share them. As soon as they become personal, however, they say that there is no accounting for taste. One possible explanation is that architecture is an indirect form of communication loaded with ambivalent values. The message conveyed via architecture may be difficult for the senders to control and may sometimes be hard for the recipients to interpret as well: “Far from always offering a clear picture of someone’s economic stature, conspicuous displays often raise questions about his or her priorities, in particular, and about shared definitions of appropriate economic activity, in general. Costly houses and big parties get neighbors talking” (Colloredo-Mansfeld 1999: 40). Architecture discloses information about those who made the building or those who occupy it. This message may be interpreted in various ways. Architecture communicates the taste, the sense of awareness, and the financial state of the builders and occupants and is therefore seen as a very personalized expression. At the same time, homes contain the personal lives of the occupants. Despite its representative quality, the exterior is not a direct window onto the way of life on the inside. Discussing architecture thus requires interpreting the message conveyed, which bothers many neighborhood residents. They might reach the wrong conclusions about the private lives of the occupants based on what they see on the exterior of a home. That is why they say that there is no accounting for taste.

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Speaking about home architecture also reveals the relationship between the builders/occupants of the home (those sending the message) and the critic (the recipient of the message). Saying that a certain home is ugly means stating out loud that you think a household is too poor to do something about the aesthetics of the home, or that the occupants are displaying “bad” taste. Such statements suggest that the critic considers himself or herself superior to the builders or occupants of that home. Architects avoid making statements about the work of counterparts who are still alive for these reasons as well. In addition, critics set themselves up for negative remarks from others: if I do not like his or her house, he or she may not like mine either. Such a statement might therefore jeopardize relationships with colleagues. In other contexts, however, neighborhood residents and professionals are happy to discuss social relations in their everyday surroundings. They readily discuss quarrels between neighbors or disagreements within the group of architects and sometimes even mention the parties by name. Apparently, however, disclosing a relationship between persons who know each other well by making statements about a multifaceted medium such as architecture is regarded as gossip, improper conduct against which the builders/occupants are unable to defend themselves. That is why critics speak only about homes that have no social bearing on themselves, thereby generalizing their statements. The homes they discuss in their social or geographic surroundings are usually “nice” homes. After all, saying that somebody owns a nice house may be perceived as a compliment and as acknowledgement of the aspired status of the occupants, describing the relationship between the speaker and the occupants in favorable terms. Despite the sensitive nature of the subject, my conversations with neighborhood residents about home architecture disclosed countless stereotypes, enabling me to distill the criteria they applied in assessing home architecture. Moreover, the communicative strength of architecture is what causes successful elements to be copied and unsuccessful designs to be ignored. Some homes reveal what the makers or occupants aimed to conceal. Occupants copy elements from other homes they consider attractive or suitable and integrate them in their own design. Construction costs, architectural attributes, and associations with American and European building techniques were mentioned repeatedly.

“Migrant Architecture” Many residents of working-class neighborhoods want their home to convey their accomplishments in life, revealing that they are not among the very poorest and are sometimes even among the more affluent. They show that they know about construction and interior decoration and about how to run

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Illustration 21. Home of a former transnational migrant in Cooperativa Santa Anita

Illustration 22. Homes of transnational migrants in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi

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their household efficiently, hoping to elicit social appreciation. Households with little disposable income literally progress stone by stone. They build slowly, but they try to use small details, such as a brightly painted exterior façade, to show that they are respectable. Other families can afford to spend a lot on the architecture and hope to display their affluence that way. These include the families of transnational migrants, who are known in Ecuador and elsewhere for using their homes as signposts proclaiming their upward mobility (also see Waterson 1997; Fletcher 1999). In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and Cooperativa Santa Anita the homes of transnational families are larger and built from more expensive materials. They are equipped with matching furniture and conveniences that most other households lack. The nouveau riche, who are able to spend more thanks to remittances from abroad, are inclined to engage in conspicuous consumption. Others benefit from the relative success of this migrant architecture: because the architectural expression by migrant families is so powerful that detached homes with certain visual characteristics are associated with transnational migration, other builders now use these architectural expressions as well. Flashy architecture, featuring elements such as a neoclassicist porch with columns or a large, stained-glass façade, has basically become synonymous with economic success and a global lifestyle. How residents of working-class neighborhoods feel about homes in their neighborhood and elsewhere in the city depends in part on local building traditions. Cuenca’s building traditions differ from those in Riobamba, and the powers that be in Cuenca have different ideas about architecture in their city than their counterparts in Riobamba. Since the 1960s professionals in Cuenca have sought an architectural expression compatible with the city’s cultural history and natural surroundings. In the 1970s and 1980s this quest for cultural uniqueness gave rise to the school commonly known as the arquitectura cuencana, which became popular among the cultural elite. The authorities in Cuenca have called for a consistent cityscape. In Riobamba the absence of a specific design tradition has given rise to an arbitrary medley of building styles. Municipal policy has done little to change this, despite commitments in writing to a more consistent cityscape. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi residents take pride in Cuenca’s illustrious cultural history, especially the monumental inner city. They value the traditional building styles and efforts by the authorities to protect monuments. Those living in adobe houses note the traditional values expressed there. But they do not base designs for new homes on these building traditions. Instead, they look at new detached houses in neighborhoods filled with them or at architecture abroad. In Riobamba residents are far less likely than those in Cuenca to mention the value of cultural historical buildings in the inner city. In conversations about building styles, neighborhood residents are more likely to refer to Cuenca’s architecture than to that of their

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own city. In Cooperativa Santa Anita residents building new homes also base their designs on elegant abodes in neighborhoods with detached homes or on examples from other Ecuadorian cities or abroad. Despite the differences in building traditions, residents of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi and Cooperativa Santa Anita apply comparable evaluation mechanisms. During interviews and informal conversations, residents were strongly inclined to think in dualities. As in the section about Gabriel at the beginning of this chapter, architectural classifications such as “traditional” and “ordinary” are contrasted with “fashionable” and “special.” Evaluation and appreciation of home architecture conform to a dichotomous model with a cluster of clearly identifiable features that are greatly appreciated at one end of the spectrum and one of far less clearly identifiable characteristics at the other. The verbal vagueness about the less appreciated architectural features probably relates to the self-imposed censorship described with respect to deprecating other people’s property. The pole that is very much appreciated consists of the following classification of architectural features: “fashionable” architecture; visible involvement of professionals in homes “with a striking style”; “elegant” designs from “abroad”; “expensive” construction materials; extensive finishing touches; matching sets of furniture and added conveniences. “Attractive” or “fashionable” homes are contrasted with what are popularly known as “ordinary” homes, and homes “with a striking design” are contrasted with those that are “nothing special.” The terms neighborhood residents use when they discuss architecture are especially significant, as they reflect their verbal construction of architectural categories. This does not mean that “foreign models” are indeed from abroad, or that “expensive construction materials” really are expensive. Their idea of attractive, fashionable, and successful is being constructed here, like a metaphor. James Fernandez argues that metaphors in cultural expressions are used to draw social and cultural distinctions and to enable comparisons between groups. By communicating messages visually, people elicit responses (Fernandez 1974, 1977). Lawrence and Low (1990: 472) paraphrase Fernandez’s theory, asserting that “[h]umans predicate space upon themselves and obtain qualities that they, in turn, project upon space.” The strength of the images is apparent from the so-called “migrant architecture,” which has become a metaphor for economic success and social prestige. I use interview excerpts to demonstrate how that social construction works. Vicente and Nancy’s family is one of the few in Cooperativa Santa Anita to have built a relatively large home; it was almost finished in 2002. Thanks to the money that Vicente had saved while working as an illegal immigrant in New York, they have just about built their dream home. The house consisted of a ground floor and two upper stories, of which the mother and

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father and their two children occupied only the ground floor. Above they built an apartment, which they rented out now and then, to guarantee their monthly income over the long term. On the roof of their house they had placed a 130-gallon water tank to provide enough water for the bathroom and kitchen. One tank of water lasted about two weeks. Inside, the home appeared comfortable and neat. The floor was covered with narrow floorboards in two different colors, creating a striped light-dark pattern. I had never seen this before, and it looked very exclusive. The living room area had a coffee table, a television set, and a VCR, and the interior decorations included plants and various ornaments. The all-terrain vehicle that Vicente drove was the crowning glory in this picture of affluence. Many neighbors had the same impression of them and often mentioned their home as one of the few “nice” houses in the neighborhood. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi there are several houses similar in terms of their size, finishing touches, and layout to the one owned by Vicente and Nancy, for example the one that belongs to Julia. She lived for a long time in an unremarkable home at the end of the block, described by somebody in the neighborhood as “very modest.” After her husband left for the United States, “the house changed appearance,” as a neighbor described it, from a simple, rectangular, self-built home into an American-style house. The house had three stories and a covered roof terrace. Situated at the central crosswalk in the neighborhood, the yellow façade with green trim was visible from almost everywhere. Inside, on the first elevated story, where the living areas were, was a cozy living room with photographs of many family members living in New York on the light-blue walls. The house also had a water storage tank on the roof, a water heater, and several phone lines. Julia’s husband regularly sent her money for the house, enabling her to replace the fence surrounding her lot in 2001. After her two daughters had joined their father, Julia moved to New York as well in 2003, and Julia’s mother, who lived elsewhere in the neighborhood with her only son (who had not emigrated), her daughter-in-law, and their children, moved from her apartment into the comfortable yellow house on the corner. All homes described by those I interviewed as “nice” were associated in some way with economic progress and globalization, especially transnational migration. Some occupants stated very explicitly that the homes of fellow neighborhood residents with relatives abroad were the only “nice” ones in the neighborhood; others mentioned the extravagant mansions of presumed migrant families in city neighborhoods with detached houses, while still others spoke about homes of presumed coyotes (people smugglers) as examples of excessive opulence. Marco from Cooperativa Santa Anita described presumed migrant homes as “excessively attractive,” while Gabriel from Ciudadela Car-

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los Crespi told me that migrant homes stand out as being “more elegant, larger, and [having] better workmanship” than those of non-migrants. According to the residents, migrant homes reflected imported architecture or were built with foreign materials or with building techniques that they believed had come from abroad. Jorge from Cooperativa Santa Anita, for example, described the homes of two families with relatives in Spain as “models from Murcia” without really knowing what houses looked like in Murcia. Based on the fact that these families had relatives there, and that they used the money they made to build their home, he inferred that the architecture was inspired by that of homes in Murcia. The residents described this type of home as “fashionable,” luxurious, and “having an elegant style designed by architects or engineers.” Lorena formulated it in these terms as well: Sometimes I do not know how to make ends meet. Thank God we have enough to buy food. I believe that only people who go abroad build fashionable homes; I mean those fashionable homes that they have engineers and architects build nowadays….. These homes are entirely planned in advance. You must know that some fashionable homes have a bathroom for each bedroom. Only people with money have those.

Residents of working-class neighborhoods regard transnational migrants as the nouveau riche and as such able to afford nice, comfortable homes. “Nice” and “fashionable” are becoming increasingly synonymous with “expensive” and “luxurious.” The consumptive strength of individual households has become an important social value that has a cultural connotation as well, namely that people are receptive to all that a transnational lifestyle entails: fashionable interior decoration, state-of-the-art electronic devices, access to internet facilities, email, and chat services, learning a bit of English, and awareness of new products and other customs. The discourse of neighborhood residents sheds light on how they relate architectural design to social standing. Nice houses have a distinctive style: most are large, luxurious, built with fashionable techniques from developed countries, and finished with exclusive materials. These homes cost a lot to build and are therefore automatically believed to belong to migrant families. Whether the owners themselves are indeed transnational migrants, people who benefit from transnational migration, or people who behave as if they have relatives abroad is irrelevant. They all display their—presumed—financial progress through extrovert consumer behavior (see Walmsley 2001). Non-migrant families with sufficient means copy migrant homes to raise their standing as their migrant neighbors have done; that is the non-verbal form of communication via architecture. This so-called “migrant architecture” has become an influential phenomenon in southern Ecuador.

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In other regions in the world similar changes in architecture and patterns of consumption have been observed under the same circumstances. Roxana Waterson (1997: 229–48) describes how in Indonesia the money that migrants earn elsewhere is spent on houses in their areas of origin. In the Tana Toraja district of Sulawesi, for example, renovation and re-dedication of origin houses (houses of ancestors) is regarded as the wisest investment of migrant money. The more often a house of ancestors is renovated, and therefore the more often a ritual celebration is held, the greater the prestige of the heirs. Migrants who pay for the renovation leave the renovated home of their ancestors empty, because using the building entails too many ritual restrictions. They build a fashionable home, a ranch house, or a stone house with two stories for themselves, for when they reside in the community. Renovated origin houses and the adjacent new bungalows are the non-verbal signs of a migrant culture there.

“Fashionable” and “Ordinary” Houses As far as the homes of their own neighborhood were concerned, neighborhood residents generally distinguished “ordinary” homes—simple mediaguas and casas made of adobe or stone—from “fashionable” ones. Fashionable homes were associated with technical innovations and the neoliberal world economy. In practice, these turned out once again to be the casas and villas of the nouveau riche and migrant families. Lorena: There is little difference [between homes in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi], because most homes are adobe and the newer ones—the ones built in the past decade—nearly all concrete or brick. The only ones that are a bit different are the ones behind the school there. Those are pretty fashionable. Apartment buildings are located there as well, next to or across from the sports field. Why is that? It’s because those people went abroad and made them far more fashionable and so on. But here, in this sector, are only one or two really fashionable homes, no more. The one owned by doña [Maria Caridad], because her husband went to New York, and changes like that happen slowly, but otherwise… Her husband: And the one owned by doña [Julia]. Lorena: That one owned by doña [Julia], yes, is basically next-door. That is why I say: yes, there are three or four other homes, no more, because most people own adobe homes, and the newer ones are made of concrete blocks and bricks.

Esteban, who lived on the other side of the neighborhood, also mentioned the migrant homes of Julia and Maria Caridad when we spoke about fashionable homes. Esteban: Three or four of the homes across from here are copies of homes in the United States. Not in this part: there are only old homes here. Christien: Do the two parts of the neighborhood differ in this respect?

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Esteban: Yes, the difference is that most people across from here have relatives in the United States. So their properties look like they receive more care, and the construction is better. Unlike here, where all homes are about the same from top to bottom. Most are adobe.

Conversely, Maria Caridad, who lived in one of the migrant homes, reported that except for one or two older, traditional homes, the neighborhood was filled with fashionable houses. She explicitly avoided the rich-migrant-wife label and described herself as an “ordinary” resident, even though her home was more comfortable than most of the ones in the neighborhood. Adobe homes with a tiled roof, of which a few dozen remained in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi (rather than one or two, as Maria Caridad maintained; see Table 10), were regarded by most residents as exemplifying traditional construction. They knew that those homes were built in the early days of the neighborhood, when this area had not yet been incorporated into the city but was still part of the rural community of Sinincay. People told me about the rustic, rural architecture of the homes there. By the early years of this century, nobody in the neighborhood used adobe blocks to build anymore, because such work was physically strenuous and time-consuming. Occupants of adobe homes, however, were very happy with them, because the material insulated heat better, and because these homes were considered to be very comfortable. Views about the aesthetics of these traditional rural homes varied: some believed that they were “no longer current” and considered them “dated,” whereas others appreciated the comfort and nostalgia of the more traditional homes. Most informants regarded a nice home primarily as a large, luxurious, and fashionable city house that was fully furnished and elaborately decorated. Self-builders’ perceptions of “nice” also correlated with what they found most convenient to build. Gabriel from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, for example, told me that he thought fashionable homes were much nicer than the traditional adobe ones with roof tiles, because adobe homes had walls that were twenty-five centimeters [ten inches] thick, requiring more land. Besides, he explained, a tiled roof required far thicker roof beams than did asbestos-cement corrugated sheets, making the entire structure heavier and costlier. Greater familiarity with foreign residential architecture and Western construction methods as a consequence of transnational migration and the economic globalization of construction products has increased appreciation for new building techniques (see Gough 1996). New myths about the origin of building products influenced such appreciation as well. A few residents of working-class neighborhoods, for example, thought that asbestos-cement corrugated sheets were a good product, because they believed that they were manufactured with European technologies. They described their roofs made

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of international brand products such as Eurolit, Eternit, and Ardex, as “fashionable,” unaware that in the countries of origin of the manufacturing multinationals the use of asbestos had been prohibited some time ago because it caused cancer (Gough 1996; Rodriguez n.d.).

Illustration 23. Village where Avelina was born, near Riobamba

Illustration 24. Map of Avelina’s sister’s home

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Illustration 25. Adobe rural home, Ciudadela Carlos Crespi

Urban and Rural Construction and Lifestyles In February 1999 I accompanied Avelina from Cooperativa Santa Anita to the village where she was born, a twenty-minute drive from Santa Anita (see Illustrations 23 and 24). The village, where part of her family still lived, was a hamlet comprising a few homes along an unpaved road. Avelina showed me where she was raised, in an adobe hut with a thatched roof, of which only a few remnants were visible. Her sister lived with her daughter in a small three-room home, consisting of a vestibule and two bedrooms. Avelina told me that this was a typical rural home for that region. In addition to the living area, there was a separate structure for cooking and a latrine on the plot. I entered the house via the vestibule, where the only furniture was a small wooden bench against the wall. I continued in and was invited to take a seat on the sister’s bed in one of the bedrooms. The other furnishings in this room consisted of a low cupboard with a black-and-white television on top and a wardrobe. The second bedroom, which belonged to her daughter, was furnished with a bed and a wooden shelf on the wall, where she stored some things. A section had been removed from the boards covering the floor of the room. In the hole beneath the floor I noticed a rabbit hopping about. The kitchen and the adjacent guinea-pig cage (people in the Andes eat guinea pigs on special occasions) were separate from the living area. The

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kitchen was dark; light entered only through the doorway. A narrow wooden bench and a cooking area consisting of a steel-plated rack on two cement blocks were the main objects in the kitchen. A small wooden rack with some scallions and a bucket of potatoes underneath it comprised the pantry. Even if the stone house looked no different on the outside from some homes in working-class neighborhoods, the furnishings would still reveal that it was a country home, according to Avelina. This sister is also a member of Cooperativa Santa Anita and had just started building her new home there when we visited her in the village. Within a few years, she and her daughter would move from their three-room home in the countryside to a two-story house at the edge of the city. The distinction between urban and rural homes was palpable. When I asked Avelina to describe the homes in Cooperativa Santa Anita, she told me like many of her neighbors that most of the homes built in the neighborhood were “city” houses. Janneth regarded the homes in the cooperative as “city” homes, because according to her, wood, brick, and corrugated sheets were used for construction in the countryside, whereas most homes in Cooperative Santa Anita had a losa, a flat concrete roof. Resident Vilma had the same view: Christien: What types of houses are here in the cooperative? Vilma: Nowadays they are losas, mostly [homes with] losas. And the ones of the— what are those homes called?—of the Banco [de la Vivienda, the housing bank], those mediaguas. There are those and losas, no other types. Christien: Do the homes in the cooperative differ from the ones in the countryside? Vilma: In the countryside, do you mean in the villages? Christien: Yes, in the villages. Vilma: Of course, of course those are different. Here, it is like the city. They try to build like in the city. Over there most have a [sloped] roof, casas de techo. Christien: In the villages? Vilma: Yes, in the villages. Not here, here they are already part of the city. Christien: And why don’t you want sloped roofs here? Vilma: I’d have to think about why. I think that’s just progress. Yes, as progress continues, they don’t want to keep building houses like in the countryside.

Gabriel from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi also noted that his fellow neighborhood residents no longer used adobe, because they preferred more fashionable construction methods. Ana from Cooperativa Santa Anita agreed that homes in the neighborhood were not rural houses, explaining that in the countryside wooden shutters were used, rather than the steel bars in front of the windows here. Moreover, openings for windows and doors were small in the countryside, whereas the ones in the city were large. Nancy and Vicente described the architecture in Cooperativa Santa Anita as “hybrid”: “The de-

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signs include some rural and some city elements. Yes, a hybrid variety. People who love the countryside build country homes, and those who love the city build city ones.” The visual distinction between city and rural homes is not straightforward and is largely a matter of interpretation. Researchers of material culture therefore emphasize the importance of the relation between the artifact and the way it has come about (Miller 1998). In building products, the place and/ or mode of manufacture influences product appreciation as well. Inexpensive asbestos-cement corrugated sheets are common in the countryside but, as I mentioned above, are also regarded as a Western product manufactured with imported technologies and are therefore considered to be an urban product as well. Depending on their shape and how they are produced, roof tiles are seen in some cases as typical of rural homes, while in other cases they are believed to highlight fashionable city life. Hand-shaped roof tiles, known as teja española—hollow and convex elements that slide over each other—are manufactured in small ovens in the countryside and are considered to be local, rural products. The industrialized version, which consists of more processed tiles in various styles and colors (for example, glazed), is associated with international technologies. While hand-shaped roof tiles therefore epitomize local craftsmanship in country villages and a rural building tradition (see Illustration 25), industrial roof tiles are regarded as fashionable urban or imported products. Compared with the interior spatial arrangement and architecture of rural homes, such as in the village where Avelina was born, the homes in Cooperativa Santa Anita are city dwellings according to the occupants, because all facilities are under the same roof, because they have larger windows allowing more sunlight in, because they are made of industrial construction materials, and because they are arranged to accommodate an urban lifestyle. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi the distinction between the countryside and the city is similarly associated with traditional building methods compatible with a rural lifestyle and fashionable urban building styles appropriate for city life. The distinction is less geographic than it is cultural. The residents of the two neighborhoods consider their respective living environments rural from a geographic perspective, but they believe that lifestyle matches that of the city. Their homes are designed for staying indoors, for receiving visitors, and for working as artisans at home or in the city. In addition, neighborhood residents try to observe the prevailing hygiene and health standards associated with city life. As Vilma indicated in the section quoted above, neighborhood residents “no longer want to live like in the countryside.” They want to advance, to develop their neighborhood, to “civilize,” to lead clean, healthy lives like other city dwellers. Those kinds of remarks figure within a broader discourse in which being clean and healthy,

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as attributes of an urban middle class, are contrasted with the presumed impurity and suspected diseases of the rural population. Colloredo-Mansfeld (1998) postulates that the national preoccupation with hygiene in Ecuador has led actual or presumed signs of dirt to be regarded as indicative of social disability. The distinction between dirty and clean is used to establish social and ethnic divisions, especially between an urban white/mestizo middle class and indigenous rural inhabitants and farmers. His indigenous informants from Otavalo were as aware of urban hygiene standards as residents of working-class neighborhoods were: “people often saw recent economic changes as the move towards the white-mestizo’s clean life” (Colloredo-Mansfeld 1998: 196). Here they were referring not only to the progress enabling them to replace dusty, muddy surroundings with cleaner ones, but they meant primarily the categorical transition from being known as farmers or indigenous to urban mestizos. Ethnicity was not an important factor for residents of working-class neighborhoods in this study. Their desire to be regarded as full-fledged city dwellers did come into play. To them, the distinction that Colloredo-Mansfeld (1998: 188) describes first and foremost as “hygienic racism” was mainly one between rural and city lifestyles and between associated social positions. Most residents therefore intended explicitly for their homes to convey that they were no longer farmers or cholos but had become respectable city mestizos. Wherever possible, the outside of their home conveyed that they could meet the prevailing standards of urban cleanliness, for example by the water tank placed on the roof (which, in addition to enhancing interior comfort, was visible from outside) and by the materials used for and finishing of the interior. Because filth and stench are often associated with animal husbandry, most residents did not keep their guinea pigs and rabbits indoors, as they would in the countryside, but had them on the back patio or next to their house. Although many had grown up in houses in the countryside—with mud walls, dirt floors, and thatched roofs—they preferred to raise their children in homes with tiled floors, finished-stone indoor walls, and plaster ceilings. In addition to appearing more fashionable, this gave the impression that the families led clean, orderly lives.

Appreciation Scale of Residential Architecture Homes “with a Striking Design” In both neighborhoods, residents expressed little appreciation for modest homes lacking any distinctive features or having coarse structures, which the residents of Cooperativa Santa Anita believed abounded in their neighborhood. Vicente explained what those houses looked like:

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Vicente: They are made of a single piece and have only one window overlooking the street. They consist of only one story and a door. That is all. They have no decorations, and the model comprises of a single piece. Christien: They have no decorations at all? Vicente: Nothing in the way of decorations, everything is plain.

The plain, poorly finished homes virtually devoid of decorations are offset by the “styled” homes, designed by professionals. These views were expressed in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi as well: Gabriel: They are good designs and nice styles, and this is almost impossible to achieve, because building a house like that in the center costs a lot. Christien: What do those designs look like? Gabriel: They are designed by architects. Christien: What is special about them? Gabriel: These designs are distinctive, in that they are set forth in a blueprint, not the way I did it, based on visual impressions. These are planned.

Marisol, who lived in a simple, little stone home, also distinguished homes in the neighborhood that were built “from drawings” from the ones built “without drawings,” such as her own home, thus echoing Gabriel by indicating the difference between her self-built home and the more expensive ones designed by architects. Ivon, whose husband had been living in the United States for a few years, was closely involved in building their new home in an expansion zone at the edge of town. Her husband sent her whatever he saved. She paid careful attention to the construction process. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi she lived with her two children and her mother in a simple wooden home by the river. She and her husband had decided, in addition to advancing to a better home, to move away from the neighborhood. Their new home, a two-story stone house, was designed by an architect, who supervised its construction as well. In 2002 this construction had stopped temporarily, because they were out of money, but they had already used the migrant dollars to purchase a new dining room set, which was stored in plastic wrapping, until they could move into the new home. They hoped to resume construction soon, and her husband intended to return once the new home was finished. Although this family did not stand out as a “migrant family” in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi because of their residential situation, they were trying to advance from a home “without a design” to one “with a design.” Nowadays, professionals are more likely to be involved in remodeling plans inside the city limits, including the city’s working-class neighborhoods, because requests for construction permits undergo increasing scrutiny (see Gilbert 1999: 1077). But the difference between homes “with” and those

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“without a design” lies primarily in the nature of this involvement: has the architect merely signed the request for a building permit, or have they in fact designed the home as well? Only in the latter case does the house have “a striking design.” Homes designed by architects feature a spatial complexity in building volumes and interior arrangement of spaces, according to the occupants. In addition, the residents I interviewed told me that architects designed better structures than they or their maestros did. Jorge from Cooperativa Santa Anita told me about nice homes elsewhere in the city: “Their structure is better—the concrete part is better—because they are built under the technical supervision of an architect or a civil engineer, whereas I know nothing about such things.” Residents perceive a “designed” home as one with a functional arrangement, unlike some of the self-built homes. In many self-built homes the rooms and different floors are not connected, forcing the occupants to walk around outside, as it is cheaper. “Designed” homes accommodate interior horizontal and vertical walkways and include deliberate connections between different spaces. Spatial quality is therefore a direct consequence of a higher construction budget and the expertise of professionals. Sometimes self-builders, after completing the ground floor, come up with money to commission an architect after all. In such cases they have the architect rebuild a house “without a design” into a “designed home.” Not all professionals welcome such commissions. Architect Flor from Cuenca told me how difficult rebuilding self-built homes can be—a problem she often encounters among migrant families from lower social classes who suddenly have the money to rebuild. A mediagua with a simple and often substandard or crooked supporting structure may need to be converted into a two-storey home, without eliminating rooms or displacing the supporting structure too much. This means that the architect has to take special measures to reinforce the original structure and rebuild an area to form a walled-in hall with a stairwell. Sometimes tearing down the house already present and building a new one on the same site would be more efficient, but clients rarely agree to that. They tend to expect a lot from architects, but in some cases the client’s wishes are simply not feasible in practice. Experience with this type of project led the architect from Cuenca to say that she found migrant families to be difficult clients: they wanted things that were technically impossible and had a taste uniquely their own, which in her view was also bad. Roof type (flat or sloped) and the material used to cover it (concrete, tiles, or corrugated sheets) are indicative of the distinction between “designed” homes and those “without a design.” Many homes “without a design” have a flat roof or a simple sloped roof made of asbestos-cement corrugated sheets, whereas “designed” homes tend to have concatenated, multifaceted roof surfaces. There is a difference between the two cities of Riobamba and Cuenca. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi most houses have a sloped roof, like elsewhere in

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Illustration 26. Sloped façades and roofs, Riobamba

Cuenca, preferably with roof tiles; flat or sloped concrete roofs are much less common there. This relates to the Cuencan building tradition, where sloped, tiled roofs are regarded as part of the city’s historic legacy, which is protected by the UNESCO regulations for world heritage sites. In the protected inner city, the appearance of buildings is tightly regulated, only sloped, tiled roofs are allowed.3 Outside the city limits, roofs are at least supposed to appear to be tiled when viewed from the street.4 In Riobamba, in keeping with the building traditions in Quito, more concrete is used in construction, and in Cooperativa Santa Anita residents therefore prefer concrete roofs with creative shapes. “Ordinary” gable roofs with two roof surfaces, as seen in the countryside, are not in demand; at least the material used or their shape should make roofs appear more “fashionable” than traditional homes in the countryside. Sloped roof surfaces, different levels, and inclined gable surfaces are especially popular (see Illustration 26). Tiled roofs have been in vogue for a while as well. A few years ago a house with a flat concrete roof appeared to be an objective in its own right in Cooperativa Santa Anita (Klaufus 2000), but this trend seems to have changed. Not many houses with sloped gables and roofs have appeared in this neighborhood yet, although they abound in upper-middle-class areas, according to the residents. Ana told me that she had noticed nice homes with “uneven roof surfaces” in the more expensive area of Los Alamos. Fellow

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neighborhood resident Cathy spoke about “sloped gables,” and Marco and Rosa also talked about these new roof types on houses they liked. A construction worker who happened to be visiting them joined the conversation. My question about what the houses that they thought were nice looked like gave rise to the following conversation. Marco: They are detached homes. Rosa: Fashionable homes with tiled roofs. Marco: They have a losa covered with roof tiles. Rosa: With fashionable decorations from other countries. Christien: From which countries? Rosa: I have no idea where they are from. Marco: They bring them along, because nowadays a lot of people live in Spain, so they are European designs…. Many people have moved abroad. Some designs are from the United States, since many people went there. Christien: Are those designs different? Marco: Yes, very different! They are lovely, they are new. Christien: In what respect are they new? How are they different? Marco: Those houses look different, because they are not finished like these houses here, which have flat roofs. The houses there do not have flat roofs but sloped ones, so they are different. Construction worker: But made of reinforced concrete. Marco: Of reinforced concrete. So they are supported not by wooden beams but by the concrete itself, that is a major difference. Having a house like that is wonderful, but of course it is very expensive. Christien: How much would that cost? Marco: [After consulting the construction worker]: The construction alone would cost about 40,000 dollars.

In the conversation below, various popular features are mentioned: sloped walls, a jacuzzi on the roof terrace, and roof tiles “from other countries.” Nancy: Ciudadela Las Acacias has nice houses. Christien: What do they look like? Nancy: I’m not sure. Vicente: They have windows in the middle, because the outer walls are sloped. On the top story, they have terraces and jacuzzis and stuff. Christien: Do they have a losa? Vicente: With a losa and stuff. The concrete is covered with special roof tiles from other countries, such as your own; from the United States, Spain, and England, where they make those thin roof tiles that are imported here. The house has those on the roof, on top of the concrete.

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The difference between the occupants of “designed homes” and those of homes “without a design” is primarily socioeconomic. The interview excerpts reveal how neighborhood residents associate a certain design, imported building techniques, and high construction costs with transnational migration. Even the origin of locally available roof tiles may assume mythical proportions in social constructs of “migrant architecture.” Their verbal discourse reveals how they view visual, constructional, and functional features of homes as identifying the differences between rich and poor households.

Illustration 27. Old trends (left) and new trends (right) in window frames, Ciudadela Carlos Crespi

Illustration 28. Finishing exterior walls

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Illustration 29. Decorated façade, Cooperativa Santa Anita

Finishing and Details Because self-builders were keenly aware of the social value of an attractive design, they focused heavily on the parts where they could control the expression, such as the finishing touches on exterior walls. Most could not afford a home designed by professionals, but painting the exterior a striking color or inserting a carefully considered ridge did figure within their architectural repertoire. Here too, the local context mattered. In Cuenca’s historic city center, color combinations are tightly regulated.5 As a result, architects and self-builders alike in Cuenca became more aware that some color combinations might disturb the visual harmony of a street’s appearance. Riobamba’s historic city center lacked such regulations at the time of this study. There, highly visible buildings featured color combinations such as bright orange and fluorescent green or bright yellow and white. Some new utility buildings, including a hospital, a television studio, and a few hotels, were particularly striking, thanks to their bright, contrasting colors. Understandably, brightly colored walls were very popular in various residential neighborhoods in the city, as well as in Cooperativa Santa Anita. Residents of working-class neighborhoods convey their personal taste, style, and knowledge of current trends via the façade of their home. Homes where the exterior walls had yet to be painted were deemed to be “unfinished” and received highly unfavorable assessments from those living in the surroundings. Marisa from Cooperativa Santa Anita believed that “the more decoration, the nicer the appearance,” although choice of decoration

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turned out to be very personal: what one person might describe as “cheerful” colors might seem “loud” to someone else. Some deliberately opted for “cheerful colors,” “lively colors,” or “striking colors” for the exterior walls, while others preferred them “not too striking” or “not too common.” Many homeowners in both neighborhoods liked the safe, subdued blanco hueso (off white), because this color, as Maria Caridad told me, “is not that bright but is not pale either. The color makes a nice impression.” Doña Monica of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi had painted her house a striking light blue. I asked her why she had picked that color. Monica: Because I wanted to stand out. Because no houses here were this color yet. That is why I painted the roof steel blue and [the walls] light blue. That sets me apart from the rest. I chose this myself at the time, even though I do not like it that much anymore. Noelia: [Smiles]: Bad taste! Monica: I’ll see. Maybe I’ll change the color, perhaps to ochre yellow, since nobody has that yet either. Noelia: [Smiles]: That’s even worse! Monica: That’s exactly why, to look different from the rest. Christien: Is it important for your house to look unique? Monica: Of course—different from the rest. Christien: Why is that so important? Monica: Because I identify with it. I tell people “I live in this or that neighborhood, my house is in this section, and it is the only house that looks like that.” Everybody can recognize it; that is why I said that this is the only house like it.

