The Vernacular Architecture of the “Coffee Landscape” in Colombia A Study in the Three Types of Settlements and Lifestyles of La Cabaña and El Chuzo

Presented by: Juanita Botero Lopez Supervised by: Dr. Robert Mellin

Urban Design and Housing Program School of Architecture McGill University Montreal

A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Post- Professional Master of Architecture

September, 2016 ©

1 Abstract

The main purpose of this research is to demonstrate the connection between the vernacular architecture of La Cabaña and El Chuzo, two coffee regions of Caldas, Colombia, and how their ordinary domestic spaces of everyday life are defined and intimately related to the process of coffee production. The study of both veredas will lead us to understand an architecture that has been shaped by the two systems of coffee production in Caldas, known as Latifundios1 (La Cabaña) and minifundios2 (El Chuzo). Both systems determine the social and economic structure of the Caldas coffee region and therefore also its vernacular architecture and its peoples’ everyday life. This study will demonstrate the tangible and intangible qualities of these places, enabling us to understand in a deep way their values, meaning, and change over time.

In Colombia, a country just starting to document its history and to create a written patrimony, being able to narrate what people do not know about La Cabaña and El Chuzo is a way to work toward a better understanding of the coffee region´s vernacular architecture and cultural landscape, and its sense of place and identity.

To achieve this understanding of the coffee region, the project is undertaken in the emerging field of Cultural Landscape studies. This methodology aims to identify and analyze the essential and fundamental qualities of specific places, to then reveal their sense of place and identity. The study is done through historic photographs, recorded memories, oral histories, interviews, direct observation and documentation of peoples’ everyday lives around the process of coffee production. Only by studying how people live and the activities that take place in their domestic spaces and by being part of their everyday life, will we be able to understand how the vernacular architecture of La Cabaña and El Chuzo has been shaped by the process and culture of coffee production.

1 Latifundios is the way in which large portions of land that belong to one landlord are named. In the coffee region of Colombia a land parcel between 30 and 40 hectares and a maximum of 60 is considered a Latifundio. 2 Minifundios are small portions of land that belong to one landlord, which do not exceed 5 hectares.

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Acknowledgments

My interest in studying the coffee region of Colombia emerged from a surprising and fortunate coincidence and event. In starting my masters, I was fortunate to have as my supervisor the architect and researcher Professor Robert Mellin, an expert and authority in Cultural Landscape studies. In addition, I am the fifth generation of a family who has been producing coffee in Colombia for more than 100 years. After mentioning this to Professor Mellin, he encouraged and supported me to study the coffee region of Colombia and to develop a cultural landscape study in the region where my family produces coffee.

I want to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Robert Mellin, for his enthusiasm in my research, his support, and for encouraging me to develop this study. He not only motivated me to develop research in this region, but he also allowed me to see my family tradition of producing coffee with completely new eyes.

I am also deeply grateful to my family. I will like to specially mention my grandmother, Julia Calderon de Botero, my father Jose Fernando Botero, and my uncle Ricardo Botero to whom I owe the most sincere thanks for being a key element in my fieldwork. They demonstrated profound interest and cooperation during the whole process.

It was also a privilege to count on the support of all people in the coffee region. I express my profound gratitude to all the generous and helpful workers and peasants of the farms I visited; their cooperation was enormously important to my work.

Last but not least, I am very grateful to my parents and brother, who always encouraged me in my academic and professional life and who have always inspired me to continue my studies and dreams as an architect.

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Introduction

It is not news that one of the best coffees in the world is Colombian coffee. Around its consumption a culture has been created in every country of the world, and in Colombia, around its production, a way of life. The relationship between Colombia´s coffee region inhabitants and the process of producing coffee has shaped much of the nation’s cultural values, way of life, socio-economic structure, and vernacular architecture and everyday life.

The aim of this study is to document the everyday architecture and way of living of the people from one of the most representative regions of Colombia’s coffee cultural landscape. The study focuses on La Cabaña and El Chuzo, two veredas located in El Municipio de Manizales, Caldas, both of which have a particular way of producing coffee and living. In this region coffee is produced under two economic systems, which are Minifundios (El Chuzo) and Latifundios (La Cabaña). Both systems define the three types of settlements found in the rural areas of both veredas. The first kind of settlement is small coffee grower farms. The second one, big landowner farms, while the last is caserios, or small villages of big farm workers. In all three, I studied the construction techniques and materials, composition, formal structure, social orders, change over time, and everyday life of the vernacular architecture.

To have a better understanding of the coffee landscape, a cultural landscape study, which is based in a qualitative and observational method, was undertaken. Interviews were conducted with people to know how they live their everyday life. These were accompanied by measured drawings, oral histories, photographs, and sketches to visualize and analyze the coffee landscape, to reveal the patterns, identity, and everyday life of the people from La Cabaña and El Chuzo. An understanding of the social, cultural, and economic forces that ultimately shape the architecture and everyday life of this region was sought and played a crucial element in this study. The starting point for the development of this research was to identify the main elements of the coffee region that have shaped the architecture of this region over time. Subsequently, to develop an analysis on the macro level of the territory, I developed a study on the micro-level of the three types of settlements.

4 For the first chapter, a literature review regarding the concepts, methodology, and importance of developing Cultural Landscape studies in vernacular architecture and the architecture of the everyday was done. Then an overview regarding the history of the region to understand its context and position in social, economic, and cultural terms was undertaken. Furthermore, a study of the territory, or the way land is divided and how people live and move around this landscape, will be illustrated. A fourth chapter develops a study of the three different kinds of settlements that exist in the rural area of La Cabaña and El Chuzo.

The result is a document that reveals the identity, cultural values, patterns, and everyday life of La Cabaña and El Chuzo coffee cultural landscapes and vernacular architecture. This study will work as a departure point for future studies of greater detail in one of the houses or structures here identified. This study will also open up opportunities for other people to explore this area.

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CHAPTER I Literature Review

98 percent of the built environment has been planned by ordinary people, not by architects or urban planners (Dendra, 2013). Therefore an immensity of landscapes, spaces, and structures that can be considered ordinary spaces are awaiting study, understanding, and documentation. In schools of architecture we learn different methods to study what is considered “monumental or important architecture.” In my personal case, when I was an undergraduate student, I studied some of the buildings by Francesco Borromini, Le Corbusier, Rogelio Salmona, Mendes Da Rocha, and Mies Van der Rohe, but never traditional or vernacular architecture outside of a very technical study of some informal settlements in Bogota and Medellin. But we cannot ignore that within vernacular and everyday architecture lies the essence and meaning of societies and cultures. As Paul Groth asserts, “Everyday experience is essential to the formation of human meaning. When only monuments or high-style designers are taken seriously, the everyday environment is overlooked and undervalued.” (Groth, 1997, pg.3) But how to study the everyday landscape and the vernacular architecture? How to undertake research to understand a cultural landscape, its vernacular architecture and its everyday spaces in a way that reveals its identity and values?

Scholars in different fields and from multiple disciplines who are concerned about the study of the ordinary and everyday architecture and places have been able to interpret the built environment at different levels, to understand the culture, values, change over time and identity of a place, through Cultural Landscape studies. Such authors include John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Henry Glassy, Paul Groth, and Robert Mellin. The work of Jackson, who dedicated his life to understand and interpret the American landscape, and the studies of Robert Mellin, who for decades has focused on Tilting, a fishing town in Newfoundland, Canada to illustrate its everyday life, are perfect examples of how Cultural Landscape and Material Culture studies lead us to a better understanding of ordinary spaces.

Cultural Landscapes

6 Cultural Landscapes are natural environments that have been shaped by a human society over time under various economic, social, and cultural forces, and as a result have their own identities and characters. In the words of Carl Sauer, who was the first to introduce the term in 1925, “the cultural landscape is fashioned from the natural landscape by a cultural group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape the result.” (cited in Wilson & Groth, 2003, p.343)

In defining a Cultural Landscape the notion of time is also essential. In the words of Paul Groth, “Cultural Landscape studies focus most on the history of how people have used everyday space—buildings, rooms, streets, fields, or yards—to establish their identity, articulate their social relation, and derive cultural meaning.” (Groth, 1997) This means that in shaping a Cultural Landscape, the role that history plays is vitally important. A Landscape’s change over time as well as the values and patterns that remain over time is what reinforces it. As Ken Taylor states, “The landscape is an unsurpassed record of social history waiting to be read.” (Taylor & Lennon, 2012, p.2) If we learn how to see and interpret the landscape, then, and specifically to read the intangible values that we inscribe in tangible structures, the character of any society and its sense of place, identity, and memories will be revealed. Therefore, Cultural Landscape studies and a better understanding of ordinary environments leads us to a deeper understanding of a place, and specifically of vernacular landscapes and everyday architectures.

