Ruminations of an Expatriate

More Construction In Mexico

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

A few days ago I po sted pictures of the work of constructing an addition to the apartment building in which I live.

The workers are now placing the reinforcement bar for the beams that will support the upper floors and placing the form work for the second floor slab itself.

Above is a shot of some of the construction workers after work on Saturday afternooon enjoying a few hands of cards. I have become quite familiar with the fellows, who, I think, consider it a bit odd that a gringo would take such an interest in their work.

The photo at right shows the form work for the second floor slab. The posts are slender tree trunks which support wooden boards laid on edge, over which are placed thinner boards upon which the second floor slab will be poured.

Again, every bit of concrete used in the construction is mixed by hand on a concrete slab, using shovels, and placed into or onto the forms using five gallon buckets.

And here you can see a typical rebar bundle for the beams that will span from column to column and which support the upper floor walls.

The rebar is laid up essentially in the same manner as it is in the USA, but here the bundles are put together on site using only hand tools and manual labor. Often in the USA the rebar bundles are assembled in specialized workshops and shipped to the site for placement.

In the USA workers use special twister type pliers to secure the tie wire that is used to connect the pieces of rebar together. Here the fellows use a piece of rebar that is bent at 90 degrees and sharpened at one end to twist the wires that connect the pieces.

I find it all quite fascinating.

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Posted in Travel, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico | 5 Comments »

New Year Eve

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008

As I mentioned a few days ago that I would , I spent new year eve at the Tavola Trattoria restaurant and stayed out later than I have since my thirtieth high school reunion ten years ago. I had spent my previous two new year eves here at home.

When I arrived at 9:30, no other customers had arrived and didn’t begin to arrive until after ten. Generally speaking folks here begin their partying or music events later and stay at it later, including the children, than that to which I am accustomed. (Many nightclub music performances don’t get underway until 9:30 or 10:00.) By 10:30 two of the three Tavola seating areas were full of celebrating families.

I spent the evening at a table with the restaurant owner, her mother and younger sister, a gringa from Chicago who teaches English here, and a friend of the owner and her ten year old daughter Nelany, a Hawaiian name meaning tranquil sky, as her mother informed me.

The was much dancing, which the young children seem to particularly enjoy; a delicious four course meal of appetizers, ravioli stuffed with four different cheeses and spinach, beef roast and mashed potatoes, and double chocolate cake; champagne; and sparklers for the strike of midnight. We were each also provided a glass with twelve grapes, one for each month. One makes a wish while eating each grape.

During the evening about a third of those present continually had their cell phones open, sending and receiving felicidades to and from their friends and families. At one point, Nelany asked her mother for her phones and her mother pulled three phones out of her purse, two of which were Nelany’s and only one hers, she assured me. She indicated that Nelany is familiar with all of the phone and her home computer functions while she, herself, was capable of only making calls and sending email.

At midnight the sparklers were lit and everyone in the restaurant got up and circulated to wish every other patron a happy new year, a wish accompanied by hugs, kisses, and hand shakes.

It was a wonderful evening.

There is apparently not the fondness for new year fireworks here, as I remember there is in Merida. There the explosions continued through the night. Here I heard only a couple of reports.

I should also note that the Chedraui store where I shop frequently put out racks of red and yellow bra/panty sets a week or so before new year eve. I have since learned from reading “What I Do All Day” that the underwear is worn for luck, one color for luck in love and the other for money.

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Construction in Mexico

Sunday, December 23rd, 2007

The owner of the apartment building where I live is adding more apartments. The construction site is what used to be a parking area where I was able to store my pickup. The work began in the Summer, and every day since there have been from two to more than ten fellows working on the project.

The work began with the demolition of the areas of the parking lot slab where footings would be poured and a small structure that existed on the site. Demolition was completed by a group of fellows with hammers and chisels. No machinery was used.

There is almost ubiquitous here during weekdays and Saturdays the clinking of hammers on chisels and the thump of sledge hammers colliding with masonry, as workers demolish or remodel existing structures.

Keep in mind that labor here is inexpensive so everything is done quite labor intensively. I believe the minimum wage for construction workers here is about 47 pesos per day, roughly the equivalent of $4.35 US.

These photos show typical construction in Mexico, which consists of concrete columns, spanned by concrete beams, and topped with a structural slab floor or roof. The columns you see here will support the load of two additional stories and a roof. You can also see that lumber supports have been placed against the columns, upon which the beam forms will be placed. The spaces between the columns will be filled with either brick or concrete blocks, which will be finished with a layer of stucco.

Every bit of concrete that you can see in the photos, and a substantial quantity which can not be seen, has been mixed by hand and poured into the forms from buckets. The concrete is mixed on the existing concrete slab, where gravel is placed in a bowl shape; sand, cement, and water are added; and workers with scoop type shovels do the mixing. Such is how concrete is typically mixed here. A couple of days ago there was a group of workers mixing concrete in Calle Calijero, one of the main drags through the Centro shopping district, with which to patch a relatively large portion of one side of the street which had been excavated.

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