A lot of thought goes into the colors of the exterior walls. Often the main color is complemented by a second, contrasting color, used for borders, stripes, or other decorations (see Illustration 29). The combinations are usually copied from a building that the occupants have noticed elsewhere. Each neighborhood resident uses the desired color combinations in their own way, since no two houses in the neighborhood are supposed to look alike. In 1999 don Carlos had not painted the façade of his house yet and had no idea which colors to use. He planned to paint it peach with brown trim, but another resident had already used that, so that was not an option. He asked me for advice, presuming that I was an expert. Since I was not very knowledgeable about trends in color combinations, I was unable to be of much help. Fortunately, Avelina came to my rescue and recommended that he use blue with white trim. Copying façades from other neighborhoods is allowed, which was why señor Salazar of Cooperativa Santa Anita, who had noticed a house with a cream-colored façade and light-green trim in a nearby middle-class neighborhood, intended to paint his house precisely those colors. Diego in Cooperativa Santa Anita based the color of the façades on the

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popularity of “migrant architecture” and painted his house yellow “to make it look Mediterranean.” Stained-glass windows are a fairly new way of showing one’s colors. At the time of my first visit in 1999, only a few houses in the cooperative had brown stained-glass windows. In the years that followed, stained glass became a trend. In 2002 blue stained glass was the vogue, and various residents in Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi alike drew their dream house for me with blue or brown windows. In 2007 I noticed that the façades of two migrant homes (one in Cooperativa Santa Anita and the other in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi) had been painted over from soft yellow to clear blue. Apparently this color was now in vogue. Other popular details for experiments include façade ornaments such as elevated roof ridges, twisted balcony bars, vestibules, and window shapes. Many homes of the nouveau riche feature elements described by some professionals as Victorian: pillars at either side of the entrance, arched windows divided into sections, and steeples. Following their example, self-builders tried to enhance the appearance of their house by adding such elements. Illustration 27 shows how Francisco of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi made his old adobe home appear more fashionable and elegant by placing new windows featuring arches with a grille pattern. The practice among working-class residents of copying foreign-looking elements differs from the elite’s use of foreign, high-brow styles. Working-class residents do not use these elements to proclaim cultural superiority. Instead, the availability of a broad set of cultural repertoires signals the freedom to experiment with self-representations and group identity. The key characteristic of the design elements used (or appreciated in the houses of successful individuals) is the fact that these elements originate neither from aristocratic, high-brow styles nor from vernacular traditions. They are different. This act of deviancy serves to express a new social identity. By using these foreignlooking elements in otherwise common house types (see Illustration 27), the residents demonstrate a relatively balanced combination of visible newness that reflects progress and challenges the elite’s ideas of working-class architecture, encouraging respect for the cultural codes of the lower classes. In addition to building materials, exterior finish is an important indicator of the socioeconomic status of the occupants and determines appreciation by fellow neighborhood residents. Marble is a status symbol par excellence. In a neighborhood near Santa Anita is a house featuring a marble-covered exterior, which Avelina and her niece pointed out as “beautifully finished” and well worth a photograph. Doña Monica, her neighbor Bolivar, and doña Lorena from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi all mentioned marble as one of the materials that in their view turned a home into a fashionable dream house. In Ecuador finishes come in different categories: those of the finest quality are known as a “first-rate finish,” although the neighborhood residents

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report that they have to settle for second or third-rate finishes. This classification exists not only among residents of working-class neighborhoods; architects use it as well. The exclusivity and cost of materials used for first-rate finishes makes them greatly appreciated. Because self-builders and professionals are familiar with general material classifications, these terms are presumed to be known, although their use varies. Abstractly, the three categories of finishes appear clear to everybody, although in practice the values are subject to various interpretations. After all, does one marble-coated part in an otherwise basic self-built home constitute a first-rate finish? At the same time, this ambivalence provides an opportunity for extending social categories. Marble denotes prestige, and some self-builders therefore include something made of marble, even if the rest of the exterior remains to be finished.

Home Furnishings and Comforts Home furnishings may enhance the prestige of the house, although many neighborhood residents have never seen the inside of each other’s homes, because they rarely invite one another into them. Once somebody sees that the home of a fellow neighborhood resident is finished with costly materials and decorated with expensive furniture and striking wall ornaments (paintings, tapestries), word spreads quickly. In Cuenca, where the self-appointed noblesse has invested in creating tasteful salons since the early twentieth century, neighborhood residents greatly appreciate a carefully-considered composition of furniture, decorations, and trinkets in the living room. Some dreamed of a true salon, such as Lupe from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi: Christien: What would your dream house look like? Lupe: The house of my dreams has everything, it would have everything, such as a bar in the living room. It would be large, very spacious, that’s how my dream house would be. I don’t expect I’ll ever get it. Perhaps my children, maybe they’ll manage that. Everybody has illusions, and they must have an idea of what they would like. A large, beautiful living room, for instance. Christien: Does the living room matter a lot to you? Lupe: Yes, the living room, the entire house: a nice bedroom, a nice living room, a salon, where you can have a party or celebrate a birthday … A large salon for the whole family. Oh well, you have to make do with what you have.

Doña Maria Caridad had decorated her living room with tapestries and sculptures. One sculpture was a large unicorn, which she regarded as the showpiece of her interior decorations. Doña Monica was proud of the bar in her living room, and another neighbor showed me the bar filled with bottles of liquor as the finest part of her living room.

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In Riobamba I saw fewer illustrious interiors of the old noblesse that might serve as examples to neighborhood residents. The nouveau riche appeared to focus more on the quantity of furniture than on the overall impression that their interiors exuded. Avelina and Yadhira took me to visit the detached home of a very wealthy family, of which the husband lived in Houston. They had already been inside this house, which was one of the largest in Riobamba. Yadhira tried to explain in advance how large and luxurious the house was by describing it as “a house furnished with seven living-room sets.” The vast living room was in fact divided into several sitting areas, adjacent to and behind one another, and furnished with various living-room sets. Rather than the appearance of the living room as a whole, the quantity of furniture impressed Avelina and Yadhira. The interior was a clear case of conspicuous consumption. On the scale of appreciation that the residents use, the relatively bare, multifunctional spaces that characterize rural homes rank near the bottom. City homes in which each space has its own purpose and furnishings are high on the scale. A “designed” home suggests from the outside that the different rooms and spaces inside each have their own ambience and furnishings and appeals to the imagination. At the top of the scale are homes with living rooms that have not merely one sitting area but a range of sitting areas, and not merely one bathroom but a separate bathroom for each bedroom (relating to the image of “cleanliness” denoting a fashionable urban lifestyle). Residents associate such homes both with expensive furniture and quality material finishes (marble stairs and parquet floors) and with comfort-enhancing or extravagant conveniences, such as a jacuzzi or a remote-controlled garage door. Avelina and Rafael from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, for example, once asked me with amazement whether I had not visited any homes of transnational migrants yet, since I did not seem to know that most of those detached houses had a sauna or swimming pool. Vicente from Cooperativa Santa Anita also mentioned a jacuzzi as an obvious feature in homes still more luxurious than his own. Some other residents associated them primarily with garages and cars and jokingly compared them to their own situation. Christien: How can you tell that a house belongs to a migrant? Francisco: [Smiles] By the garages and cars. Christien: [Smiles] By the garages? Francisco: And the garage door opens automatically. Christien: Really? Francisco: Some have an alarm. We can’t afford to live like that. Christien: Neither can I. Francisco: [Smiles] We bought a watchdog instead!

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Even though the stereotypes have taken on a life of their own, the homes of migrant families in the two research neighborhoods often contained consumer items beyond the means of non-migrant families. Before Cooperativa Santa Anita had regular phone service, for example, Marisa already had a cellphone to stay in touch with her husband in Spain. Back then, cellphone calls were very expensive, and this was a considerable luxury. Many of the nouveau riche in the two neighborhoods had video cameras, VCRs, stereo equipment, and large televisions in their homes. Although the furnishings remain concealed from most neighborhood residents, stories about nice interiors or luxury commodities circulate, enhancing the prestige of the residents concerned. Combining the features of the architecture and the furnishings yields the following chart for architectural and interior features: Table 12. Residential architecture appreciation among residents of working-class neighborhoods “ordinary”

special: “fashionable,” “nice,” “striking design,” “well made”

Building materials

Craftsmanship

Industrial manufacture

Regional product

(Inter)national product

Home

Own design

Designed by a professional

Built independently and/or in mingas

Partially or exclusively built by hired construction workers

Mediagua

Casa/villa (house/detached home)

Small/single story

Large/multiple stories

Supporting structure based on visual estimates

Supporting structure in compliance with legal standards

Simple arrangement of interior areas

Complex arrangement of interior areas

Production process

Artifact Design

Only living rooms and bedrooms, Spaces dedicated to special multifunctional areas purposes, such as a garage, study, inner garden

Finishing and details

Rectangular design, “box”

Variegated model, various roof surfaces

Home is still under construction

Home is just about finished

Exterior not plastered/painted

Exterior plastered and painted

Third-rate materials

First- or second-rate materials

No decorations on the façade

Decorations on the façade

Home furnishings and Not all basic amenities present amenities No plumbing, or latrine is outdoors

Running water, electricity, sewage, telephone Indoor plumbing

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Table 12 – continued No comfort-enhancing amenities

Comfort-enhancing amenities, such as a gas water heater, jacuzzi, satellite dish, cellphone

Home-made furniture, individual items that do not match

Store-bought living-room and dining-room sets

Inexpensive or free decorations, such as Coca-Cola calendars

Store-bought decorations, including paintings, carpets, and ceramic sculptures

Social Construction of “Appropriate” Architecture Now that “special” and “lovely” houses have been distinguished from “ordinary” ones (the social construction of “nice” architecture), the next step is to explore what neighborhood residents consider appropriate for their own residential surroundings (the social construction of “appropriate” architecture). After all, not everything nice is appropriate. Working-class neighborhoods are known as places where builders creatively intertwine and combine architectural elements from different repertoires. They base their work on construction practices from their areas of origin, from urban building techniques, and from examples from abroad. Individual self-builders need to take their financial and technical limitations into account in determining their options. Many are well aware of what is available and of the costs of raw materials—such as sand, cement, and steel—so that the outcome expresses an “informed quotation and combination” (Holston 1991: 460). They use their knowledge of trends, technical options, and relevant costs to evaluate each other’s creations, as well as homes elsewhere in the city. Based on an abstract appreciation model (Table 12), residents of working-class neighborhoods distinguish very generally between people who live in “ordinary” houses and those who live in homes that exceed this standard. Designs reflect the social distinction between homeowners who realize their housing needs very gradually and those with the economic means to build their dream house from start to finish and to include what is currently fashionable as well. The consequences of transnational migration have changed patterns of social mobility. Because middle- and upper-middle-class families without relatives abroad tend to have less disposable income than families from the lower social classes who do receive remittances, a new social landscape has materialized. Kruijt, Sojo and Grynspan (2001: 22) assert that, “new social actors have gained a presence on the economic, social and political stage, and are now seeking a space of their own to maneuver in.” Residential architecture provides them with such space to maneuver.

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In Latin American cities, housing location remained an important indicator of status for a long time (Ward 1993: 1151). The upper middle class was clustered in neighborhoods with detached houses, while city dwellers from lower social classes built their own developments at the edge of the city. This stratified geographic distinction has faded, now that successful migrant families are present in villages and working-class neighborhoods as well, and now that—conversely—impoverished families live in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Visible patterns of individual and household consumption are the main barometer, which is why “migrant architecture” has become such an important vehicle of expression. Table 12 depicts the clusters of architectural features from the discourse as a dichotomous model, distinguishing homes that residents of working-class neighborhoods find “ordinary” from homes that they believe are particularly striking. Note that the distinctions in this table reflect the views expressed by residents of working-class neighborhoods. Architects express a different view of architectural qualifications and would in fact regard a home with diamond-shaped façade decorations, for example, as working-class or cholo in taste. Decorative modes vary depending on the social group. In everyday life the ambivalent values of architecture are mediated, leading to the distinction between families that attain standing through their home and the other residents. In both neighborhoods I discovered widespread appreciation for the striking houses of the nouveau riche in nearby neighborhoods, although neighborhood residents do not necessarily find these houses appropriate for their own neighborhood. Homes that may be glorified at an abstract level are not always appreciated if one’s neighbor owns them. Because houses cannot be adapted to fit a situation the way clothes are altered, self-builders face the complex task of selecting the right architectural combinations. They need to sense subtle differences to translate generally appreciated architectural features into a combination compatible with the residential neighborhood. Doña Soledad, who lived in an adobe patio home in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, for example, regretted that the new types of houses had led conspicuous consumption to prevail in her neighborhood: “They purchase extravagant items from elsewhere, from other cities. Perhaps this reflects what they earn abroad and send to pay for their houses, but they are no longer honoring traditions.” When I asked how she felt about that, she said that she did not like it, because “you should not abandon your heritage.” Doña Maria Caridad lived in a home that her neighbors considered to be among the four or five “migrant homes” in the neighborhood. She would seem an unlikely person to consider the detached houses of migrant families to be out of place. Still, she was the only one of my informants to comment about a specific house that belonged to one of the neighbors:

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Maria Caridad: Over there is a corner house. I feel that building a home like that over here is a bad investment. Christien: That yellow house? Maria Caridad: Yes, that one. Yes, that’s my opinion, because starting your own business here will yield next to nothing, and if you rent it out, you won’t break even. Look at the places I just told you about.6 A house like that would look good there. It seems out of proportion here, as if it is not in sync with the surroundings.

The phrase no está de acuerdo al ambiente, “not in sync with the surroundings,” conveys the essence of what most residents felt, which was that the house you build should match the physical and social surroundings or you are putting on airs. Gabriel from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi liked fashionable, detached migrant houses, because they were “fashionable,” and because they were “more elegant, larger, had a superior finish” and were “designed well.” His statements reflect the general discourse perfectly. Still, he disliked some of the visually striking homes, arguing that they “did not match” the lifestyles of the occupants. These homes had striking—round—windows or large glass façades. In specific cases, therefore, new architectural elements are not universally accepted. People need time to get used to them. Novelties that the nouveau riche flaunt are at first condemned by the rest of the community, because they are considered too deviant and visually repudiate prevailing values. As more and more people follow the new example, however, the innovations gradually gain acceptance. The resulting architectural expression denotes affirmation to those who identify with this discourse of shapes (see Fletcher 1999: 79). The round windows and glass façades that Gabriel mentioned were too new to denote prestige. They were not yet widely accepted and were “not [considered to be] in sync.” Other, previously introduced innovations, such as colored glass, already denoted the “nice, fashionable” home, which was why even Gabriel had used brown glass. Everybody wants a nice house, but the moment the house deviates from the norm in some way, its makers are criticized indirectly—for example, by invoking a well-known myth about migrant homes. This myth, which circulates through the highlands in countless versions, is about a fictitious migrant family in a rural village that has an elegant house built. The name of the village varied depending on the narrator. According to one, the house was in Biblián, while another said it was in Déleg (both in Cañar Province); still others mentioned different villages as its location. The mythical detached house was said to be so luxurious that it even contained an elevator. But because the village did not yet have electricity—different versions provided other explanations, including the ignorance of the farmers living there, who did not know how to operate an elevator—the occupants used the elevator as a pig

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sty, chicken coop, or guinea-pig cage. The myth was told to convey the idea that the excessive opulence of some migrant homes overshot their purpose, but it also had a distinctly class-based and moral undertone apparent from how professionals used it (to be addressed in the next chapter). Residents of working-class neighborhoods told their own version of the myth. Sometimes they did this indirectly, as a means of criticizing others in their neighborhood, since the myth was always about migrant homes in a small, remote, rural village. In this context Francisco of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi shared his interpretation of the home/lifestyle discrepancy by stating: “They build a bathtub to bathe in and then use it to wash their dirty laundry. That makes it inappropriate.” His neighbor, who lived in a luxurious detached home, explained: “If you go to Checa, for example, you will see lovely houses, with cattle in the living room, sheep in the dining room. They [the occupants] do not understand the purpose.” She appreciated the design of the elegant migrant homes but disapproved of this “improper” use of their interior spaces. Nor did most of the neighborhood residents really know whether these homes were used primarily for cattle; they presumed they were. The story had acquired a life of its own. In this narrative construction the social and cultural distinction between city and countryside is important. There was a reason why all versions of the myth related the “improper” use of a bathtub and the presence of cattle inside the home. It served to stereotype people in the countryside as “dirty” folk, who despite their new homes were still unable to live “truly” urban lives. By emphasizing this, the narrators classified themselves as “real” city dwellers, and at the same time used the myth as an example of misplaced ambitions to discourage overly ambitious neighborhood residents. Social and cultural identities are negotiated via architecture. Mediation processes are set forth in architecture in other regions of Ecuador as well. In his study of Otavaleños in northern Ecuador, Colloredo-Mansfeld reveals how values are constructed via residential architecture. Wealthy traveling salesmen and weavers express different views about whether conspicuous architecture is appropriate in relation to personal prestige and the display of community spirit. While wealthy traveling merchants prefer a city-style home with a flat concrete roof built by hired construction workers, wealthy weavers sometimes deliberately choose traditional homes with tiled roofs built in mingas. This way they affirm reciprocal ties with members of the community and perpetuate local building traditions, even at a slightly higher cost than a city-style home: “[T]he cultural importance of the conspicuous display of resources—whether in house forms, automobiles, or other commodities— lies in the way signals of wealth initiate new appraisals of socially appropriate economic activity” (Colloredo-Mansfeld 1994: 862). New architectural

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styles instigate debate about the values of established and new customs and about social barriers. Self-builders in Cuenca and Riobamba who have achieved economic improvement want a more comfortable as well as a cleaner, healthier lifestyle. Their lifestyle is often colored by what they have seen and heard of life in the United States and Spain. Their self-image has changed, in that they feel they have become not only wealthier but also more cosmopolitan. On a brief visit back to Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, for example, Julia’s husband refused to ride the bus to the city center anymore, claiming that it was dirty, crowded, and dangerous. Instead, they took a cab, as he would have in New York. Differences in consumption patterns thus denote social and lifestyle changes alike. As I have said, the houses of transnational migrants attract most attention because they symbolically challenge an ascribed marginal position. In the previous chapter I mentioned the discussion about chicha culture. In this context it is relevant to stress the cosmopolitan lifestyle of transnational families, which is why their habits cannot be regarded as a specific chicha culture. In her ethnographic study of a Mexican village where transnational migrants introduced new types of homes, Fletcher writes: “The new house designs reflect and restructure social relationships. In some cases, the houses are modified … [while] in others, domestic social relations are renegotiated within the new spatial arrangements” (Fletcher 1999: 81–82). This interaction between artifact and users surfaces in Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi as well. Relations between neighbors change when some families have all the basic amenities they need while the rest of the neighborhood remains dependent on the community. The contrasts are visually exaggerated because the wealthier families put up high fences isolating their property from the outside world (see Pader 1993). Maria Caridad of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi explained to me that her house—presumably because it was more luxurious than the ones next door—had been broken into a few times already. This was why she paid to enclose and protect her lot, which seemed like it was becoming a small fortress. Conversely, daily use of a home might give rise to all kinds of adjustments to the architecture and the interior. In many cases changing the use of spaces did not require relocating walls or doors. Living rooms were used as work areas, bedrooms as a living area, and bathrooms as storage spaces in homes that lacked running water. Social construction of “appropriate” residential architecture figures within experimentation and adaptation processes, with changes being introduced gradually. Compared with the slow rate of change half a century ago, the pace at which homes have “metamorphosized”—as one informant put it—seems pretty fast to the neighborhood residents.

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Conclusion Architecture represents, structures, and restructures social relations and cultural core values. In the historic centers of cities such as Cuenca and Riobamba influences from international architecture have been incorporated and adapted for centuries. Foreign architects and European-based architectural styles characterize these cityscapes. Residents of working-class neighborhoods contribute in their own way by building and rebuilding houses and by combining different cultural repertoires. In a country such as Ecuador, which lacks comprehensive social-housing programs, many people build their homes themselves. One important feature of self-building is that builders become directly involved in the architectural design of their home. Residential architecture allows them to express the financial means of the household and its residential desires, social ambitions, and cultural values. The architecture reveals something—but not everything—about the identities of the occupants (rural migrants, born-and-bred city dwellers, transnational migrants) and about their lifestyles (fashionable, cosmopolitan). Because non-verbal communication via architecture is subject to various interpretations, neighborhood residents try to limit their disclosures to nice homes or ones not in close proximity. They use stereotypes and especially their own construction operations to convey the value they attribute to architectural designs. In twenty-first century Ecuador the homes of the nouveau riche—usually transnational migrants—are the basis for comparison. Massive labor migration abroad, which got under way around the turn of the millennium, and the vast remittances sent home have led transnational migration to determine national and local economies. Cuenca already had an extended tradition of labor migration, with much of the monies sent back being invested in building new houses. As a consequence, the cityscape changed, and the city became the most expensive in the country. In Riobamba transnational migration started later on. Nowadays, labor migration is associated increasingly with the import of new ideas and products for housing construction, although “migrant architecture” is not as influential here as in Cuenca. “Migrant architecture” tends to be associated with large, fashionable city houses designed by professionals. Such architecture comprises striking models and quality finishes made of costly materials. Both the models and the building materials are presumed to be imported, as products and ideas from developed countries are held in great esteem. Moreover, these homes are associated with luxury amenities that make life more enjoyable, such as a jacuzzi or a remote-controlled garage door for the four-wheel-drive cars so popular among the nouveau riche. These associations have a reciprocal impact: migrant families often build luxury homes, so all luxury homes are

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attributed to migrants. In both research neighborhoods the homes of most transnational migrants were indeed visibly larger, more advanced, and more luxurious than those of non-migrants, even though they lacked jacuzzis and remote-controlled garage doors. The noticeable economic progress of these nouveau riche has made the distinction between migrants and non-migrants synonymous with the one between “nice, fashionable” homes and “ordinary” ones. Neighborhood residents design their homes with consideration of affordable elements that are fashionable and they need to take into account their social surroundings as well. Self-builders who manage to impress those around them with their homes may enhance their prestige. If they ignore the prevailing codes, however, and build homes that others consider out of context, their work will be criticized in informal conversations. A detached home that would have been perfectly appropriate in Cuenca’s most elegant section but is located instead in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi will be perceived by the neighbors as being incompatible with its social surroundings. A home with a bathtub that is not used for bathing because the place lacks running water is incompatible with the lifestyle of the family members. Proclaiming a myth about a misplaced migrant home perpetuates social standards within the neighborhood while constructing a social distinction between residents of working-class neighborhoods—and their self-perceptions as city dwellers—and rural inhabitants. City dwellers are expected to be clean and neat. The neighborhood residents aim to show the outside world that despite the rural appearance of the area where they live at the edge of the city, they are indeed city folk. They want their homes to exude a material impression of an orderly, hygienic lifestyle. Although building and living have become progressively less collective in both research neighborhoods, collective standards still prevail with respect to residential architecture and consumption. Relatively wealthy residents, for example, do not seem inclined to flaunt their personal progress. No jacuzzis, automatic garage doors, or satellite dishes appear there. Rational considerations—“such a large home is not worthwhile here; you might as well move”—and moral pressure to honor building traditions, as well as security issues, may be an obstacle. In addition, the flow of money from abroad tends to stop the moment migrants return or decide to sever financial ties with Ecuador. Most economic successes are therefore temporary. On the other hand, ownership of televisions, VCRs (or DVD players), matching furniture sets, and interior decorations are by no means extravagant anymore. Migrant families have not only become a new social class. They are a separate group in cultural respects as well. This new sociocultural category cuts through the old social-class divisions and divides the population of working-class neighborhoods. The lives of migrant families revolve around main-

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taining international contacts via the internet and cellphone services. Nonmigrants try to keep up with the internationalization of architecture and interior decoration: an ordinary window may be replaced by a Victorian arch window or a stained-glass one; a façade may be painted a “Mediterranean” color. Homes that show that the owners lead a fashionable urban lifestyle, are getting ahead financially, possibly with help from relatives abroad, and are aware of the latest trends in architecture are likely to elicit appreciation for the occupants. What residents of working-class neighborhoods regard as “nice” and “appropriate” is thus determined both verbally, through expressions of praise or disapproval, and non-verbally, through emulation and adaptation. Despite the new social dichotomy that has emerged in Ecuador as a result of transnational migration, residents of working-class neighborhoods regard themselves and others in their neighborhood as pertaining to the urban middle class and as having to struggle to make ends meet, although they acknowledge that differences within the neighborhood have become larger and especially more visible.

Notes   1.   2.   3.   4.   5.

El Comercio, 19 March 2001; El Mercurio, 4 November 2001. El Comercio, 9 January 2003. Municipalidad de Cuenca (1983), Art.21 and 28. Municipalidad de Cuenca (1998), Art.32, 40 and 41. Municipalidad de Cuenca (2000b), Ordenanza No.118. See Jones and Bromley (1996: 377–78) and Jones and Varley (1999: 1553).   6. Shortly before, Maria Caridad had told me that she would prefer to live on Avenida Solano or Avenida Remigio Crespo, two streets in a neighborhood considered to be the most elegant in Cuenca.

5

Transformations in Cuencan Architecture

Over lunch at the Universidad de Cuenca cafeteria in late 2002, I spoke with two lecturers from the architecture faculty about several trends in local construction. We talked about various movements in local architecture, including neoclassicist, modernist, and neovernacular traditions. When our conversation turned to recent design trends, the frequently exaggerated design features of homes associated with migrant owners were mentioned. The architects explained that this trend of architectural opulence instigated extensive debate at the architecture faculty. We started discussing these debates. Fascinated with the subject and our riveting exchange, I said that I wanted to publish about the topic, preferably together with them. Unexpectedly, however, they responded by freezing up in the midst of a lively conversation. They said that talking about what was popularly known as “migrant architecture” was a taboo among professionals. Until then, I had not realized how sensitive the subject was, because architects, policy makers, and university lecturers kept bringing it up. Upon being made aware that the subject might elicit adverse reactions among architects, the underlying social transitions became more meaningful to me. In this chapter I review the debates about “migrant architecture” conducted during my research among Cuencan professionals. Few debates of this kind are ever carried out in public. While none specifically addresses homes in working-class neighborhoods, the debates about changes in working-class architecture in suburban and rural areas related so closely to the subjects raised by the inhabitants of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi that, as far as the Cuencan situation is concerned, I regard this professional discourse as a perspective on building and living in working-class neighborhoods that is complementary to that of self-builders. I examine why the new architectural trends are so controversial, how they were regarded in debates, and what underlying sociocultural dynamics they reveal. I relate professional mindsets and procedures to changes in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. As noted earlier, “migrant architecture” denotes a trend in local building styles attributed to the increasing number of transnational migrants sending money home to family members left behind. Because house exteriors do not reveal whether they actually belong to migrant families—some families build such houses to suggest that they have family members abroad—the term “mi-

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grant architecture” is popularly associated with the nouveau riche and with the growing tendency toward extravagant consumption and the importing of foreign designs and ideas. In this debate among professionals, importing foreign architecture is related to a group of people that the cultural elite believes lacks cultural capital (insufficient education, little understanding of different art forms) and manifests “poor” taste. This attitude, where professionals exhibit their superior knowledge, is relevant for understanding the debate. At the beginning of this century, the recent wave of transnational migration was addressed at length by journalists and researchers. Countless reports appeared explaining the new migration wave and exploring its economic and social consequences. Public interest contrasted with the absence of a public debate about the consequences of transnational migration for the construction industry and the development of urban and rural landscapes. Even though the effects were visible and the changing landscapes perceived as a problem, architects rarely spoke about them in public. Informal remarks from professionals conformed to a set pattern. They would criticize how the homes of presumed migrants were designed, describing them as inappropriate. They also took issue with what they considered to be the functionally unsuitable layout of new homes in the countryside, as they believed that the rural lifestyle of the residents was incompatible with the new homes. Parallel changes in the city tended to go unmentioned. One reason invoked for this practice was that opulent homes in the city stood out less than those in the countryside. Interviews revealed, however, that “strange” architecture (in the sense of being unconventional and out of place) was often regarded as a problem in cities as well, but that it came too close both literally and metaphorically to the position of the elite architects to challenge openly. The rising popularity of extravagant construction styles undermined the dominant ideology and consequently the professional prestige of the architects that subscribed to this ideology. Established professionals were losing control over the cityscape as a representation of idealized society. In addition, the visible presence of the nouveau riche in the city eroded the personal, socioeconomic status of those established, and locally well-known professionals. Given these dynamics, their views about the desired cityscape conflicted not only with those of self builders and lay people but also with those of each other, as I will explain below. I will start by reviewing the origins of the established order in the field of architecture and urban studies in Cuenca.

Professionals in Cuencan Society Architects in Cuenca The history of local architectural traditions started five decades ago, when an architecture program opened at Cuenca’s public university. In the 1960s

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the social hierarchy in the city was dominated by a fairly small, cohesive elite, consisting of aristocratic families who regarded themselves as descendants of the Spanish and a group of prosperous merchants and industrialists who had penetrated the elite as well. The first group comprised hacienda owners, artists, and officials. Most of the time they resided in the city, from where they ran their estates in the surrounding countryside. Changes in the city are therefore impossible to disassociate from those in the countryside. The elite was a cultural upper crust that took pride in leading a respectable, devout lifestyle, and in having refined tastes. Members of the aristocracy cultivated their presumed Spanish heritage, based on about fifty family trees. The noblesse was identifiable by the surnames in those family trees. People married within their group whenever possible. To exclude citizens from the lower echelons from their circle, they held multiple paid and unpaid positions simultaneously. They kept prominent government positions, memberships of prestigious clubs and funds, as well as cultural and business positions within their ranks (Hirschkind 1981). The regional economy underwent major changes around this time. The national government enacted two agricultural reforms, although their sole consequence was that many rural workers in the Cuenca region were allocated small, unproductive plots of land while the landed aristocracy retained control over the most productive estates (Hirschkind 1981: 105–8). The rise in rural poverty and industrial expansion in the city resulted in rural-to-urban migration. Cuenca’s population increased from 40,000 in the mid-twentieth century to 60,000 by the early 1960s, growing to 100,000 by the mid-1970s (Lowder 1990; Villavicencio 1990). Hacienda owners with estates along the urban periphery sold tracts of land to the growing group of new city dwellers in search of land for building homes, leading to informal residential areas such as Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. In this context, the urban elite urged the University of Cuenca to start an architecture and urban planning program, partly with a view toward training architects and urban planners from their own ranks to retain control over all aspects of urban development (Lowder 1989, 1990). In 1958 the Escuela de Arquitectura y Urbanismo was added to the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences. The architectural design program thus started out as an engineering program. In 1961 the program was reassigned to a separate faculty, where graduates obtained a degree in architecture. The first architects completing this program belonged to the elite. Their professional activities consisted of designing villas for wealthy clients. As part of the social upper crust, they were politically influential as well. As university-educated architects, they were regarded as technocrats and were expected to address social problems through physical-spatial interventions.

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This planning elite was a closed circle. In practice, architectural and urban development interventions rarely provided a solution to social problems. Still, titles such as Arquitecto and Ingeniero preserved the respect that these people commanded. They were the ones believed to be experts in design and construction, and this gave them power: “Whatever there is of a connection between expertise and power is based on the fact that as the interaction between expert and layman begins, there is a notable asymmetry of baseline knowledge; and more or less regardless of what happens in the interaction, much of that asymmetry will remain” (Hannerz 1992: 120). As artists, architects were moreover regarded as connoisseurs of refined aesthetics. This position elevated the status of the title Arquitecto in Cuenca. Even in the twenty-first century, lecturers at the faculty still hail largely from the circle of affluent Cuencans (see Kyle 2000: 63). In Cuenca, and in Ecuador in general, having palancas—people who serve as conduits toward professional opportunities—is of the utmost importance. Certain positions are obtained by having the right connections, whereas professional experience and the required capacities are often secondary. This is why at the beginning of this century vacancies at the Universidad de Cuenca were not filled through an open application procedure. Instead, “suitable” candidates were contacted directly. Many architects affiliated with the architecture faculty were therefore related to one another. Most had several sources of income. Some complemented their position at the university with their own design practice, while others were senior civil servants or government officials, and one was the director of a large cultural institution. Mutual exchanges of work and services were, as Hirschkind has described for the 1970s, standard practice among the group of architects during the period under investigation. Close ties existed both within and between the agencies and institutions, enabling the planning elite to seal its ranks. Between 1996 and 2004 ties strengthened between the municipality and the architecture faculty. The architect who served two consecutive four-year terms as mayor of the canton received his training in architecture in Cuenca. Before becoming mayor in 1996, he held various positions in the architecture faculty. During his terms several municipal research projects were allocated directly to the faculty (Universidad de Cuenca n.d.). In practice, this meant that the architects affiliated with the faculty distributed the commissions based on seniority, rotating them among senior faculty members. Faculty lecturers lower down in the hierarchy received none of the commissions. Architects who were granted these commissions had students conduct the project during class and then submitted the result to the municipality. According to some critics of this informal system, the money that the architects received did not always benefit the faculty. Instead, the architects from the elite kept a large share for themselves, thus retaining the commissions and resulting proceeds.

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The faculty also maintained close ties with the professional organization Colegio de Arquitectos for a long time. Until a few years ago, membership of the Colegio de Arquitectos used to be compulsory for all practicing architects who are professionally active. As a national organization, the Colegio is subdivided into regional chapters and supervises compliance with the act governing professional architecture practice and imposes sanctions as needed on architects that fail to observe it (Gobierno del Ecuador 1996). In addition, the Colegio used to figure in issuing permits. Before requesting a permit from the municipality, applicants were required to submit a preliminary request to the Colegio, which verified compliance with legal regulations. Applicants (architects, construction firms, or government agencies) were required to pay the Colegio one per mille of the total construction costs. Proof of this payment was then submitted to the municipality to obtain a permit.1 Among local designers and builders, the Colegio was an important gatekeeper along the procedural route. Contacts between the architects of the different institutions perpetuated a system of nepotism that enabled official procedures to be circumvented. From the establishment of the local chapter of the Colegio de Arquitectos in the 1970s and up until 2003, for example, all presidents were also lecturers at the architecture faculty. Then in 2003 this system of mutual ties proved untenable. Society, and consequently the professional group of architects as well, was changing, and the privileges of a small group of elite architects ceased to be tolerated. Before elaborating on this transition, I will review the symbolic expression by these architects of their dominance in urban space, via a strong ideological tradition in architecture and urban planning.