The Meaning of Landscape

To achieve a better understanding of what Cultural Landscape studies are, we should pay particular attention to the concept of Landscape. Today we understand landscapes as a man-made system and cultural process and product that is full of material structures and sets of forms that are in turn the visible expressions of cultural values and human behaviour. Therefore, as Paul Groth states, “For writers in Cultural Landscape studies, the term Landscape means more than a pleasing view of scenery. Landscape denotes the interaction of people and place: a social group and its spaces, particularly the spaces to which the group belongs and from which its members derive some part of their shared identity and meaning.” (Groth, 1997, p.36)

Although today’s definition of Landscape is far from its first definition, it is surprising how not only common people but also some professionals in architecture still have

7 the idea of a Landscape as only a scenery view. I venture to affirm this, because during my fieldwork almost all people had the idea that I was only looking for the “best scenery view” of the Caldas coffee region. Thanks to this notion, I visited and saw amazing places and sunsets, but I also grasped the importance of the evolution and significance of the concept Landscape.

Jackson, as mentioned above and today an authority in Cultural Landscape studies, was also concerned in defining and studying the evolution of the term. According to him, when the concept Landscape was first introduced, it was defined within an artistic perspective, where the immediate visual experience of the landscape occupied the principal place. First understood as the picture of a view, a two- dimensional picture that was not only a picture but also the view itself, only eventually did a Landscape start to be understood as a “three-dimensional shared reality.” (Jackson, 1984, p.5) In architectural terms, the concept of Landscape moved from a garden design and scenic view to working landscapes or agricultural societies. A landscape is “a composition of man-made or man-modified spaces to serve an infrastructure or background for our collective existence; and if background seems inappropriately modest we should remember that in our modern use of the word it means that which underscores not only our identity and presence, but also our history.” (Jackson, 1984)

Working Landscapes

For the purpose of this research, it is appropriate here to emphasize and go deeper not only into the concept of Landscape, but also into the concept of working Landscapes. Working Landscapes are Landscapes shaped by cultivation and by agriculture, and are characterized by achieving a balance between human and natural forces. In the words of Chris Wilson, a Working Landscape is a “particular area shaped by a cultural group and strongly influenced by the limits of soil, climate, and plan life.” (Wilson & Groth, 2003, p.5) Although all Landscapes have a story to tell, Cultural Landscape studies pay special attention to Working Landscapes, which change over time as a response to the needs of the people living and working in them while also maintaining a distinctive character. Working Landscapes are a collective project of many generations.

8 In Working Landscapes it is easy to find the main three principles of the term sustainability (social, economic, and ecological). Sustainability that is inevitably linked with Cultural Landscapes always highlights the distinction between the use and the abuse of nature, which is framed by an ethical way of living and using the land. A proper use of the land avoids natural environment destruction and marks a limit between destruction and transformation. Sustainability is a perfect term to describe Working Landscapes because it embodies how Cultural Landscapes and Working Landscapes are natural environments framed over time by human societies, achieving a balance between all forces that shape a landscape, but above all respecting the natural and surrounded environment.

Importance

According to Lewis the human landscape is an appropriate source of self-knowledge. Studying ordinary and everyday Landscapes helps us to discover social structures, everyday activities, and the culture of a place. Cultural Landscape studies not only create a better understanding of a place but they also become essential for a better design and management of the built environment.

The goal of good Landscape studies is to learn how to read the Landscape, to find in everyday and ordinary settings essential human concerns. Jackson states that, “The beauty that we see in the vernacular landscape is the image of our common humanity: hard work, stubborn hope, and mutual forbearance striving to be love. I believe that a landscape which makes these qualities manifest is one that can be called beautiful.” (Jackson, 1984, p.XII) Cultural Landscape studies aim to reveal the values and identity of a place, and to document and contribute for a better understanding of the everyday environment, for both academics and larger publics.

Methodology

Cultural Landscape studies have no single approved method: not only the subject but also the built environment has an inherently interdisciplinary nature. “The new writers are less likely to search for a single social or cultural value in the cultural environment. They see the landscape not as one book but as multiple, coexisting texts or (in keeping with literary post-modernism) as compelling fragmentary

9 expressions.” (Groth, 1997) What is important is to have a rigorous and explicit method and set of rules.

The first step is to learn how to look. Learning how to look involves finding the best way for the researcher to understand the composition and form of the landscape, to then be able to make connections between the tangible and intangible and finally reveal the patterns and elements from the Landscape that show the essence and the identity of the place. To achieve such an understanding of the intangible and reveal the essence of a place, its culture and people, Cultural Landscape studies in architecture must develop a method in which we train our eyes and brain to read and see the built environment and everyday surroundings as the evidence of cultural values and social life. According to Ken Taylor, “Products in the landscape— buildings, structures, patterns of land-use—are the tangible physical components of the landscape, the what, when and where. But these need to be viewed and understood within a cultural context of why they are there, why does the landscape take the shape that it does and who has been involved over time in its shaping.” (Taylor & Lennon, 2012, p.7) Learning how to read the architecture of the everyday and the vernacular architecture of a place is what architects should seek.

For the interpretation of ordinary landscapes we must look for people and places, particularities and the day-to-day life. We must look at all scales, from the macro- level to the micro-level, to understand the present-day scene and we must pay special attention to the unseen. In the Landscape and the built environment, what leads us to understand the values, culture, and identity of a place is the intangible. Jackson argues that the “landscape must be regarded first of all in terms of living rather than looking.” (Groth, 1997) Having a well-trained eye to find the appropriate questions and a way to answer them, and learning to distinguish between descriptive and interpretative studies is vitally important. If a landscape writer connects his eyes to his brain well, then he will reach his goal (Groth, 1997). In practical terms, a qualitative method should be used, and the researcher should develop on-site sketches, measuring the buildings and creating detailed drawings, interviews, maps, and photographs. She needs to submerge herself within and explore the selected place in a critical and analytical way, by learning about peoples’ everyday lives, how they live, and how they interact with each other (Groth, 1997).

Secondly, it is important to clarify the importance of both change over time and the meaning of culture in Cultural Landscape studies. The Landscape cannot be

10 considered a historical museum stopped in time, as it is being made and made over by people. Although Landscapes’ identities and traditional skills and knowledge are a constant, they also evolve and change over time, due to economic, social, cultural, and political issues. This is why researchers must pay special attention to all traces in the landscape that reveal patterns that both last but also evolve over time.

With regard to the concept of culture, in the words of Paul Groth, culture can be considered as “a changing set of social relations, rules and meanings woven through everyday life... Culture is not frozen or superorganic entity that somehow acts upon people and landscapes without their conscious action or knowledge; rather, culture is recreated or changed through individual lives.” (Groth, 1997, p.11) Culture is intangible; unseen, immaterial, but what shapes our values, ideas, and beliefs and provides rules for social interaction in our physical and built environment. In other words, we make things (shelter) through our culture, which means that the material world that surrounds us is an indicator of our cultural values. In architectural terms, culture plays a big part of what shapes the built environment, everyday architecture, and ordinary buildings; as a result, buildings have the potential to communicate social and cultural values beyond descriptive and subjective observation centered on formal structures. So studying and making connections between culture and the built environment will lead us to understand the patterns and reveal the identity of a place.

Architecture of the Everyday

As architects we are tempted to consider that only important buildings display values, but “unimportant” buildings also display values that we have not learned to appreciate. We have to open our eyes to ordinary buildings and study them through an analysis that looks at tangible structures in the built environment in order to identify formal structures and patterns, as well as a more intangible study that involves understanding human behaviours, peoples’ everyday lives, and change over time.

As Steven Harries states, “The everyday is that which remains after one has eliminated all specialized activities.” (Harries & Deborah, 1997, p.69) Everyday structures are often taken for granted, as they are durable, solid, and remain without any apparent change or significant quality. To deal with the everyday requires developing a sensitive engagement with peoples’ everyday environments and lives,

11 to then be able to find poetry within the routine, the repetitive, and the cyclical. “Lefebvre´s concept of everyday life…at its most basic, it is simply ‘real life,’ the ‘here and now’; it is ‘sustenance, clothing, furniture, homes, neighbourhoods, environments’ but with a ‘dramatic attitude’ and ‘lyrical tone’.“ (Harries & Deborah, 1997) The everyday must be studied with no assumptions, with a very open mind and open eyes to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, and it must be studied knowing that social, economic, political, and cultural values are a big part of what gives shape to the architecture of the everyday. In other words, the context is what will lead us to understand and interpret ordinary environments and to find its real meaning. As Henri Lefebvre states in his article, “The Everyday and Everydayness” (1987), “Every complex ‘whole,’ from the smallest tool to the greatest works of art and learning, therefore possessed a symbolic value linking them to meaning at its most vast: to divinity and humanity, power and wisdom, good and evil, happiness and misery, the perennial and the ephemeral. These immense values were themselves mutable according to historical circumstances, to social classes, to rulers and mentors.” (cited in Harries & Deborah, 1997, p.33)

Vernacular Architecture

Vernacular architecture and ordinary buildings are designed and built by peasants, farmers, craftsmen, or common people, using local techniques and local materials with the local environment in mind: its climate, its traditions, and its economy. Vernacular architecture predominantly exists in the countryside or small villages. Vernacular architecture is loyal to local forms and structures, rarely accepting innovation from outside the region. According to Carter and Cromley, vernacular architecture studies may be defined as the study of those human actions and behaviours that are manifest in commonplace architecture (Carter & Cromley, 2005). And according to Eric Mercer, “vernacular architecture is the common building of a given place and time.” (Carter & Cromley, 2005, p.8) In brief, vernacular architecture buildings are commonly the architecture that satisfies and addresses most closely peoples’ needs. It addresses problems of shelter, work, identity, and cultural and aesthetic affiliation.

