Decency and Excess by Samuel Martinez

Author:Samuel Martinez [Martinez, Samuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594511882
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2007-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

The rooms in the pabellones and casitas are absolutely identical, with the exception of the corner rooms in the pabellones, which are somewhat larger than the others. That the storage closets in each room are divided into four separate compartments suggests that the entire complex was designed to be inhabited by groups of single men, one storage compartment for each man. In fact, local bosses generally do house four single men in each room in the braceros’ barracks there. Yet in spite of the uniformity of the rooms, Monte Coca residents favor the casitas and detest the pabellones. The term “casitas” itself suggests a different perception of this kind of barracks, and the casitas were accordingly assigned mainly to families that were already in permanent residence on the estate. Far fewer single men have rooms in the casitas than in the pabellón barracks; none of these are Haitian. By contrast, two of the three pabellones in La Construcción are used exclusively to house braceros. These are the buildings that I have noted are regarded as highly “indecent” places to live.

It is not just the pabellones’ association with the braceros but the lay-out of these barracks that residents find irksome. Pabellón residents and others agree that it can be unpleasant to have the door to your room open out onto a small central courtyard. Having to cross this shared space to enter or exit the rooms frequently makes it impossible to avoid seeing your neighbors in various states of emotion, sobriety or (un)dress as well as confronting the sights, sounds and smells of everyone else’s laundry and cooking. It seems likely that this design shortcoming was determinant in the decision to house the braceros in the pabellones. The door of each casita, by contrast, gives out to a small open lot. Having no door that gives direct access from their rooms to the space outside the courtyard also makes it difficult for pabellón residents to use the small spaces immediately adjacent to their residences as private yards. As I discuss in the next section of this chapter, staking out, planting and decorating a yard is one means by which batey residents personalize and enhance the comfort of their living environments.

To the discerning eye, this quick walk through Monte Coca reveals a number of ways in which power is inscribed into the design and lay-out of the batey. I have already noted that one reason for constructing densely inhabited, nucleated settlements is to minimize the amount of land that the workers and their human needs subtract from sugarcane cultivation. Dense settlements also facilitate surveillance and control, as does the lay-out of the workers’ barracks following more or less regular lines, with enough space between each building to leave sight lines open. The barracks built in La Construcción in the 1970s have essentially the same floor plan as the first barracks built in Monte Coca in the 1880s, and, for that matter, are the same as those built even earlier on sugar plantations in nineteenth-century Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Guyana and Trinidad.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.