Illustration 30. Home on commission, designed by Jaime Malo. Photograph courtesy of Boris Albornoz

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Illustration 31. Residence of Honorato Carvallo, based on his own design. Photograph courtesy of Boris Albornoz

The Emergence of a Cuencan Architecture Movement Until the first locally trained architects graduated in the late 1960s, most homes and other buildings were designed by engineers and a few architects from elsewhere. Engineers built houses according to the “international style” tradition. Homes in this modernist style, which became known in part thanks to the work of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, have rigid, geometric shapes. These austere concrete “machines for living” appear as plain façades comprising largely functional and technological features and express ideas about progress and universalism in art. In Cuenca various villas are built in this rigid, modernist construction style. The general public has relegated them to the “generation of the engineers,” denoting the period in which architectural design was still part of the engineering program. The first architects to graduate from the new architecture faculty resisted the rigid international style, which they considered inappropriate for Cuenca. They sought a locally embedded architecture in line with the international movement of “critical regionalism” (Lefaivre and Tzonis 1991; Frampton 2002). They devised the school known today as the arquitectura cuencana (Andrade 1999; Estrella Vintimilla 2000). In other Latin American cities experiments with new architectural styles imported from Europe had been in progress for decades, for example in Bogotá: “Freestanding house styles from Spain and Great Britain included chimneyed houses with exterior gardens…. By the end of the 1930s full-fledged abandonment of the old innercity residential areas by elites was under way as the spread of pseudo Tudor,

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Georgian, and French Provincial houses continued northward” (Griffin and Ford 1980: 412). These new construction styles augured a period of urban growth and rapid spatial transformation. Among the first generation of architects trained in Cuenca, Rafael Malo, Enrique Malo, and Jaime Malo became especially well known. These three architects, all related to each other and hailing from the social upper crust, built rustic villas for affluent Cuencans (Navarro Jiménez 1976: 76–79; Vázquez and Saltos 2001: 238; Soruco Sologuren 2003: 38). Their designs radiated rural craftsmanship (see Illustration 30). Based on the model of colonial houses, structured around a patio, a rear patio, and a garden, the villas by the Malos integrated many open spaces and interior gardens, allowing sunlight to penetrate deep inside the homes. Many of the interior gardens contained bodies of water and planters. Inside, wood and natural stone were the materials most frequently used. Most villas were situated in the middle of the plot and surrounded by lush gardens designed to express a harmony between building and landscape, as did the interior gardens within the homes. The first generation of architects was followed by new ones that carried on the tradition of the Malos while adding their own interpretations. Honorato Carvallo of the Planarq bureau was often mentioned as a protagonist of the second generation. He and his business partners also built villas with brick façades and tiled roofs (see Illustration 31). Unlike their predecessors, however, they integrated new technological advances in their buildings to give them a contemporary appearance. Carvallo was less dogmatic about building homes around a patio or interior garden, although his designs also have an internal spatial quality and various visual axes. In addition to freestanding single-family homes, he built duplexes and apartment complexes. Like his predecessors, though, most of his clients were wealthy. The work of the Cuencan architects related to the culture of the self-designated noblesse. Cuenca’s elite nostalgically glorified the simplicity of rural life and the skills of Cuencan craftsmen. Representation of rural values in urban villas corresponded with their manifestation of themselves as contemporary landed gentry. Many people from the upper crust owned haciendas or estates in the countryside, where they spent weekends. During the week they resided in their city villas. Hirschkind has described what country life symbolized for urban elite as follows: “A rural property is a symbol that evokes the image of landed gentry projected by the Nobles onto their ancestors. It is also a place to pass vacations and to picnic, and is thus a symbol of the leisure that Nobles enjoy” (Hirschkind 1981: 128). New appreciation for native values in the arquitectura cuencana led these symbols to be introduced in city villas as well. By glorifying craftsmanship, nature, and country life, the elite architects used arquitectura cuencana to construct a social and visual distinction between themselves and their wealthy clients in the elegant residential neigh-

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borhoods on the one hand and “ordinary” people in working-class neighborhoods and villages on the other. While the villas were inspired by local building traditions, their comfort and size contrasted sharply with the simple two-room adobe huts in the countryside that served as the source of inspiration. Carlos Jaramillo Medina describes where the new houses were situated: “Among architects, who deliberately overlooked the rational input from the engineers during the 1950s, new appreciation for this local style influenced architectural visions and procedures. This new trend surfaced in single-family homes in garden cities, commissioned by members of the middle and upper classes” (Jaramillo Medina 1998: 132). The arquitectura cuencana-period villas arose not in the countryside but in spacious elegant residential neighborhoods built up in the second half of the twentieth century and modeled after European garden cities. In addition to architectural design, urban geography thus became another medium used to convey the distinction between social classes (Ward 1993: 1151). Many new residential areas in the 1970s and 1980s were built on the private allotments of landowners who divided their property into sections and sold them to relatives or acquaintances (Lowder 1987). Arquitectura cuencana protagonists built separate streets and homes for their family members as well. Those from the lower middle class, however, relied on social housing projects by the Banco Ecuatoriano de la Vivienda, which built standard homes measuring thirty-six square meters (forty-three square yards), or on the housing cooperatives. Impressions of the different types of neighborhoods obviously varied considerably: a spacious, private development with lush greenery and villas in the city was obviously more socially prestigious than a suburban neighborhood of small, standard homes. Besides, supply did not match the demand for affordable housing. In the mid-1980s the authorities built about 1,800 residential units in Cuenca, whereas the shortage of affordable homes totaled nearly 19,000 (Schenck 1997: 132–33). Compared with the housing shortage among the lower classes, developments of private Cuencan neovernacular-style villas therefore symbolized physical-spatial power and opulence. In the late 1990s new trends in the housing market proved capable of extending the old physical and spatial boundaries. The aforementioned effects of transnational migration on architecture and housing construction blurred distinctions between social groups and between geographic areas. I realized how fast things were changing from a remark by a local engineer. He told me that he lived in a house with an area of ninety square meters (120 square yards) in a prestigious, private upper-middle-class development. Upon hearing that I was conducting research in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, he responded that to his knowledge some migrant homes there were gigantic compared

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to his own, larger than he could ever afford. This trend was likely to lead to confrontations, although it obviously did not materialize overnight. Table 13. Architecture faculty students on first course by category of secondary education % Public school

% Private school

% Junior college

Total (= 100%)

1998

57

40

3

250

1999

50

45

5

165

2000

49

50

1

127

2001

50

49

1

98

2002

43

55

2

94

2003

49

48

3

98

Source: Universidad de Cuenca, Unidad de Matrícula Diferenciada, 2003. Note: attendance rates on the first curso (sixteen-week course) are not representative of the rest of the ten-course program, as they are always higher. Between 1999 and 2003, attendance on the first course averaged 139 students, whereas in the second course it averaged eighty-three students.

Illustration 32. Cuenca’s historic city center. Photograph courtesy of Xavier Ordóñez

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Social Transitions in Education and Profession One noteworthy change is that of the architect’s profession and the professional prestige of the title Arquitecto. The architecture program evolved from a small and costly program for the elite in the 1960s and 1970s into an academic curriculum drawing students from broad strata of the population in the 1980s and 1990s. This was due in part to reforms in higher education during the 1980s, making it affordable for students from lower-income homes as well (Jameson 1999; Gobierno del Ecuador 2000). Enrolment not only increased but also changed in composition. The new educational act linked tuition fees to family income, enabling students from lower social classes to become architects. Since Cuencan architecture was nationally renowned, students from other provinces enrolled in Cuenca’s architecture program as well. This growing popularity increased enrolment so much that it exceeded the faculty’s capacity by the 1990s. A few years ago a cap was therefore placed on enrolment. In 2003 only eighty new students were admitted to the freshman year. Since some were repeating the year, the freshman contingent reached a maximum of 120 on some first year courses. The new limitation on enrolment explains the reduction in the number of students between 1998 and 2003 in Table 13. To obtain a general impression of the socioeconomic backgrounds of architecture students in the period my research covers, I have listed the type of secondary education as an indicator. In Ecuador, secondary education is deeply divided down class lines: basically, the poor attend public schools and the rich private ones. Nationally, about 70 percent are enrolled in public education and about 30 percent in private education (Arcos Cabrera and Vásconez 2001; Vos and Ponce 2004). Table 13 shows that between 1998 and 2003 approximately half of all architecture students had attended public secondary schools. This means that students who had attended private schools (46 percent between 1998 and 2003) were still somewhat over-represented with respect to the national average, but that the architecture program is definitely no longer restricted to the elite. In addition, about 70 percent of students hail from Azuay Province, of which Cuenca is the capital. The others are mostly from neighboring provinces. Coeds account for around 30 percent of the enrolment. Architects thus continue to be predominantly male. Because of the huge influx of students in the 1990s, more architects graduated each year than the local markets could absorb. In 2002 over 1,000 architects were registered with the Colegio de Arquitectos in Azuay Province, of whom about 600 were active as architects.2 An estimated 90 percent of this group subsisted on residential construction jobs, making for intense competition. Greater diversity meant that many from the new generations of architects were unable to join established architects, who controlled the

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distribution of commissions. This imposed new challenges on the system. Excluded professionals might, for example, object to a mayor’s practice of allocating commissions to a select group of lecturers at the architecture faculty. These protests started to be channeled through an official spokesperson, when the newly elected president of the Colegio de Arquitectos intervened in this practice. In 2003 members of Azuay’s Colegio de Arquitectos elected for the first time a president who was not affiliated with the architecture faculty. This official hoped to make the procedures for awarding government commissions more transparent to enable fair competition between architects and to give new architects a chance. He therefore campaigned against the private distribution of design commissions. His efforts included calling for a competition where architects would compete based on skills rather than on palancas. In the first year of his term, he convinced the municipality to organize a competition for ideas to develop the El Barranco River zone bisecting the city. This design competition procedure, prescribed by law, had never been applied in Cuenca before. In fact, the mayor had already promised the commission for the urban development study of El Barranco to architects at the faculty (Universidad de Cuenca n.d.: 13). After consulting the Colegio de Arquitectos, however, he changed his mind and decided to make the procedure competitive. This decision meant that a few of the faculty figureheads missed out on this prestigious research commission. The ensuing conflict pitched the faculty against the mayor and the Colegio de Arquitectos and was partially fought out in public.3 After a few decades in which a strong cultural elite controlled urban development and representation of their ideal of Cuencan society, the cohesive group of architects from the established order gradually lost its monopoly in the 1990s and 2000s. Events such as the competition for El Barranco marked a transition, not only in the order of architects, but also in Cuenca’s general social stratification. Some members of the cultural elite acknowledged these changes, although most found them confusing and refused to discuss them. According to an anthropologist employed at the culture department of the Banco Central del Ecuador in Cuenca, during the period of this research, “social relations” experienced a “total restructuring” and tremendous cultural dynamics, affecting primarily the self-appointed noblesse, because the architecture with which it identified—colonial and neoclassicist architecture from Europe and the neovernacular arquitectura cuencana—was being threatened by new, contemporary design and construction styles. He was referring to the transnational migrants and nouveau riche who visualized the status to which they aspired in the houses they built. New groups of wealthy clients and new generations of architects henceforth had the opportunity to influence the appearance of the city and surrounding villages.

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The architects graduating during those years not only hailed from more varied layers of the population but also served more diverse categories of clients, resulting in new styles of housing construction. New generations of architects made progressively less use of elements from the hegemonic building traditions and shifted their focus to new international examples. Architects affiliated with the architecture faculty in 2002 described these trends as a break with past practice. The colonial, neoclassicist, and neovernacular schools, which they regarded as representing a local identity, made way for a cityscape defined from below, where emancipated citizens selected the designs for their striking villas. This concerned them. On this subject, architect and lecturer Dario explained: The new architecture has compromised the quality of Cuencan architecture, which used to be considered good. I would not call this a loss of identity. But design quality, aesthetic quality, and craftsmanship—as our architecture is still based on craftsmanship—are deteriorating … These qualities of Cuencan architecture are disappearing, because [the new designs] are copies, poor copies, of certain models from specific magazines. This is what happens: they [the clients] see a magazine and say “I want a house like that.” While such architecture may well relate to the North American identity, it does not fit in cities such as ours. Our primary influence derives from the Incas; next comes a strong European one, arising from Spanish and Portuguese cultures.

The interview excerpt reveals that this architect believed that the features that working-class migrants imported from America clashed with the elements from precolonial and European cultures selected by the elite classes. Still, the international influences were not shocking in and of themselves, as the Cuencan elite had always been eager to introduce cultural elements from Europe in Cuenca. It was the role of cultural innovators—the nouveau riche who had houses built and the architects working for them—that inspired both criticism and fear within the established order, because it eroded their power over the physical city and symbolism of the cityscape. Two categories of architects emerged within the local occupational group of architects. The first category consisted of the architects from the established order. Trained in the tradition of arquitectura cuencana, they aimed to preserve architectural traditions. They verbalized this objective in terms of the construction styles they mentioned as authentic and related to their location. In their view, colonial and French neoclassicist architecture and the neovernacular tradition of the arquitectura cuencana expressed transcendental values that seemed appropriate for the city. They perceived traditional self-built homes made of wood, adobe, and roof tiles as the most authentic for the countryside. In their narrative, they classified building traditions from different historical periods, as well as from different geographic zones, as “vernacular architecture.” The architect Jaramillo, for example, has written:

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“The true local vernacular architecture, which is located in the historic center and in the countryside, has similar spatial and technical features that stem from the colonial period” (Jaramillo Medina 1998: 130). However great the differences were between adobe country homes and colonial, neoclassicist, and neovernacular city dwellings, the cultural elite lumped these building traditions together in the social construction of “vernacular architecture.” The established professionals did not consider buildings with a different design to be authentic. They regarded such designs as exogenous, transitory, and excessively focused on external appearance and on making an impression. The second category consisted largely of architects from younger generations eager to try out new designs, due in part to the opportunities that their new clientele offered. Sometimes they derived inspiration from architecture in the United States that they encountered in architecture journals, while in other cases they were carrying out requests to the letter from transnational or local clients. In still other cases, they were looking for design innovations themselves. They were regarded as commercial architects by the first group. Catering to the demands of their clients, they were relatively successful financially. In addition to younger architects, a few architects from the established order pertained to this group. Although they were a minority on the faculty, some were highly respected among students for their financial success. The symbolic struggle between these two groups therefore extended beyond ideological differences to economic competition for commissions and clients. It was also a personal struggle to preserve social status. Dario, who belonged to the first category, told me how the social changes had affected his own situation: In our region land prices have soared. Why? Because migrants will pay any given amount that an ordinary citizen or university lecturer cannot afford. So the rising cost of land is one of those clear patterns here. And because of the new practice of pricing in dollars here, acceding to a certain middle layer or middle class has become impossible, as has purchasing land that they [the transnational migrants] can afford: they have driven prices up by paying any price asked….

Lately, the middle class, to which we as university lecturers and merchants used to belong, has largely disappeared. So at this time—I’m trying to explain this quickly to make it easier to understand—one group has everything and the rest nothing. From buying a plot of land to building a house— nowadays the process costs millions of dollars. This is what has happened. The rental market is thriving, since people with a lot of economic power are building houses to rent to others. This will ultimately affect a major share of the people in this country. In a while, they will no longer have any means to build houses of their own. And architects work only for these clients with

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[financial] means, whereas the supposed middle class no longer commissions architects. I used to distinguish between an elite upper class, a middle class, and a class of poor people. By now, there are only the haves and the have-nots. That is the problem. And our children and grandchildren keep asking me when they can build their house, but they cannot build their house. Considered from a professional perspective, this means, on the other hand, that some professionals do not have work and will not get any either. A great many architects have not been professionally active in years and have taken up other pursuits. And those who do work as architects have little ethical awareness. Because the rising demand for homes had driven up the cost of housing, families without income from abroad had difficulty obtaining an affordable home. This trend had weakened the old divisions between social classes. The self-appointed noblesse had to forfeit privileges. Professionals of the established order experienced an erosion of their professional and personal privileges. Professionally, competition was often intense and led some to undercut regulated rates, reducing income from architectural design. With the housing market accessible to all citizens, the title of Arquitecto, which was once so prestigious, had lost some of its status. Architects no longer determined who lived where: residents did. The change in personal status appears in the above excerpt, where Dario describes himself as part of the disappearing middle class. His children may not even be able to have their own house built. He regards this as a personal failure for him as a father and as a member of the self-appointed noblesse. Because the social changes affected the occupational and personal lives of professionals, and because they were unable to grasp or classify certain changes, professionals avoided public debate about the subject. When the subject of migrant architecture arose in conversation, they would mention the homes of cholos in the countryside. Referring to this group, which was ranked lower in the social hierarchy by the elite and lived further away, was safer than entering a debate about architecture and planning in the city. After all, these subjects related to the professional and personal spheres of the architects.

The Debate about “Migrant Architecture” New Residential Architecture in the Countryside The vernacular residential architecture that dominated the landscape of Cuenca’s surroundings until the mid-twentieth century consisted of a wooden frame, adobe walls, and a sloped, tiled roof (see Collier and Buitrón 1949). In the front, many of these homes had a covered one or two-story vestibule, with some balconies and cornices featuring decorative wood carvings (see Il-

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Illustration 33. Rural building traditions near Cuenca: adobe home with a tiled roof and balcony featuring wood carvings

Illustration 34. New construction styles in the countryside

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Illustration 35. “Migrant architecture” as a symbol of family wealth

lustration 33). In those days the interior spaces served multiple purposes, of which sleeping and storage were the most important. The kitchen was built as a separate, adjacent structure, and most homes lacked indoor plumbing. The muted colors, natural materials, and situation amidst a green landscape led outsiders to praise homes from this period for their harmony with the surroundings. The elite architects from the Cuencan program liked this vernacular building tradition so much that they came up with their own, fancier versions of it in arquitectura cuencana. From the 1970s onwards, parallel to the first migration wave, changes appeared in the morphology and use of rural homes (Zambrano Vásquez and León Samaniego 1993). Vestibules vanished from the plans, and façades consisted increasingly of bricks left in full view, in some cases plastered with stucco and painted in bright colors. Construction volumes became more complex and variegated, featuring protruding elements, balconies, terraces, and cupolas. Homes became larger, as each space was attributed a special purpose. Increasingly, concrete, asbestos cement, steel, glass, aluminum, and finishing materials, such as wall and floor tiles, were used. Many new homes featured decorations not found in old homes with porches: pillars and arches and windows with rods dividing them into sections (see Illustration 36). From the 1990s smooth tiles (bathroom tiles) on the exterior became more common, as did glued corner windows made of dark glass. Some wealthy

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owners had their names inscribed on the façade of their building to avert misunderstandings about who the owner was (see Illustration 35). In his book on transnational migration in Ecuador, David Kyle notes: “In some rural villages near Cuenca, out-migration and subsequent remittances are noticeable by simple observation: primarily the explosive construction of new homes, which are considerably more extravagant than those of other comparable sized towns in Ecuador” (Kyle 2000: 70–71). Other researchers have observed: “South-central Ecuador is now littered with large homes based on North American styles, newly purchased trucks, and other displays of wealth that result from remittances” (Jokisch and Pribilsky 2002: 81). And one of the many reports on this subject in the national press reads: “The people who own these houses select luxurious models with facilities that conflict with the surroundings…. These houses clash with the humble abodes of other residents who lack the ‘good fortune’ of having relatives abroad.”4 What mattered most about these migrant homes was basically that they stood out. This gave rise to debates about the desired development of the city and landscape. To realize their dreams, transnational migrants used to ask architects to build a house from a visual example. Sometimes the task was virtually impossible for architects to perform. Fernando Vega, head of Cuenca’s Social Presbytery and active in protecting the interests of transnational migrants, explained that one of his female parishioners had given an architect a picture of a house she wanted him to copy. This was no ordinary house: the photograph turned out to be of the Sydney Opera House! The striking houses elicited criticism among Cuenca’s established architects, based on the “good” architectural design principles that they had learned as professionals and propagated as lecturers. Their ideas about architecture and spatial development were embedded in a worldview structured by hierarchical differences between city and countryside, between the elite and the masses, and between older and younger fellow professionals. They expressed their concern about the physical-spatial changes discursively, attributing moral values to construction styles. “Migrant architecture” was regarded in this discourse as a counterpart to the aforementioned construction styles found to be “attractive,” “dignified,” and “proper.” Architect Dario from the architecture faculty explained to me how the construction styles associated with local heritage differed from the new “migrant architecture” that he felt expressed poor taste: A specific type of architecture has been identified that could belong to migrants. In a strict morphological sense, it is hybrid architecture, a type of eclecticism, a little bit of everything, since they build a neoclassicist entrance, for example, with modern or post-modern pillars and so on and so forth. Yes, it is a terrible hodgepodge and reflects poor taste, very poor taste.

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“Migrant architecture” was thus regarded as stylistically adulterated, as impure, and was believed to epitomize poor taste. The perception among established architects that the new migrant homes were stylistically impure may have been a factor in their refusal to talk about them. Analogous to Mary Douglas’s theory about taboos, the strange hybrids of “migrant architecture” may be regarded as a threat to the social order (Douglas 1966). This danger was very real to the group used to controlling this order, namely the architects of the self-appointed noblesse. To identify new trends in residential architecture, these architects invoked their professional knowledge and the classifications they had learned. Dario’s analysis was as follows: In the countryside we observe the destruction of the [original] popular architecture and the invasion of this new architecture. Clearly, these models have been transferred from the city to the countryside. The shapes, materials, and technologies are or may be appropriate for the city. But they were transferred without any consideration, without any adaptation to the countryside. So they appear totally out of place over there, the houses clash with the original ones built without architects, the architecture of adobe and roof tiles mingling with nature. All of a sudden, you see a gigantic brick house, with vast dimensions, whereas the original country homes are never large. That is very domestic architecture, truly from this area. Those [homes] have an entirely different functional layout. They do not have a living room, dining room, music room. We may use them, but they, the farmers, care more about the walls, the kitchen, and the space for guinea pigs and livestock.

Those classifications corresponded with the difference between urban and rural lifestyles. He did not believe that farm families needed a differentiated residence. Professionals did not mention changes in lifestyles and needs in the countryside. Changed habits and customs were usually assumed to be a consequence of the introduction of new homes: “they want to identify with this inferior architecture and in doing so change their culture, their habits, their customs, their way of life.” In the debate the reciprocal influences of people and surroundings were often overlooked. Because the architects viewed social and cultural changes first and foremost as the outcome of material and spatial changes, they labeled the architectural transformations as “inappropriate.” Another architect wrote: “This creates a cultural landscape that strikes a balance between poor urban taste and rural aspects. Like city neighborhoods in a rural setting, or rather, uprooted rural settlements as an expression of an uprooted culture” (Jaramillo 2002: 194). Jaramillo described migrant homes in the countryside as “fetish homes,” because he believed they had been built with the wrong intentions. Like Dario, he felt that the opulent design failed to convey lasting values and deplored the apparent failure of the builders to consider how to embed homes in the surroundings and local traditions.

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A social scientist from the University of Cuenca also criticized “migrant architecture” in an article. She labeled the homes of transnational migrants “cement monsters” and argued that they conflicted with the landscape: Importing architecture styles from the big city, the abundance and abuse of concrete and concrete blocks leads areas with high migration rates to cease to reflect their heritage and to lose any sense of the architectural harmony, making way for true “cement monsters” [that may materialize] in the center of a small village previously known for its elegant harmony with the landscape and the surroundings. (Borrero Vega 2002: 85)

Borrero Vega regarded the vanishing distinction between city and countryside and the advancing modernity in areas that until recently had appeared to change very slowly as a cultural threat that she stressed with the term “monsters.” Below I will show that houses designed in a new style elsewhere in the world are described as monsters in similar contexts. A general paradigm that instigated the professional critique of migrant homes was objective design analysis. According to that paradigm, the shapes compatible with the landscape could be determined objectively. Presumably, inherently superior and inherently inferior designs existed for each setting. In a conversation I had with an architect and lecturer of the younger generation, he performed this analysis on a ruin dating back to the Incas, comparing it with contemporary “migrant architecture.” He concluded that the first sample blended in with the landscape, but that the second did not. Architect and lecturer Roberto also advocated such an objective design analysis, although he realized that what elite architects usually consider despicable appeals to owners of such homes. He understood this because he knew that this new architecture had granted them visible power over their own surroundings. The difference between an abstract professional design analysis and concrete explanations based on everyday experiences simply made the “migrant architecture” phenomenon more confusing. Established architects did not quite know what to make of this. The extent of the classificatory confusion was also apparent from the expression “architecture without architects” so prevalent among architects. The rural adobe and wood houses that I described above were consistently described by professionals as “architecture without architects.” This expression is also the title of an influential book from the 1960s by Bernard Rudofsky (1998 [1964]) containing examples of vernacular architecture. The expression “architecture without architects” contributed appreciation for a traditional and indigenous building style to architectural discourse. Regarding the attributes of traditional maestros from the area, for example, Dario said: “Maestros have lived here, ordinary farmers without any academic training whatsoever, but nonetheless incredibly skilled craftsmen. The best homes

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from the colonial, republican, and current periods were built under the aegis of these maestros.” Their lay architecture was described by professionals as meeting high standards of quality and as aesthetically pleasing. With many of the new migrant homes, it was unclear whether they had been designed with or without assistance from architects. This made for a curious paradox in the discourse. Some professionals, including Roberto, regarded “migrant architecture” largely as self-built products. They attributed the inferior design to a lack of professional involvement. Dario, who in an excerpt above describes the new houses as diametrically opposed to “architecture without architects,” said shortly afterwards in the same conversation that the cause of the present deterioration of the countryside was that everybody there except the skilled professionals had started building houses. The paradox is thus that some professionals condemned “migrant architecture” for no longer being “architecture without architects”—and as such losing its authenticity and rural value—while others criticized “migrant architecture” precisely for being “architecture without architects.” Referring to legislation about building permits and the requirement that an architect be involved, they deemed migrant homes to be illegal constructions. This classificatory vagueness regarding the professional knowledge used in building migrant homes similarly reinforced the taboo on discussing the subject. At any rate, the new popular architecture was no longer described as idyllic, harmonious, and attractive by the established architects but was instead labeled as commercial and ugly; new building styles were regarded not as local but as examples of globalizing architecture and consequently as lacking identity. The same maestros and self-builders, who until recently had been acclaimed for their traditional craftsmanship in building, were now reproached for their ignorance about appropriate architecture. The urban elite saw the idyllic image that it had constructed of rural life disintegrate before their eyes. They believed that in addition to the loss of craftsmanship of the villagers and the aesthetic harmony between buildings and nature, traditions such as building in mingas had disappeared. Mingas, regarded by the elite as a type of togetherness believed to be characteristic of social relations in Andean countries, had been replaced by capitalist labor relations. This was a consequence of the new architecture styles that often required more specialized and technical expertise than the homes made of adobe and wood had in the past. So construction workers would be recruited, and no mingas were organized. Cuenca’s cultural elite regarded this trend as evidence that the new, imported, and copied building styles coincided with a deplorable loss of local Andean culture. Amid this confusion and concern, the professionals of the established order invoked the myth of the large migrant house mentioned in the previous chapter as a means to impose clarity. They used this myth in part to avert de-

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viations from the prevailing architectural standard but especially (as did some residents of working-class neighborhoods in their own way) to reconfirm the social distinction between city and countryside and between whites and cholos through stereotypes.5 The story was usually told by professionals with a touch of irony, to explain to the listeners that the houses built by migrant families were unsuitable for life in the countryside; that the houses were grotesque and ugly and contained facilities of no use there. The account of the house with the unused elevator circulated in several different versions, some based on personal experiences, such as the one that Dario told me: “some homes in the countryside contain an elevator for livestock, to take pigs upstairs and wash them on the deck.” Flor had still another version: One of my father’s employees who emigrated has a house, but that [house] has been sold now—you should have seen that one. He owned a magnificent house near the stadium, truly magnificent. But there was corn in the bathtub. He let corn dry in the bathtub. They used only one area as a kitchen and another as a bedroom, and the rest of the house was unused…. That is their way of showing what they have, even though they do not know how to live there. They have enough money to buy something nice, but they do not know how to live there or how to use it.

In all versions of the myth, inhabitants of such migrant homes were stereotyped as country bumpkins with no idea about how to spend their money and unable to live like city folk. The flawed aspirations of these fictional migrants surface in two recurring story elements: the bathtub and the livestock. They are said to use the elevator to bring the livestock upstairs or to leave their crops to dry in the bathtub. The myth is therefore not merely a stereotype about a group of people regarded as putting on airs but also a commentary about changed lifestyles. After all, these former farmers or country folk were said to continue their unsanitary habits in their new home as well (see Colloredo-Mansfeld 1998). While they had a bathtub, according to the story they did not use it to wash themselves—confirming once again that they were “dirty.” Or they had an elevator that they used to store the livestock, so that the livestock could be kept in their house, another practice considered to be unsanitary. While residents of working-class neighborhoods used the story to counteract deep material contrasts in the neighborhood and to depict themselves as superior to the country bumpkins in the myth, professionals also used the myth to stress social boundaries. In their view, the nouveau riche, the cholos with their “despicable taste,” conflicted with the idyllic rustic image that they had constructed. The Cuencan elite’s stratified view of society was undermined by globalization.

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Power over Architectural Representations The first wave of transnational migration had the strongest impact on the countryside. As the exodus accelerated in the 1990s, transnationalism started to affect Cuenca and its immediate surroundings as well. New building styles spread to the city. Architect and lecturer Gerardo drove me to the village of Turi adjacent to Cuenca to show how close the changes in the landscape already were to the city. He asserted that older generations of architects, to which he belonged, had been resting on their laurels. By now, it was almost too late to preserve the area’s cultural heritage. For a long time the established architects believed that the problem was too remote and insufficiently important to address. When “migrant architecture” became too prevalent in their view, however, they spoke out, albeit in all cases by criticizing the “peasants.” Self-critique or criticism of work by fellow professionals was virtually non-existent. In recent years the nouveau riche have started to encroach on the personal sphere of those with old money. Not only have migrant villas been popping up all over rural outlying areas and in working-class neighborhoods, but more and more architects in Cuenca have started to produce striking architecture. Many are younger architects trained by the established professionals. Dario resented this and accepted part of the blame: “we architects are protecting [the nouveau riche clients]. There is, so to speak, a vast market of professionals willing to take on those assignments.” The changes that at first had seemed “very remote” to the established professionals in both social and geographic respects suddenly appeared to be upon them. This feeling was reinforced when a few architects of the established order conducted projects for the nouveau riche as well, revealing cracks among the closed ranks of elite architects. Reservations about discussing urban trends were therefore a logical part of the taboo. The silence reflected a sense of self-preservation. After all, plenty of fellow architects and influential clients were involved. Now and then something would be published about houses that stood out in the countryside, but “inappropriate” building styles in the city were shrouded in silence. Still, Dario believed that the new architectural design repertoire was controversial in the city as well: Even in the center, architecture clinging to its identity conflicts with modern, international architecture. [He points at two buildings on a photograph.] This hotel features neoclassicist French influences. The building next to it is a rigid, modernist design. [These are] clashes, clashes between different forms, between views about space, and between cosmovisions, as we call them, between a life that is introspective and one that is extroverted.

In this passage Dario makes clear that architectural designs represent deeply embedded values to him.

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The established order of architects aimed to safeguard transcendental values; they were enforcers of a local identity and of authentic building traditions. In the dual model of architecture that Dario and his fellow architects constructed, Spanish colonial and French neoclassicist architecture, as well as arquitectura cuencana, represented the transcendental, introspective values as stated. These building styles offered a coherent comprehensive impression and reflected good taste. Cuencan identity was accurately conveyed in buildings designed in these styles: “that is our architecture, and we identify the most with that.” Regarding other buildings, he said: “you could find that anywhere in the world. Surely, that is not our identity. It does not correspond with our design.” Those who were responsible for other building styles were regarded as ideological adversaries. Everything considered to be “international” or overly ostentatious received the same label, whether it was modernist or postmodernist. Still, the debate did not revolve around the international nature or visibility of the architecture. In Cuenca the nineteenth- and twentieth-century elite was known to have had houses copied as well. Like today, they often derived inspiration from abroad, preferably from Europe (see Illustration 3). The real difference lay in the identities of the cultural innovators. In the “French” period new influences were imported by elite families and not, as in the case of transnational migrants, by former peasants, residents of working-class neighborhoods, or other members of the lower-middle class. Hardly anybody had the courage to identify the transitions in power behind the representations. Architect and lecturer Roberto was one of the few who did: Roberto: This other recent architecture, which might relate to the migration— we should examine who the true owners are, but to me it seems to be a social sector that does not have the same roots in Cuenca … They do not address the Cuencan identity theme, since they are far more interested in enhancing their profile in the city, as a powerful economic sector. [This architecture] is far more distributed throughout the city. It is not specific to any neighborhood but appears everywhere.... These migrant houses in the city, as well as in the countryside, acknowledge neither the former aspects of Cuencan architecture, nor what is known as arquitectura cuencana, nor those of that different, more internationally oriented architecture by Planarq, which was also focused on beauty, on aesthetic codes. This new architecture acknowledges neither one [school] nor the other. It is a social sector unwilling to be embedded in a tradition. They refuse to commit to a social sector alien to them, one that is associated more with family traditions and surnames. No, it is a new social sector that aims to stress its presence and to set itself apart from the rest, indicating a clear distinction: this is my architecture, this expresses who I am, and what my status is, like a new social status. Christien: Yes, but perhaps the owners are looking for economic power precisely because of that former culture of surnames. Are the power structures shifting?

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Roberto: Of course, this social sector was long marginalized. Now they want to show that they have economic power. Later they will advance to political power, but for now that power is minimal. In this case you could perceive the culture as an arena of symbolic power. This has always been that way, but I think that these [new] expressions are clearly part of that symbolic struggle.

Roberto is on to something really important here. A long time ago, Cuenca’s cantonal council launched new programs in the villages to develop the countryside with varying degrees of success. With some rural families managing to improve their economic situation independently, the urban elite saw that it was starting to lose control over the countryside and viewed these emancipatory developments less favorably in professional and personal respects. Kyle (2000: 72) paraphrases the hegemonic discourse in Cuenca by asserting that “peasants” will never be appreciated by the urban elite, regardless of whether they construct four-story buildings, because the elite considers social status to be congenital. Rural families who have their houses built with conspicuous designs use the emancipatory force of material culture to explore new individual and group identities. As I explained in the previous chapter, and as stressed by Roberto as well, the fact that the new architectural elements originate neither from aristocratic high-brow styles nor from vernacular traditions expands their cultural repertoires and validates their social claims as a new middle class, not comparable to any position in the old social stratification. Now that I have described the manifestations of social transitions in residential architecture and in debates among architects, I will examine in what measure these changes are characteristic of Cuenca. Examples from the literature reveal that shifts in power and the social construction of a local identity or identities has in many places coincided with a symbolic battle over building styles. In Postmodern Urbanism, Ellin describes how nostalgic glorification of the past in architecture and urban development arose worldwide in response to the modernism of the international style and to progressive globalization, with a search for authenticity and local identity gaining ground: Though putatively “preserving” the past, the undertakings of historic preservationists and gentrifiers alike may be more accurately described as rewriting or inventing the past since buildings and districts are “renovated,” “restored,” or “rehabilitated” to correspond to ideal visions of the past and to satisfy contemporary needs and tastes by incorporating new technologies, floor plans, and more. (Ellin 1996: 65)

Researchers have described similar situations in other cities, such as Vancouver and in Puebla (Mexico), where the symbolic struggle over architectural styles and town and country planning also denoted underlying social and cultural changes that related to transnational migration and globalization. In west Vancouver, the opulent villas of Chinese migrants sparked a controversy between the Chinese owners and their British-Canadian fellow neigh-

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borhood residents (Ley 1995; Mitchell 1997, 1998). The British-Canadians, who were longstanding neighborhood residents, favored Tudor, classicist, and colonial architecture, which in their view accurately depicted their lifestyle and their social prestige as “old” money. The lush neighborhood with parks featuring English landscaping symbolized English aristocratic heritage and traditional values that had withstood the impact of globalization. The wealthy Hong Kong migrants who settled in these neighborhoods from the late 1980s, however, built large, opulent homes, often covering an entire lot. Adhering to feng shui principles, they took care not to let trees obstruct the view from the windows when they built their houses. They therefore cut down large old trees standing on their lots, instigating panic among the British-Canadians, who regarded the new houses of Chinese migrants as “monster homes” (similar to the designation that Borrero Vega uses for Ecuadorian migrant houses in the countryside) and called for the preservation of what they considered to be valuable cultural heritage constituted by combining classical homes with rustic elements. In the debates that ensued, Chinese homeowners invoked their right to own private property and to increase the market value of such property, whereas the British-Canadians stressed the user value of their residences, which they believed was determined by the social and environmental attributes of the neighborhood as a whole. Researchers who have written about this subject interpret the tension as ideological contrasts that convey underlying assumptions about the social hierarchy. The presentation of power in physical, social, and symbolic space is pivotal in this controversy. Like the elite in Cuenca, the British-Canadian residents feared erosion of their social status and the lifestyles and complexes of meaning that came with it. Studies about the preservation of historic inner cities show that many of these efforts to protect heritage reflect the desire of the urban middle class to reconquer the city and to construct a cityscape that corresponds with their moral categories of suitable and unsuitable users (Swanson 2007; Bromley and Mackie 2009). A study of Puebla in Mexico describes how the middle class became so impoverished as a result of an economic slump that they were described as the city’s “new poor” (Jones and Varley 1994, 1999). Frustrated at this loss of status, members of the middle class resorted to aristocratic symbols of colonial heritage. Rescuing heritage coincided with changes in which activities were permitted in the inner city: street vendors were chased out and bus stations relocated. All activities performed by people from the lower classes and deemed “unacceptable” by the middle class were thus systematically displaced from the inner city. Jones and Varley conclude that “the strenuous efforts of the state and middle classes to recapture the historic centre and to limit others’ access to it constituted a moral project conveyed through the construction and representation of a particular spatial order” (Jones and

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Varley 1999: 1559). As in Cuenca, the interest of the upper middle class in Puebla in “restoring” and “preserving” elements of an idealized past was a way to halt the loss of control they feared they were experiencing. The examples above demonstrate that debates about style and aesthetics— or precisely the absence thereof—conceal a fear of losing control over urban space. Maintaining or reclaiming style elements associated with one’s own position (building styles of English aristocrats in Vancouver, Spanish-colonial construction in Puebla, and colonial neoclassicist and neovernacular styles in Cuenca) is a recurring step in this process. A social conflict is thus presented as an ideological one. In Cuenca architects of the established order felt threatened on two fronts: as professionals and as an elite group. Older-generation architects had become accustomed to a social order in which their professional status corresponded with a privileged personal position as members of the affluent bourgeoisie. As a group, the architects of the established order became professionally known for their interpretation of local building traditions in the arquitectura cuencana. In addition to their design activities, they continued to hold several positions at once. For a long time they were in charge of urban planning and were responsible for representing the social order and local culture via architecture and the use of space. Because training and occupation were democratized, however, market competition for design commissions grew, and the role of the clients became more important. The influence of transnational migration has given rise to new groups of clients in recent years, along with different housing needs. The new clients wanted large, striking houses with a state-of-the-art international aura to convey their economic progress. Architects without access to the closed network of the established order welcomed such commissions because they were often happy to have work at all. Dario was concerned about this trend, which he saw as a qualitative deterioration: While the values of that good architecture that Cuenca had continue to be respected, they are no longer the [prevailing] paradigm at this time. Young adults are abandoning these values, and many new professionals are poorly informed. The university is also at fault for failing to provide them with proper cultural education. So there is no longer any respect for our values or our identity. Or, as I always say when I teach history classes: sometimes they know more about the history of the city of Miami in the United States than they do about the history of Cuenca. That’s the way it is.