Vernacular architecture is meant to study the relationship between everyday objects and culture and the built ordinary environment and people. But overall, as Henry Glassie states, “Architecture gives physical form to claims and names, to memories

12 and hopes. As a conceptual activity, architecture is a matter of forming ideas into plans, plans into things that other people can see. Architecture shapes relations between people. It is a kind of communication. The mode of its thinking connects architecture to all of culture, but its mode of realization distinguishes it from other varieties of communication.” (Glassie, 2000, p.22)

Vernacular Architecture Studies

A powerful tool to approach a study in vernacular architecture is the eight principles that Henry Glassie states in order to help us understand, study, and find answers in vernacular architecture (Glassie, 2000). Materialization, the first one, makes reference to the construction process and materials that are used in ordinary buildings. By definition, vernacular architecture is built with local and not imported materials. Working with local materials demands knowledge in growing things, the understanding of seeds, soil, and weather that farmers develop in time. As people learn about the environment, they know how to select and work each material. With these local materials they produce environmentally efficient, beautiful, and affordable buildings. Glassie states, “Local materials are their resources, their technologies are powered by their own muscles, but their aim is to create emblems of culture presence.” (Glassie, 2000, p.31) Technologies and production transform universal materials into architectural materials, trees into wood and then walls and soil into roof tiles.

With the use of local materials, connections between people and nature and between people and people is establish. In vernacular architecture it is not only one occupant who gives shape to a building. The process of building and inhabiting vernacular architecture occurs within a social organization, immersed in a traditional pattern of division of work. It is a community connected by culture who designs, constructs, and gives use to space.

By saying this, the second characteristic can be introduced, which refers to social orders and the idea of community. People in small groups raise their own food, make their own clothing, and build their own shelter. In the words of Henry Glassie, communities “at work with others, they have created their landscape…they have built the world they inhabit. In action, in engagement, they have learned from the environment about nature, and from the neighbours about human nature. They have

13 learned what is possible and what is not, and they know they are capable. They know how to set priorities and act decisively. I am talking about peasants. They know how, as individuals, they fit in the world.” (Glassie, 2000, p.49) They trust in times of need, and they believe in reciprocity, cooperation, and engagement with the environment and their neighbours. They work as a team, they become experts in what they do, and each one of them has a specific role. What they do is something that has been tested, not only by nature but also by the community for generations. That does not mean that changes cannot occur, but when they occur, they are carefully done and are rooted in pre-existing solutions.

Building and giving form to space involves a process of composition, which is the third aspect stated by Glassie. Composition is not only a problem of where to put walls and what materials to use, it is a problem of how to create and give form to space. “Architecture divides space for differential experience. It provides an exterior to see and an interior to use. One problem the designer must solve is how to make the exterior and the interior, appearance and function, fit together in a composition.” (Glassie, 2000, p.52) In this sense, vernacular architecture has mainly two approaches: one in which the interior use is not revealed in the exterior, and a second in which the exterior is the consequence of the life inside, the result of patterns of use. But what really matters in terms of composition is the tension between private and public. “People in rural communities construct a real of rights between the public and the private.” (Glassie, 2000, p.56) Local etiquette makes people know how to use space, and how to recognize the communal space that lies between private and public

Going into more detail in architectural terms, architectural decoration and artefacts, the fourth principles shown by Glassie, are also essential elements in vernacular architecture. The house confronts the body and delights the senses. Ornaments treat the body and architecture in a very special way; materials and spaces talk brutally but artefacts and ornaments reveal what we like and how we live, not only inside but also outside. The inside is crucial to understanding where families and communities intimately exchange their everyday lives and the outside is a way to understand their visuality and how they shelter people from climate. In the words of Henry Glassie, “Acts of composition bring interiors and exteriors together, massing and ornamenting buildings into units that contain diversity.” (Glassie, 2000, p.79)

14 Composition not only mediates domestic activities like sleeping, eating, and cooking, but also how to make these activities come together and whether it is better to combine or disperse them. Composition also mediates between agriculture and work buildings and it plays with more than one unit, on all scales, from the macro to the micro levels. It moves from familial to working and communal spaces and it recognize them as part of a whole. Composition also deals with natural, social, and economic forces—the same forces that shape culture and that are determined by local values and peoples’ behaviours. This leads us to declare that no object can be studied in isolation; the environment sets the conditions that shape physical structures and objects. Although the whole might be divided into zones, defined by different forces that organize the landscape, studying peoples’ dwellings and architecture requires understanding its environment and social conditions, because people respond to these elements when they shape their physical environment.

The sense of time and change over time in architecture, and especially in vernacular architecture, is vitally important. A dichotomy exists between the fact that no vernacular building is entirely new because they are constantly changing, and the presence of continuity, tradition, and the folk in buildings. The latter makes a group of people think in patterns. Some patterns and values never change; these define typologies and are unbreakable, shaped by traditions and deeply rooted in culture and human behaviour. These patterns merge old and new, and change over time in connection with use and social, communal, and economic change. “The building says clearly that social interaction matters more than shifts in fashion, that local orders matter more than national orders. It says that what continues matters more than what changes. A history that tells only a tale of change misses the most important part of history. Its story is trivial.” (Glassie, 2000, p.75) What is important is to identify the hierarchy of values and patterns. Some are ephemeral, not strong enough to shape peoples’ behaviours and cultures. But vernacular architecture is wise enough to erase these, which will weaken and disappear. Our eyes must be trained to discard weak elements even when they are still present.

Going back to the idea of the importance of external forces in shaping vernacular architecture, economic and social changes also dictate a transformation in architectural composition and patterns. Shifts in emphasis and tendencies in time can change architecture. “Since architecture is not a system into itself, the architectural change provides the clearest evidence of a cultural change led from communal order that mixed social and economic goals.” (Glassie, 2000, p.107)

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Change is inevitable, as Working Landscapes respond to cultural, social, technological, economic, and political changes, all of which can be seen in architecture. Buildings change over time as they respond to the changing needs of people, so they are constantly rethought and rebuilt. One building can be adapted to a particular moment in history, or can be multiple buildings over time. Changing the furniture location in a home is a way of evolving and changing a way of living. Houses speak about history; modified old houses can tell stories and new houses reveal the reinterpretation and evolution of societies and cultures. What we need to know is the reason behind such changes.

It can be claimed that Henry Glassie´s eight principles are a call to understand buildings in their context, to understand architecture as a witness to cultural values and the identity of a place and its change over time. Trying to read the vernacular architecture of a place and its Landscape out of context is completely useless. Context is what gives meaning to tangible and intangible findings in the vernacular architecture and what leads us to deeply understand its values and identity.

Methodology

A qualitative and observational method is what best responds and covers what is needed for a Cultural Landscape study in vernacular architecture. Although historic knowledge is required to deeply understand the why of things, a well-trained eye is essential to find representative buildings in a world of possibilities and to identify and make relevant and strong enough conclusions that embrace and reveal cultural values and the essence of a place.