In his view, globalization had penetrated professional life too deeply. Miami had come too close to Cuenca.

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Illustration 36. Turn-key house for a buyers’ market of transnational migrants

Generation Gap The Architects behind “Migrant Architecture” The ethical objections to new building styles and changing identifications expressed by established architects were far less prevalent among younger generations of professionals. They perceived mainly new challenges, both in the area of design and in economic respects. Gabriela, a young, middle-class architect who graduated in 1995, derived a wealth of professional opportunities from the housing market of the nouveau riche. Her brother had been living in New York for years and hoped to invest some of what he earned there in real estate in Cuenca. He had heard that demand for turn-key homes was high among transnational migrants, as many lacked the inclination, time, and means to arrange a building process from start to finish. In recent years a separate lucrative market had emerged for these turn-key homes. Gabriela added her savings to those of her brother and in 2001 purchased a plot of land from a relative and had a house built there (see Illustration 36). In her design she accommodated what she described as the “taste of migrants,” featuring arched windows with glass rods and luxurious interior finishing. She put the

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house on the market for 55,000 dollars and sold it within a few months for 52,000 dollars to an Ecuadorian woman living in the United States. Next, she bought the adjacent corner lot and built a similar house there, slightly larger than the previous one. This house had the same arched windows, because, she explained, “migrants like those.” She tried to sell that house, which cost nearly 50,000 dollars to build, for 65,000 dollars. But by 2003, demand from migrants in the United States had dropped, and the house took over a year to sell. Eventually, she reduced the price, and this second project was less lucrative than she had expected. Despite the financial risks that developing two homes entailed, she liked to work this way, as she did not have to rely on connections within the network of established professionals distributing major commissions. Getting by as a professional required maintaining several sources of income. In addition to being active as an architect and developer, Gabriela therefore worked as a technician for MIDUVI as well and was responsible for running the SIV housing construction program. As such, she often visited Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, where in the end only one client requested a grant. Because she learned via her neighborhood contacts that many people in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi were interested in building a subsidized new home for their son or daughter, Gabriela devised a plan for a new housing cooperative. A relative was selling a vast site that would be suitable for building a new housing development. If the cooperative members managed to save enough money, she could take care of all the drafting and coordinating activities as the architect. The plan failed when the neighborhood residents heard how much money they would need to contribute every month (the site alone would cost around 200,000 dollars), but the story reveals how enterprising these young architects can be. It also shows that the social divisions that the established architects constructed were not adopted by the younger generations, who were perfectly willing to treat residents of working-class neighborhoods as potential customers. In 2002, for example, Ivon from Ciudadela Carlos Crespi wanted to speak with Gabriela about building a new house in a different neighborhood. Ivon and her husband, who worked in the United States, had bought a tract of land in an expansion neighborhood for about 14,000 dollars. At the time, Ivon (as described earlier) still lived with her mother and two children in a house made of wood and chipboard. Ivon and Gabriela discussed the costs of designing a new home and options for requesting funding from MIDUVI. Gabriela agreed to bill the design at four dollars per square meter, instead of her usual rate of five dollars. This would bring the cost of designing a twostory house with an area of approximately 120 square meters (144 square yards) to about 500 dollars. They went to look at Gabriela’s first project home together. A few months later, Ivon had hired a different architect, and

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a two-story house was under construction on the plot of land in the suburb. I hardly saw Ivon anymore in 2003. Her mother told me that she spent every day on the construction site supervising the workers and had assumed responsibility for this. Thanks to the emancipated attitude of Ivon and her husband toward housing construction, architects such as Gabriela had to try hard to get design or building commissions. Architects combined several design and building operations to create their own sources of employment. Gabriela’s friend and fellow professional Flor had also performed a few commissions for migrant families. Instead of development projects, however, she received assignments from families interested in rebuilding the house they owned or designing a new one. She received most of her commissions for migrant houses by word of mouth, as she explained to me on a tour of her projects: The house we are about to visit was built for one of my former construction workers and employees. He worked with me, so I built him a little house. It’s not really a complete house, more like an extension. His wife sent that [design on video] from the United States for him to see. And because the migrants lived together there— they live in a group, they share an apartment with eight or nine others—the people who share the apartment with him included a man who saw the video. He liked it and asked me to contact him to [make a design]. He is also a construction worker.

She had also built a house for a former maidservant. All these clients had relatives in the United States. In addition to smaller commissions passed on to her now and then via her connections among the circle of established architects, which were often more about supervision than about architectural design, she looked on these commissions to build migrant homes as a welcome source of income. Nonetheless, Flor sometimes found work for transnational migrants from lower social classes to be difficult. Her migrant clients were often strapped for cash, wanted things that were not technically and financially feasible, and had a “taste of their own” that she as the designer usually had difficulty opposing. This is why she told her own version of the myth that I described above. If clients wanted a copy of the Sydney Opera House, they would stick to their guns, even if it was not feasible for technical and budgetary reasons. Despite these objections, however, they were an important group of clients for her. The younger architects thus gradually bridged the gap that the elite architects tried to maintain between their group and the lower social classes. New generations of clients and architects converged in the changed local housing market. Together, they worked to make the city and landscape different.

Divisions among Professionals of the Established Order Architects of the established order, such as Dario, Gerardo, and Roberto, were unanimous in their views about developments in residential architec-

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ture. While they criticized migrant homes in the countryside, they tried to reverse the trend in the domain they still controlled: the architecture program at the public university. Even there, however, the changes had penetrated, as aside from recent architecture graduates some of the lecturers had by then discovered the market of new clients as well. Hoping to preserve their standards and values, “identity” was introduced as a recurring theme in the curriculum. Roberto told me: Just imagine: for the first time, the architecture faculty has added “identity” to the curriculum. In other words: the faculty lecturers have decided that the students, the new professionals, should know about identity in architecture to graduate. This proves that some awareness is materializing, that a new perspective is gaining ground, that the cityscape is being destroyed, and that new professionals will leave here with that awareness…. Precisely at this moment, the faculty is concerned about this theme, including responsible ecological design issues and expressive qualities of designs.

Dario also emphasized that the program could help preserve Cuenca’s building traditions and said that at the faculty the objective was for “the students to develop high ethical standards as professionals, to receive good academic training, and to be honest [in their designs].” Like his colleagues, he fully intended to teach a “civilized” ethical vernacular. He mentioned a specific class where he tried to teach his students good design principles: We really stressed the importance of respectable and respected projects; that they should not turn into play architecture lacking serious basics; that in addition to the functional and constructive criteria, the designs need to be good. In the design process we emphasized respect for our architecture, shapes, so to speak, our morphology. That is very difficult, because, as I explained to you before, this is a cultural problem that starts as early as elementary school.

Dario regarded the changes in residential architecture as signs that society was increasingly repudiating its traditions, and he doubted he would be able to make this loss clear to students. In his view, they had grown up with this situation. His colleague Gerardo also told me that he had made every effort to convince his students that cultural heritage and building traditions figured in the identity of Cuencans. Roberto, however, explained to me that the ideological struggle had permeated the organization far more deeply than merely its impact on the students: Roberto: When we discuss those themes with the students in the design classes, they are interested. But we notice a contradiction along the lines of … they want architecture like that [new one], which they see as a milestone in the discipline, while on the other hand they perceive the need for more local, territorial architecture that is more traditional. They realize that the profession is headed in a certain direction, and that they risk being marginalized. At the same time, some lecturers on our faculty make this architecture for migrants. So their impression is “if a

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lecturer does that too, if he supervises me in design projects and is professionally successful, then I will follow his example.” So the faculty is divided. Christien: Are there two sides? Roberto: Yes. The faculty is not united, neither in ideas, nor in operational approaches. [Both] views manifest there too, although implicitly.

The trends in housing construction are irreversible and deeply affect the order of architects. Commercially successful architects who have stopped building according to the style of arquitectura cuencana in their striking creations for wealthy clients have become alternative role models for neophyte architects. One of them is the architect and lecturer Alonso. His views differed from those of his conservative colleagues. First, he seriously objected to their stigmatization of the architecture of transnational migrants and thus of the migrants themselves: “We say ‘the migrants,’ and we say condescendingly ‘those are the cholos who make such horrible architecture’.” He abhorred the designation cholos for the nouveau riche and added that the Ecuadorian economy was so bad that relatives of established architects might also go abroad at any moment, leaving them no ground for acting superior. Alonso went on to explain that many of the nouveau riche were not even transnational migrants. The debate about “migrant architecture” and the myth of the migrant home had taken on a life of its own, distinct from reality: Those large houses do not belong to migrants at all. A migrant is somebody who … I’m telling you, because it is basically my good luck that I work in architecture, and I have built homes for residents and non-residents. The homes I built for migrants are very small. They are really very small. Those homes are small from our perspective, homes of 120 or 150 square meters [144 or 179 square yards]…. So, migrants do not necessarily build large villas. No, large villas are being built by simple people, who had no money before, like shoemakers. A shoemaker who has made good money through his work and now has a shoe factory. Somebody like that is wealthy, whereas the people who used to be the Cuencan noblesse, wealthy and with eternal prestige, have become frustrated. A few of them still have money, but most have nothing at all. So the architecture of the large houses that you saw does not belong to the migrants, no, it belongs to the locals: butchers, shoemakers, people who work and have turned their workshop into a factory and have money now….

On the other hand, in some cases migrants build large houses in the countryside—there are reports about four-story houses with an elevator, although I have yet to see any—and rumor has it that they were built without architects and are probably very cold and very modern houses, and their appearance conflicts with the countryside. That’s possible. As a lecturer, I’ve examined that subject a bit and visited the countryside with my students. I saw what they were building there, I saw brick houses with tiled roofs. Together with the others, I wondered: “What can we build? Let’s do a project

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to see what might work.” And what do you think? A few architects from the faculty told me: “Give me that design you did for a migrant.” It’s not easy to make something different. I’m sure that some people build houses without an architect and produce inferior quality, but many do use an architect. And it’s logical that the houses are made of brick and have tiled roofs, as do most of our houses, since this area is an expansion of the city. In the countryside designers and builders had the same obligation to use the available construction materials, according to Alonso. Just because this had made the houses resemble ones in the city, they were not by definition unsuitable for village life in his view. The ethical objections of his colleagues to the design of migrant homes were without merit, argued Alonso. He was one of the few to doubt that the mythical house with the elevator actually existed. Nor did he believe that migrants built houses without an architect, or that those who did use architects always wanted copies of houses they saw in foreign magazines. Many migrants did in fact commission an architect to do the design. He had worked with about twenty migrant clients, and none had presented him with a photograph from a magazine. Alonso believed that most migrants liked the houses from the Cuenca region more than ones from the country where they lived and worked temporarily. Transnational migrants seemed to be increasingly interested in buying turn-key houses, as I already described based on Gabriela’s building activities. In this respect, he felt that the debate about the poor taste of migrants was rather inappropriate, as the architects were the ones designing and building for this market. Designs were thus the responsibility of fellow professionals, not that of the buyers. Even an elite architect such as Alonso found the market for turn-key houses to be a lucrative one: “I build houses to sell too. I have built about six houses to sell. I don’t really have that much money, as you need capital. But let me tell you, if you build houses to sell, you make good money, at least 30 percent on top of the building cost.” Unlike his colleagues from the established order, who emphasized the occupational ethic of “appropriate” building styles, Alonso catered to the demand. He disregarded predefined building styles and the social origins of clients. He accepted the consequence that his ideological adversaries associated him with the cholos and their poor taste: Perhaps I am a bit of a cholito myself, as I love architecture with large windows and the like, so maybe those people hire me because we understand each other. They like showing off in their houses [what they have], while people from a [higher] social class or those without the money for that—which is more likely—are not as ostentatious. They have their friendships, because they have always been part of family “thus and such.” I care about my clients and am grateful to them. I am happy with them, because I need them. I need people who want exotic architecture, and they need someone able to provide that. They want architecture that stands out.

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Professionally, he saw this as a win-win arrangement. He was able to build striking houses, because his clients wanted to be noticed, providing him with the artistic freedom he welcomed. Because of the professional course he had chosen, his colleagues regarded him not as an architect who served affluent Cuencans but as an ideological adversary. In turn, he believed that his colleagues had baseless prejudices, because they had little or no experience building for people outside their own social group. In summary, I have demonstrated that the changes in Cuencan society, which related to the globalization of work, money, and consumption, have altered the social hierarchy in which elite architects were accustomed to working. The most important clients in construction are no longer primarily people who flaunt their background and want a specific type of house in certain elegant residential neighborhoods but come from all kinds of social classes and groups, within and outside the city, and have different housing needs. The worldview that the planning elite adopted in classifying social groups and buildings failed to cover all bases. The new architectural designs were dismissed as impure and inappropriate and were said to urbanize the countryside. Because it was unclear who was responsible, the architects from the established order refused to discuss the subject in public. In the absence of professional debate about the changes in architecture and landscape, most architects of the established order opted for a conservative approach, while the newcomers often benefited financially from their artistic and commercial ventures in the new housing market. Which long-term trends are desirable could be determined only in a broad social debate, and the taboo that this powerful group of elite architects maintained throughout the period of this study long impeded such a discussion.

New Urbanizations for a New Social Order Before concluding this chapter I want to describe a remarkable response to the situation that existed at the time. The architect Xavier, who during this study was president of the local Cámara de la Construcción, used his position to realize a housing development project in his other capacity as an independent architect. He owned a development company, where he planned new construction projects intended to reverse “social decline” in Cuenca and grant hard-working Cuencans without income from abroad access to the costly housing market. He also blamed transnational migration for the loss of traditional values and weakened local identity. In 2002 I interviewed Xavier following a newspaper article reporting that a study by the Cámara de la Construcción indicated that most Cuencans wanted to live along the urban periphery.6 Interested in suburban residential areas, I was eager to read that study. During our conversation, however, I

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learned that no research report existed, but that he had described this trend based on his own experiences as president of the Cámara de la Construcción. This publicity probably helped him develop his own suburban housing construction programs.7 The first project, “Laguna del Sol,” was developed in 2002 and initially comprised 390 homes, a shopping center, sports fields, and a lagoon on a private site. The number of homes to be built was later reduced.8 In addition to its commercial aspect, the project had a strong ideological component. Xavier explained: Migration has caused a lot of damage. Those who leave are not well educated. Many have not even completed elementary or high school. But they have left, and they return with a lot of money. So, what do we say? The families, the professionals, the doctors, lawyers, teachers, decent people who live here but are poor—we can’t just let them live anywhere now because they have no money. So we say, we must restore family life, and this effort requires projects such as this one. We want to organize the demand, to avoid having just anybody enter the project, so that we can select and give priority to people who work here in Cuenca, who are based here. This will guarantee a certain standard, a quality of life. It will improve standards of living, their family life, because these houses have flat concrete roofs and the most refined ceramic floors. We make the doors from veneer imported from Spain and a frame based on Colombian technology, and we install the finest quality bathrooms with the best faucets. We want it to be a good investment.

To be eligible to purchase a house in one of those projects, potential buyers would need to meet undisclosed criteria. Xavier explained that the standards of propriety prevailing among the elite would receive consideration. In addition, overall neighborhood safety would need to be guaranteed. He had therefore designed the neighborhood as a gated community, with only one access road under continuous surveillance. He expected these measures to prevent social decline and a sense of insecurity. The project was covered by the law that encourages social housing construction. Considering the size and pricing of the homes, however, they seemed to be designed for the urban middle class.9 This was also apparent from Xavier’s remark that the project catered to educated people, such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers. In his discourse he actually labeled the nouveau riche and transnational migrants as people of low standing, who prevented decent citizens without relatives abroad from gaining access to the housing market. To help “honest, hardworking, decent” middle-class citizens obtain housing, he proposed building for specific target groups to be selected at the time of registration, excluding undesirable households from the project. The houses were to be built in stages, with the first one consisting of a groundfloor story with a surface area of forty-six square meters (fifty-five square yards) and costing approximately 12,000 dollars including the land. MIDUVI offered SIV grants of 1,800 dollars toward this stage of new hous-

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ing construction. Six months later, the next story would be built: forty-nine square meters (fifty-nine square yards) for about 5,000 dollars. For about 15,000 dollars, residents would have a decent home, built with modern materials and foreign technologies. Xavier’s approach was fairly deterministic. He assumed that “good” homes, built with Western materials and technologies, together with “good” residents and controlled access to the neighborhood, would also guarantee good social and cultural surroundings, where traditional Cuencan values would be perpetuated. In this project he did not invoke nostalgic construction styles, as his colleagues from the architecture faculty did, although he did observe local standards of propriety and family values that used to be taken for granted but were now challenged due to globalization. His powerful position as president of the Cámara de la Construcción, enabled him to influence spatial and social planning in Cuenca, as well as reporting via the media, while implementing his ideas through his development company. In 2005 he urged the local government to make new suburban sites available for his projects, which served to “generate solutions for the shortage of affordable homes that might confer dignity upon the family.”10 Unlike some of his colleagues from the architecture faculty and the Colegio de Arquitectos, he did not limit his professional involvement to remaining silent about or critiquing a changing situation but capitalized on a new economic niche that arose indirectly from transnational migration: the market of members of the middle class seeking housing without income from abroad, who could no longer afford a home because of rising prices. As a project developer, he reaped commissions for major projects, which he managed to carry out by teaming up with banks and with the EMUVI municipal housing construction company. The desirability of this form of segregated housing construction—housing for select middle-class groups in gated communities—was not discussed openly either; it just happened.

Conclusion Transnational migration and other aspects of globalization have affected architecture and urban planning in Cuenca over the past decade. The members of the urban elite that invoked their purported Spanish heritage to set themselves apart from the rest of the city’s population and the rest of the canton wielded political, economic, and symbolic control for decades. Architects and urban planners figured prominently in enforcing this power, because they determined the physical-spatial manifestation of their ideas about social relations. Hegemonic values kept being reconstructed through a series of building traditions. But the emancipation of certain parts of the population, achieved in part through transnational migration, brought about changes in the social hierarchy.

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Various groups of professionals reacted in different ways to the social and spatial dynamics. The generation of architects from the established order— lecturers, politicians, and officials who owned architecture firms—wanted to reverse the prevailing trends. “Migrant architecture” did not fit in their classification system and was incompatible with their outlook. That was why they avoided discussing it openly, or, if they did talk about it, they criticized the groups that were distant from them in social-geographic terms: the socalled cholos in the countryside. By informally criticizing the poor taste of the groups that they regarded as socially inferior, and the urbanization of the countryside in general, they expressed a modest counter argument without needing to engage their fellow professionals and wealthy clients in the city. Their ideology was that transcendental architecture would best represent local identity. Only a few building styles were of proven transcendental merit in their view. Spanish colonial architecture and French neoclassicist architecture in the historic inner city (see Illustration 32), traditional self-built homes in the countryside (see Illustration 33), and arquitectura cuencana in the elegant residential neighborhoods as an urban alternative (see Illustrations 30 and 31) were the building styles that they regarded as culturally appropriate. These building styles featured an introspective design. Moreover, these building styles reconstructed the rural–urban divisions. They tried to communicate their ideas about which building styles were appropriate for different locations to their students by highlighting “identity” in the curriculum. Parallel to this, there were new groups of professionals connected with new groups of clients in an evolving housing market. Younger generations of architects went to work for the nouveau riche in the countryside and in the suburbs. These new groups of clients wanted to be in charge of building their home or to purchase one turn-key. The main design criterion was their desire to distinguish themselves from the established order. That was why they deliberately built houses that were not copies of the four “authentic” building styles listed above. Some professionals viewed these opportunities as a creative challenge and welcomed the aesthetic freedom that came with them. And the president of the Cámara de la Construcción identified the “forgotten” middle class as a target group for his own private development project. Professionals embarked on the quest for cultural uniqueness in different ways. One group clung to a nostalgic image of Cuenca from around 1900, while another group took advantage of the social and cultural changes to seek out new working methods. To residents of neighborhoods such as Ciudadela Carlos Crespi the shift in the social and symbolic hierarchy of the city meant that they were regarded by professionals as potential clients. The architect Gabriela reached out to the residents of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi in three different ways: as a MIDUVI contractor, she attempted to interest homeowners in a home improvement grant; as an architect and project developer, she tried to

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develop a new neighborhood as a housing association; and she tried to negotiate a commission from a migrant family. Other members of Gabriela’s generation tried to find clients via their networks in similar ways to make ends meet. As makers and keepers of the local architecture, the professionals in Cuenca thus followed various scripts. While the established order used a conservative script that revolved around reconstructing a disappearing hierarchy, the progressive group used a more innovative one of product development and experimental design, abandoning the traditional standards. The scripts used related to differences in worldviews that determined how the groups operated, as well as differences in power, status, and opportunities available to them, both as professionals and as residents in the city. In the long run, the various projects and initiatives developed may increase the options available to residents of working-class neighborhoods with money. The question as to whether landscape changes are desirable needs to be addressed in a public debate and to be guided by a new policy. The present policy offers little foundation for safeguarding the visual quality of the city and the landscape. The outcome of the test of strength between the old elite and the nouveau riche, between architects of the established order and young professionals, as well as how the debates about local identities will proceed, and which architectural and landscape changes will result, are impossible to predict at this time. Provincial towns in the Andes definitely have their own dynamics, in which different groups, however hard they may try to be distinctive, cannot ignore each other. Residents of working-class neighborhoods are no longer merely cholos with poor taste but are potential clients as well.

Notes   1. See Municipalidad de Cuenca y Colegio de Arquitectos del Ecuador (1994: 23) and Gobierno del Ecuador (1997), Art. 85, 86.   2. Colegio de Arquitectos, Azuay Province (personal communication).   3. El Mercurio, 19 September 2003, 24 September 2003, 27 September 2003. See also Klaufus (2006a, 2006b).   4. El Comercio, 18 June 2001.   5. On the social-psychological use of stereotypes, see Howard (2000: 368) and Verkuyten (2005: 59).   6. For the newspaper article, see El Comercio, 9 March 2002.   7. See El Mercurio, 13 January 2005.   8. El Mercurio, 3 April 2005.   9. Municipalidad de Cuenca (2000a), Ordenanza No. 104. 10. El Mercurio, 16 February 2005.

6

Riobamba, Disordered City

In 2003 some architects in Riobamba invited me to a series of evening debates, organized by the regional chapter of the Colegio de Arquitectos. They addressed many different subjects relating to urban planning at these weekly gatherings, which were convened in response to the city’s unchecked spatial development. A core group of architects aimed to discuss these changes out of dissatisfaction with certain socio-spatial transformations that Riobamba had experienced in recent decades. The influx of rural migrants, the fear that the city would be “retaken” by indigenous people from the surrounding area, and the quest for a shared local identity were pivotal in the debates. These architects believed that Riobamba was in danger of losing its reputation from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a historic center of the republic and might turn into a non-descript and seemingly disorganized rural community. In many of the debates Riobamba was compared with “big sister” Cuenca, the provincial capital that the professionals felt conformed to a certain ideal. The cohesive cityscape that they believed had been constructed successfully in Cuenca had not come about in Riobamba. Because the Colegio professionals knew that my study concerned both Riobamba and Cuenca, I was asked regularly which of the two cities I liked better. In most cases their question was rhetorical, and the professionals provided the answer by following up with “Cuenca, right?” This insecurity and the negative feelings that professionals expressed about how their city came across to outsiders surfaced not only during these debates. Uncertainty about the city’s spatial attributes characterized local development policy and the general operating procedures of professionals as well. Lack of a unanimous policy vision or comprehensive ideology made this group apathetic in many cases. Given the ambience of division and complacency, the gatherings of the Colegio de Arquitectos were remarkable in 2003. The professionals organizing the debates acted because they believed that something needed to happen, and they wanted to reverse the trend before it was too late (Klaufus 2007). Improved urban development required a concrete local policy. A policy document from the 1990s served as a framework for the city’s spatial development: the Plan de Desarrollo Urbano de Riobamba (PDUR). But this plan was not implemented in the policy. Following the debates, articles were writ-

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ten and appeared in the new journal Urbis Visión of the Colegio de Arquitectos del Ecuador of Chimborazo. Following the publication of the journal, public forums were organized, where citizens expressed their views about a few core themes. The internal exchange of ideas within the Colegio de Arquitectos thus evolved into a public debate about the city. In this chapter I describe the sociocultural dynamics of Riobamba based on professional visions of the city and the actions taken by architects and policy makers. I analyze the problems that professionals identified in the debate about urban planning in 2003 in the context of the physical-spatial, social, and cultural trends of the twentieth century. Rural–urban migration, the increasing influence of indigenous groups on the real-estate market, the perceived absence of a local identity in the built environment, and a lack of policy about spatial planning were viewed not as separate problems but as interrelated developments. The professional debate was neither exclusively nor largely about working-class neighborhoods or informal housing construction but concerned the connection between inadequate urban development policy, growing numbers of urban residents from rural and indigenous communities, and the absence of a local identity in the built environment. I therefore regard the attitude of professionals toward urban development as the second perspective on construction and living for the lower middle class in Riobamba, complementing that of the residents themselves. As I have mentioned, in the professional debates Riobamba was often depicted as the antithesis of Cuenca. Accordingly, in this chapter I address similarities and differences between these cities. Despite the perceived differences, the debates between professionals resulted in a discourse comparable to that of their Cuencan counterparts. Here, too, certain population groups are regarded as partially responsible for a disorderly, incoherent cityscape and the production of “ugly” architecture. In this case, these groups consisted of rural migrants and indigenous Quechua from the region and were inextricably linked with the urban economy. The debates of the Colegio de Arquitectos and the subsequent public forums held in the city made discussing urban development and the quest for a local identity possible. In that respect, the professionals in Riobamba differed from their counterparts in Cuenca, who avoided discussing “migrant architecture” openly. Still, the political continuity, support base, and tenacity required for solving the problems identified were lacking in Riobamba.

Rise and Decline of the Affluent Bourgeoisie Twentieth-century urban developments have defined the cityscape and demographic composition of Riobamba as it is today. In my conversations with

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them, all architects mentioned the city’s heyday, when Riobambans still had reason to take pride in their city. They explained that to get to know the city well, I would need to investigate the period of “the Bank” and the buildings constructed around that time, because they exuded the noble and elevated cultural ambience that prevailed in the city back then. The period they referred to was one of economic prosperity, in which the Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo generated urban development. In Chapter 1 I noted that this period was when some of the city’s landmarks were constructed, including the premises of the Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo, which later became known as the post office, as well as the European-style villas in Bellavista. Understandably, the municipality has tried to recapture this feeling on its website by asserting that the Sultaness of the Andes has been resurrected and aims to be “the center of the country’s history and development once again” (Municipalidad de Riobamba n.d.). The professionals wanted me to get to know these architectural representations of a mighty, thriving city to visualize Riobamba as they appreciated it. In Cuenca the characteristic historical inner city emerged and survived because of the extended hegemony of the strong cultural elite over urban development policy. But what happened in Riobamba? During the early decades of the twentieth century Riobamba had a similarly rigid hierarchy, in which a small, powerful landed aristocracy determined the arrangement and use of urban space. This period was relatively brief. Until the 1920s, argues Hugo Burgos (1997), two basically separate social classes existed in Riobamba: at one end the dominant class of large landowners, importers, and intellectuals, and at the other end the underclass of local artisans, workers, and jobless. The wealthy large landowners, who maintained close ties with the Roman Catholic Church, dominated the city and the surrounding countryside: “the twenty families of large landowners, the church, and the state owned eighty percent of the arable land” (Burgos 1997: 130). As in Cuenca, privileges were granted only to people with the “right” surname, who did their best to keep the power within the fold: “The mere utterance of their melodious surnames, which represented about twenty families, gave the members of these dynasties tremendous prestige in daily life in the city and region” (Burgos 1997: 130). As another commentator observes: In those days this disparaged and purported nobility in Riobamba … did not understand the need to inform its progeny about the country. Back then, large local landowners usually arrived on horseback and locked up the taverns to prevent the cholos from entering. It was inconceivable that a girl whose surname was Llamuca might wed a youth whose surname was Cordovez. (Morales Mejía 1999: 138–40)

Only members of the elite were eligible to join the new social and recreational associations founded in the city during the early decades of the

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twentieth century. The influence of the landowners moreover extended to the national parliament (Clark 1998: 136). The roaring twenties were the heyday of the elite of Riobamba. During this heyday, however, several social changes occurred. An urban middle class of educated workers arose, occupying the social space between the elite and the impoverished underclass: “A small group of educated people broke away from this dominant class and from the lower echelons and positioned itself between the class with the power and wealth and the impoverished masses of manual laborers, farmers, and middlemen living in dire circumstances” (Burgos 1997: 130). While in 1930 the census indicated that there were just over 130 white collar workers (Burgos 1997: 130),1 over the decades that followed the middle class became more numerous and influential. Newly established trade unions and other social organizations protected the interests of citizens and gradually enabled the middle class to affirm its position in the city. The power of the self-designated noblesse began to decline in 1926, when the Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo went bankrupt. After the banking system collapsed, many large landowners sold their haciendas and moved to Quito and Guayaquil. Leading intellectuals, authors, and politicians moved away as well, primarily to Quito. Newspapers that had been recently launched folded, and Riobamba lapsed into a general recession (Machado, Navas and Sánchez 1989; Ortiz n.d.a). The remaining members of the affluent class were deeply disillusioned, as is clear from the following appeal from a member of the elite: “Why have so many families, who were the pride and joy of our society, moved away from Riobamba? Why has an avalanche of vulgar and common [people] filled the vacancies left by the old nobility and prominent citizens of bygone days?” (Luis Alberto Borja, quoted in Ortiz n.d.a: 36, emphasis in original). The affluent families that remained tried to retain their power in the organizations they had traditionally dominated: the influential agrarian organizations (still regarded as the old-boy networks of the elite) and the conservative Club de los Amigos de la Policia. But the era of great power and wealth was over. In the second half of the century the old elite of Riobamba had increasing difficulty maintaining its position in the region. As a consequence of the agrarian reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, rural poverty deepened, and the trek to the city got under way (Handelman 1981; Corkill and Cubitt 1988). Around this time the elite lost the support of the Catholic Church as well. Influenced by the second Vatican Council, the progressive bishop of Riobamba, Leonidas Proaño, practiced his liberation theology in the rural indigenous communities of Chimborazo Province in the 1960s. His efforts, as well as those of his Protestant competitors, who acquired ever more adherents, helped the emancipation of the indigenous communities (Muratorio

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1981; Stoll 1990; Lyons 2001). Some believe that the city started to lose its refined culture around that time: “This is because of the major changes that affected the city as a result of the migration. Until 1950, however, San Pedro de Riobamba was a city of culture, where the people were refined and courteous.”2 The city experienced a metamorphosis that the authorities still deplore in the twenty-first century. From the 1970s onwards, as increasing numbers of rural migrants came to Riobamba in search of work, emancipated indigenous groups penetrated the middle class, to the immense discomfort of the elite: “The most alarming news for the local nobleza is that the so-called cholos have attained their supreme wealth and power in the region. That alarm is not unfounded, as in luxury commodities, imports and the liberal professions, where the elite formerly held a monopoly, indigenous surnames have replaced the traditional ones” (Burgos 1997: 133). The elite that remained consisted of families with surnames such as Dávalos, León, and Chiriboga; these were families who like the Cuencan aristocracy prided themselves on their distinguished family dynasty and cultural prestige. They had lost their economic power by then. Despite the rising participation by indigenous groups in city life, Burgos believed that an internal colonialism still prevailed, making it difficult for the local Quechua population to escape the paternalist culture. Although indigenous population groups had become a permanent presence in the cityscape, their political and social influence remained limited in the city. During its heyday, most of Riobamba’s spatial expansion had been to the north and the northeast. Between 1938 and 1974 the population increased from 25,000 to 58,000 inhabitants (Machado, Navado and Sánchez 1989; INEC 2003). In the early 1940s an airport was built north of the center—as a strategic departure site for fighter planes defending national territory in a border conflict with Peru—but that airport had hardly been used in decades. On the south side of the city, schools and hospitals were built from the 1940s onwards (Machado, Navas and Sánchez 1989). Because of the shortage of affordable housing in the city center, the first working-class neighborhoods arose on the city’s outskirts in the 1970s. Rural migrants often settled on the side of the city facing their villages. People from Penipe settled on the east side of the city, people from Chambo and San Luís (predominantly indigenous) on the south side, and people from San Andrés on the northern side. This gave rise to a social-geographic hierarchy, in which the southern districts wound up at the bottom because of the large numbers of indigenous people living there. All the municipality did was to tacitly allow former agricultural sites to be divided into lots and sold to cooperatives, even though they lacked basic infrastructure. No policy coordination whatsoever existed between the IERAC, which was in charge of converting agricultural land for other purposes, and institutions responsible for public housing and urban development.

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In the 1970s the first generations of university-educated architects designed social housing for institutions such as Mutualista Chimborazo, Junta Nacional de Vivienda (the predecessor of MIDUVI), and the Banco Ecuatoriano de la Vivienda (BEV). They were responsible for the construction of a few social housing districts at the edge of the city. Around this time the Chimborazo regional division of the Colegio de Arquitectos was established as well. Architects from that period designed the first inner-city buildings more than three stories high. Old buildings were replaced by new concrete ones, inspired by American art deco. Preservation of cultural heritage was a low priority. At the end of the twentieth century more self-built districts arose, while inside the city limits tall buildings and middle-class neighborhoods alternated with many undeveloped sites. The inner city was not densely built. In the early 1990s, less than a third of the municipal territory qualified as consolidated. Slightly over half was still under construction, and the remaining 14 percent lay vacant and undeveloped (C+C Consulcentro n.d.). Low buildings, high rises, and vacant lots alternated. Nor did the architectural styles reflect cohesion. The result was a chaotic cityscape that was considered problematic in 2003. This disordered cityscape materialized because the powerful elite had disappeared. Social fragmentation started to manifest in the physical space. Even the new generations of university-educated architects and engineers did not change this. In Riobamba their expertise never commanded the esteem of that of their counterparts in Cuenca. Architecture never figured prominently in the local culture, and professionals had to find other ways of securing their social status. Political and economic interests therefore often prevailed, while substantive discussions about appropriate forms and cultural values in architecture and urban development took a long time to materialize. In the 1990s Mayor José Mancero Logroño called local society apathetic (Mancero Logroño 1991: 22), and the professionals believed that this designation still applied during the early years of the twenty-first century.3 As an occupational group, the professionals rarely took a stand in local debates. Only when the municipality of Riobamba decided to replace cobblestones with asphalt, which they considered more functional, did a brief debate ensue. This debate addressed the historical value of the old paving and the failure to protect the city’s cultural heritage. With events that had a major impact, the professionals tended to maintain a low profile. One such case was after the explosion of the Brigada Blindada Galápagos munitions depot in November 2002, in which over 10,000 homes were destroyed. The public argued that the homes of the thousands of victims were poorly or not at all renovated, and that the professionals had simply pocketed the money that the government had allocated toward the reconstruction. They also believed that the renovation of historically valuable buildings had been careless and

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incompetent.4 The Colegio de Arquitectos did not respond to these accusations against fellow professionals. The professionals did their best to avoid criticizing each other or the authorities, for fear of disrupting the balance of power. After all, their personal careers depended not on their portfolio but on political clientelism.

The Social Status of Professionals in Riobamba Architects in Riobamba In 2003 over 200 architects from Chimborazo Province were registered with the Colegio de Arquitectos in Riobamba. About 180 were active, mainly in new construction. The others accepted occasional commissions but derived their main income from other activities, because making a living from construction projects alone was difficult. Some professionals combined their design work, for example, with a business selling construction materials. Commissions from individuals were far rarer than in Cuenca. While in Cuenca approximately 90 percent of the professionals designed and built homes, a far smaller share did so in Riobamba. This was because the population was relatively poor compared with the national level of affluence (UNDP 2001: 221–22). Little was invested in site-specific architectural design in Riobamba. Architects were not held in great esteem. In Riobamba maestros often designed and oversaw construction of private housing, without involving an architect. This practice was attributed to the poverty and thriftiness of Riobambans. Over the past decade, transnational migration had got under way, but remittances were still insufficient for a construction boom, and private commissions had not increased. As in Cuenca, architects usually developed housing projects themselves (as opposed to institutionalized developers), restricting this activity to architects flush with funding, as architect Hugo explained: “Several of my fellow professionals have moved to other cities. Wealthy ones have opened their own companies and workshops or now focus on developing housing districts or inexpensive homes, always putting up their own money.” All other architects thus found sidelines for generating revenue. In addition to commerce and project development, architects became involved in regional and local politics and public administration. Several architects served four-year terms as aldermen or mayors or terms of office as directors of the planning department. As such, they participated in decision-making about urban planning. Even though professionals were active in several fields, as they were in Cuenca, no cohesive elite dominated the different institutions in architecture and urban development. In fact, control was scattered. Groups of professionals systematically worked at cross-purposes. They took turns trying to control

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local institutions. This was why like-minded groups consistently served brief stints at the helm of institutions such as the urban planning department, the board of the Colegio de Arquitectos, and the board of the Cámara de la Construcción. These institutions hardly interacted with one another, as professionals from other institutions were often regarded as adversaries in the struggle for institutional and economic control. Differences of opinion had nothing to do with professional ideological differences about architecture and urban planning or with spatial representations, as they did in Cuenca, but largely concerned the allocation of important positions. The fragmented control prevented an ideology from crystallizing. Examples may illustrate how officials from different planning institutions treated one another. In 2003 I asked the director of the planning department, whom I will call Ildefonso, whether his department ever worked with the Colegio de Arquitectos or the Cámara de la Construcción. He responded that they did not, because political interests were an obstacle to cooperation: Political interests prevail here. What matters to people is that the proposal content serves political interests. So you don’t put just anything together, as that could harm the political interest, when what you want is control. So if I represent a certain political party, my aim is to ensure that the other party does not get anything. So instead of joining forces, the objective is to deprecate whatever the other guy is doing for the city. These are more political interests than political activities, since ultimately every professional wants the city to improve, to be structured, for the city to be our own home. We want what is ours to be best, but as I said, unfortunately political interests prevail. This is the situation not only in the city but throughout the country.

As Ildefonso makes clear, political loyalties prevailed over professional insights in this political system. Rather than making a lasting contribution to the city, many architects were undermining each other’s work or taking offense at each other’s activities. The ongoing struggle for control prevented professionals from different groups from working together. The evening debates that the Colegio de Arquitectos organized in 2003 might be perceived by the municipal architects as challenging their performance. They did not attend, despite being invited. When I inquired how they got along with the board of the Colegio, some of the staff members at the planning department told me that the professionals who worked for Ildefonso did not wish to work with the present board of the Colegio, because they hoped to be elected to the next board. I took little note of the situation. One year later, when Ildefonso had been removed from office by the city council, I assumed that he would have lost his powerful position in the city. Then an acquaintance sent me an email telling me that Ildefonso had been elected president of the Colegio de Arquitectos in early 2005, and I recalled the conversation with his staff. From the moment he entered office,

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staff and active members who were not on good terms with him resigned. Of course these architects remained members of the Colegio (as practicing architects, they were required to do so), but they no longer determined its course. Initiatives that had started under one leader were discontinued by the next. Following a change of command, the outgoing group would try to gain control at a different institution. This meant that small groups of professionals shifted back and forth between institutions, and continuity was generally lacking. As a result, people were constantly working at cross-purposes. This was different from Cuenca, where a strong elite dominated the important institutions for years. Changes in command did not relate to changes in party policy. “Policy” had less to do with a substantive position than with loyalty to a political figurehead and the power that ensued. Political clientelism and electoral success determined whether or not actions were taken. Locally, political parties all promised the same improvements, including better water facilities. These promises were rarely kept. A report on local policy in Riobamba to improve drinking water supplies and waste processing, for example, states that: “political clientelism and fear of losing popularity and political support curtails the decision-making power of those temporarily in control locally” (Vásconez 1994: 96). Nor were the political convictions always clear locally with respect to local parties. Candidates for offices such as mayor or alderman regularly switched political parties, if such a move would improve their chances of getting elected.5 These types of political gain without substantive continuity caused political discontent among citizens. Note that in the past thirty years (since the military dictatorship ended in 1979) no mayor has ever been elected to serve a second term in Riobamba.6 Whenever a political figurehead left, a considerable share of their staff would follow, so that their successor had to spend the start of their new term of office filling vacant posts rather than dealing with policy matters. The power struggle determined not only relations between institutions. Unity and unanimity were lacking internally as well. Hugo described the ambience in the Colegio de Arquitectos when he joined three years after graduating. He wanted to contribute, but as a newcomer he encountered a group of architects claiming power based on their social and economic dominance in the city: That is what I discovered when I arrived here: the Colegio was divided in two groups. One consisted of fellow professionals with a lot of social and economic prestige, so to speak…. There was a generation gap as well, but the difference was primarily economic and social. These architects had parents that were educated and affluent and they had certain modes of interaction. That was one group. We belonged to the other group. We obtained our training as architects differently, thanks to our personal efforts and thanks to still greater sacrifices by our parents.

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Perhaps some fellow professionals have outperformed that other group economically, but the social distinction remains very pronounced. Those are the two groups that constitute the Colegio and wage a struggle, a confrontation that often gets personal, so to speak…. We try not to distinguish one group from the other, but the differences remain very pronounced. The Colegio does not adopt a [public] stand. At present, this institution does not convey, demonstrate, or say anything.

At first the dichotomy resembles the Cuencan distinction between the professionals pertaining to the self-designated noblesse and younger generations of professionals. Still, a significant difference exists. In Cuenca a group of established professionals felt that its authority was being undermined. In Riobamba the balance of power was so dynamic that the established order was not a circumscribed group but consisted only of groups formed specifically to obtain certain facilities. As a consequence, the Colegio was too torn apart by internal strife to take a stand in municipal debates. The Colegio de Arquitectos did not substantially benefit the professional practice of the members. The constant struggle for power and disinterest in professional practice made for a lack of intellectual ambience or commitment within the professional community. Remarkably, at the Colegio in Riobamba, as well as at the one in Cuenca, the most money and time invested year after year went into organizing sports events for architects. In the professional community the organization’s silent operations were perceived not as a shortcoming but as a condition for preserving the position of the different groups. Architects preferred keeping a low profile to making disparaging remarks that might affect their relationship with fellow professionals. In many cases the Colegio regarded substantive initiatives of members as a personal affront to the course the Colegio pursued. Political loyalty was incompatible with critique. A heated debate between professionals took years to materialize, because they always needed to be mindful of the game of political musical chairs. The evening debates in 2003 and the ensuing public debate were therefore striking events, even though some participants questioned their impact. One participant reproached his fellow professionals openly for refraining from forceful action, because “nobody wanted to be in the hot seat,” and everyone was “jealous and suspicious.” Another professional told me after that same meeting that he was similarly skeptical about whether the debates could bring change. How deeply the balance of power affected relations within institutions such as the Colegio became clear when one of its members was organizing a Christmas party for Colegio members at the expense of the institution in late 2003. He mentioned that ninety architects were invited. When I asked why the rest of the 200 or more members were not invited, he answered: “they are not part of our line.” He explained that the decision to make political statements as a professional group necessitated excluding adversaries. Even though they belonged to the Colegio de Arquitectos of

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Riobamba and paid their membership dues, they were not welcome at the official Christmas party. Younger generations had difficulty finding a place in Riobamba’s professional community. Because the city had no faculty of architecture, most had studied in Quito. After graduating, they returned to work in Riobamba, where virtually no opportunities were available for opening up their own firm as novice architects. Most therefore tried to obtain temporary appointments with government institutions. Architects who had attended the Universidad Central in Quito (the majority) were also more specialized in urban development-related designs and policy than in designing private homes. The municipality and the local MIDUVI department were therefore obvious places of employment for them. Hugo described the early careers of most recent graduates in Riobamba: Each year eight—no, somewhat fewer: four or five—architects [from Riobamba] graduated and found employment with the public institutions. This means that they went to work for the Banco de la Vivienda or for the municipality, and so much work awaited them there that they did not design individual homes. In some cases they did not even charge for drawings [for private clients], as some architects told me. They had so much work that they made good money and did not deal with architecture. They left designing plans to architectural draftsmen, who would copy an existing project, and that was how the design [of such a home] came about.

In such cases, preserving contacts with potential clients mattered more than earning money through personal commissions or producing wonderful designs. Young professionals could thus build a network in case they stopped receiving commissions from the institution where they worked, which usually happened the moment a new mayor was elected. Internal divisions within the professional community forced the younger generation to subordinate their professional ambitions to the system of political clientelism. The system where changes in command impeded a strong and forceful urban development policy was thus perpetuated from one generation to the next.

Construction In addition to the political and personal contrasts within the group of architects, younger and older professionals in Riobamba both experienced a general lack of appreciation for architecture and the specialized architect’s profession. Architects were officially necessary only to obtain a construction permit, which in practice meant signing a form, although this was not very fulfilling. In a group debate, four older architects, who had all held important offices in the city, discussed the lack of appreciation for their profession:

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Illustration 37. Street in the center of Riobamba

Illustration 38. Modern buildings in the historic city center

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Ernesto: Development is minimal here. There is no architectural standard, and none is possible, because the public has so little confidence in the capacities of professionals. The professional is present only because his signature needs to appear on the construction blueprint. The actual builders are maestros mayores and reliable construction workers, and the architect… Joaquin: … he is part of the process only until the [application for a building permit to the] planning department. The majority of homes here are built only by maestros mayores. Vinicio: They do not observe the standards; that is one of the issues. Joaquin: Nor do they build according to the blueprint…. That is how you can distinguish the mark of a professional from the product of a construction worker. There’s a big difference. Anything can be designed [on paper], but carrying it out in practice is another matter. Vinicio: If I am not mistaken—we have discussed this several times among fellow professionals—twenty to thirty percent of the buildings are by professionals and about seventy to eighty percent by informal builders, so to speak: contractors, architectural draftsmen, or maestros mayores. That is what happens in the city, and the architecture reflects that. Christien: Is that different from cities like Cuenca and Quito? Joaquin: Cuenca is the opposite: twenty percent is done by informal builders there and eighty percent by [professional] builders. Christien: Is that because this city has no faculty of architecture? Ernesto: No, it’s the nature of the people. Joaquin: The maestro handles the tools, he is the one with the knowledge. Vinicio: He knows about it.

Hugo was familiar with those experiences as well: Hugo: One of the characteristics of this city, so to speak, is that it does not allow, or rather we Riobambans as citizens do not like, to spend much money. Our economy is very practical, and in some cases money for an architect is simply not “available.” The quotation marks relate to the amounts, which are by no means astronomical. People do not like it. I have had an experience where I designed a house, and after a few meetings [with the client] produced the drawings and got the building permit application approved, and then the client changed his mind. Christien: Did he pay nothing at all or just part of it? Hugo: He paid for the building permit application but not the operational supervision, which he did himself. He recruited a maestro mayor. In the absence of technical operational supervision, many projects reflect the interpretation by the maestro mayor that the client uses or of the environment where it is built. In this environment you often hear “my brother or my neighbor says that I should not build the wall that way, that I had better make this type of roof, that I should not build the stairs like this, that I should build the stairs outside,” and so on and so forth. Ultimately, it becomes a hybrid [design]. It is not even eclecticism but a hybrid in the true sense of the word. That is how construction happens in Riobamba.

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In practice, construction in Riobamba was thus controlled by maestros and self-builders. Architects did not figure prominently in the building process. They were too expensive and were regarded by clients as doing work identical to that of a good maestro mayor. Lack of appreciation often forced privately commissioned architects to do exactly what the client wanted, without taking standards and rules into consideration or ensuring an aesthetic look on the street. After all, individual clients cared only how their own house looked, not about the appearance of the street as a whole. If an architect did not do as requested, they were likely to lose their commission. Architects did not object to this lack of appreciation; they tried primarily to protect their position in the system of political loyalties. Designing quality buildings or preserving uniformity on the street was a very low priority. This setting, in which architects were regarded as little more than glorified construction workers, gave rise to a disordered city, where everyone did as they pleased (see Illustration 38). According to some professionals, government agencies conducting construction projects further eroded their profession. To cut costs, these institutions preferred to work directly with the parties doing the work: the maestros mayores and self-builders. Vinicio and Joaquin described the lack of appreciation for their profession: This is reflected in [the disposition of] public institutions, such as the Consejo Provincial. They have agreements with the rural communities regarding the execution of certain projects. The Consejo Provincial supplies certain materials, and the communities provide the manpower. No professionals are involved. The staff [of the Consejo Provincial] might go look once a month … to see what they have done. But there is no specific inspection by a professional supervising the work. This is the way it works. A public institution such as the Consejo Provincial avoids commissioning professionals to save money. This is terrible.

Government institutions, especially those in the highlands, have always relied on mingas for their projects in local communities, as we read above, to curtail labor costs. This has created a vicious circle in which professionals resorted to ways of earning a living other than the line of work for which they had been trained. They accepted political offices or administrative positions. At the same time, local and provincial authorities (including architects who had wound up in those positions) did not recruit professionals for government projects as a cost-saving measure. Accordingly, neither building design nor urban development designed to accommodate growth were high priorities. Authorities, architects, and citizens who had homes built for them perpetuated this situation.

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Urban Development Policy The urban planning department was responsible for implementing urban development policy and supervising compliance with building regulations. Both the growth of the city, thanks to the accretion of working-class neighborhoods, and individual building projects needed to be regulated. Since politicians disliked supervisory duties because of the inherent risk that they might lose votes, they formulated different policy spearheads. Popular concepts such as regeneración urbana, meaning revitalizing certain city districts, and renovación, meaning restoring a historic-looking cityscape, were pivotal in urban development policy during the period 2000 to 2004. Ildefonso, the director of the planning department, mentioned five spearheads in his policy, of which three served to promote revitalization of the city: rebuilding a few market halls; streamlining traffic; revitalizing the historic inner city; setting up a new land register system with external support; and internal updating of the PDUR (as a counterpart to the debates conducted within the Colegio de Arquitectos, in which professionals employed by the municipality did not participate). This policy expressed the political desire to restore something feared lost as a result of the growth of the disordered city: a coherent cityscape. The first project in particular, which entailed rebuilding and reorganizing a few market halls, received extensive consideration. The largest market, La Condamine, was transferred to a new building and was no longer called a market but became a Centro Comercial. Since vending spots on the new premises cost more than they had on the old one, the poorest merchants were no longer able to sell their wares there. At first, they switched to plying their wares on the streets surrounding the building, until street vending was prohibited there, and they then had to set up their stands further out of town.7 Other authors describe similar situations in cities such as Cusco, Quito and Puebla where street vendors became non grata as well (Jones and Varley 1994, 1999; Swanson 2007; Bromley and Mackie 2009). The authors depict cleaning up and revitalizing the historic inner city as an effort by planners and the commercial elite to recreate part of urban space according to their moral order. Gentrifying neighborhoods by driving out undesired user groups started in Riobamba with the new market hall. The physical remodeling had social consequences as well. The director in charge of this move avoided discussing the social consequences of his policy and spoke only about the plan’s economic potential. He described the project as follows: First, we aim to find solutions for the city’s commercial system. Commerce is in deep trouble. The city has become impossible to cross, the entire city is packed with market stands and vendors, and this is the problem we need to solve. We have studied the entire commercial system and have presented a proposal for a few

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markets. This led to the market now being built, the wholesale market, and the proposal for remodeling the Santa Rosa market. We aim to remodel three other markets as well. Rather than remodeling [the actual premises], we hope to change the way the markets are used, to structure trade in the city. We are focusing mainly on the markets. Having two markets within two blocks of each other, as well as additional vendors on the street, is not good. We must structure the city. We are working on that now. Allowing so many vendors in the city when no space is available is a serious problem. So we are trying to solve that problem.

He believed that the solution to the disordered city was to regulate user groups, especially merchants. Like projects being carried out in Quito, Cuenca, and several other Latin American cities, he hoped that implementing this plan would make the city more attractive to tourists. The objective was not only to curtail informal trade but also to eliminate monotonous economic activities that made streets appear “uninteresting.” He mentioned a street filled primarily with metal-processing workshops as an example. To make the streets presentable again, these workshops would have to disappear. The premises left vacant might then serve a different purpose. The different municipal projects dedicated to revitalizing the city thus had major consequences for small businesses and informal vendors. The director also intended to restore historical buildings and to renovate squares and parks “to enhance the quality of the inner city.” These plans merely entailed aesthetic measures, such as placing new streetlights featuring antique designs on Riobamba’s main street. These interventions under his aegis might be regarded as incidental prestige projects (see Ward 1993). They did not cater mainly to the largely poor locals but appeared aimed at attracting tourists and large-scale events. In the end, Ildefonso was unable to implement many of his plans, because the municipality placed him in charge of the restoration project that followed the explosion of the munitions depot in November 2002. With nearly all his staff assigned to this task, only a few architects were available to perform regular duties. Supervision of compliance with existing legislation only existed on paper. Like in other cities, the planning department comprised an official Control Urbano service responsible for enforcement. Hugo explained that in Riobamba violations of building regulations were commonplace, even by the architects: Hugo: As I told you before, building lines have to meet certain standards. The building line serves to determine the minimum distance from the building to that line. Those distances are used to calculate the coefficients for the maximum builtup area and the designated purpose, but they are easy to circumvent. These coefficients indicate maximum building heights as well, but are just as easy for owners and builders to evade. Anybody who wants to add a story simply does so. Nobody stops them. Christien: Isn’t there a Control Urbano service?

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Hugo: There certainly is, but it wields little authority. There is definitely a Control Urbano. Christien: Is it part of the planning department? Hugo: Yes, but [the service] does not serve its purpose. That is because of the problem with … I do not like to talk about it, but corruption has arrived here as well. Even planning department staff will accept bribes. They are corrupt. On the other hand, because Riobamba is a fairly new city, no restrictions existed until two decades ago. Everyone could do as he pleased, so introducing regulations was difficult. On a given block, fifty percent may meet the rules, while the other fifty percent may be in violation. So you face a dilemma. Suppose I as a professional have a client unwilling to leave some free space up to the border of that lot, while on that same block, on that very street, three other homes do not have any free space up to that line either, then they cannot prohibit me from using that space too. So the problem spreads. If they cannot prohibit me from building a three-story house—suppose that the two or three houses next to it have three stories as well, even though the maximum recommended for that spot is two stories—then they certainly can’t prohibit that [to others] afterwards. The absence of any restrictions whatsoever two decades ago is conducive to this situation.

Claudio, one of my architect friends from the Taller de Barrios Precarios, once invited me to come see a house where he was supervising the construction. In the project that we went to see, he was building without a permit. The house had an area of seventy square meters and was situated on an enclosed lot. The regulations stipulated that the house should be a certain distance from the building line, leaving space for a front yard. But the client wanted the house to cover the entire lot, so as to have as much space as possible. That was why Claudio had felt pressured not to request a building permit. The client preferred the minor risk of paying a fine to the cost of requesting a permit. In the difficult architecture market of Riobamba, professional integrity was hard to maintain. Director Ildefonso identified this problem and explained that it was impossible for his department to force people to comply with the rules: Here, everybody does as they see fit, without considering the rules or obeying the law. Everybody simply does as they please. It will be difficult to change this mindset and to get people to obey the rules, as at a certain level we even have difficulties with the authorities. The worst part is that even the professionals circumvent laws and disregard rules. The professionals cause the worst harm, as they say “let’s just do it, without permits, without construction blueprints,” they don’t care. That sets a bad example. They are the first to evade [the rules]. “Sir, you can’t build here, this has to remain vacant, construction here is against regulations,” doesn’t work with them; they want to build, so they go right ahead. This leads to a struggle between the professionals and the municipal authorities. They do as they please. We try to stop this, but that is the way they are, people are like that, aren’t they? People want to be free to do as they please, outside of laws and regulations, and that is not good. In that sense we are struggling and are making a combined effort to get them to observe the rules. There has been some improvement, but

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the Control Urbano department will need to become stronger to continue the improvement. That process is different. It would be a complete reversal, because many simply ignore the rules. Major changes will be necessary to get citizens to respect [the law]. We need to consider the option of demolishing [buildings] to shock people and make them realize they cannot simply do as they please, that they need to use construction blueprints and to obey the law, because otherwise it will be torn down. But we need support from the authorities to take forceful actions.

As director of the planning department, he was responsible for enforcing policy, but, lacking political support for a rigid and consistent policy, no systematic inspections were performed. Such examples reveal how in the building culture that had arisen in Riobamba, working-class residents were not the only ones who built without permits: everybody did, including architects and authorities. Some architects from the Colegio de Arquitectos hoped to reverse this trend by reviving the PDUR.

Discussions about Disorder in the City A Well of Memories of Injustice The PDUR was established in the early 1990s by Cuencan professionals, under the aegis of architect Fernando Cordero, who later served as mayor of Cuenca. That plan included recommendations for balanced architectural and social development in Riobamba. It also comprised detailed strategies and partial plans concerning use and arrangement of urban areas, as well as recommendations for enforcing building regulations (C+C Consulcentro n.d.). In 1997 the plan was officially approved, but little had been done with it since then (Municipalidad de Riobamba 1997). Because the plans had never been implemented, and even the existing rules were disregarded, no systematic planning had been possible at all in the city during the interim. The professionals of the Colegio de Arquitectos therefore wanted to reintroduce the PDUR in 2003. On Wednesday evenings a group of professionals gathered at the offices of the Colegio to discuss a topic related to the disordered city. One architect from the group would prepare a topic for discussion and deliver a brief introduction about it. The others present, and sometimes invited guests who were specialized in a specific subject, subsequently shared their opinions about and views on the problem introduced. The report based on the debate that evening served as a foundation for an article in the Colegio’s new journal Urbis Visión. The results of the evening debates were distributed among fellow professionals via that medium. Following the publication of the first issue of Urbis Visión, four forums were held that were open to the people of Riobamba. The themes of the four forums were: the PDUR; the decay of buildings in

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the historic inner city that defined the cityscape; claims by indigenous groups to urban territory; and the traffic chaos in the city (Velasco 2004). In a series of radio programs architects talked about their visions. Local newspapers reported the activities as well. The initiative received extensive media coverage, suggesting that such substantive discussions were exceptional in Riobamba. The debates acquired the controversial designation El Pozo Memorial de los Agravios (A Well of Memories of Injustice), based on the discontent about countless issues that made architects feel that the authorities were not taking them seriously. A cesspool had formed of problems in need of a solution. The initiators explained: “The reason for the name is that there is a well, a place where we have gathered and tracked all the problems, slander, insults, all those violations of the city. Violations that have taken place and were made possible because our main theme, the Plan de Desarrollo Urbano, was not applied.”8 They wanted to share their critique regarding the urban development policy of the authorities. The problematic reconstruction of the city following the explosion in the army barracks was an important impetus, as were frustrations about other plans that were never carried out. They felt that the PDUR development plan could have protected the city from this chaos. The architects reproached the authorities in office between 2000 and 2004 for failing to act on the plan. In two articles from the first of issue of Urbis Visión they formulated their critique as follows: The current problems are no different from the ones mentioned in the description of the City of Riobamba’s Plan de Desarrollo (PDUR). Worse, although a basic document for urban development exists, the objectives and intended sector plans were never realized. (Cruz Toledo and Morocho n.d.: 30) In planning urban development, inertia and “letting things take their course” have prevailed over taking precautions and performing inspections, as evidenced by the chain of neighborhoods, cooperatives, and other types of settlements labeled spontaneous and/or clandestine and located outside the city limits, rendering these limits technically and legally meaningless. Disorder and insecurity arise, on the one hand because facilities are lacking, and on the other hand because the municipal authorities are pathetically powerless to deal with a problem they have no idea how to solve. (Vega n.d.: 42)

The accusations directed against a responsible alderman that implementation of the PDUR was sorely inadequate elicited vehement protest. Alderman Pablo Monge objected to the criticism and lashed out against the architects. In a newspaper article his irate response was conveyed as follows: “Unfortunately professional organizations sometimes claim they are right based on public opinion, but they have never addressed the source, which in this case is the planning committee,” observes Monge.

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Is the city disordered or not? “All we have done has been to follow the spatial planning by the city and to adhere to the development plan, based on established regulations,” explained the outgoing alderman. But Monge acknowledged that some problems had been caused by the architects themselves and noted that many did not respect the regulations, and that this had led to problems with some housing cooperatives.9

The alderman reproached the architects for being somewhat hypocritical, because they were in part responsible for observing the rules. The president of the Colegio de Arquitectos regretted that the municipality was involved in the debate only indirectly, and that the professionals working for the city were unwilling to attend the evening debates and were secretly drafting a document intended to offset the debate that the Colegio was conducting publicly. But, explained the president of the Colegio, “only political interests prevail here,” which was why things happened this way. Participants in the debates had their own agenda and would broach topics that they considered to be important and could be politically advantageous. One of the initiators of the debates was a former mayor of the city. During his term of office (1992–1996), the former mayor had Fernando Cordero draft the PDUR. In the Pozo Memorial debates he spoke and wrote about the importance of the PDUR, in part with regard to the local elections in 2004, where he would stand again for mayor. In kicking off political campaigns for the upcoming elections, some participants welcomed the favorable media coverage, even though the Colegio de Arquitectos denied on the radio that the timing of the activities was politically motivated. Antonio Fierra: Architect Velasco, the elections are approaching, and we will be electing a new mayor of Riobamba. I believe this will be very important for our future. What profile should the candidates fit? What should they propose for the Plan de Desarrollo Urbano de Riobamba? Carlos Velasco: Look, at our meetings we never try to give them electoral connotations. Unfortunately we will conclude our first stage during the run-up to the elections.10

The mayoral elections were not the only background consideration. Elections for the board of the Colegio de Arquitectos were imminent as well. During one of the evenings I attended, participants decided to publish the first issue of Urbis Visión in December 2003. The Colegio elections were held in January 2004. Participants hoped that these debates would give the candidate from their midst additional publicity, at the expense of the competing candidate Ildefonso. They were aware of the timing of their activities, even though they claimed otherwise on the radio. But the journal could hardly have influenced the election results, as it appeared after they were over. As mentioned, Ildefonso was elected president of the Colegio, and the former mayor received too few votes to serve an additional term.

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During the period described, the professional group comprised two recognizable forces. Professionals from different generations active in the Colegio de Arquitectos faced off against professionals from different generations employed by the municipality of Riobamba. The architects working for the municipality had a single spokesman: their director. The Colegio had several spokespeople, who each manifested their expertise by presenting a substantive theme in the debate. Each group or sub-group of professionals had its own ideas and interests, although very generally the Colegio countered the municipality here. The professionals aiming for administrative control over urban development opposed the ones that temporarily wielded such power.