Historical documents, texts, and secondary sources can only give us an indirect or filtered idea of what happened in the past. Studying buildings implies having immediate contact with what is being studied. If what we need is to find traces of people doing things and of what has been done, buildings and objects can talk by themselves: we can see, touch, experience, and interact with the space. We also need to watch and observe how people behave in architectural environments and we need to formulate questions about time, form, context, and function. Because we never know what we are going to find during fieldwork, we need to go into the field with “shifty eyes,” believing in the senses and in what the place and its people has to

16 tell. We need to identify which patterns reveal particular community behaviours. And we need to learn how to gather, analyse, and interpret data so that patterns become visible. By studying the built environment, we can also recover stories that did not leave any other record. “Buildings and assemblages of buildings make excellent sources of information about everyday people and life because they exist in great numbers and are complex enough to shed light on many aspects of human behaviour, from attitudes toward the use of space to aesthetic traditions and technological know- how.” (Carter & Cromley, 2005, p.XX) Not only buildings but also objects are essential in the study and understanding of the artfulness of a culture, its aesthetic and how people bring beauty to their lives. In architecture this can be understood by studying materials and construction processes, decoration, patterns, colors, and forms. “A building’s appearance is never left to chance, but rather is based on a system of culturally determined ideas of what is considered suitable or beautiful to be hold.” (Carter & Cromley, 2005, p.XXII) Cultural values are reflected in buildings. Once a building is created, values and symbols are enforced and become a real and tangible representation. Architecture, in the words of social theorist Mark Gottdiener, “possesses the dual characteristics of being both a product of social relations and a producer of social relations.” (cited in Carter & Cromley, 2005, p.XXII)

Some important premises that can help us read vernacular architecture are the following. First, to develop a visual inspection, look to all kinds of buildings to find why they all work together, but also look into details to find similar principles and values. Second, to measure buildings and create measured drawings to classify them, find a way to read beyond the building: find the essence behind the drawings and develop typological studies. Also read the building fabric: how it is constructed and how materials work together. Finally, look for patterns. Patterns are important, the result of repetitions on all scales. Through patterns we can decode values and behaviours that shape culture, because they are rooted to human and natural considerations. “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem.” (Spirn, 1998, p.X)

Patterns are connected; no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern needs to be supported by other patterns to become more coherent and part of a whole. “Every society which is alive and whole, will have its own unique and distinct pattern language.” (Spirn, 1998, p.XVI) Pattern language logic is formed by the connection

17 between patterns, moving from the one that creates a structure (large) to the ones that embellish those structures (small). Exploring and discovering the built environment and looking for patterns involves looking for objects, oral histories, and memories to then build the story of a place—a story about culture, values, identity, and sense of place.

Phenomenological Approach

As architects, but mainly as individuals, the role that our senses and our feelings play in the process of discovering a place, of doing fieldwork, paintings, talking to people, walking, and taking pictures mark our findings, results, and interpretations of a place. We have to discover the place with our personal sensibilities, well-structured methods, and the set of rules mentioned above, but in order to see how the real has its own magic, the magic of things, the magic of the real world, we need to explore with our five senses, with all what we are.

In the words of Peter Zumthor, “We perceive atmosphere through our emotional sensibility. So if we ask ourselves, ‘So what moved me? Everything. The things themselves, the people, the air, noises, sound, colour, material presences, textures, forms too—forms I can appreciate. Forms I can try to decipher. Forms I find beautiful. What else moved me? My mood. My feelings, the sense of expectation that filled me while I was siting there.’” (Zumthor, 2006, p.17) An atmosphere and the feeling can only exist as part of a whole. We need to see how people interact with objects and space, and we need to be pay attention to all senses and understand the world through them. Buildings and space exist through our experience and body and space are not experienced as an isolated object, but incorporate mental and physical structures. “Architecture is our primary instrument in relating us with space and time, and giving these dimensions a human measure. It domesticates limitless space and endless time to be tolerated, inhabited, and understood in humankind.” (Pallasmaa, 2005, p.17)

Getting immersed in a culture and place by eating, sleeping, talking, and living with the people of a culture, combined with a clear set of rules, will lead us to read and understand the architecture of the everyday and vernacular architecture in a deeper way.

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CHAPTER II Background

“In the beginning there were mountains, plains, and rivers, but especially, mountains; no one geographic feature has so molded the history of Colombia as the Andes… they give the Colombian landscape its basic structure. They also determine temperature, climate, and ease of human access.”

David Bushnell3

La Cabaña and El Chuzo lie in the fertile lands of the Colombian central Andean mountain chain, in the middle of an abrupt topography of mountains that are covered by guaduales4, plantain trees, colourful houses, and plenty of coffee plantations. They are part of the eleven veredas5 that make up El municipio de Manizales6 in Caldas, where big and small landowners, peasants, farmers, and workers who have been producing coffee for generations live and work, and where community and culture have been woven together over time through the production of coffee. On passing through the coffee region, there is a feeling that remains throughout the journey of one being in a landscape that has been covered by coffee for centuries. The landscape and architecture of this place looks solid, rooted, well-structured, and permanent. It is difficult to believe that coffee is not a native plant; it arrived in Colombia 150 years ago and its cultivation started in Caldas only at the end of the nineteenth century.

Two factors were crucial in my decision to study the cultural landscape and vernacular architecture of the coffee region in Colombia. First, I was fortunate to have as my advisor the architect and scholar Robert Mellin, an expert in Cultural Landscape studies who encouraged me to study this region. Second, I am the fifth generation of a family that has been producing coffee in Caldas for more that 100 years, and for the last 55 year in La Cabaña. Besides these two reasons, during the first stage of my research a third unexpected factor appeared: the declaration by UNESCO that the coffee region of Colombia is considered a heritage of humanity

3 Bushnell, 1993, p.1 4 Guadua is a subfamily of Bamboo, which is found in tropical areas of America. Guaduales are ecosystems conformed by a group of guaduas. 5 Veredas are in the political territorial subdivision of Colombia the smallest rural areas. 6 Municipios are one of the administrative subdivisions in Colombian territory

19 site because of its coffee cultural landscape, and La Cabaña and El Chuzo are part of it.

UNESCO

According to UNESCO, in order to consider a region a cultural landscape it must represent the “combined works of nature and of man.” Such sites must illustrate the evolution of human societies under the influence of the natural environment in a way that allowed humanity to build social, cultural, and economic forces evidenced through specific techniques of sustainable land use and a built physical environment.

In Colombia, coffee is produced in nineteen departamentos7 out of thirty-two, but only five of them demonstrated certain conditions that allowed them to be part of UNESCO’s declared Colombian coffee cultural landscape. La Colonización Antioqueña 8 mixed indigenous and Spanish cultures and shaped Caldas culture, structure of land ownership, technologies and processes of coffee production, and its architecture and everyday life. These four elements give this region its character, responsible for its inclusion among UNESCO’s heritage of humanity sites. In words of the official document that was presented to UNESCO, “This region highlights the deep-rootedness of the coffee culture, reflected in the rows of coffee plants covering its mountains, as well as by its urban centers and architecture.” (PPC, 2009, p.6)

Colombian Vernacular Architecture

The development and formation of the popular and everyday architecture of Colombia is related to the development of the economic and social structure of the country. From the beginning the vernacular architecture of Colombia has been in constant change. Early techniques of pre-Hispanic cultures were later adapted by the Spaniards. Subsequently, rapid change in economy and society has produced quick transformations.

According to architects and scholars Lorenzo Fonseca y Alberto Saldarriaga, although in natural terms Colombia is divided into five regions (Andes, Caribe, Pacifico, Orinoquia, and Amazonas), in terms of its vernacular architecture it can be

7 At the macro-level and in political terms, Colombian territory is divided into thirty-three Departamentos. 8 The Colonización Antioqueña is a historical process of occupation and development of a portion of Colombian territory in which Caldas is a part. This process shaped today’s economy, society, politics, and culture in this region.

20 divided into seventeen regions. Each region has its own construction techniques and way of leaving, which are intimately related to the economic activity of the region and its local materials (Fonseca & Saldarriaga, 1984). This is why, in the case of Caldas, to understand the vernacular architecture of the region one has to understand its natural environment and its process of coffee production as well as Quimbayas9 peoples, the Spanish colonization, Colonización Antioqueña, and the influence of the Federacion Nacional de Cafeteros 10 . Without studying and understanding these historical influences, the vernacular architecture and cultural landscape of the coffee region will not be deeply understood.

Caldas Landscape and Architecture

Caldas landscape, which includes La Cabaña and El Chuzo landscape and territory, has been mainly shaped by its difficult and exuberant topography. Its roads, paths, villages, and houses are all located in places of easy access. And its architecture is a faithful representation of an architecture that rests on a landscape that has suffered huge changes in a relatively short time. Although La Cabaña and El Chuzo architecture and its inhabitants’ everyday life are most heavily shaped by the process of coffee production, indigenous and Spanish influences also affect the architecture of this region. In terms of construction methods, technologies, and materials, the use of guadua is of indigenous heritage while the architecture’s formal structure and aesthetic has Spanish influence.

To get a better picture of the influence of coffee harvesting and production in the architecture of the region, later explained with greater detail, I want to mention and highlight what is for me one of the most representative and interesting types of houses that exist in the coffee region. This type of house, commonly built by small landholders and peasants, was created so that coffee beans can be dried on the roof as a response to limited space and budget. Small coffee growers are able to move or deploy their roof depending on the season, climate, and need. These houses, called Casas elda, are a perfect example of how the vernacular architecture of the coffee region can be flexible in terms of its formal structure, composition, and even materials but never in its response to the needs of coffee production. The region’s architecture all revolves around coffee.

9 Quimbayas are an ethnic and indigenous group that first inhabited Caldas territory. 10 Federacion Nacional de Cafeteros is the Colombian federation of coffee growers.

21 Quimbayas

An indigenous group known as Quimbayas first inhabited Caldas. Even though there are very few documents and information about them and what we have is the work of only a few scholars, Spanish chronicles like those of Pedro Cieza de Leon as well as fragmented information from what remains in the landscape and oral histories supplements our knowledge of Quimbayas culture and architecture. It is a fact that three of the most representative characteristics of the region’s cultural landscape date back to Quimbayas history.

One of the most powerful forces that shapes the coffee region landscape is its abrupt topography. Cultivating and living in this territory is not easy, but Quimbayas peoples found ways to create paths that connected them with other indigenous communities and territories. They also discovered the vegetation to be a perfect material to build their houses and other structures and serve as a rich variety of food ingredients.

Quimbayas villages were not isolated; they were normally located near rivers, which allowed them to move around the territory and be connected with other indigenous communities. Four main paths that are today important roads were first built and used by Los Quimbayas. Two of them were oriented to the Magdalena valley through the Central Andean mountains, one through “El paramo11 del Quindio” and the other one through “el paramo del Ruiz.” The other two paths became today’s local roads through the Western Andean mountain range and then to El Choco12, in the direction of the Cauca River.

Nowadays Quimbayas are well known for their monumental gold work and ceramics, but architecture and agriculture were not their main concerns, so imagining their house designs is not easy. Spanish chronicles of the sixteenth century provide descriptions that let us know there were mainly two types of houses accompanied by religious structures and bridges. The first type was for one or more families or for a group of people, and the second type was for major figures, such as the priest or leader of the village. This last type also included terraces, platforms, and fences. In architectural terms we know that their houses were commonly in a circular floor plan, rarely a square, with low elevation. They were very spacious and with a conic roof. The exterior was not very attractive and the interior had no divisions but was a big

11 Paramos are typical ecosystems of the Andean mountain chain, which are located at 3,000 meters elevation and above. They are characterised by a lack of trees, and are an important source of water. 12 El Choco is one of the thirty-three Departamentos of Colombia

22 open space. In terms of form and functionality today’s vernacular architecture of the region has no similarity with Quimbayas architecture, but their use of materials has been inherited.

Although they knew how to work different materials like stone and metals Quimbayas houses were built with native plants abundant in the landscape. They mainly used guadua, straw, and liana but also native trees like Ceiba, cedro, guayacán or palo santo and nogal. More documentation regarding Quimbayas houses does not exist, but the use of guadua as the main material for the construction of different structures and houses in the region of Caldas date back to Quimbayas history. The use of this material is not only attributed to its easy access in the landscape, but also because it is a seismic-resistant material in a landscape of large earthquakes.

The third aspect that we inherited from Quimbayas peoples is food. Although there is no trace in the landscape of a strong agricultural system—they never reached the level of the raised fields of the Muiscas13, for instance—we do know that they used to cultivate maize, yucca, beans, rice, plantain, cacao, and some medical plants, which were their main food source, and are still today some of the most important foods in their everyday diet. “The modern Antioqueño likes to be called a maicero (maize eater) and the most characteristic of the Antioquia regional dishes has been derived from Indian methods of preparing maize. Among these the unsalted cornbread balls (arepas), whole hominy (mazamorra) and its watery liquid (claro) are overwhelmingly the most important.” (Palacios, 1980, p.111)

The Spaniards

The one thing that we can be sure of is that Quimbayas peoples mastered goldsmithing. Even though this does not have an impact on the vernacular architecture or the way of life related to coffee production, Quimbayas goldsmithing explains why the Spaniards found the region so attractive, despite its complex, dense, and difficult mountainous landscape and its very narrow and tough paths.

Between 1525 and 1550 the Spaniards, following native settlements, founded twenty-two villages in the region of Antioquia and Viejo Caldas14. Only six of them are located within what today corresponds to Caldas, mainly because of the dense

13 Muiscas are an ethnic and indigenous group that first inhabited Cundinamarca and Santander territory. 14 Viejo Caldas is how the three departamentos of Caldas, Risaralda, and Quindio used to be called.

23 vegetation—a fact that explains and emphasizes the ongoing relationship between transportation and the complex landscape of Caldas, today still a big issue to all Caldenses15 and one of the strongest forces that shapes the region’s landscape.

At the beginning the Spanish were delighted by the region’s gold mines, and with the large and malleable labour force: the Amerindian population. They mainly focused their economical activity in the mines, under the systems of encomienda, cabildos, and resguardos16. These systems drastically changed land distribution, and “in so doing, [they] destroyed the economy and undermined the religious and ceremonial structure of Indian society.” (Palacios, 1980, p.47) In time, mining declined and agriculture became an important element of Colombia’s economy. But Caldas, because of its complex mountainous landscape, remained isolated and with very limited agricultural activity for a long time. Only after the next important historic event in this region, the Colonización Antioqueña, did agriculture and coffee production start to be important in this region.

Colonización Antioqueña

“ … Por los caminos caldenses llegaron las esperanzas de caucanos y vallunos, de tolimenses y paisas, que grabaron en Colombia, a golpes de tiple y hacha, una mariposa verde que les sirviera de mapa ...”

Caminos de Caldas, Luis Carlos González

The next historic event that strongly influenced and shaped the coffee region of Colombia is known as the Colonización Antioqueña. At the end of the nineteenth century a movement of people from what is today known as Antioquia to Caldas occurred. For a long time the Caldas region had remained relatively isolated from big interventions and the construction of significant haciendas or encomiendas. Only after significant population growth and a decline in the mining business did a large amount of people move to Caldas. In the words of Marco Palacios, it was Surplus land for surplus people. (Palacios, 1980) A new society emerged around the economic process of cultivating, processing, packing, and transporting coffee.

15 This term is used to refer to Caldas inhabitants. 16 These three terms reference distinct socioeconomic institutions developed and implemented by the Spaniards to control indigenous groups during colonization.

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In social and economic terms the three historical conditions under which the Colonización Antioqueña occurred are, firstly, the fact that Medellin elite, who can be considered capitalist colonizers, were willing to grow and expand economically. Secondly, due to hard economic conditions, peasants who owned their land plots but faced difficult working conditions decided to move in search of new opportunities. And thirdly, poor peasants gained the right to work public lands known as Colonias de Poblamiento. Economic crisis and population growth introduced to the region a group of people who desired economic independence, moulding the Colonización Antioqueña.

The Colonización Antioqueña is a complex and well-studied historical event in Colombia, and represents both the departure point for producing coffee in Caldas and a huge change in all aspects of the coffee region. In terms of its vernacular architecture and land distribution, the event provided two important characteristics that marked a significant difference between Caldas and other regions in Colombia where coffee is produced. The first characteristic is related to the appropriation of land. Different researchers state that in the Colonización Antioqueña access to land was democratized so land was redistributed, creating a new structure of land ownership that was dominated by small land owners. In the words of Marco Palacios, the “Antioqueño colonization can also be seen as the test of the Liberal principal which aspired to create a democracy based on the smallholder.” (Palacios, 1980, p.167)

At that point much of the best land was in the hands of the Spaniards, who owned big Latifundios that were at that moment inhospitable and unexplored. With the arrival of people with the Colonización Antioqueña, a new territorial division was created. Marco Palacios argues that the central feature regarding the Colonización Antioqueña is to understand the appropriation of land; as a result, he provides the four mechanisms through which land was divided (Palacios, 1980):

. by gaining title to public lands through the legal processes of adjudication and concession; . by special concessions or adjudications granted to the colonias de poblamiento; . through the transfer of title of privately owned land by commercial companies;

25 . or by extra-legal occupation by poor colonists excluded from “official colonization.”

Regardless of the mechanism by which land was obtained, the fact that unexplored and significant land holdings were subdivided into smaller land holds to cover peoples’ needs gave birth to a society that has been known as worker friendly and brave.

A second and crucial characteristic of the cultural landscape of the coffee region related to the heritage from the Colonización Antioqueña is its particular form of housing and human settlement that gave birth to the vernacular and most representative architecture of the region. Strongly influenced by Spanish colonial style in terms of its aesthetic and formal characteristics but adapted to the local environment through the use of local materials and techniques discussed above mark the bright and lively colors of windows and doors and the ornaments in local houses. Lastly but most importantly, the construction of an architecture and system of working buildings that responded to the needs of the process of producing coffee was created as the architecture of the Colonización Antioqueña, which is today the architecture of the Caldas coffee region in Colombia.