Ruralization and “Cholificación” of the City The Colegio professionals who joined the debate regarded Riobamba’s disordered urban development as a complex problem with many causes and consequences. The causes they identified included not only shortcomings in policy implementation and poor compliance with building regulations and laws but also sociocultural changes in the city. Indigenous groups and rural migrants became increasingly influential in the urban built environment, making urban identity and multiculturalism constant conversation topics. Lack of appreciation for local cultural heritage and the decline of inner-city landmarks

Illustration 39. Dávalos market

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were frequently mentioned as well. Other subjects of discussion included the inadequate land registry system, traffic congestion, rent increases, and street vendors without permits. Although each gathering focused on a different topic, over the course of several weeks the debates started to resemble each other, because causes and consequences were lumped together. The architects treated the decay of the historic inner city, the growth of informal suburbs, the lack of a strong, white elite, and the presumed territorial claims of indigenous groups as different aspects of the same overarching problem. As the capital of Ecuador’s most indigenous province, Riobamba has a history of strained relations between whites/mestizos on the one hand and the Quechua population on the other. Ethnic discrimination remained a daily occurrence in the city. Many mestizos feared being dominated by the Quechua population. The erudite architect and former dean of the largest architecture faculty in Quito, Carlos Velasco, described the situation as follows: “The majority of Riobamba’s white/mestizo population regards the [urban] presence [of indigenous people] as arbitrary and bad. They believe that the indigenous people belong in the countryside, that agriculture should be their economic activity, and that the invasion is defacing the city” (Velasco n.d.: 34). A radio announcer recalled how mestizos from the neighboring town of Guamote had fled to Riobamba to escape the indigenous dominance in their town: The mestizo population that lived in Guamote came here to escape the central village being taken over by indigenous people. Now they are here in Riobamba, but, surprise, surprise, the same is happening in Riobamba …. You [Carlos Velasco] have broached this problem and initiated a debate, so that all of us may solve it as a means of constructing our collective identity.11

Velasco expressed the hypocrisy: “we are a country of half-breeds that hate the indigenous people,” explaining the local situation as a national, Ecuadorian problem.12 In my view, however, the cities and regions are too different to equate the local debate with the national one (see Lucas 2000; Pallares 2002). But the point that the architect Velasco aimed to make, and one with which I agree, is that non-indigenous Riobambans were rarely favorably disposed toward the presence of Quechua groups in the city. This same architect attempted to instigate debate about indigenous groups during a public lecture in 2002. He subsequently continued to champion this theme. During that lecture he suggested that Riobamba’s most serious problem might well be the onslaught of the rural Quechua population, because these people brought chaos to the city. He spoke of a “floating population” that came and went, and which the authorities did not take into account in urban development policy.13 At first they traveled back and forth from the villages in the canton to the city of Riobamba to peddle their products on the market (see Illustration 39). Later they rented cheap storage areas and

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found inexpensive places to sleep around the markets to use during their stay in the city. In recent decades real estate in the city was therefore increasingly purchased by Quechuas, who thus became a permanent influence in the city. To acquire buildings, they were willing to pay more than the market value, driving up real estate prices: “[I]ndigenous people interested in living in the city pool their money and buy an overpriced house to live close to a commercial zone that will facilitate setting up their business” (Berrones and Ruiz n.d.: 26, emphasis in original). The professionals accused the authorities of failing to tackle the problem. As merchants, the indigenous groups were an important economic force in the city, but the political elite either ignored their presence or formulated it in different terms. The people working for the municipality implicitly assumed that reorganizing the daily markets would put an end to public street vending. But the problem of the multicultural society extended beyond illegal street trade. The professionals regarded it as a fundamental sociocultural problem. Rumors circulated that indigenous people were trying to “reconquer the territory.” The use of the strong term reconquista must be understood within the historical perspective in which the Spanish conquest has evoked various overt and covert forms of indigenous resistance, some of which continue to this day. The Colegio architects confirmed this on the radio: “as confirmed in the forums we organized, [indigenous people] long to reclaim the city …. Territorial reclamation is in progress.”14 One of the indigenous participants in that forum had stated: “we had our city, we were builders of cities. Here in Riobamba we had our city, which was Liribamba. That city was destroyed, and now we are returning to our city.” Liribamba was the Puruhá settlement twenty kilometers (twelve miles) southwest of the present city, where the Spaniards originally founded Riobamba in 1575. In Riobamba today, Liribamba has mainly a mythical resonance. Riobambans use the name to refer to a precolonial past, in which courageous Puruhá warriors populated the highlands. Urban mestizos disregard the indigenous or ethnic nature of Liribamba and the Puruhás. Quechuas who participated in the debate, on the other hand, devised their own version of the history. They saw their ancestors as urban dwellers that the Spaniards drove from Liribamba. The discourse about the “reconquest” of the urban territory by indigenous people brings to mind Otavalo in the north of the Ecuadorian Andes, where this discussion was conducted as well. Indigenous people there were also regarded as “reconquerers” of the urban space. Windmeijer (2001: 208– 17) argues that the indigenous population did not reconquer Otavalo; a reconquest is when indigenous people reclaim territory they have lost. For centuries, however, the majority of the indigenous population in the canton lived not in but outside the city. Those who did live inside the city were not driven out but led a marginal existence. In Liribamba they had probably done so as

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well: the indigenous people were not driven out but lived on the margins. On a list of home ownership from 1786, for example, in addition to about 200 homes of white/mestizo owners, 174 houses appear as belonging to indios (Terán Najas et al. 2000: 133–40). A census from 1783 indicates that 49,553 out of 64,905 inhabitants were in fact indios (Ortiz 2005: 72). This proves that the majority of old Riobamba was indigenous; these inhabitants had not been driven out of the colonial city. The new Riobamba built after the earthquake had indigenous inhabitants from the outset as well. Documents about the construction of the new Riobamba reveal that 124 of the 368 manzanas were meant to house indigenous residents: over one third of the residential blocks (Ortiz n.d.b: 11–12). Earlier in this chapter I quoted passages demonstrating how affluent citizens grew concerned about the dominance of indigenous people in local commerce in the mid-twentieth century. According to Burgos (1997), internal colonialism persisted until well into the twentieth century, even though successive potentates were unable to ban indigenous people from the city. They have always been part of Riobamban society. The twenty-first century is no different in this respect. In Riobamba the political authorities ignored indigenous people. The way that indigenous claims to urban space were presented during this research period—as a territorial reconquest—should therefore be perceived as it has been in Otavalo: as part of a symbolic struggle that Quechuas waged in Chimborazo Province from the 1990s. Supported by the Roman Catholic Church in Riobamba, and thanks to their increasing clout in national politics, they were able to present themselves locally in new ways as well (Lucas 2000). One compelling illustration of the active construction of an indigenous identity in Riobamba is that on a Catholic radio station Quechuas used the designation Puruhá to identify themselves as indigenous groups from Chimborazo (Lyons 2001: 20, n.16). Thus, Quechuas retroactively claimed the Puruhá settlement Liribamba as “their” territory. At any rate, in 2003 the professionals experienced the Quechua presence in the urban space as a real problem, which they expressed in terms of “we, white/mestizo urbanites” versus “they, indigenous villagers.” The architects argued that in addition to dominating part of the land and real-estate markets and driving up prices as a consequence, indigenous people had architectural tastes that “defaced” the cityscape: “A large share of the population regards the indigenous people as soiling the city of Riobamba, as causing problems that detract from the cityscape.”15 An article in Urbis Visión reads: Another special aspect of concern relating to the indigenous population is their [tendency] to distinguish themselves from the urban surroundings, which is why they build exaggerated, superficial architecture that appears in the buildings owned by indigenous people. This architectural practice compromises the city’s visual structure; this phenomenon reflects an ongoing but misplaced need for self-affirmation. (Velasco n.d.: 34)

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The professionals had ambivalent responses to the visible influence of Quechua residents. On the one hand, as part of the cultural elite, they hoped to contribute to a multicultural society. On the other hand, their professional expertise led them to label the architectural taste of this group of urbanites as inappropriate for the city, although they did not indicate how rural and indigenous groups could or should manifest themselves in the urban space. The presence of the Quechua inhabitants in the city was an established fact and required that space be created for them, both physically and metaphorically. The professionals envisaged a cultural mosaic, in which different population groups might live alongside one another as equals. At that point, living peacefully alongside one another seemed like the ultimate goal attainable; true coexistence was not yet mentioned at that stage. A few architects participating in the debates focused primarily on the illegal working-class neighborhoods that were materializing. They were concerned not with the ethnic or cultural characteristics of the group of residents but with the sale of land and the consequent disappearance of the boundaries that marked the city limits. Land has become a negotiable commodity. [Opportunities for purchasing land] need to be regulated more in Riobamba. I would almost advise and compel the city to address this problem and not to allow what happened in the past in many sections along the urban periphery. Some neighborhoods do not even have an infrastructure, including the ones along the road to Quito, which are moreover outside the city limits, [such as] Santa Anita.16

The local authorities were expected to compel landowners to develop vacant sites, since the relevant law regarding local administration authorizes municipalities to expropriate sites that have gone undeveloped for longer than four years and to build homes on them (Gobierno del Ecuador 1971).17 The purpose was to prevent land speculation and the sale of unsuitable sites beyond the city limits. The professionals emphasized that urban planning would be impossible, unless the local authorities controlled the urban territory. Because political myopia had led the municipality to lose control over land allocation, the city had turned into an amalgamation of informal or illegal residential neighborhoods, among which Cooperativa Santa Anita had become one of the best-known examples by then. Given the absence of political interest, the parties buying and selling the land determined what happened to it. Even though the debate in Riobamba was less heated than the one about “migrant architecture” in Cuenca, because so many topics were being discussed at the same time, the discussion about the influence of groups of new inhabitants on the cityscape surfaced here as well. Various designations—indigenous, Indians, informal vendors, rural migrants—were applied to people

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who had moved to the city from rural areas to denote their combined role in bringing about the chaotic cityscape. By 1999 professionals from the Taller de Barrios Precarios had already observed that settlements built without supervision were defacing the cityscape and eroding the urban morphology (Municipalidad de Riobamba 1999). Most still held this view four years later. Although it was not stated openly, the passivity of the local authorities had led cooperatives and organized neighborhood residents to gain control over their residential surroundings. This had given rise to a problem with urban development, in their opinion. The quotation above referring to clandestine settlements outside the city limits made possible by the inertia of the municipal authorities affirms this perspective. The professionals perceived the disappearance of the “technical and legal meanings of that boundary” between city and countryside as a spatial problem (Vega n.d.: 42). The city seemed to be losing its urban attributes. Like their counterparts in Cuenca, the professionals in Riobamba were bothered by the trend known in the Andes as cholificación: the culture was becoming more popular and democratic. Whereas in Cuenca the problem of urbanization in the countryside was discussed in increasing measure, professionals in Riobamba focused primarily on the ruralization of the city. The problem identified by professionals—loss of government control over the land—might also be perceived as the local real-estate market becoming more accessible to groups and individuals who had been excluded a century ago. They regarded the interventions of rural migrants in the city as changing not only the appearance but also the nature of Riobamba. The observation that these actors were often indigenous and migrants gave the debate class and ethnicity-related connotations, as had been the case in Cuenca. Moral judgments about the architecture and use of space derived from the values of white and mestizo professionals. Because many professionals did not share the lifestyles and tastes of these groups, in addition to appealing for acknowledgement of the multicultural problem and a shared identity, they urged that the historic center be protected. That was the part of the city with which the professionals identified the most, and where the architecture exuded an international aura that made them proud. Along these lines, the architecture in Riobamba from the heyday of the white/mestizo elite was labeled as good architecture.

Cuenca as a Model City Sometimes so many subjects mingled in the discussions that the views seemed to lack coherence. All the participants appeared to agree on was that an updated policy was needed on urban planning, and that Cuenca would be a good role model. But the comparison with Cuenca inspired other reactions

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as well among those present at the evening debates. One architect mentioned a sense of general discomfort in the group. He argued that the two cities were difficult to compare, because Riobamba did not have an identity, whereas Cuenca did. A radio announcer describing the debate of the Colegio de Arquitectos on his show shared a similar view: “We know that Cuenca has at least charted its course and is on track. [Cuencans] know where they are headed; they know who they are. Since we are not clear yet on who we are, in what direction are we headed?”18 It was as if even the professionals were uncertain about the impression the city conveyed, because in their eyes Riobamba could not measure up to Cuenca. Their uncertainty contrasted with the self-assured pride with which Cuencan professionals displayed their city to outsiders. From the perspective of the professionals, Cuenca’s success related to the dominance of the local white/mestizo elite. They did not believe that any problems existed with indigenous groups there like the ones in Riobamba. Here, the situation was more complicated, I was told, because it was a multicultural city, and the population was less homogeneous than in Cuenca. The indigenous population was invisible in Cuenca, whereas in Riobamba it was extremely prominent. Although the population in Cuenca is no more homogeneous than it is in Riobamba, it is true that in Cuenca urban development was long controlled by a cohesive elite. In part because control was long clustered among a small elite, planning and enforcement in urban architecture have always been fairly extensive (Lowder 1990). The resulting coherent cityscape exuded a comprehensive local identity. The current debate about “migrant architecture” in Cuenca, however, raises the question as to whether rural groups or indigenous and mestizo residents in the canton identified with the image that the cultural elite had devised. Conversely, professionals in Riobamba took an important step in my view by raising the multicultural and disordered nature of their city in a public debate. In that respect, Cuenca did not seem like a good ideal to me, because the local elite there did its best to keep problems away from public view. I pointed this out at one of these theme evenings and in the article that I wrote about them (Klaufus 2004). But lack of appreciation for their city permeated the debates. The fact that the Cuencan architect Fernando Cordero, the maker of the PDUR, was a celebrated mayor at the time of the debate makes the comparison with Cuenca obvious. On the radio, for example, one of the architects said: I believe that the director of the plan, the architect Cordero, was successful during his term as mayor. We discussed this once within the Colegio de Arquitectos, and the architect Velasco said that Cuencans—in addition to doing things well—appreciate what they do and make this known. They publicize the good and the bad alike. We feel no affection for what is ours. This is a serious problem. We need to try to understand what we have and to care about it. More importantly, we should

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know what we have. To this end, we must disseminate the Plan de Desarrollo Urbano again. I believe that would be a good idea.19

Architect Ruiz thus urged not only a change in mindset but also a consistent stand on the part of the authorities toward the cultural heritage of the inner city. After all, Riobamba was no different from Cuenca regarding the amount of monuments. According to a newspaper article about disappearing heritage, Riobamba, with its 448 registered monuments, in fact had a vast cultural heritage.20 The problem was that this heritage was in danger of rapidly disappearing. The community would need to work hard to preserve it: Despite a Plan de Desarrollo Urbano listing one of the six main objectives as “INTEGRAL REVALUATION OF CULTURAL HISTORICAL HERITAGE,” and even though a General Conservation Plan has been proposed for the Urban Architecture component, the municipality is simply not implementing it…. Let us also remember that the City of Cuenca worked relentlessly to be placed on the World Heritage List and therefore provided its built Heritage with the best possible protection. People spoke about the city and visited it to introduce the public to its culture and the greatest cultural expression, which is the built environment, its Historic Center. (Ruiz n.d.: 18, 19, emphasis in original)

The inadequate implementation was attributed to arbitrariness on the part of the authorities, who looked no further than their term of office. According to the professionals, the authorities lacked the political drive to protect buildings designated as monuments from becoming dilapidated, because personal interests and corruption consistently prevailed. As a consequence, demolition of monuments was authorized in some cases, even though owners of state monuments were prohibited from tampering with them.21 One architect explained: [In Riobamba] the personal interests of the authorities were a factor and led demolition to be authorized for some buildings but not others. There is no general awareness that [the historic inner city] should be preserved, because knowledge is lacking. Nor is there any instruction about or appreciation for the city. We long to be like Cuenca …. But why has Cuenca [succeeded]? Because in Cuenca everybody from the mayor to the aldermen and the municipal directors appreciate what they have. Everybody is to blame for our situation, including us. That is why we are not assuming responsibility as the Colegio de Arquitectos.22

This admission of guilt by the professional group was the first step toward a sense of awareness that was institutionalized over the years that followed. In 2005 the Unidad de Turismo of the municipality, under the aegis of an architect, implemented a program introducing children to the city’s twentiethcentury heyday. Children learned how in 1930 steam engines transformed Riobamba “into the Beverly Hills of Ecuador.”23 The professionals thought that if people became historically aware of the city’s heyday, their interest in its architectural heritage would increase as well.

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The professionals made other proposals as well. To preserve the old buildings, the inner city’s residential function would need to be restored. The exodus of the elite from the city had left many buildings vacant in the inner city. In addition, many lots were undeveloped, while the informal neighborhoods kept expanding along the edges of the city. The low building density and the manner of construction (self-building) made the city appear more like a village than a city. Redeveloping the inner city as a residential area might help solve the housing shortage and make the city denser. The city might recapture its urban attributes. The architects regarded restoration of the inner city as an untapped opportunity: People moved away from the inner city, but no coherent policy encouraged conservation of the built heritage. This built heritage is very valuable, and if we allow the present process of erosion to continue, we will lose about sixty percent of the usable buildings, which could be adapted to our needs through revitalization programs. These are necessary here […] The houses are well-built and have good structures; very solid and so large that many families could live there. A revitalization program would densify the city adequately and turn it into a city.24

This part of the debate focused on reformulating urbanism, as a counterpart to the ongoing ruralization. Urbanism corresponded with densification, while Riobamba was fragmented and sparsely settled. Inner city landmarks were demolished and replaced by huge, modern buildings, while many other lots remained undeveloped, as the owners waited for the land to appreciate in value. The distinctive City of Riobamba was in their view being transformed into a horizontally expanding community without a center. The professionals wanted to halt this process.

Spatial Representations of Local Identity The abstract level of the debate did not stop at the concern of professionals about the monuments in the inner city or about the parochial, “ugly” architecture of the people. The main issues were the comprehensive identity of Riobambans and ways to manifest this identity in the physical space. The bankruptcy of the Sociedad Bancaria de Chimborazo and the exodus of the elite from Riobamba had led to a loss of pride as well. The emancipation of the indigenous population in the countryside and its trek to the city had caused the physical-spatial transformation of the city, turning Riobamba into a village bursting at the seams. The urban society had become socially and culturally fragmented; mestizos and Quechuas were like ships passing in the night. The central authorities, indigenous vendors near the commercial hubs, and self-builders in suburban neighborhoods all worked on their own city, a city that had not experienced continuous historic development but had gone through several abrupt changes. The professionals started to ask: Which

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Illustration 40. Contemporary housing construction in villa districts

tradition they should elaborate. Whose traditions should they preserve? As long as they did not know “who they were,” how could they know “in which direction to proceed,” or what type of city to build? It was argued in the debate that the lack of local identity made for the messy street and cityscape where “everybody does as they please.” Nor did Riobamba have a distinctive architectural style. Architects in Quito and Ambato prided themselves on their modernist buildings, while in Cuenca they had their own tradition of arquitectura cuencana. In Riobamba, where architects did not focus closely on private housing construction in any case, no such building tradition existed. According to Hugo, many architects therefore did not design their buildings but copied examples from elsewhere: As I told you, Riobamba does not have avant-garde architecture. Fellow professionals involved in residential construction try to imitate architecture from elsewhere, usually European or American projects. Alternatively, fellow professionals from Riobamba may travel to Cuenca and Quito or somewhere closer, such as Ambato, because the finest architectural specimens are there, even though those cities are a different size. They are larger than Riobamba and therefore more varied. So many of us have produced copies. I regard myself as a young architect; I have been working here in Riobamba for only three years as such. And here in Riobamba, I see a loss of identity. It is not like in Cuenca or Ambato, where you will find distinctive architecture in some parts of the city.

Riobamban architects were not the only ones who found the cityscape chaotic. I showed a young architect from Cuenca a photograph of a street in Riobamba, without telling him where it was. He figured out immediately that the photograph could never have been taken in Cuenca and guessed

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that it was Riobamba. When I asked him what was different about the street, he answered: “What is different? You would never find so many houses like this next to each other in Cuenca.” Various architects attributed the lack of cohesion to the city having been founded “only” two centuries ago. Hugo expressed it succinctly: “Riobamba is the outcome of the chaos,” and chaos may well have been the most important feature of Riobamban identity. Very rarely did architects argue that their fellow professionals were responsible and should give greater consideration to the aesthetics of structures. During one evening debate an architect claimed that Riobamba’s identity was manifested best in homes with sloped roofs (comparable to arquitectura cuencana), but that nowadays too many flat, concrete roofs were being built, because that was more energy- and cost-efficient; after all, Riobambans were naturally thrifty. Moreover, he continued, hybrids were becoming increasingly common in architecture, as entrances featuring pillars were being added to buildings constructed according to local styles. He regretted this trend: “they may look attractive, but surely they do not represent our identity!” (see Illustration 40). This resembles the remarks by the Cuencan elite architects about “migrant architecture” in their region. Comments about construction styles did not seriously affect the course of the debate. In their debates, the professionals focused more on the general contours of the city than on architectural details. They were not unanimous on how to compensate for the lack of urban identity, and no concrete solutions were suggested. Unlike in Cuenca, there were no large ideological projects, in which design philosophies were distributed among prospective architects or urban developments built for select groups of residents. They merely addressed a complex of problems neglected all too long because of political opportunism. No concrete blueprints were produced for the desired multicultural architecture and urban development. Any social construction of suitable architecture discussed among professionals usually consisted of specific examples from other cities and other times which reflected unity in design. Inner-city monuments tended to be regarded as authentic local architecture. Professionals from Riobamba perceived them as pure, powerful forms that would meet domestic and international standards, even though Western art historians would probably have called these same buildings eclectic. Buildings regarded as stylistic hybrids were rarely appreciated. Professionals made more critical remarks about homes that people from the lower social classes (including indigenous people) commissioned from less well-known architects or maestros than about projects by fellow professionals for prominent citizens. As Hugo described, many professionals in Riobamba were used to copying buildings they had seen elsewhere. Suitable architecture as a representation of a shared, local identity was a concept that each architect in Riobamba interpreted differently.

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Conclusion In the fall of 2003 Riobamba’s ordinarily passive community of architects organized a series of evening debates entitled “A Well of Memories of Injustice.” These debates marked the start of a public debate about spatial development in the city. In the 1990s the Cuencan architect Fernando Cordero drafted a development plan for urban development in Riobamba: the PDUR. This document was never used. For several reasons a group of professionals active in the regional chapter of the Colegio de Arquitectos tried to get the PDUR back on the political agenda in 2003. The intellectuals among the architects acted out of concern that social and cultural changes would lead to a disordered cityscape. They believed that the municipal authorities were insufficiently sensitive to these changes and were instrumental and complacent. The architects involved in politics expressed new interest in the PDUR, because they hoped to win the local elections and the elections within the Colegio de Arquitectos. The debates, a journal, public forums, and radio programs accommodated reviews of and discussions about different themes from the PDUR. The debate, which was open to the public, led to a controversy between the professionals from the Colegio and the ones employed by the municipality, who refrained from participation. The professionals employed by the city’s planning department did not participate in the debate, because they believed this might undermine the “political interests” of the incumbent authorities. This response reflected Riobamba’s administrative and political context which was marked by clientelism. Members of the social elite constantly vied for control over large institutions. Professionals in architecture and urban development preferred to obstruct other professionals to curry favor with political figureheads, even if they approved of their adversary’s plans. This highly divisive ambience complicated pursuing a coherent spatial policy or adopting substantive positions. The professionals operated individually and in small groups in accordance with the balance of power at that point in time. Between 2000 and 2004, professionals from the planning department devoted their energies primarily to high-profile projects, such as beautifying the cityscape and streets. To this end, the department renovated market halls and prohibited informal street vendors. Other cities, including Cuenca, had successfully executed some urban renewal projects. This made the Riobamban municipal authorities aware of their inner city’s untapped potential for attracting international tourism. Unlike in Cuenca, very few efforts were made in Riobamba to preserve buildings on the list of monuments. Revitalization projects addressed street lighting and new road surfaces, not preservation of state monuments.

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Strict compliance with the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act would require that powerful real-estate owners, authorities, and professionals observe regulations as well, which was unusual in Riobamba’s political culture. The Control Urbano service, which reported to the planning department, did not perform inspections, because it would have been politically risky. As Ildefonso, the highest-ranking official in the department, observed, his own co-workers and superiors were the first to circumvent the rules, and there was little he could do about that. That was why the municipal authorities concentrated on their own prestige projects, until the explosion at an army barracks forced them shift their focus to repair operations. Demand for affordable housing and legalization and regulation of informal neighborhoods were unpopular policy themes and did not figure among the policy spearheads. The professionals involved in the Colegio de Arquitectos labeled municipal urban development policy as inadequate between 2000 and 2004. They organized the debates because they believed that the unchecked urban development needed to be addressed. In the debates they also advocated trying to express a comprehensive identity in the built environment that would appeal to the present multicultural population. In addition to regulating urban expansion and enforcing building regulations, this meant finding means for white people/mestizos and Quechuas to see themselves represented in urban space. This question was urgent, as the architects believed that indigenous people were “reconquering” the urban territory. By purchasing buildings and selecting striking architecture for their real estate, they were making their group more visible. They were not literally reconquering space. The presence of various social and ethnic groups on the urban real-estate market seemed to suggest that urban space was being democratized. Professionals, however, regarded the cholificación and “popularization” of urban space as an undesirable trend and a sign of poor taste. Participants in the debate noted that Riobamba’s architecture and urban development lacked both sociocultural and symbolic cohesion. If the city had an identity, it was probably the chaos that characterized the cityscape. Some professionals attributed the problem to a lack of respect for cultural heritage, while others stressed that the city had been rebuilt on a different site following the earthquake around 1800 and had therefore not been around for long. A campaign to raise awareness among the population highlighted the city’s heyday during the early decades of the twentieth century. Professionals wanted to preserve the symbols of the white/mestizo elite from that heyday; the inner city was supposed to radiate urbanism. The presence of Quechuas and rural migrants in the city needed to be taken into consideration as well. That symbols of this heyday were probably meaningless to these groups was not addressed.

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In the debates the professionals presented Riobamba as the antithesis of Cuenca. Authorities such as the mayor and architect Fernando Cordero had in their view taught the Cuencans to respect their own heritage. Cuenca had a pronounced identity, whereas Riobamba did not; Cuenca had a universally appreciated and well-preserved monumental center, whereas in Riobamba the center was becoming run-down; in Cuenca “they know who they are and where they are headed,” as a radio announcer stated, whereas in Riobamba the people were clueless. In addition, the problem in Riobamba was not the imminent disappearance of a contemporary building tradition but the absence of one. Rather than transnational migration, rural-urban migration was the most serious concern. Riobamba was perceived as a city without cohesion, where growth was disordered, and which lacked a local identity, and was faceless. Moreover, as the Colegio professionals put it, in Cuenca no indigenous people were “defacing” the cityscape. What had worked in Cuenca failed in Riobamba. The perception of the urban space as disordered led various subjects to be raised in the debates without any clear vision emerging from the discussion. While the joint efforts of the Colegio architects to instigate debate about the urban space were indeed unique, they were unwilling to waive professional and personal privileges as individuals. As a group, they conducted various parallel and in some cases contradictory debates. Moreover, some professionals expected from the outset that the debate would not lead to concrete changes, because everybody was jealous and suspicious and was afraid of getting into trouble. In the debate professionals spoke primarily as architects, although their political views figured in the background as well, as became clear from the disclosure of information. As practicing architects, as civil servants, or as authorities, they had other loyalties and networks as well. This made the public debate somewhat non-committal. This openness of a debate without consequences formed a marked contrast to the muted, controlled tone of the “migrant architecture” debate in Cuenca. After all, the confined discussion there inspired people to take measures to curtail the problem. In both cities, however, the tone of the debate was similar, with criticism directed primarily against democratization of public space. Any difference with respect to Cuenca was not so much spatial or architectural as in the way that professionals dealt with their occupation, their ideologies, and each other. In Cuenca, opinions were divided with respect to ideologies and architectural representations. The divisions basically existed between younger and older generations of architects, between newcomers and the established order. In Riobamba no strong group of professionals was able to set the long-term course for urban development. As a group they exhibited none of the self-confidence or pride that characterized the lead-

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ing Cuencan architects. The struggle between the professionals of the Colegio and those of the municipality was a battle over administrative control. Like the built environment of Riobamba that was the subject of the debate, and like the professional group, the substance of the debate was fragmented. Which cityscape or local identity or identities it best represented remained undetermined. Riobamba was an arena where the elite and the authorities had long ago lost control over the symbolic and social struggle over space, and where new city dwellers pursued their own fragmented agenda.

Notes   1. Cf. Deler (1986: 210), who asserts that there were fifty-five profesionales in 1909.   2. La Prensa, 15 April 2004.   3. ERPE, 1 June 2004. The source of this point is a series of ten radio programs about housing and urban planning aired in 2004 by the Riobamba-based station Escuelas Radiofónicas Populares del Ecuador (ERPE). All citations to these programs (“Diez Programas sobre Vivienda y Planificación Urbana,” Senderos y Baches) are to ERPE followed by the date of transmission.   4. El Comercio, 13 March 2003, 10 September 2003, 23 March 2004, 1 April 2004, 10 June 2004, 22 November 2004.   5. La Prensa, 14 July 2004, 18 August 2004.   6. La Prensa, 13 August 2004.   7. El Comercio, 24 December 2003; Diario Los Andes, 29 March 2005.   8. ERPE, 20 May 2004.   9. Diario Los Andes, 31 December 2004. 10. ERPE, 20 May 2004. 11. ERPE, 20 May 2004. 12. ERPE, 1 June 2004. 13. Carlos Velasco, lecture delivered at the Colegio de Arquitectos, Riobamba, 31 October 2002. 14. ERPE, 20 May 2004. 15. ERPE, 20 May 2004. 16. ERPE, 1 June 2004. 17. In 2010 the Ley de Régimen Municipal was replaced by the Código Orgánico de Organización Territorial, Autonomía y Decentralización (Gobierno del Ecuador 2010). 18. ERPE, 20 May 2004. 19. ERPE, 1 June 2004. 20. Diario Hoy, 18 June 2005. 21. See El Comercio, 19 April 2005. The state’s prohibition of such demolition is set out in Gobierno del Ecuador (1979). 22. ERPE, 20 May 2004. 23. El Comercio, 31 May 2005. 24. ERPE, 1 June 2004.

7

The Ordinary City

Based on the opinions and experiences of many residents of working-class neighborhoods and professionals, I have tried in this study to explore some of the mechanisms driving the development of residential neighborhoods in provincial cities in Ecuador. In this chapter I present my empirical findings in an academic context. Before I proceed, I will summarize my findings thus far. I have explained that in social-geographical literature about selfbuild housing, many authors assert that homes and neighborhoods reflect steadily advancing consolidation. Based on my observations between 1999 and 2009, however, consolidation in my research neighborhoods did not reflect a steady increase. In this dialectical process individual and collective efforts to improve residential situations were mutually reinforcing in some cases; in others they were conflicting. Neighbors formed groups specifically to obtain certain facilities. In their struggle to improve living conditions, they often regarded residents from other parts of their neighborhood as adversaries. Joint operations were replaced by independent action and self-sufficiency, leading to low participation levels, a process described previously by Gilbert and Ward (1985). In both neighborhoods, the antagonism between hanan and hurin—common social-geographical dichotomies in the Andes—figured in identifications with the residential area. Neighborhoods were divided and then merged again, if it benefited the residents. The dynamic group processes hampered collective neighborhood activities, such as mingas. Consolidation was in fact capricious. Residents of working-class neighborhoods are often presented in the literature as a group or a community. They may, for example, be regarded as marginalized citizens with few opportunities for improving their living conditions: the culture of poverty paradigm. Alternatively, they may be depicted as citizens who have developed a strong sense of mutual solidarity as a consequence of their dire living conditions. The culture of poverty paradigm does not apply to working-class neighborhoods in provincial cities such as Cuenca and Riobamba. In my research neighborhoods, after all, various families proved capable of visibly improving their own financial and material situation, usually because a family member went abroad to work. Financial improvement came with personal sacrifices and social suffering but enhanced the prestige of the neighborhood nonetheless. At the same time, progress by

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some contrasted with the relative poverty of others, often families without a foreign source of income. The distinction between transnational migrant families and non-migrant families gave rise to a new social dichotomy in the research neighborhoods. Individual survival strategies, such as transnational migration, however, undermined the sense of neighborhood solidarity; ultimately, each family had to manage on its own. In my view, theories attributing strong social cohesion to residents of working-class neighborhoods are therefore romanticized representations of the situation. In working-class neighborhoods the “neighborhood” concept is not equivalent to neighboring, as working-class residents are not a static, cohesive community but comprise dynamic, variegated groups. I have discussed theories about the power of spatial representations based on case studies, such as the studies about the street vendors who were banned from inner city streets (Jones and Varley 1994, 1999; Swanson 2007; Bromley and Mackie 2009; see also Scarpaci 2005). Their interpretation that the local planning elite tried to impose a different moral and social order by regulating architecture and the use of space applies to the situation in Cuenca and Riobamba as well. In both research cities, professionals from the established order objected to the uncontrolled construction of working-class neighborhoods and to “tasteless” or “inappropriate” popular architecture. This view was based on an idealized impression of the city, in which the historic inner city was central. The preferred solution was to revitalize the inner city to make it a coherent representation of a white/mestizo elite or an upper middle class. The ideas of professionals about an attractive city for trade and tourism might clash with those of citizens about attractive residential surroundings. Much of the funding allocated by the authorities was invested in inner-city projects to enhance the appearance of the city, often at the expense of projects in suburban neighborhoods. Professionals were unable to implement their ideas about social and moral order outside the center as they were too internally divided, and policy implementation was too inconsistent. The rising middle class in the suburbs had moreover discovered the power of architectural representations. The city became a battleground of symbolic representations by different social groups. In the literature professionals are in my view all too often associated with the products they generate, thereby concealing their personal opinions, experiences, and operating procedures. I have tried to present them as individual agents, rather than as part of an abstract structure. In their ideas and actions they are influenced by and conversely contribute to political balances of power and policy implementation. Like residents of working-class neighborhoods, professionals appear in different roles in the social-spatial dynamics, including as residents of the city.

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Regarding studies about the aesthetic qualities of popular architecture, I have asserted that residents of working-class neighborhoods, even those without financial resources, usually have clear ideas about architecture as a medium of expression. Accordingly, I disagree with Bourdieu’s theory about taste, which holds that the aesthetic expressions by people from lower social classes primarily convey their functional needs. Authors supporting this interpretation, including scholars aiming to illustrate the efficiency of self-building, devalue the home to its practical worth. This reduction fails to do justice, in my view, to the use by self-builders of architecture as a form of non-verbal communication. None of the self-builders considers only functional needs in building a house; all houses have a representative value. Nor does this reduction do justice to the multiform nature of homes. Architecture in workingclass neighborhoods may represent highly divergent cultural customs and values. Because many “new urbanites” and transnational families live there, self-builders build and furnish their homes according to local, national, and international cultural repertoires, ranging from building traditions from the villages where they were born to foreign housing typologies that transnational migrants import. The architectural representations visualize social and cultural differences between families in public space. There is, however, no comprehensive characteristic culture of working-class neighborhoods; no chicha culture. In this chapter I elaborate on the academic debate about popular architecture and the model of the city as an arena, and architecture as performance. Self-building has a special place in studies about popular architecture and is regarded as a separate category, because how it relates to traditional building methods, as well as to professional architecture, is often unclear. The academic debate about high and low culture matters, because it informs professional debates all over the world, including Latin America. This debate has indirectly influenced my own perspective on the study as well, as I will indicate. Next, I view the model of the city as a symbolic and social arena, which has been a guiding principle in this study. Based on the works of Manuel Castells and James Holston, for example, as well as on my own findings, I reflect on conflict theories about the city. In the process I also consider in what measure my research groups identify with the urban community as a whole and with the urban territory. Understanding these ties with the urban territory is necessary to establish how the urban space concept is perceived nowadays. I will question the relationship between professionals and self-builders; between the elite and the lower middle class; between authorities and citizens; between spatial arrangements from above and at grass-roots levels; and between official and informal architecture to elaborate on the Andean city as a place to live. Finally, I will suggest some possibilities for follow-up research.