La Federación Nacional de Cafeteros

Shortly after the Colonización Antioqueña, coffee started to be one of the most important elements in Colombia’s economy. After the end of the Thousand Days War in 1902, the Colombian government started to develop policies for the exportation of coffee. In a very short period of time coffee started to represent the main exported product of Colombia to the world. Caldas’ position in Colombia’s economy strongly marked the development of the region, especially in rural areas, where the difference in terms of education, health services, and infrastructure was important and evident. This was in part thanks to the creation of the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros, evidence for the significant and strong community that was created around coffee by all coffee producers. In 1927 coffee growers created the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros, a federation that was born around coffee commercialization, development, and culture. The Federación influenced not only the development of coffee in economic terms but also the development of its infrastructure. A spin-off organization called Cenicafe, a

26 national research center created to work for the technological development of coffee, was formed. Production processes, practices, and new seeds were created in Cenicafe to ensure the quality and improvement of the region’s coffee. The Federación Nacional de Cafeteros has since been in charge of ensuring that every coffee bean from the Caldas coffee region is sold on the national and international market. In this process of selling coffee the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros obtains funds which are then invested into the development of the region. Programs and services around the construction and development of the educational and health systems, road system, water and sewer systems, and housing were implemented by the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros. The idea of creating a community around coffee to reinforce the coffee region’s structure and society was the aim of all coffee growers. For this reason the Federación created a system in which all member coffee growers, regardless of land size and ownership, had a space and a voice.

In terms of the coffee region’s architecture, the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros supported the creation of Banco Cafetero17 and the Concasa18 program, both of which fund and promote housing for small landowners and workers of the coffee region. The community formed around coffee production was also responsible for the development and construction of the rural area. Big landowners, for example, supported the creation and construction of schools and sponsored kids from their vereda to allow children access to education.

With the Colombian economy relying mostly on coffee in the 1960s, and especially with bonanza growth in the 1970s, the development of this region reinforced connections between different villages of rural areas, creating a strong infrastructure in the entire region. After the international coffee pact brooked in 1989, however, the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros became undercapitalized. Nowadays the Federación is only involved in coffee commercialization, no longer subsidizing inputs into the region’s cultural and social aspects. Presently the coffee region is facing the common phenomenon of rapid urbanization and the movement of people from rural to urban areas, as well as technological change.

A History of Coffee

17 Banco Cafetero is a bank owned by the coffee guild that specializes in financing the coffee guild. 18 Concasa is a financial entity owned by the coffee guild that specializes in loans for the purchase and construction of housing.

27 After having discussed in a very general way the evolution of the Caldas coffee region and highlighting the historic events that strongly shaped this region and influenced its architecture, everyday life, and territory, I turn now to a brief history of how coffee became the most important element of the Caldas cultural landscape.

As far as is known coffee trees grew wildly in the forest of what is known today as Ethiopia around 900 BC. Its cultivation, trade, consumption, and domestication began in the Arabian Peninsula, though we do not specifically know where. For centuries coffee remained in Arabic territory, until the seventeenth century when it arrived in Europe and started to become popular across the continent. In 1650 the drink arrived in England, in 1660, France, and in 1670, Berlin, places where different techniques and processes were implemented for the preparation and consumption of coffee. But only at the end of the seventeenth century did the coffee tree leave Arabia for France and the Netherlands, where without success was cultivated.

In a short time it became clear that coffee could only be produced in tropical countries and in consequence, “after the eighteenth century, the geography of coffee production came to be intimately linked with Western colonies and neo-colonial expansion… Coffee was, and in some degree continues to be, a colonial product and is largely cultivated in parts of the world geographically removed from the centers of greatest consumption.” (Palacios, 1980, p.14)

The country responsible for the introduction of coffee plantations to South America was France. French colonies in the Caribbean started to cultivate coffee at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1714 the coffee tree reached Guiana and Venezuela, and by the middle of the century it gained ground in Caracas and Cumana. At the same time that Dutch coffee plantations in India suffered severe disease, ending their coffee production, Latin America became the center of the world’s coffee production.

In 1820, coffee plantations emerged at the border between Colombia and Venezuela and in Santander, the first centers of coffee production in Colombia. By the middle of the nineteenth century coffee was established in Colombia proper, expanding through the Andean mountains to the center of the country following the Magdalena River, the heart of coffee transportation. Between 1870 and 1910 coffee expansion was very rapid and this fueled the construction of railways to connect the interior of

28 the country with the Magdalena River and its maritime cities. This facilitated the rapid growth of coffee cultivation in Antioquia.

After 1910 the most difficult stages of development were over: plantations were established and the settlement process largely over. Only then did Colombians know that they had the most fertile and ecologically propitious conditions for the cultivation of coffee in Latin America. Therefore its growth happened rapidly, leading to the development of a demographic structure at the center of the country (today Caldas, Antioquia, Risaralda, Quindio, and parts of Valle del Cauca) that was strongly influenced by the cultivation, production, and international market of coffee.

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CHAPTER III The Territory

It is impossible to talk about the way in which Caldas territory is organized and its landscape structure without referencing its topography and mountainous landscape. From the time of settlement, finding the appropriate means of transportation to move around this region has been one of the main issues for Caldenses, and it has also been one of the forces that shaped its landscape and determined its settlement patterns. In this respect, natural elements like rivers and mountains, paths built over time, and modern means of transportation have been crucial in the construction, development, and evolution of this territory.

Moving Around

At the macro-level, all rivers, but mainly the Magdalena River, is what kept the coffee region connected to the world and what facilitated the exportation of coffee. At the beginning the crop was moved by mule back through the landscape until its arrival to the Magdalena River, and then to marine ports. Eventually and with a significant effort because of the difficulty of the terrain, which makes road construction challenging and inevitably expensive, roads were built as an auxiliary system to the river. Connections between Medellin, Puerto Berrio (a port on the Magdalena River), Manizales, and La Dorada (also an important city on the river) were created. Later, in the first decade of the twentieth century an aerial cable of 72 kilometers, at the time the longest in the world, began to be built to connect Manizales with Mariquita19, generating in the region an efficient mode of transportation to activate trade.

From the beginning a significant effort in improving the transportation system was made by the cafeteros 20 , the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros, and the government. Despite the difficulties of the terrain, the important position of the coffee trade in Colombia’s economy aided the development of Caldas territory and motivated its inhabitants to find mechanisms to overcome the difficulties that the landscape represents. Nowadays transportation in this region is still complicated,

19 A city on the Magdalena River. 20 Coffee growers.

30 although Caldenses have found a way to move easily through its steep and hilly roads commonly covered by dense fog.

The Magdalena River is no longer the main means of transport to connect the coffee produced in Caldas with the world nor is the mule the local way to move it. Today, roads facilitate the movement through a landscape now fraught with buses, motorcycles, and especially willys or “mechanical mules” that have been the most representative means of transportation in the coffee region for decades.

“Mechanical Mules”

It is difficult to ignore, on moving through the coffee region, the presence of willys full of plantains, sacs of coffee, people, and even chickens. Willys are cars that arrived in the coffee region with the help and subsidy of the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros. They became the main transportation vehicle in which coffee bags as well as people with their plantains and other products cultivated on their farms were taken to be sold in the city market. Willys arrived in Colombia in the 1950s. Initially they were produced as war cars for the United States. Because of their facility to move in complex and mountainous landscapes they were adapted to bear more weight and could thus move coffee, products, and people around Caldas territory. Willys are colorful cars that, after receiving a name, are personalized and taken care of for generations. It is not surprising to listen and learn some of the names of the cars while walking through the landscape, and to see their drivers cleaning them to keep them impeccable.

Mules: A Key Element in the Construction of the Coffee Region Landscape

The ingenuity of cafeteros drove them to find solutions and mechanisms to move around the landscape. Even though rivers, the construction of roads and the aerial cable, and then willys are what facilitated the movement through the landscape, the most important element responsible for shaping the Caldas coffee region landscape, urban areas, and paths are mules. Today mules are no longer the main means of transportation in Caldas but their traces remain in the landscape, shaping the paths used today to move easily through each vereda landscape.

31 Urban areas in veredas are composed of villages usually placed where las fondas de los arrieros de las mulas21 were located. In the words of several persons from La Cabaña and El Chuzo, “Villages are located one day trip in mule from each other, before we used to wake up very early in the morning, to move the coffee. The journey lasted one day at mule pace. We started at one village and ended in the next one.” (2016) This means that the geographical location of the houses and villages were determined by the time it took a mule to move from one small village or town to another during one day, from sunrise to sunset.

Mules have a very special characteristic: they walk through the landscape following as closely as possible one same level. They move through mountainous landscapes in a smooth and reliable way. This makes their paths curvy and with no apparent logic, but also friendly for long hours and days of walking by animals and people alike, carrying heavy bags of coffee beans, attending mass, or going to la fonda22 for a drink.

On one of my visits to a workers’ village, I talked for hours with a woman in her late 40s who told me about these old paths. She remembers how after partying and having some drinks in las fondas, she and her friends returned home at 1 or 2 in the morning walking the paths that today do not exist because today’s road systems covered over them. But she remembers all of them, where they used to be and how they used to be full of people moving around the landscape. From my conversations with people, I can say that some of these paths have disappeared, but more than once I moved through the landscape walking on them, being careful of where to place my clumsy feet and trying to follow coffee workers.