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The Popularization of Architecture Constructs in architecture and urban planning are based on ideologies about what constitutes “good” living space. Over the centuries, these ideologies have manifested themselves in divergent architectural mindsets, each with separate schools, architecture, and protagonists. I have examined several types of architecture and movements that are visible in Cuenca and Riobamba: nineteenth-century French architecture (neoclassical and neo-Gothic versions), the modernism of the “international style,” the postmodern styles, and “critical regionalism.” Originating from international movements, they appeared in location-specific adaptations in Cuenca and Riobamba. Professionals legitimized the use of these types of architecture based on the international popularity of the different art movements. Professionals in Cuenca and Riobamba supported the academic distinction between architecture as art and popular architecture. They felt responsible for preserving high-brow culture and set themselves apart from makers and consumers of popular culture. Often, however, they were unable to distinguish clearly between the buildings they categorized as refined architecture and the rest. Consensus was simply non-existent. Some professionals argued that an essentialist distinction existed between good and bad architectural designs. Architect Roberto, for example, and a younger fellow professional from Cuenca alleged that the new “migrant architecture” was unsuitable for the countryside, based on objective form analyses. They believed that all use of material had an intrinsic logic, from which the design derived, and that in “migrant architecture” the logical connection between materials and design was lacking. They regarded their knowledge of form analyses as part of their academic expertise, which enabled them to judge how socially appropriate aesthetics were (see Crysler 2003: 58). As I mentioned earlier, various social scientists have already observed that however constructivist and negotiable differences between the Self and the Other are in practice, they are regarded as circumscribed and authentic for informants in a given situation (Baumann 1999: 91–94; Cohen 2000b). This held true in Cuenca as well. Although professionals claimed they applied an objective-scientific form analysis, their analyses contributed primarily to the social construction of urban elite architecture. The constructivist nature of the we/they discourse surfaced in part in the observation that the authenticity evaluation was applied only to houses of which the owners were socially or geographically remote from the professionals. They spoke, for example, about fetish architecture and about imported models, but only regarding houses they presumed were owned by farmers and workers. They did not openly criticize the opulent architecture in the elegant neighborhoods with detached houses inside the city, because

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known fellow professionals and important clients had been involved in the construction of these homes. American-style detached houses in the wealthy middle-class neighborhoods (see Illustration 41) were not actually described as inappropriate, although some secretly believed they were. Even the argument that the design of a home with imported stylistic features was not authentic was invoked selectively. It was not applied, for example, to the neoclassicist French architecture in the historic city centre. Professionals from the established order tried to use this debate to reconstruct the social barriers between the elite and the masses and between city and countryside. In many cases, though, the expressive power of the detached houses of transnational migrants and nouveau riche mitigated their judgment. In Riobamba, where mingling architectural elements from different periods and styles was commonplace, rendering style consistency a scarce commodity, architectural critique related to a fragmented cityscape. Rather than the countryside urbanizing, professionals would say that the city was “ruralizing.” They described the designs of specific buildings in the center as “not from here,” emphasizing their lack of authenticity. Nobody could say, however, which architecture was appropriate for Riobamba as a multi-ethnic city. Buildings by architects still alive were not criticized; the work of fellow professionals was simply not a subject of debate. New forms of popular architecture have obscured the differences between edifying architecture and everyday structures. Both in Cuenca and Riobamba, and in other cities in the Andes region, the rise of new forms of popular architecture in the city has instigated debate in recent decades. A range of architectural forms and styles impossible to capture in a single designation but all very striking now dominate the cityscape. In cities such as Lima and La Paz intellectuals have explored changes in popular architecture was well. In addition to the European academic architectural tradition, architectural expressions have arisen that local professionals refer to as “chicha” and “chola architecture” respectively. In the 1980s in Peru, as described earlier, a debate began about the hybrid chicha culture of rural migrants in Lima working-class neighborhoods. Authors such as José Matos Mar and Jesús Martin-Barbero livened up the debate about the rise of the hybrid culture of rural migrants. Matos Mar described this hybrid culture in an essay entitled Desborde Popular y Crisis del Estado (Matos Mar 2004). The popularization of urban culture piqued the interest of intellectuals. Within the debate about the hybrid culture of migrants from the highlands in Lima working-class neighborhoods, the Peruvian architect Jorge Burga Bartra introduced the chicha architecture concept in the 1990s. He defined chicha architecture as an intermingling of modern artifacts with indigenous or traditional elements from the highlands, from where most migrants in Lima originated. According to Burga Bartra (1993), the combinations of

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“extremes,” such as industrially manufactured aluminum frames and artisanal roof tiles, attest not only to poor taste in architecture but also to the demise of the authentic indigenous building traditions from the highlands. He argues that this hybrid architecture in working-class neighborhoods is simply a huge masquerade, a costume ball, where the migrants from the highlands no longer recognized themselves in the end, but that had nonetheless been adopted as a standard in the residential neighborhoods. Jorge Burga Bartra is among those architects who believe that people need to be protected from themselves, and society from cultural homogenization (see Introduction). In an article about chicha architecture he describes the trend of attaching a shelter to the façade of homes, creating the impression that the homes have sloped, tiled roofs. Their roofs are in fact flat, rather than sloped. He views this optical use of façade elements as evidence of a masquerade eroding the authenticity of the homes. He has written: When the farmers arrived from the highlands in the big city, they abandoned their roof tiles and sloped roofs and opted instead for the modern urban architectural pretense of flat roofs … Later, in the past decade, wealthy urbanites started to use roof tiles and arches in their gaudy homes. So [the farmers] wondered: how about if we do that too? But don’t those happen to be the very elements they left behind in their villages of origin? So another masquerade began, and they disguised their architecture again, this time with roof tiles and sloped roofs attached to the façade. (Burga Bartra 1993: 34)

Burga Bartra emphasizes in this excerpt that self-builders in working-class neighborhoods are thought to copy their ideas from the nouveau riche, and that their designs are incompatible with their identity. In his view, the people are sponging off of the high-brow culture of the elite. This train of thought corresponds with the popular culture paradigm. He is concerned with the loss of authentic indigenous culture and with the erosion of the prestige that refined culture attributes to the elite. At the same time, he admits in the article that hybrid architecture is by no means limited exclusively to workingclass neighborhoods, and that no distinctive criteria—neither the architectural forms, nor the location in the city, nor the builders constructing this type of architecture—characterize this design type. He thus undermines his own argument, since if even the elite commission such shelters, whose “disguises” does he mean? In La Paz changes in popular architecture interest professionals as well. La Fundación de Estética Andina (perhaps not coincidentally abbreviated as FEA, which is Spanish for ugliness), which addressed the subject, reported a few years ago on its website: FEA regards the specimens of popular architecture in La Paz as laboratories disclosing the duality and incoherence of a civilization where Western development models coincide with precolonial procedures, myths, and traditions. This vibrant

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cultural mestizaje has brought about a bizarre architecture that alters the cityscape and is built by a powerful bourgeoisie, known as the cholo bourgeoisie, which engages in official and unofficial trade, smuggling, and with the underworld. (FEA n.d.; see also Villagómez 2007)

Here, certain design features of homes and buildings are also associated with a specific population group: indigenous, residents of working-class neighborhoods, informal urbanites, and the marginalized. They are believed to be the makers of a bizarre architecture, different, but not necessarily bad. One of those involved in this organization, architect Carlos Villagómez, is fascinated with hybrid popular architecture in his city, which he calls arquitectura chola, the Bolivian counterpart of arquitectura chicha from Lima. Unlike Burga Bartra, however, he likes the design: Failing to communicate a distinctive or organized design, the buildings of the chola aesthetic are a delirious mixture of colors and details reinforced by an irrational profusion of messages … The aesthetic qualities … express new social movements in the largest indigenous city of Latin America, and this reality is irreversible. Although some groups recall the liberal city in the early twentieth century with nostalgia or long for a proper and sterile modernity, chola aesthetics may be the most dynamic driver of new ideas about the city. (Villagómez n.d.: 11, 13)

Villagómez does not regard the popular architecture built by rural, indigenous migrants in the city as a problem but as a form of emancipation of the indigenous population. He views this emancipation, or rather the democratization of urban space, as a challenge to professionals in the search for cultural authenticity and an urban identity. Twenty years after the publication of his book, the anthropologist Matos Mar also regards the omnipresent chicha culture in Lima as a sign of successful democratization. So successful that he concludes in 2004 that the rise of this popular culture in Peru will enable the construction of a national identity (Matos Mar 2004: 144–48). Comparing the views of these two architects about architecture is interesting, as it reveals ideas about new trends in construction. Burga Bartra regards the expanding size of chicha architecture as symptomatic of the popularization and homogenization of architecture, arguing that this process compromises the noble quality of architecture. His views correspond with those of the critics who condemn such popular architecture on the ground that it sponges off of high-brow culture, leading ultimately to cultural homogenization. Villagómez, on the other hand, considers chola architecture to be a signal that indigenous architecture is modernizing under the influence of emancipatory processes, aligning him with the cultural optimists, who perceive cultural heterogenization as the outcome of a new diversity. Many established professionals from Riobamba and Cuenca invoke arguments similar to those of Burga Bartra.

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I agree more with Villagómez, although I certainly acknowledge the unequal balances of power between elite architects and residents of workingclass neighborhoods. Considering both sides is in my view exactly what will enable us to observe social transition in Cuenca and Riobamba. The concern among professionals appears to indicate that in recent years new groups have emerged from the lower middle classes, affecting the architectural monopoly of the elite. Abner Cohen (1981: 4) has asserted, “when the symbols of [the elite] cult lose their potency, when outside audiences cease to defer to them, such elites lose their legitimacy and are likely to lose power.” This is in a sense what happened in Cuenca, as well as in Riobamba, albeit to a lesser degree. Similarly, Hannerz (1992: 112) writes:, “[w]hen the cultural forms claimed as property [by the elite] lose their attractiveness to oneself or to others, or are taken up by too many people, or simply by the wrong people, the right kind of distinctiveness can only be reinstated if one comes up with something new.” The former elite architecture is losing its distinctive quality; the barrier constructed by the elite between superior and popular culture is fading. The elite symbols have forfeited some of their strength. In response, however, the professionals have not devised new forms, as Hannerz argues, but have started to emulate existing ones and to preserve historic architecture. They regard colonial and republican monuments as specimens of superior architecture exuding an international aura denoting Architecture with a capital “A.” They legitimize this status by referring to the international movements that have given rise to the buildings and the protection the UNESCO title provides to Cuenca’s historic inner city. They regard this superior architecture as a counterweight to the city’s cholificación. The efforts of the cultural elite to revitalize the historic inner city should thus in my view be perceived as a response from a professional elite to the progressively “popular” or more democratic character of urban space.

The City as an Arena The observation that ideas about appropriate forms of building and living are mediated and disputed by different parties in the local context brings us to the analytical model of the city as an arena. Elaborating on the tradition of conflict theories, urban space is considered from that perspective as a domain of a social and symbolic struggle between urbanites from different social groups.1 I have used the arena metaphor to shed light on interactions between professionals and between residents of working-class neighborhoods, and interactions among members of both groups. In some cases the struggle was symbolic, such as in Cuenca, where transnational migrants along the periphery used the architecture of their new homes to challenge dominant architectural representations from the city center. In other cases the struggle

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for space was not symbolic but practical and revolved around the question of who was allowed to use public space and when. This occurred in the innercity public space of Riobamba, where municipal professionals tried to curtail street vending. Spatial regulations comprised a social-ethnic component there as well. Quechuas, whose trade was regarded as defacing public scenery, were banned from the inner city. Public space in the neighborhoods instigated social disputes as well. The most remarkable example may have been the controversy over an unfinished church building in Cooperativa Santa Anita. The building was valued in different ways by supporters and opponents of the former manager César Escalante. Escalante’s supporters viewed the church without a roof as evidence that he had done a lot for the neighborhood as a manager. To his opponents, the building symbolized wasted money; they believed that the church was left unfinished for lack of money. They also believed that the present walls were not attributable to César Escalante but had been erected thanks to them, because they had constructed them with their own hands in mingas. The argument between the supporters and opponents of César Escalante continued for years, but at that specific moment the differences between groups of residents were symbolized by the four walls of the unfinished church. If, as the examples demonstrate, a symbolic stage exists at different scales, on which residential architecture performs, then the question is who the lead actors are in what domain, at what moment they appear on center stage, and what they aim to convey.

Professionals in the Lead? A few decades back, Manuel Castells depicted the city primarily as the scene of an unequal class struggle. In this struggle, professionals were cast in the lead, while residents from the lowest social classes received supporting parts. In The City and the Grassroots (Castells 1983), Castells assumes a dichotomy between power from above and forces from below (see also Castells and Ince 2003: 66). Social changes in an urban civilization will in his view necessarily materialize from below, from social movements (or directly from neighborhoods). The supporting actors can then turn into co-stars, provided forces are mobilized. He describes, for example, how in the 1950s, in the suburbs that arose around Paris—neighborhoods consisting of large, monotonous concrete apartment blocks—new social movements opposed both the high cost of housing and the erosion of the natural surroundings. Citizens from different social classes teamed up in a broad protest against their living conditions. Despite their divergent interests, their reproaches targeted the same institutions and brought them closer together: “the socialization of housing led to the socialization of protest” (Castells 1983: 94). This case demonstrates that spatial interventions that are based on models implemented top-

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down may be experienced differently by the users confronted with them in practice. It reveals how they may resist these interventions. This resistance need not be organized from above but can also arise spontaneously or chaotically in daily life, as it did in working-class neighborhoods. A compelling illustration of the impact of political ideologies about planning and architecture on housing for different social groups in a city appears in Holston’s study of Brasilia (Holston 1989). This city was built from scratch, based only on a Utopian image. In the modernist design of the new city, inequalities in Brazilian society were deliberately overlooked. An ideal city was designed based on an egalitarian spatial structure featuring standardized architectural elements: “[T]he people who inhabit their buildings will be ‘forced’ to adopt the new forms of social experience, collective association, and personal habit their architecture represents. This forced conduction to radical changes in social values and relations is the essential means by which Brasília’s planners hoped to institute their egalitarian prescriptions for a new Brazilian society” (Holston 1989: 21–22). This idealized society turned out differently in practice. Satellite cities arose, where people with low incomes settled, while the planned city (Plano Piloto) ended up with a high concentration of affluent residents. The intended equalization of social differences through urban planning and architectural design in fact exaggerated these social differences and gave rise to a social-spatial segregation between center and periphery, according to Holston. Even though the professionals hardly emerged as winners with their ineffective city plan, the urban underclass, as Holston calls them, were little more than extras in his interpretation. Paul Rabinow has also described how the elite uses official architecture to realize its ideologies. In French Modern (Rabinow 1989) he examines nineteenth-century France, demonstrating how various architects and urban planners tried to use spatial interventions to bring about a desired social order. Henri Prost, one of the most influential urban planners in nineteenthcentury France, regarded the new discipline as “[a] visual art which directs itself to our senses; a beautiful city which we love is one where the edifices have a noble beauty, the promenades are agreeable, and where everyday life is surrounded by an agreeable decor producing in us a sentiment of profound harmony” (Prost, quoted in Rabinow 1989: 235–36). This urban developer believed that attractive public space would be conducive to social harmony. Like Holston, Rabinow shows that the academic discipline of architecture and urban planning was an arena for experiments based on the idea that spatial design determines social behavior. Also in France, however, many spatial projects failed to bring about the desired social changes. At the start of the twentieth century, a new mindset, which Rabinow describes as middling modernism, led to a change in policy: unilateral attention to an aesthetic order made way for increased interest in a social order.

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Whereas in French Modern Rabinow uses historical reconstruction to identify the role of professionals, Holston primarily considers asymmetric balances of power between the elite and the people, an asymmetry that he observes has not changed in Brazil. He argues that the distance from home to city center positions citizens within the social hierarchy. Self-builders purchasing land at the edge of the city reproduced the dichotomy between rich and poor, because, he argues, the city limits were extended, placing everybody who moved further outside the city lower down in the social hierarchy (Holston 1991). Relatively small cities, such as Cuenca and Riobamba, have different mechanisms. Formally planned urban developments and spontaneously built working-class neighborhoods are separated far less rigidly there than in Latin American metropolises. One major difference between metropolises and provincial cities is that in many small and medium-sized cities a neighborhood’s reputation outweighs its actual distance from the city center. In Cuenca, for example, neighborhoods north of the city have the worst reputation. The area north of the center is topographically the least suitable for construction, which is exactly why working-class neighborhoods have arisen there. Ciudadela Carlos Crespi is also in that northern zone, although it borders directly on some neighborhoods planned for the middle class, which do have a good reputation. Conversely, one of Cuenca’s most popular upper middleclass expansion areas (Challuabamba) is far further away from the center than Ciudadela Carlos Crespi. Geographic distance does not determine neighborhood status after all. In Riobamba, however, the areas south of the city are the ones with a bad reputation. This zone is where the public social-housing projects are. As mentioned above, the share of Quechuas is relatively high here. Cooperativa Santa Anita, which is to the north, has a fairly bad reputation as well, although not as bad as the indigenous neighborhoods to the south. In Riobamba the best-known elegant neighborhood with detached houses is also far from the center—further away than some working-class neighborhoods. The rigid social-spatial segregation that Holston describes therefore does not hold true for Ecuadorian provincial cities. In cities such as Cuenca and Riobamba, rich and poor may live alongside and among each other. While professionals envision a clear division between city and countryside and between elite and farmers, no clear spatial segregation exists between social groups or classes. In their writings, Holston, Castells, and Rabinow depict the planning elite as very superior to the masses. In the daily practice of Cuenca and Riobamba, however, professionals are not world-famous architects or urban planners but citizens with specific expertise, who hold changing offices and positions of power. They are “actors” rather than “factors.” Although Setha Low differentiates between actors and factors in her book On the Plaza (Low 2000),

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she aptly describes how professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods should be regarded as equivalent informants: “an effective anthropological theory of spatialization must integrate the perspectives of social production and social construction of space, contextualizing the forces that produce it and showing people as social agents constructing their own realities and symbolic meanings” (Low 2000: 127). How, then, should we identify the roles of professionals in Cuenca and Riobamba? Professionals in Cuenca are known to be key players in producing housing; those in Riobamba are not. Most professionals in Cuenca earn their income by designing and building homes for individuals. Usually these homes are for affluent clients or for members of a rising middle class. Professionals with capital of their own may develop turn-key homes or lucrative private urban developments for selective target groups. This is because the housing market in Cuenca is demand driven. Established professionals in Cuenca tend to perceive working-class neighborhoods in negative terms, designating them as zonas rojas, dangerous neighborhoods. Professionals from the Control Urbano service long avoided working in these neighborhoods, which they felt were too dangerous. Their voluntary absence meant that they did nothing significant there; self-builders could do as they pleased. Municipal professionals still stigmatize residents of working-class neighborhoods. From their perspective, these individuals do not understand construction and manifest poor taste in architecture. Cuencan architects from younger generations, on the other hand, discovered new clients in suburban areas. In most cases, these were transnational migrants interested in rebuilding their home or purchasing a new one. These architects sought clients among non-migrants as well. The initiative of Gabriela from Cuenca, who tried to interest residents of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi in founding a new housing cooperative, shows that professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods have started interacting on everyday matters. New middle-class groups, residing along the edge or just outside the city, arranged their visibility in the built environment in a manner that forced the planning elite to take notice. Professionals in Cuenca are therefore not the only ones with lead roles; they have discovered that residents from suburban neighborhoods co-star in these productions. In Riobamba, where private clients are rare, and professionals hardly ever work with self-builders from working-class neighborhoods, the main involvement of professionals in housing construction concerned the social-housing projects from the 1970s and 1980s. In the years that followed, they focused their efforts on drafting urban and rural development plans. In 2003 professionals from the Colegio de Arquitectos and those working for the city faced off in a debate about spatial planning. In housing construction, however, they were all far less prominent. Independent architects lacked the profes-

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sional standing of their Cuencan fellow professionals and were unable to implement the ideas and ideologies they discussed about an ideal urban space. Very few professionals became project developers, as most were unable to afford such large and risky investments. Private clients were powerful, and professionals often had to submit to them, for fear of losing a commission. Since policy was hardly ever enforced, all builders, laymen and professionals alike, could do as they pleased. As a consequence, those settling in the city from the countryside proved able to become key players on the real-estate market. The visibility of Quechuas in the real-estate market was an especially important topic in the debate. Citizens from various social classes and groups were also important counterparts of the planning elite as self-builders or clients. The asymmetric balance of power between professionals and laymen and between members of the elite and people from lower social classes thus exists in varying degrees. Within the institutional context, professionals acted in their capacity as civil servants, department heads, or experts. Civil servants working for municipal services were expected to implement spatial policy. Because spatial planning policy abounded with contradictions, however, especially in the jurisdictions of the institutions concerned, civil servants were at times simply unable to do so. In most such cases nothing would happen, and civil servants would let things run their natural course. They were also expected to serve the politician who had given them their jobs and to accommodate their preferences. Most professionals working for a municipality or MIDUVI were department heads responsible for supervising staff. Projects considered to be time consuming, costly, or risky, such as inspecting construction projects in remote working-class neighborhoods, were assigned a lower priority than office work, in part for lack of funding for inspections and qualified staff. In the presence of neighborhood residents, professionals were usually manifest as authorities and educated experts, two roles that enabled them to assume a position of power. Their corresponding script prescribed a friendly but authoritarian disposition. In some cases their behavior was in fact denigrating. In their interactions with neighborhood residents within the confines of their offices, they were after all lead players, but this was definitely not the case in the working-class neighborhoods where these residents lived. In interviews professionals often admitted that spatial planning procedures were flawed and opportunistic, and that they were usually unable to change anything about that. After all, different priorities prevailed in their policy field.

Residents of Working-class Neighborhoods: From Extras to Co-stars According to Holston (1991: 460), self-builders apply an “informed quotation and combination” of style elements to produce highly personalized

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Illustration 41. Villa based on an American model in an elegant Cuencan neighborhood with detached houses. Photograph courtesy of Boris Albornoz

Illustration 42. New home in Tunsalao, near Riobamba

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architecture that shows outsiders how respectable they are. Conceivably, the emphasis by government professionals on autogestión (self-sufficiency) and on conducting projects in mingas has been conducive to innovating residential architecture. The inspiration that residents of working-class neighborhoods and villagers designing homes derive from detached houses in elegant neighborhoods (see Illustration 42), from other cities, and from other countries results in part from the self-sufficiency that the government expects of them. Members of the new middle class entering the real-estate market in both cities ignored the unwritten style codes of the professionals. They did not aim for purity in their forms or coherent architecture, as some professionals did, but sought to design personal and unique homes; these architectural values were, as Glassie (2000) put it, a far cry from the values taught at the university. According to Holston, the aesthetics of self-built homes in working-class neighborhoods perpetuates social inequities for precisely that reason. The bricolage architecture of emulation and adjustment fails to impress the elite. He writes: The performative displays of autoconstruction thus subvert deep stigmas of real and imagined ignorance that derive from the official exclusion of the poor from the discourses of high culture and from their condemnation by its agents to a lowbrow and unaesthetic existence as a result. Of course, the elites do not acknowledge the aesthetic distinctions of autoconstruction. (Holston 1991: 462)

While Holston concludes that self-builders in working-class neighborhoods are not passive victims of a system rife with social inequalities, he argues that they cannot change this system; the asymmetry will remain. Original and innovative expressions in residential surroundings—expressing their desire to be respected as citizens—in his view merely enable the dominant class, by labeling these forms as inferior, to extend its hegemony over new fields. I do not share Holston’s pessimism about the symbolic power of popular architecture, as a performance intended to earn respect. The ability of citizens who have advanced on their own merits to make themselves visible via their residential architecture indicates the leeway they have carved out within the applicable standards and regulations (see Hernández, Kellet and Allen 2009). These forces are “permitting resistance, counterresistance, and change to occur” (Low 2000: 131). In my view, the situation in Cuenca and Riobamba also resembles the one in Lima in the early part of the new millennium, as Matos Mar has described it: “Because [residents of working-class neighborhoods] built their own houses and kept obtaining more deeds of ownership, the overwhelming majority has proved its economic resilience and has demonstrated its ability to make one of the largest investments of the past two decades” (Matos Mar 2004: 145). He argues that self-building has indeed influenced social relations.

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Thanks to the self-sufficiency that surfaced in response to the housing shortage, groups in Cuenca and Riobamba that used to experience discrimination have become active in the real-estate market. Survival strategies such as transnational migration have strengthened this position. The cityscape reflects the shifts in the social order and demonstrates that the monopoly of the old elite has forced its way back into spatial planning. One possible reason why authors such as Holston and Castells refused to acknowledge these trends is that they insisted on a fairly rigid economic class model. They were too focused on residents of working-class neighborhoods as members of the underclass instead of on their role as social agents. The criteria applied by residents of working-class neighborhoods in evaluating houses lack the rigid distinctions between good and bad architecture that professionals use and instead revolve around the extent to which homes will enhance their prestige. Abstractly, they distinguish between houses with a model and houses without a model; between special and ordinary architecture. Houses with a model are those designed by an architect, usually with “migrant dollars.” Greater involvement of professionals in the self-building process raises the standing of the house. The benefit of professional involvement is not the presumed cultural refinement of the architect. Residents of working-class neighborhoods do not regard people with the title of Arquitecto as parties preserving an authentic or superior culture but as technicians knowledgeable about building and with an understanding of spatial structures, who know how to translate the ideas of their clients into blueprints and subsequently into buildings. In evaluating the design of houses, residents of working-class neighborhoods consider the representation of affluence and of a modern-urban lifestyle. Social differences are conveyed through size, model of the house, workmanship, and level of comfort. The architectural style selected or the pursuit of aesthetic purity matters less to them. Luxurious or exaggerated designs, preferably including imported parts or materials, are often regarded as symbols of social mobility. Abstract preferences guide the construction of “suitable” architecture in the neighborhood in practice. Generally, residents of working-class neighborhoods believe that houses in their neighborhood should be comfortable and spacious but should not stand out too much. If they do deviate, neighbors complain that they “are incompatible,” meaning that the homes do not suit the suburban environment, life in the community, or the lifestyle of the residents. Houses are to be regarded as “physical stimuli, filled with associations and memories,” as Fernandez (1992: 216) asserts. Dual architectural qualifications such as ordinary/special, traditional/modern, rural/urban, and authentic/imported are cognitive categories imbued with everyday associations. Residents of working-class neighborhoods use these categories to clas-

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sify themselves and others. Using similar and dissimilar elements is an obvious approach here. The nouveau riche and transnational migrant families from the rural and suburban middle class, who hoped to advance in Cuenca’s rigid social hierarchy, had reason to prefer deviant, frivolous forms. Architectural forms that contrasted with the architectural conventions of the professionals offered them the opportunity to challenge the social and symbolic order, while demonstrating that they led a modern urban lifestyle. Without venturing into social Messianism or romanticizing popular architecture, I find that the effects of urbanization and globalization in Cuenca and Riobamba have extended existing social and cultural horizons. In the neighborhoods I studied, I observed a new social distinction between families of transnational migrants and non-migrant families. Changes in culture are perceptible among residents of working-class neighborhoods as well. Although some rural traditions, such as the huasipichana, are observed sporadically, a modern urban or even a cosmopolitan lifestyle entails greater prestige nowadays than a rural lifestyle does. Residents with no family members abroad similarly adopt elements of a cosmopolitan lifestyle. The theoretical polarity between architects as a planning elite and residents of working-class neighborhoods as dabbling in home improvement is not a reality. Residents of working-class neighborhoods in provincial cities are not a homogeneous group or underclass but are individuals with divergent circumstances and varying opportunities for improving their circumstances. They are not by definition extras. As house builders and private clients, they operate in the real-estate market and engage in spatial planning; as such, they are players that professionals need to take into account now and then.

Construction of Local Identities Conceptualizing the city as an arena has been a useful model throughout this book for disclosing interpersonal relations and intergroup relations between residents of working-class neighborhoods and professionals with respect to housing construction. I have described the mechanisms that drive the changes in housing construction based on the roles and capacities assumed by members of both groups in different situations. In doing so, I considered the balances of power characterizing the interactions. I discussed identity constructions by examining how residents of working-class neighborhoods and professionals accommodated their self-images and those of others in their daily practice of building and living, as well as in talking about building and living. Based on perceptible differences between houses and living conditions, they constructed cultural categories to make changes in local society easier to understand. Changes in housing construction thus provided a glimpse of a changing society: “the negotiation of the form and meaning of spatial representations is illuminating as a public forum for the working

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out of larger conflicts stemming from the growing impact of globalization, increased tourism, and the struggle by both individuals and the state to maintain a distinct cultural identity” (Low 2000: 131). In light of the depiction of the provincial city not only as an arena filled with conflicting interests but also as a location or community with which large groups could more or less identify—the idea of “a distinct cultural identity”—I will conclude this study by elaborating on aspects of belonging and imaginations of community (see Anderson 1991; Hedetoft and Hjort 2002). Manuel Castells (1989) argues that the importance of a space of places has diminished in favor of a space of flows, of spatial networks and processes between places. He believes that these translocal flows of people, goods, and ideas may prevent urbanites from identifying with their city, because local communities each hunker down in their own territory as fragmented groups. For globalization to reverse social fragmentation, Castells believes that cities need to stress their role in domestic and international networks. This will reinforce ties between municipal institutions and other locations while strengthening the identification of citizens with their city (Castells 1989: 348–53). In the present era, ties with territory have acquired new meanings that are aptly conveyed by the term “belonging.” Belonging expresses the feeling of belonging somewhere or being at home, together with—as a composite of the verbs being and longing—the ambivalent idea of being in one place while longing for another (Hedetoft and Hjort 2002: vii). Not only migrants may perceive their ties with “home” in such a multifaceted manner. Urbanites born and bred in the city sometimes feel they live somewhere but are not—yet—at home there or think their city has changed so much that they no longer feel at home there. Longing for a certain place is thus interpreted in very different ways. In Cuenca and Riobamba, the consequences of modernization and globalization have led people to rethink the meaning of ties between citizens, as well as links with the urban territory and with local cultural values, customs, and practices, including the omnipresent forms of architecture and urban development. Professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods each experienced ties with the place and with each other in their own way. In addition to mediating their individual positions in the city more or less strategically because of this interpretation, they attributed meaning to their life in that place. They formed an image of who they were, and of how they wanted to be perceived. The nature of territorial ties, of belonging in its double meaning of being and longing, differed between individuals and groups and depended on the scale at which they were examined. From the housing scale, residents of working-class neighborhoods were especially attached to their homes, if they were the owners. Owning a house gave those who lived there decision-making authority, which they had never

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had as tenants. Their neighborhood ties therefore derived in many cases from tremendous appreciation for owning a house in that neighborhood. Identification with the neighborhood as a territorial unit had two components. Internally, a community spirit was constructed in both research neighborhoods, based on the perceived difference between residents “up above” and “down below,” “in back” and “in front.” The polarity between hanan and hurin gave residents a common bond because of mutual contrasts. Excessive dissent led sections to be divested temporarily or permanently. Such divestment meant renaming the neighborhood, as happened with Sector 2 in Cooperativa Santa Anita, which became Urdesa del Norte. The neighborhood name served as a ritual affirmation of territorial unity. Residents of working-class neighborhoods appeared as suburbanites in their conversations with me. They enjoyed living at the edge of the city. They mentioned proximity to the city center on the one hand and the relative tranquility and space of suburbia on the other as important aspects of feeling at home here. Occasionally, somebody might move to a larger house in a different suburb after a while. Most cared more about peaceful residential surroundings near the city center than about ties with the specific neighborhood communities of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi or Cooperativa Santa Anita. They emphasized to the authorities and professionals that they were true urbanites, not farmers or cholos. Neighborhood residents were keenly aware that their neighborhood had been transformed from a former rural community to a contemporary city neighborhood. Vilma said that Cooperativa Santa Anita continued to evolve, because the inhabitants no longer wanted to live “like in the countryside.” She and her fellow neighborhood residents wanted to live like civilized city folk (Vilma used the verb civilizar to express this desire). In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi Rafael said that he deeply regretted that the community still regarded them as indios, because no “important people” lived in the neighborhood. His neighbor Noelia stated somewhat scornfully that the neighborhood was supposed to be part of the city but still resembled the countryside. The majority of residents from both neighborhoods no longer felt like rural inhabitants. They wanted their identity as citizens to be acknowledged, even though they lived on the periphery. They expressed this need in their residential surroundings and their lifestyle. Eva from Cooperativa Santa Anita said that the municipality of Riobamba continued to treat their neighborhood as a phantom occurrence, as an area that did not officially exist. By continuing to build rapidly on their own, Sector 2 residents tried to force the city to acknowledge their presence, so that the city would have to accept them and eventually legalize their neighborhood and homes. Within their economic means, they installed modern city amenities that met urban standards of propriety and hygiene. Even though some cherished the cultural

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repertoires brought from their villages of origin, the majority of the inhabitants reported progressing toward modern city life: se va civilizando. This was how they confirmed to themselves and the community that they were decent urbanites and wished to be viewed as citizens of Riobamba or Cuenca in their own right. In both cities the professionals employed by the municipality regarded residents of working-class neighborhoods primarily as urban marginals. The double meaning of the term marginals, denoting people from lower social classes who moreover live along the urban periphery, provided a rather simplistic impression of this group. Working-class neighborhoods were often classified as the rural sector in local policy. As architects and members of the cultural elite, professionals feared that obscuring the boundaries between city and countryside and the intertwinement of urban and rural lifestyles would erode the city’s culture, which had once been so refined. They felt that the “ruralization” of the city (Riobamba) and the urbanization of the surroundings (Cuenca) would compromise their self-image as Riobambans or Cuencans: citizens with a previously superior and refined culture. Against their better knowledge, they sometimes tried to circumscribe clearly the physical boundary between city and countryside in their discourse. Even though in Riobamba professionals acknowledged the problem of the social and cultural exclusion of rural migrants, they did not generate a broader definition of the city or of the significance of being Riobamban. Anthony Cohen (2000b: 2) argues that: “the cultural differences which discriminate people on either side of a boundary are not just matters of degree or relativity … but of kind.” This did indeed hold true for Riobamba in my opinion. The debate was not only about the boundaries of being Riobamban but also—or perhaps especially—about what Fredrik Barth (1969: 15) has described as “the cultural stuff that it encloses.” Lacking a consensus about “who we are,” and “where we are headed,” the imagined urban community continued to be based on the old distinction between a white and a mestizo middle class in the city center, versus the indigenous Quechua and residents of working-class neighborhoods, who were not really regarded as “true” urbanites but as visitors or residents who were temporarily tolerated. Contrary to the exclusive definition of Riobamban identity, the dominant representation of Cuencan identity did integrate city and countryside, albeit as two separate social-geographic and cultural extremes that converged to form the imagined community of Cuenca. The Chola Cuencana was a local symbol expressing this hybrid social order, a social order perceived by many as rigidly hierarchical. Most residents of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi therefore did not so much challenge the boundaries of Cuencan identity (nobody questioned that they were Cuencans) as they did the differences constructed within that model imposed from above. Some residents also cherished the

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greenery and certain rural traditions in this neighborhood, but that sense in no way undermined their self-perceptions as urban Cuencans. According to the older generation of professionals, maintaining a comprehensive local identity required clear distinctions between city and countryside and between social classes. They tried to enforce the social hierarchy and the corresponding representations but had to acknowledge how the urbanization of the countryside and the rise of what was known as “migrant architecture” had changed perceptions of the Cuencan community. The image of the countryside as a separate geographic entity dates back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Around that time the urban middle class in Ecuador and elsewhere in the Andes constructed a social dichotomy between city and countryside based on new ideas about hygiene and propriety. Rural dwellers were depicted as unhygienic and disorganized (Colloredo-Mansfeld 1998; de la Cadena 2000: 68–72). In Riobamba and Cuenca, these images surfaced in descriptions of the Bellavista neighborhoods and in the glorification of the Chola Cuencana, respectively. Bellavista was praised in the early twentieth century as “the hope of Ecuador,” because it was “very comfortable and hygienic” (Ortiz n.d.a: 20). The Chola Cuencana, a half-breed with an urban white father and a rural indigenous mother, was still attributed features reflecting that dichotomy in the 1990s. After all, she was “a bit tan” but “had a clean complexion” (Editores y publicistas 1990: 264). Both examples reveal how hygiene and a clean complexion were associated with city life. During this study, metaphors for cleanliness and dirt were expressed primarily in the myth of the migrant home: the bathtub not used for bathing, because it was used for drying corn, or the elevator used for storing livestock. According to the narrators, the myth expressed the flawed aspirations of former farmers. Although they had earned money as transnational migrants, they had yet to master city customs. Residents of working-class neighborhoods who propagated the myth tried to distinguish themselves from the countryside and from unsuccessful urban lifestyles to stress their perceptions of themselves as urbanites in their own right. Residents of working-class neighborhoods unable to afford the conveniences of modern city life or to meet the standards of modern hygiene and propriety became progressively impoverished in relative terms. Homes without furniture and proper plumbing contrasted sharply with homes where the occupants had acceded to the new urban middle class. In the most compelling cases, poverty-stricken families suffered from malnutrition, scabies, and alcoholism. Outsiders expected them to maintain a semblance of order. Often they succeeded. As more individual families managed to improve their residential and living arrangements, however, the poor had increasing difficulty making ends meet, given the rising cost of living in the city. One of the most

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significant features of provincial working-class neighborhoods is therefore the frequently concealed difference between—as the neighborhood residents describe them—people with opportunities and people without them. Mutual competition between cities made promoting the city to outsiders ever more important. The physical-spatial attributes of the cities were beautified to attract tourists and to interest organizations such as UNESCO and the American organization in charge of the Miss Universe beauty pageant. This was how the local authorities expressed the idea of territorial ties. Internationally renowned local festivities provided an opportunity to publicize the urban culture and architecture to the international community via the media. But success comes at a price in these cases. Being designated as a venue for international events strengthened the political desire and professional enthusiasm to purge the cityscape. The more “authentic” the city was believed to be, especially in terms of its architecture and other tourist attractions, the greater its international competitive edge would become. Authenticity was regarded as an urban quality that professionals brought about, for example through historicizing architecture. The renovation of Cuenca’s historic inner city within the UNESCO program exemplifies this approach. The same holds true for beautifying public space in Riobamba for the arrival of Miss Universe by installing old-fashioned street lights. Revitalizing the inner city thus set in motion a gentrification process that forced certain user groups to make way for others. Economic interests prevailed in the social construction of local identity as a marketing strategy. Because the elite determined the meaning of “place” as a commodity for sale, the stronger identification with the inner city was not universal. City festivals and local religious ceremonies have traditionally been crucial moments in constructing a common local identity in Ecuador. Riobambans, for example, take pride in the Christmas parades during the Rey de Reyes festival in their city. Cuencans admire their own Pase del Niño Christmas parades. Construction of a local identity stretches across vast distances as well. The sense of belonging is perceived and reformulated at such ritual moments. Even after emigrating abroad, residents of working-class neighborhoods continued to honor the culinary traditions associated with local festivals; those remaining behind would send the ceremonial dishes to their relatives by courier to enable them to partake in the festival from a distance.2 Overseas residents from Cooperativa Santa Anita and Ciudadela Carlos Crespi reciprocated by sending money to these neighborhoods to celebrate holidays such as Christmas. Transnational contacts also led new festivals and ceremonies not specifically associated with a city (for example Halloween) to be introduced in Ecuador. Both nationally and locally, celebration of this festival by schoolchildren gave rise to heated debates about the loss of cultural individuality. Belonging and longing, feeling at home while longing

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for change, therefore acquired a different meaning for the citizens pursuing social and cultural mobility than they had for the conservative elite, who reminisced nostalgically about a previous social order. Professionals and authorities used city festivals primarily to highlight their ideas about authentic local culture. Practices that the cultural elite in Cuenca and Riobamba described in these discussions as a loss of local traditions through globalization are interpreted by Hannerz (1996) as new forms of local culture. He mentions a global ecumene, a world system comprised of networks of cities exporting or absorbing labor, enabling the labor recipients to achieve great diversity and to develop highly specialized economies and cultural activities. Migrants take the cultural products from the cities to which they have moved back with them to their home cities or villages. Thanks to meetings between transnational citizens and “locals” left behind, cultural diversification has become possible. Accordingly, he believes that globalization does not lead to cultural homogenization but refocuses cultural individuality (Hannerz 1992: 111). If he is right, Halloween will have different manifestations in Cuenca and Riobamba in a few decades, just as the Rey de Reyes and Pase del Niño Christmas parades do today. In summary, residents of working-class neighborhoods in both cities used their homes to express their multifaceted identities as respectable citizens, urbanites, or members of the new middle class. By perceiving themselves as urbanites (and as the antithesis of rural inhabitants), they expressed their cultural mobility; by perceiving themselves as consumers or as members of a rising middle class, they expressed their social mobility; by perceiving themselves as Cuencans or Riobambans, they expressed their ties with their place of residence and with a local culture that was handed down but was also changing. Professionals were divided in their images of themselves and in how they perceived the residents of the city. Some regarded former cultural heydays of their city as the main source of their ties with it. Others were inspired by cultural dynamics and viewed themselves as cosmopolitan citizens and innovators, without feeling any less Cuencan or Riobamban as a consequence. The difference between Cuenca and Riobamba primarily concerned the extent to which definitions of being a Cuencan or a Riobamban accommodated inclusiveness and shifts. In Cuenca the boundaries of Cuencan identity were not contested, although the internal order was. In Riobamba the debate did address the circumscription of an in-group with respect to an out-group. The verbal intention was to absorb new groups “from outside” in the community of Riobambans, although this did not happen in practice. I have tried to reveal how, taking contemporary Cuenca and Riobamba as spaces of flows, new connections arise between groups of urbanites and their translocal cultural repertoires. The urban bonds of citizens were deter-

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mined in part by their physical presence in the urban territory and in part by an active contribution from migrants to the local community, both on site and at a distance. Urban space in provincial cities in the Andes is therefore best understood as the locus of an imagined community that is continuously reconstructed at different scales. Nowadays in the Andes this often entails a search for more inclusive and less hierarchical definitions of local identity, which are expressed in part through the architecture of the residential surroundings. Groups previously excluded thus long to feel at home in their place of residence.