At the mid-scale of the veredas, towns and villages were located according to the paths created by mules and people for centuries. And at the micro-level, coffee plantations have been organized to facilitate the movement of workers through the landscape carrying coffee bags along coffee rows. Two of the farms that I visited at La Cabaña, Lusitania and El Bosque, have in the recent years reoriented and reorganized coffee rows to facilitate and give more comfort to workers moving through coffee plantations. Each farm has its own method and distances by which they locate their coffee trees. In the case of these two farms, previous coffee trees

21 Places where the people who traveled with mules around the landscape used to sleep, eat, and rest during their journey. 22 Fonda are places where coffee growers and workers meet to listen to traditional music and have some drinks.

32 were seeded 1.30 meters by 1.30 meters from each other in both directions. Nowadays coffee trees are planted 1.20 meters by 1.20 meters but after a certain number of rows, a row of 1.60 meters long is left so workers can walk more easily through the landscape. This shows how Caldenses are always looking for ways to make the movement through the complex mountainous topography easier.

Urban Areas in Veredas

Even though veredas are mainly rural areas, with farms and coffee plantations, they also have small villages, towns, and centers that meet the needs of people. I will use the case of La Cabaña, which is a large representative working landscape and vereda of Caldas, to explain how at the macro- and micro-levels its landscape has been shaped and organized. All of La Cabaña’s facilities and structures respond mainly to the needs of people in the coffee producing business. Although its urban center is not large enough to have a plaza surrounded by important buildings and streets with houses, La Cabaña has different nodes with institutional buildings, which are spread around the vereda. This settlement pattern may be attributed to the fact that the lots often used to build institutional buildings are donated by coffee growers. In this area all coffee growers, regardless of the size of their land holdings, are committed to their communities. When the community identifies a deficiency in their services or facilities, normally lots are donated or sold at very affordable prices. Facilities are subsequently built in rather random locations, but the veredas landscape is a very complete and well-equipped one.

The first node that was built in La Cabaña is the one where the church is. In front of the church is the square where people have been meeting before and after mass for decades. This meeting point became an important one in La Cabaña, eventually also becoming a place where people gather to have a drink or talk after a busy day. That is why it also has two fondas where people go to have a beer or aguardiente23, to talk and eat and buy simple stuff like groceries, a pencil, or a t-shirt. There is also one discotheque, a small parish house, and a few houses. It is not a big center but it definitely is a place of reunion and a place where the community congregates. Two hundred meters from the church is the police station, located in a lot donated years ago. In another two spots around the landscape, also donated by coffee growers, sit the medical center accompanied by the elementary school; in a third node is the

23 A Colombian alcoholic beverage.

33 high-school. Other small nodes like grocery stores or places where drivers meet to fix and wash their willys are also located around the landscape.

I visited more than once the fonda and the high school, as well as other small nodes, and I can say that in all these locations human kindness and the sense of community takes possession of the place. In the fonda, after sitting down with the manager and his wife and playing with their two-year-old son, talking about the past and the present, our grandfathers who used to work together, the weather, arepas and their son´s diet, I felt as if I did not want to leave. A few minutes after I arrived, I was invited to a drink and to stay with them, and to visit their house and their grandparents’ house at any time. After that first day, every time I passed by, they smiled, waved, and screamed my name with sincere kindness. I noticed that they knew all the people in the community—how they are, where they are, and what they do. They care about others and were always willing to help others. In a very special way they helped me during the whole research process, starting from that first day in the fonda. They called others on my behalf, sending messages so I could visit as many places as possible.

I also visited the elementary school and the experience was the same. I was fortunate because I went after Mother´s Day weekend. All mothers were invited by their children to celebrate with a mass at school. I had the opportunity to not only attend the ceremony but also to meet the mothers. They were as kind as the couple in la fonda, inviting me to their houses and sharing with me memories and stories about their lives. At the houses and nodes that I visited, a sense of community in which people cared about others with generosity, including guests like me, was a common and representative pattern.

Landmarks and Names

La Cabaña is full of paths, landmarks, farms, and even trees that have acquired their names and associations from historical stories. These marks in the landscape have no specific characteristic, or physical pattern; they can no longer exist, and can be any place or element. They result from local histories that have left traces in the landscape.

34 This starts with the name veredas. For example, La Cabaña, like many other veredas, used to be a large Spanish-owned piece of land. Because of its status as one of the largest farms in today’s vereda, its name was preserved as well as its main house or hacienda, a reference in the landscape. These large lands were divided into different lots that remain today. Even if the lots have changed ownership, their names and original dimensions remain in peoples’ memories and folk culture. People from La Cabaña know and remember where the hacienda is, always having it as a reference in the landscape.

On a smaller scale, this remembering also happens to farms, lots, corners, paths, trees, and an endless number of elements in the landscape. Workers, coffee growers, and people from veredas know farms and lots by their original names. Lusitania, one of the farms located in La Cabaña, was first named El Motor, but in 1962 its owner decided to change its name. Today people from the vereda do not call this farm Lusitania; they do not even know that name. Instead, it is and will always be El Motor.

On the smallest of scales, lots also have names that are given as a description of their geographical location, or because an event or anecdote happened there. In the last decade and during the process of acquiring a sustainable certification named UTZ, lots needed to be named to then be presented as well-documented. Because of this process, some farms changed their original names to names not related to any memory or anecdote. In everyday life these new names remain useless and unknown for the coffee growers and inhabitants of La Cabaña. Although various papers now hold these “real” names, in real life previous names will remain, part of the tradition and oral heritage and history of La Cabaña.

Guadua and Plantain

Veredas in the coffee region, including La Cabaña, have not only been shaped by paths, roads, farms, and nodes or villages; they also have natural elements that have remained in the landscape for centuries, and that play a very important role in peoples’ everyday lives. These elements are guaduales, which are a source of local materials for the construction of their houses and other structures or even objects. Guaduales are also associated with water springs, which are still today a source of water for some of the region’s inhabitants. Secondly, the presence of other native

35 trees and plants like plantains, oranges, and guavas also shape La Cabaña and the coffee region landscape.

One Landscape, Three Lifestyles

La Cabaña is a landscape shaped by natural elements that also work as a source of construction materials, water, and food; by nodes, centers, and villages that satisfy peoples needs; and by paths at all scales and levels that help people move coffee thorough the landscape. It can be said that the mountainous and complex topography of La Cabaña is like a labyrinth of paths and landmarks that represent memories and local histories of a community, woven together by the process of producing and moving coffee.

Although at first sight these landscapes look uniform and homogenous with similar lots and houses, La Cabaña and El Chuzo have three very different types of settlements and houses, and in consequence, three very different lifestyles. Although distinct, they have to be studied and understood as a whole, as they create one landscape. The first type of settlement is minifundios, or small coffee grower lands. The second is big farms or Latifundios. which are composed of a significant number of lots, a main house, working buildings, and auxiliary houses where permanent and mobile workers live. The last is small villages of workers who do not have a significant piece of land but are the working force of the Latifundios.

36

CHAPTER IV Minifundios, Latifundios, and Working Villages

Coffee production in Caldas, and therefore in La Cabaña and El Chuzo, developed after Colonizacion Antioqueña as a small-scale activity involving small landholdings. A tradition of family-centered and generational labor developed. Thanks to this system of Minifundios, sustainable human development and an economic, cultural, and social structure was created. Big landholdings have always existed, but in the last few years La Cabaña’s minifundios stopped being the majority, giving way to the large landholdings. In tandem with these sizeable landholdings, villages of workers that supply the work force also occupy a prominent position in the coffee cultural landscape.

To deeply understand the La Cabaña and El Chuzo cultural landscapes and how coffee growers have been living since the beginning of coffee production, a study of each one of the three types of settlements and their houses will be undertaken, as well as the connection and influence of coffee in the everyday lives of coffee growers and workers.

The Process of Coffee Production

For a better understanding of the coffee region’s vernacular architecture it is essential to understand the process of coffee production. The specie of coffee that is produced in Colombia is the caffea Arabica, also known as “mountain coffee.” This specie is less bitter and smoother than Robusta beans, and its consumption and production volumes are much higher. It is cultivated mainly between 1,200 and 2,000 meters elevation, and its period of harvesting is determined by its elevation. Coffee plantations in Caldas, which are found between 1,300 and 1,800 meters elevation, have a one-year cycle in between one harvesting and the next.

In general, the steps to produce coffee are planting, fertilizing, harvesting, drying, and packing. First the planting is carried and two years later the first crop is collected. From that moment on, collection happens every year depending on the altitude; in the lowest regions of Caldas between September and November and in the highest between April and May, coffee is harvested. In La Cabaña and El Chuzo, which are

37 located in the low regions, the process of growing and producing coffee starts at the end of the calendar year.