Places of Residence Great and Small We can now answer the central question of this study: How does the relationship between the views and approaches of professionals on the one hand and residents of working-class neighborhoods on the other influence the city as a place to live? Views about the city as a place to live vary both between and within the groups examined. Professionals in both cities regarded the city’s residential function as a domain covered by individual citizens (acting as private clients, buyers of turn-key homes, or self-builders), often in conjunction with professionals, although they did believe that spatial planning policy should steer this process. Professionals differed in their opinions regarding such spatial policy. Changing residential needs of citizens sometimes had a greater impact on the cityscape than the professionals wanted. Fellow professionals involved in accommodating the new residential needs were part of the problem. Aesthetic responsibilities associated with their profession and the desired appearance of public space were subjects of ambiguity in both cities. Professionals adopted views depending on their institutional affiliation. Residents of working-class neighborhoods believed that professionals tended to be insufficiently involved in the tedious development and legalization of their neighborhoods. Still, they benefited from the remote, instrumental involvement of professionals to remodel their homes to meet their needs and according to their personal judgment. Contrary to the fairly static impression that conflict theoreticians convey of working-class neighborhoods in metropolises, I have tried to show that in provincial cities professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods team up or act against each other in different capacities. In some respects Cuenca and Riobamba are mirror images of each other: whereas the Cuencan elite proudly defended the values of the architectural heritage of a white/mestizo upper class, authoritative Riobamban professionals deplored the lack of identity and the destruction of their city’s heritage. The attitudes of both groups of professionals are, however, remarkably similar in one respect, as to date neither one has made a deliberate effort

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to feature inclusive representations of local society in architecture and urban development in Cuenca or in Riobamba. The planning niche where working-class neighborhoods arose accommodated individual progress and architectural competition between citizens. The consideration for residential surroundings that residents of working-class neighborhoods did not receive as urbanites with rights and obligations did materialize when they manifested themselves as consumers. Since this “awakening” of professionals, as Gerardo from Cuenca put it, overt or subdued debates were in progress in both cities about a city and canton where transnational migrants, Quechuas, rural mestizos, or cholos were ineffaceable. My recommendations for follow-up research derive from the theme that overwhelmed me the most in my study: transnational migration. Globalization was not originally a core component of my research proposal. During my first period of field research in Riobamba in 1999 I paid little attention to the efforts by residents from Cooperativa Santa Anita to move abroad. Only when I returned to Ecuador in 2001 did I notice how homes and neighborhoods, families, and groups had changed as a result of transnational contacts. Transnational migration became an important focus in my research, especially in the section about Cuenca. I believe that much remains to be learned about housing from a transnational perspective, especially in provincial cities. Migration studies presently cover only transnational migration from small rural communities and villages, while globalization theories usually concern metropolises. Provincial cities are often overlooked, as they are difficult to categorize. Anthropologists interested in identifying the local consequences of globalization will benefit from examining this type of city, of which Ecuador alone has about a dozen. Ethnographic follow-up research on the consequences of globalization might significantly enrich architecture studies as well. Transformations in architectural design, knowledge of construction, and related symbolic representations in this area have been explored in few parts of the world. Recent research about how modernization and globalization have influenced types of housing and their meanings has been conducted mainly by anthropologists in Asia (see, e.g., Waterson 1997; Schefold et al. 2003, 2008). In Latin America transformations in popular architecture have barely been identified.3 Habitat anthropology, which in my view is a fairly rudimentary discipline, would benefit—as would social sciences in general—by engaging with multi-disciplinary debates focused on the influences of globalization in provincial cities and transformations of popular architecture (especially in Latin America).

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Conclusion Enlightenment ideas about cultural hierarchies, which revolve around a distinction between superior and inferior cultural expressions, have given rise in studies about architecture to a distinction between superior, Western architecture and inferior, non-Western popular architecture; the distinction is perpetuated along disciplinary lines. In cultural studies of Latin America this distinction is labeled as largely irrelevant and has been replaced by the concept of hybrid cultures. Some authors use (and misuse) the notion of hybrid or popular culture to differentiate or critique architecture in working-class neighborhoods. A debate between intellectuals from Andean countries, for example, revolves around the extent to which hybrid cultural repertoires of rural and urban, indigenous and mestizo lifestyles, have evolved into a characteristic chicha or chola culture, which derives from the working-class neighborhoods where many rural migrants live. In the view of anthropologist José Matos Mar and architect Carlos Villagómez, chicha/chola culture is an emancipatory development that might pave the way toward new local and even national identifications. Architect Jorge Burga Bartra, on the other hand, believes that chicha culture sponges off of the superior culture and should be blocked from spreading. Based on my own observations, I have asserted that no characteristic chicha or chola culture is present in Cuenca or Riobamba. Although rural repertoires still provide a foundation now and then for ideas and actions in the residential surroundings, international influences are gaining control. The exodus of transnational migrants to countries such as the United States and Spain has led to new ideas about residential architecture and lifestyles. If there is a new trend in popular architecture, it is determined more by foreign and international influences than by rural or indigenous ones. While I perceive this trend as an emancipatory force, I do not deny that the planning elite deeply influenced the arrangement of urban space, nor that dire poverty co-existed with relative affluence in working-class neighborhoods. Provincial cities have a dynamic that is different from metropolises. Professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods are not homogeneous social groups that are by definition diametrically opposed. Cuenca and Riobamba do not have the rigid social-spatial hierarchy that some authors have described for large cities. By viewing architecture and space use as a performance, I analyzed how professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods fulfilled different roles in the domain of living and municipal spatial planning. Members of both groups engaged in the social production of a physical space and the social construction of a meaningful space. Sometimes members of both groups wound up on opposite sides—government versus citizen or expert versus layman—especially in debates about a superimposed social-spa-

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tial order. In some cases they teamed up as client and architect on building new homes. As such, some private clients and self-builders became so visible via their architectural representations that professionals not involved in the design had no choice but to take note. In that case, residents of working-class neighborhoods and other citizens from the urban periphery faced off against each other. The verbal and non-verbal struggle over issues such as the rise of “migrant architecture” revealed the city as an arena where ordinary situations became the stage of a symbolic and social struggle for space. In social science literature the distinction between high-brow and popular architecture has led non-Western and non-professional construction forms to be romanticized and has caused a lack of interest in the transformations of popular culture effectuated by globalization. Many homes in working-class neighborhoods in Cuenca and Riobamba built by individuals result from stages of self-building, as well as from stages of professional involvement. Insisting that self-building defines authenticity in vernacular architecture is no longer tenable in my view. The same holds true for assessments of design based on preconceptions. Houses may look Western, but that makes them no less authentic or less meaningful to their occupants. Examining interactions of agents in the building process and abandoning preconceptions about the type of society and design criteria helps bridge the gap between Architecture with a capital “A” and architecture in lower case. The empirical boundary disappeared long ago; the time has come to abolish the theoretical distinction as well. An active contribution from habitat anthropologists to the multidisciplinary field of architecture studies would moreover provide a more balanced impression of recent changes in architecture influenced by globalization. Globalization has strengthened not only the urge to change but also the search for cultural individuality. Among professionals, the sense of loss of cultural individuality revived their interest in local cultural heritage. They aimed to preserve historic architecture and to achieve a coherent cityscape, where certain user groups were not welcome. Residents of working-class neighborhoods tried to express cultural and social mobility via their homes and neighborhoods and the corresponding discourse. They wanted in any case to be perceived as urbanites, sometimes as members of a new middle class and usually as “true” Cuencans or Riobambans, so that they might feel at home in their own place of residence. Because quite a few—although not all— residents of working-class neighborhoods expressed a certain degree of social and cultural mobility via their homes, however, internal contrasts between rich and poor deepened in the neighborhoods as well. Belonging acquired different meanings at different scales. To the poorest neighborhood residents, owning a house generated a sense of belonging somewhere. At the neighborhood scale, the group of residents identified with the territory thanks to perceived differences between residents “up

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above” and “down below,” “in front” and “in back.” In municipal circles the symbolic struggle between professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods, which had both verbal and non-verbal manifestations, determined the dynamics of local, comprehensive identity constructions. In Riobamba the boundaries of urbanity and a multicultural definition of Riobamban identity were mediated. In Cuenca, in addition to the boundaries of urbanity, the social hierarchy was contested. In both old and new festivals and city ceremonies, the limits of identity boundaries were tested. The authorities regarded city festivals and local religious celebrations primarily as publicity campaigns for their city in competing with other cities. Local citizens and transnational migrants elsewhere in the world experienced ritual celebrations as moments for expressing shared specific values and identifying with local society. But they also welcomed new festivals and events as manifestations of a modern and more cosmopolitan lifestyle. Urban space can therefore not be understood as a territory with perceptible boundaries. The way that urbanites from various social groups express belonging, the idea of living somewhere and feeling at home there, or the alternative idea of living somewhere but not feeling at home there (yet) determines the multiple meanings of residence in the Andes.

Notes  1. See the chapters on “contested space” in Low (2002) and Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga (2003).   2. See El Comercio, 20 January 2003.   3. This point as made to me by Marcel Vellinga of Oxford Brookes University (personal communication, 30 June 2005). See also Klaufus (2006a).

Appendix

Ethnographic Urban Research This study covers the 1990s and the first decade of this century. The analysis is based on ethnographic data obtained over the course of more than fourteen months of fieldwork divided into four fieldwork periods between 1998 and 2003, updated in 2007 and 2009, and supplemented with material from more recent sources. From late December 1998 until late April 1999, I conducted research in Riobamba in the Cooperative Santa Anita and among local architects. From October 2001 until April 2002 I spent six months in Cuenca. In the Ciudadela Carlos Crespi neighborhood I performed a study comparable to the one in Cooperativa Santa Anita. Parallel to this, I conducted research among architects. In the autumn of 2002 I spent a month in Cuenca and over a month in Riobamba; one year later, I returned to both cities for a few months. In April 2007 and November 2009 I updated my research. Although conducting fieldwork in a single, extended but continuous stretch is a good idea in anthropological research, the method I employed had considerable advantages. Contacts with fellow professionals, friends, and informants in Ecuador acquired a measure of continuity and became transnational over the years. Visits by Cuencan architects and students to the Netherlands in between my fieldwork (see Preface) enhanced our dialog and reciprocity in thinking about our residential environment. An ongoing exchange arose of ideas, thoughts, and information about the subjects we addressed in our work. I chose to conduct my research in two locations because I aimed to assess living—both in public policy and as an everyday experience—in provincial cities in the Andean highlands. I selected Riobamba after an orientation tour of a great many provincial cities in July 1998. Riobamba is regarded as the cradle of the Republic of Ecuador, because that was where the assembly that promulgated the constitution convened prior to independence. This specific event and an economic and cultural heyday in which the city was the nucleus of the nation are invoked nowadays to enhance Riobamba’s reputation. But the recent past, in which the indigenous population claims civil rights, is at least as visible in the city streets. Riobamba has a special urban planning structure and a multicultural population. All these aspects make the city’s current urban development interesting.

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I chose Cuenca as my second city. With the third-largest population in the country, this intermediate city counts in national policy. While Cuenca and Riobamba are similar in their geographic structure, their historical development reveals striking differences. Riobamba was in fact one of the most important colonial centers and it was where the foundations for the republic were laid. Nationally, however, the importance of Riobamba diminished rapidly over the course of the twentieth century. In Cuenca the opposite was true. For a long time, Cuenca was an isolated city where a small group held a political, economic, and cultural monopoly. Twentieth-century urban planning was therefore more effective in Cuenca than in Riobamba. In addition, the architecture program at the university in Cuenca makes architects very numerous there.1 Policy makers in Riobamba often admire and envy Cuenca’s successful spatial policy. In this respect, the two cities are perhaps mirror images of one another. This is not a comparative study but one based on two cases. Highlighting the similarities and differences between the research groups and the two cities offers a variegated impression of the residential function in provincial cities in the Andes. Restricting my research to provincial cities in the highlands means that I do not assess metropolises such as Quito or Guayaquil or the relatively recent, burgeoning provincial cities in the tropical coastal zone on the continent. The long history of cities in the highlands, the geographic and climatological differences, and the cultural regionalism that still prevails in Ecuador and other Andean countries give intermediate cities in the highlands a dynamics of their own. In both cities I selected a neighborhood once I arrived there based on predetermined criteria. According to these criteria, the neighborhood had to comprise about 100 to 150 households and needed to be small enough so that I could get to know all of them. In addition, I looked for neighborhoods where construction was still in progress, so that I could examine the course of building, renovation, and occupancy. In Riobamba I found Cooperativa Santa Anita, a new neighborhood comprising about eighty households in 1999, where the residents agreed to participate in my study.2 In 2001 in Cuenca an expert took me to visit various neighborhoods at the edge of the city. Because rural–urban migration started earlier in Cuenca than in Riobamba, most working-class neighborhoods are a few decades old there. I chose Ciudadela Carlos Crespi because, like Santa Anita, the surface area and number of households (130 to 140) were conducive to an integral examination; because I observed both renovations and new construction there; and because the authorities were cooperative. Although the physical layout of Ciudadela Carlos Crespi differs from that of Santa Anita, the experiences, problems, and activities of the residents are very similar in both neighborhoods. Both in Santa Anita and in Ciudadela Carlos Crespi, certain groups of residents, for

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example, withdrew from the existing organization to found a new neighborhood. Problems with the authorities arising from illegal building on sites are comparable as well. Since the similarities between the neighborhoods surpass the differences, I alternate examples from the two neighborhoods. The central question in this study concerns individual and shared experiences of residents of working-class neighborhoods and professionals with living in the city and building homes. Epistemologically, this means that impressions and methods of both groups need to be disclosed, and that the nature and scope of their interactions should be identified. To familiarize myself with impressions and cognitive categories, I began my work both in the neighborhoods and with the professionals with introductory conversations and observations to reveal how my counterparts thought and spoke about their surroundings. My initial conversations and tours with neighborhood residents and professionals from the municipality of Riobamba and the architecture faculty in Cuenca generated themes that I included as “sensitizing concepts” in interviews and follow-up conversations (Glaser and Strauss 1977). Among professionals and neighborhood residents alike, for example, “migrant architecture”—the often striking design of homes of transnational migrants—proved to be a current topic of conversation. Based on this sensitizing concept, I was able to relate the visions of both groups to each other. The two groups qualified “migrant architecture” differently in their views about suitable or appropriate residential architecture. I used such central themes to structure my research on how the two groups related to each other and on how these relationships influenced the development of residential areas. In the neighborhoods I started my research with a survey. In Cooperativa Santa Anita I included forty-one of an estimated total of eighty households that were there in 1999, comprising 198 residents altogether. In Ciudadela Carlos Crespi I included seventy-two of an estimated total of 130 to 140 households that were there in 2001, comprising 387 residents altogether. These data enabled me to juxtapose neighborhoods and cities against one another and to assess the position of families as well. Understanding the relative poverty and relative wealth of residents is important, as these factors define how they function as citizens of the city and as neighbors in the neighborhood. The survey contained questions about the residents, their income, and their home, as well as a few questions about how their neighborhood functioned. This information allowed me to focus my follow-up research. I used data about how long families had lived in the neighborhood, for example, to select residents to reconstruct the neighborhood history. Going door-todoor with my survey also helped me get to know many families, facilitating follow-up agreements to conduct interviews and take pictures.

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To study the neighborhood residents in their capacity as designers and builders, and also as members of the neighborhood community and as residents of the city, I used participant observation, conducted open interviews, and took pictures. Participant observation familiarized me with interactions among neighborhood residents and between neighborhood residents and professionals. This meant conducting daily, informal conversations with people about what was happening in the neighborhood and at home, participating in mingas (collective neighborhood activities where residents build or install something together); attending neighborhood meetings; and accompanying residents on visits to government agencies. In each neighborhood I conducted semi-structured interviews with about twenty residents or couples from different households (forty-two interviews altogether). Most conversations were with women. About a third of the interviews were with men or couples, with the husband providing some of the answers. The conversations took place in the home of the informant. In the first part of the conversation we spoke about the building process, the architecture, and the interior arrangement of their home. Chapter 3 is based on these data. We also discussed houses elsewhere in the city that served as a frame of reference for the categories beautiful and ugly, poor and rich, city and countryside, emigrant family and non-emigrant family. These data are incorporated in Chapter 4. The second part of the interview was primarily about the neighborhood as a social and spatial entity, how the neighborhood developed, and legalization procedures. These aspects figure in Chapter 2. Building and residential experience as perceived by the residents are impossible to disclose sufficiently through words alone; images need to be included as well. I therefore used photo elicitations (Collier and Collier 1996). I supplemented the interviews by asking neighborhood residents to take pictures of meaningful places in their immediate residential environment. Sometimes they did so in my presence using a single-lens reflex camera, in other cases they would use a disposable camera in my absence. The scope of the assignment was very broad and yielded similarly broad interpretations. Some residents photographed a view of trees or hills from their home to show me the beautiful surroundings, while others took pictures of their cars, furniture, pets, or family members. In subsequent conversations I had residents comment on and explain the photographs. I asked them to select three photographs that reflected the most important aspects of their residential surroundings. In some cases the photographs steered the conversation to new topics that would ordinarily be difficult to broach. Working with visual assignments certainly benefits architectural research. Still, the method proved difficult to apply systematically. Some residents were willing to take only five—instead of ten—pictures. They appreciated the photograph method mainly because it gave them free pictures of their home and family. The family snapshots

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helped me remember the faces that corresponded with different stories. During each fieldwork period, I also produced photo series of houses, public spaces, and neighborhood activities, such as mingas. Those series recorded the physical changes in homes and public spaces over the years between 1999 and 2009. The research group of professionals comprised self-employed architects, architects employed by the municipal planning departments of Riobamba and Cuenca, instructors at the architecture faculty in Cuenca, board members of the local chapters of the Colegio de Arquitectos (an association of architects) and the Cámara de la Construcción (part of the Chamber of Commerce), and architects at the regional chapters of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MIDUVI). I became as well acquainted with some professionals as I did with some neighborhood residents. Professionals and residents of working-class neighborhoods were thus equivalent groups of informants, although, as I have described above, my contacts with architects were closer than they were with residents of working-class neighborhoods. I wanted the professionals to tell me how they viewed the city as a place to live in their capacity as architectural designers, urban developers, policy makers, or builders, especially with regard to social-housing policy. I also tried to get to know them as urban citizens. I expected, after all, that statements from professionals during official interviews at their office might not always correspond with what they actually did or with their views as residents or users of urban space about sensitive issues. Because professionals did not live together in a neighborhood the way residents of working-class neighborhoods did, I had to perform different types of participant observation and to conduct different interviews. On the guided tours that professionals gave me through districts and neighborhoods during the early weeks, in addition to becoming familiar with the neighborhoods and the city, I learned how they spoke about them. Over time, informal conversations and open interviews gave me an in-depth impression of their personal visions and the different views found among individual professionals. Participant observation also included joining a study by the municipality of Riobamba. In both cities, I also accompanied MIDUVI staff on working visits to working-class neighborhoods and villages as part of the grant program for people with low incomes. In both cities I accompanied architects employed by the municipality on inspections and toured construction projects with self-employed architects. In Cuenca, Riobamba, and Quito, I visited several construction fairs and architecture exhibitions over the years. I learned how professionals present their work and which designs, materials, and products they regard as innovative. I explored their professional practice, their methods, mutual interactions, and contacts with residents by accompanying them on working visits. Informal settings, such

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as cafés and receptions, were good opportunities to exchange ideas about current developments in the city. I interviewed twenty-five professionals during the day at the offices and institutions where they worked. I spoke with a far greater number in the evenings at professional debates at the Colegio de Arquitectos. Photographs, drawings, and models frequently surfaced in our conversations, because visual materials are an integral part of their work. They showed me their ideas about good and bad architecture and neighborhoods that had been designed well or poorly, based on visuals or by taking me to see buildings and sites. I have used statistics on the numbers of active professionals in both cities regarding local building economies and their means for generating income to establish the relative position of professionals in both cities. In addition to architecture and planning professionals, I interviewed seven experts on transnational migration, cultural transitions, and the performance of neighborhood organizations. From 1999 I also kept a file of newspaper clippings with articles on the following themes: building, living, urban development, and local identity constructions by governments and citizens. The national newspaper El Comercio and its Saturday insert Construir were an especially important information resource. I also read local newspapers, such as La Prensa and Diario Los Andes in Riobamba and El Mercurio and El Tiempo in Cuenca. The decision to conduct research among neighborhood residents and professionals alike determined how I organized my research. I found a home on “neutral” ground, not far from the neighborhood or the city center. This enabled me to invite both neighborhood residents and architects to my home— a form of reciprocity that I value, especially because I study people’s domestic lives. During my first stay in Riobamba I rented a room in the home of a Dutch acquaintance in a northern part of town, approximately ten minutes by bus from Cooperativa Santa Anita. Neighborhood residents and architects all knew where I lived and how to reach me. The distance to the downtown area and the City Hall was a twenty-minute walk. During later stays I lived with a Riobamban family and in the home of another Dutch friend, but all in the northern disctrict. During my various stays in Cuenca I rented a small studio on the patio of a middle-class Cuencan family close to the northern ring road, from where I went to Ciudadela Carlos Crespi by bus or taxi. From the house to the downtown area or the university was, again, a twenty-minute walk. These geographical and social “in-between” locations were easily accepted by the two groups of informants in both cities, and they facilitated my mobility and guaranteed my safety as a female researcher working alone most of the time.

290 | Appendix

Notes   1. Nowadays Ecuador has several programs for studying architecture, including the option to study off-site. This allows people to study architecture in other cities as well, although the architecture faculties in Quito, Cuenca, and Manta are regarded as the most important training centers.   2. Due to incomplete records, changes in household composition, and disagreement regarding neighborhood boundaries, the exact number of households remains unclear.

Glossary adobe unbaked earth or clay building block albañil construction worker arquitecto architect autogestión self-management ayni Andean form of mutual aid barrio neighborhood barrios precarios precarious (informal) neighborhoods borrachera drinking binge cacique local leader canasta alimentaria fictitious basket filled with basic food supplies; subsistence level standard canasta básica fictitious basket filled with all basic supplies; poverty level standard canton administrative entity, synonymous with municipality cargo task, position casa house; house type casa de campo rural house chola/cholo social category denoting a person of mixed indigenous-European background; culturally mixed cholificación cultural mixing, hybridization chicha corn beer; term used in the Andes to denote popular culture of rural migrants in cities ciudadela residential area comadre/compadre godmother/godfather, ceremonial function consejo provincial provincial government cooperativa cooperative society corregimiento geographic entity in Spanish colonial system, governed by a corregidor costa coastal region don/doña term of address used before a person’s first name feria feast, fair finca farm gobernación geographic entity in Spanish colonial system, governed by a gobernador

292 | Glossary

hacienda hacendado hanan

large farm, estate hacienda owner Quechua word associated with higher rank, male, right-hand side; used in combination with hurin huasipichana ceremony to celebrate the construction of the roof top, sometimes symbolized by placement of a cross; term used in Cuenca region huasipichay ceremony to celebrate the construction of the roof top, sometimes symbolized by placement of a cross; term used in Riobamba region hurin Quechua word associated with lower rank, female, left-hand side; used in combination with hanan indígena indigenous indio indigenous person, pejorative term junta parroquial government of rural parish (part of a canton) losa flat roof madre mother maestro (mayor) construction worker, contractor mansion mansion, large house manzana block of houses mediagua basic, temporary home where roof is a single slope mestizo social category denoting a person of mixed indigenous-European background migradólares dollars sent home by transnational migrants, remittances minga (mink’a) Andean form of mutual aid minifundio smallholder, dirt farmer moreno dark-skinned person; pejorative used for Afro-Ecuadorians municipalidad municipal government municipio municipality as administrative entity, equivalent to a canton novena Catholic ceremony performed during the nine days before Christmas oriente tropical lowlands in eastern Ecuador palanca wheelbarrow; methaphor for someone with connections parroquia administrative division of municipality Puruhá Ecuadorian Indians of the central Andean highlands at the time of the Spanish conquest residente resident; denotes a transnational migrant with a green card in the United States

Glossary | 293

señor/señora Sir/ Madame sierra highland, mountains sucre former currency of Ecuador techo roof teja roof tile villa house type; also colonial term for city villita small villa voluntad Andean form of mutual aid waje-waje Andean form of mutual aid zona roja dangerous area

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Index

A academic debate, 4, 9, 258 aesthetics, 13, 44, 147, 152, 159, 187, 209, 251, 259, 262, 270 agency, 19, 21, 67 Alliance for Progress, 32, 54 Ambato, 31, 37–38, 62n. 4, 250 anthropology, 5–7, 24, 280, see also ethnographic research, ethnography architectural representation(s), xiv, 26, 205–10, 223, 254, 257, 258, 263, 282 architecture colonial, 43, 146, 147, 208, 219 faculty, see also faculty of architecture neoclassicist, 194, 195, 206, 219, 260 vernacular, 11, 15, 148, 196, 202, 283 architecture without architects, 10, 14, 202, 203 arquitectura cuencana, 147, 154, 189–91, 194–95, 199, 206, 209, 214, 219, 250–51 art history, 7, 10 artisans, 23, 45, 46, 47, 146, 163, 223 Azuay xv, 2, 34, 42, 48, 109, 193–94, 220n. 2

Chimborazo, xi, xv, 2, 34–42, 61n. 2, 109, 119, 135, 143n. 4, 222–27, 244, 249 chola, cholo, 36, 46, 164, 177, 197, 204, 214–215, 219–20, 223, 225, 260, 262, 274, 280, 281 Chola Cuencana, 46, 52, 275–76 cholificación, 241, 246, 253, 263 cities intermediate, 1, 2, 4, 7, 29, 30, 33, 34, 55, 56, 285 medium-sized, 32, 41, 266 city marketing, 50–54 colonial architecture, see architecture critical regionalism, 147, 189, 259 cultural elite(s), see elite(s) culture chicha, 110–13, 140, 142, 180, 258, 260, 262, 281 high, 8–15, 270 hybrid, 15, 260, 281, low, 15, 258 popular, 8–15, 259–63, 281–82

B Bourdieu, Pierre, 8, 12–14, 16, 258 built environment, see environment

E elite(s) cultural, xiv, 6, 13, 26, 45, 142, 154, 185, 194, 196, 203, 223, 245, 247, 263, 275, 278 planning, 2, 11, 187, 216, 257, 266–68, 272, 281

C Cañar, 42, 48, 178 Castells, Manuel, 19, 258, 264, 266, 271, 273

D dwellings, 11, 115 city, 163, 196 traditional, 15

312 | Index

environment built, 2, 6–8, 11, 20, 24, 30, 41, 60, 145, 148, 222, 241, 248, 253, 255, 267 residential, 3, 7, 16, 25, 284, 287 ethnicity, 46–47, 164, 246, see also identity ethnographic research, xii, 20, 280, 284–90, see also anthropology, ethnography ethnography, 22–24, see also anthropology, ethnographic research F faculty of architecture, xiv–xv, 44–45, 147, 184, 186–90, 192, 194–95, 200, 213, 218, 231, 233, 242, 286 furnishing, 125–26, 139, 141, 142, 161–62, 173–76 G Gatto Sobral, Gilberto, 44, 146, 147 gentrification, 17, 53, 277 Gilbert, Alan, 4, 18, 54, 99, 165, 256, see also Peter Ward Goffman, Ervin, 20–21, 24, 99 H hacienda(s), 33, 38, 45, 60, 61, 67, 79, 137, 186, 190, 224 Halloween, 49, 277, 278 hanan/hurin, 91, 100, 256, 274 Hannerz, Ulf, 5, 16, 24, 112, 187, 263, 278 Harvey, David, 2–3, 19 heritage cultural, 13, 17, 44, 47, 205, 208, 213, 226, 241, 248, 253, 282 World, 29, 44–45, 51–52, 151, 167, 248, see UNESCO Hirschkind, Lynn, 2, 3, 45, 186, 187, 190 Holston, James, 10, 50, 144, 176, 258, 265–66, 268, 270, 271 housing cooperative, 54, 57, 61, 64–77, 80, 191, 211, 240 policy, 30, 34, 50, 54–55, 60, 66, 96, 288

program, 56, 181 huasipichana, huasipichay, 104, 134–41, 144, 272 hybrid culture, see culture hygiene, 127, 163, 164, 274, 276 I identity, identities cultural, 3, 273 ethnic, 40, 135, see also ethnicity local, 27, 45, 46, 148, 195, 206–7, 216, 219, 220, 222, 247, 249–51, 254–55, 272, 276–77, 279, 289 informal neighbourhood(s), xii, 5, 17–18, 34, 99, 102, 106, 249, 253 intellectuals, 12, 23, 30, 45, 46, 223, 224, 252, 260, 281 intermediate cities, see cities K Kant, Immanuel, see Kantian ideas, 10 Kantian view, 11 L La Paz, 260, 261 Lefebvre, Henri, 1, 19–21, 24 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 8, 145 Lima, 5, 112, 260, 262, 270 Liribamba, 37, 243–44 Low, Setha, 20, 24–25, 155, 266–7, 270, 273, 283n. 1 M Matos Mar, José, 112, 260, 262, 270, 281 media, 41, 52, 218, 277 medium-sized cities, see cities mestizaje, 262 metropolises, 1, 4, 5, 15, 56, 61, 100, 112, 266, 279–80, 281, 285 modernismo, 207, 254, 265 modernity, 125, 202, 262 monument(s), 9, 43, 53, 54, 154, 248–52, 263

Index | 313

N narrative(s), 17, 21, 179 neoclassicist style, 146, 209 O Oliver, Paul, 7, 11–12, 145, 148 P planning department, xv, 53, 57, 58, 59, 76, 83, 106, 227, 228, 233, 235, 236, 237, 238, 252, 253, 288 elite(s), see elite(s) spatial, 222, 240, 267, 268, 271, 272, 279, 281 urban, 1, 2, 34, 40, 57, 61, 75, 76, 148, 186, 188, 209, 218, 221, 222, 227, 228, 235, 245, 246, 255n. 3, 259, 265, 284, 285 postmodernist buildings, architecture, 147, 148, 206 public space(s), 2, 6, 24, 25, 63, 64, 126, 254, 258, 264, 265, 277, 279, 288 Puruhá, 37, 143n. 4, 243, 244 Q Quechua community, communities, 132, 134, 138 Quechua population, 36, 61, 225, 242 Quechuas, 135, 243, 244, 249, 253, 264, 266, 268, 280 R Rabinow, Paul, 10, 265–66 real estate, 44, 149, 210, 243, 253 market, 222, 244, 246, 253, 268, 270, 271, 272 residential environment, see environment Rudofsky, Bernard, 10, 202 rural migrants, 18, 33, 40, 109, 112, 181, 221, 222, 225, 241, 245, 246, 253, 260, 275, 281

S SIV program, 55–56, 61, 104, 115, 116 social class(es), 3, 13, 14, 19, 66, 104, 149, 166, 176–80, 182, 191, 193, 197, 212, 215, 216, 223, 251, 258, 264, 275, 276 social housing, 30, 54–56, 76, 115, 181, 191, 217, 226, 266, 267, 288 social mobility, 47, 102, 176, 271, 278, 282 spatial planning, see planning symbolic struggle, 19, 148, 196, 207, 244, 263, 283 T taste bad, 152, 171 good, 13, 206 poor, 185, 200–201, 215, 219–20, 253, 261, 267 Tomebamba, 42, 44, 45 Turner, John, 17–18 turn-key house(s), home(s), 210, 215, 219, 267, 279 U UNESCO 29, 44, 55, 151, 167, 263, 277, see heritage urbanism, 207, 249, 253 urban planning, see planning V vernacular architecture, see architecture W Ward, Peter, 12, 17, 18, 32, 54, 99, 103, 176, 191, 236, 256, see also Alan Gilbert Z zona roja, 58, 95 zoning plan, 57