After three months of workers moving through cafetales carrying heavy baskets full of coffee, coffee plants are not at their best. At the end of November and December coffee trees are, in the language of Caldenses, aporreados or literally “wacked.” In these months the most important thing is to fertilize the soil for future leaves and flowers. Although all coffee growers know when to fertilize, the process differs drastically between minifundios and latifundios. In minifundios peasants try to fertilize at least one time per year; in the case of latifundios, fertilization takes place a minimum of two times per year and on some farms, three. During these months rain is vitally important, for otherwise the soil will not absorb the nutrients. As a result, at any coffee family farm and house during Christmas, the topic of water and rain will be part of every discussion. After two rainy months, families welcome what we call summer, which is more precisely drought time; during the next months conversations about rain will not stop, but now in the opposite direction. Starting in January, all coffee growers will hope to not get a single drop of water, only long and hot sunny days, so that the greatest number of flowers will droop up.

Starting in January, the Caldenses say “El café esta puntillando,” which means that coffee plantations are full of shoots that look like tiptoes. By the middle of February the coffee should be “stressed” and awaiting water. Coffee growers also say that there is never too much sun, as plants can always handle one more week of sun, because if rain happens in these months the shoots will fall down and for every shoot on the ground one coffee bean is lost. At this point, when coffee plants have not received water or have received very little for almost two months, stressed and awaiting water, one or two rainstorms are more than enough to produce the flowers in a few days. After the plants flourish and just before coffee beans start to appear, plants are fertilized a second time so that the coffee beans will be robust and strong. During the next four to five months the beans start to grow. And in the sixth and seventh months they start to engruesar, to become thicker. Finally, between the seventh and eighth months they mature, moving from green to a palette of reds and orange colors.

The next three months for coffee growers are very busy, energetic, and the most important ones. During these months the coffee is harvested. This process, in addition to other physical, chemical, and natural aspects, is what has led Colombian

38 coffee to be considered the best coffee in the world. Harvesting in the coffee region of Colombia is done manually. Although in other countries it is done mechanically, which means that the process is less expensive, Colombians have capitalized on this manual characteristic. At this time of year coffee plantations are filled of workers, seen like hard-working ants moving rapidly through coffee plants, carrying heavy baskets full of red beans. Harvesting by hand allows workers to only pick mature beans, thus ensuring that all coffee beans will be in their best condition to then prepare the best cup of coffee.

This process of cultivation has not experienced considerable changes in the last years. But the process of drying coffee is one that has evolved and changed significantly. On any farm, from the biggest to the smallest, today or 100 years ago, at six in the morning all workers in the harvest season start their day in the fields, collecting only red and mature beans. At twelve in the afternoon, before lunch, they weigh the coffee collected in the morning, and then after lunch they continue harvesting until 4 or 5 in the evening. Taking the last basket of the morning’s or day’s beans to the Beneficiadero24, the process of stripping and washing starts.

A first manual way begins by stripping the coffee beans. After removing the skin, coffee beans are taken to fermenter tanks and left between twelve to thirteen hours in order to remove the mucilage or “drool.” When the twelve hours have passed coffee growers go to see and touch the beans. They know by years of experience and the experience of previous generations when the brown color of the beans and the warm temperature of the water indicate that they are ready for the next stage of drying.

Drying is an art for coffee growers. This process requires a lot of physical surface, discussed below. Coffee growers have been very clever in the construction of their houses. Two manual methods have been implemented. A first one dries the beans in patios and a second—the most representative and clever one—dries them on the roofs of their houses, constructing roofs that can be opened or moved according to the climate, to the sun and the rain. This process timing is determined by the weather. If they are lucky to have sunny days, in two days the coffee beans are dry, but if days are cloudy and rainy it can take four or even five days. In this process coffee growers have developed an ability to move the beans from the bottom to the

24 A plant where coffee is processed.

39 top with rakes, which ensures an equal drying. Coffee beans are dry when they only retain between 10 and 12 percent of water. As in the process of fermentation, coffee growers know by touching the beans when they are dry and ready to pack. Finally, after at least three days, coffee beans are ready to pack and take to the city in willys to be sold.

Another mechanical method has exactly the same steps. It starts at two in the afternoon, after the last morning basket of coffee beans is taken to the Beneficiadero to start the process of stripping and washing. Stripping is done in approximately three hours, so at five in the evening coffee is moved to the demucilating machine where the mucilage is removed. This machine not only reduces time but also the consumption of water, because the process of fermentation is abandoned. Coffee is then taken to the silo system, where the coffee is dried. At the end of the drying process, which takes between 24 and 36 hours, coffee is ready to be packed. Coffee is packed and immediately taken to towns or cities to be sold.

This is a very intense period; the three months of harvesting for both methods is a period of seven long working days per week. Mature coffee beans do not wait long to be collected. After they are ready they only last a few days in the tree. And at the moment that one coffee bean falls down and rests on the ground, not only is one coffee bean lost but the risk of pestilence, disease, and especially broca25 begins. As a consequence, at this time of year coffee plantations are filled of workers collecting, processing, and packing coffee. After investing energy, time, and capital for nine months, no coffee grower wants to see one bean resting on the ground.

Minifundios

Minifundios are by definition family businesses, which also means that they are centered in family labor. In minifundios a space to work can be provided for all family members, where a transmission of traditions, skills, and knowledge from generation to generation takes place. Minifundios do not exceed five hectares, and almost all of them are composed of one main house, where all domestic and working labours occur, and a few very small structures that are built over time to meet working needs. In minifundios the production, harvest, and drying of coffee is manual. The lack of technology and mechanized tools has made small coffee growers develop not only

25 Broca is an insect that destroys the interior of the coffee bean by eating it. It is the most feared plague for any coffee grower.

40 manual techniques but also a type of house that facilitates the whole process of producing coffee.

The Land

Minifundios are mainly planted with coffee trees, but because of their limited harvesting time, peasants complement coffee with other crops. Oranges, plantains, corn, and beans are the most common ones. They have different planting and harvesting times that guarantee a constant income and work during the whole year. Every week men go to the market to sell their products and every day women prepare lunch and dinner with their plantains, fruits, garden crops and farm animals.

Don Marino Agudelo, a man in his fifties who lives with his wife Doña Pureza Valencia, also in her fifties, inherited from his mother the land that they work. He goes every Monday and Friday to Manizales market with his plantains, fruits, and coffee. Every day he puts what he collects in baskets, and on market days he takes a willys early in the morning to the city, to come back later “with empty baskets but with a few cents.”

Doña Leonor is a woman in her eighties who lost her husband a few years ago but who with sparkly eyes talks about him in every conversation. She showed me his picture just after entering her house. She also has plantains, fruit trees, and coffee and one of her four sons, who now takes care of the farm, also goes two times per week to sell in the market what was harvested during the previous days.

Both Don Marino Agudelo and Doña Leonor take care of each coffee bean, fruit and plantain every day; they know when it is time to harvest, when their crops are missing water, nutrients, or sun, and when they have to be replaced. They have small lots relatively easy to control, so they say with tremendous honor that if they are disciplined they do not have to suffer like big coffee producers because of broca. They can control that not a single coffee bean rests on the ground and they can take care of each one of the coffee plants.

In minifundios families try as much as possible to be self-sustaining. Women in their gardens normally have onions, cilantro, cabbage, beets and carrots, as well as chickens for fattening and for eggs and a few pigs to sell. They know when it is the perfect time to plant each type of crop and they master the art of cooking with what is

41 ready to eat. They take care of each animal, and they know when it is time for sancocho26 and for Chicharron27. Although they still have to buy some products in the market they try their best not to.

Doña Pureza, with sadness and a little shame, took me to the place where she used to have her pigs and chickens but which for health issues she was forced to abandon. She talked to me about the importance of having a garden and animals, of how producing their own food and not wasting it by feeding the pigs with leftovers is what allowed them to live in the best possible way. Doña Leonor also took me on a tour around her farm. She showed me every single chicken and even every single egg. She also showed me how she just planted some herbs and with a very similar story she told me proudly how she and her husband were able to raise nine kids with a small parcel of land, her crops and at one point a small grocery on the ground floor under her control.

Minifundios are very small parcels of land with space for animals, crops and coffee as well as other small structures that helped them in the process of producing coffee and in the production of other crops. Normally at the entrance to their farms, houses are accompanied by storage chambers, stores, deposits, beneficiaderos, hen houses and pig houses. All of them are located close to each other or under one roof and are constructed over time by different generations. They manage not only to have everything they need but also space for a new herb, a new crop in the garden, a new chicken, pets or even the visit of a family member with his family, all in a small lot and compact house.

Casa Elda

Houses of small coffee growers have a simple but very functional structure where domestic needs like eating, sleeping, cooking and gathering are met, along with working needs. In terms of its typology and its composition these houses normally have one or a maximum of two levels. Normally rooms are located side by side, connected by internal doors and external corridors, the latter also a place of reunion for family members and neighbours. One-axle houses are what predominate in minifundios.

26 Soup prepared with chicken. 27 A piece of meat from the pig, which also has the skin.

42 Even though these houses have a simple structure they are also one of the most clever and interesting types of houses in the coffee region. Almost all small coffee growers live in a house type called Casa Elda, which besides fulfilling domestic functions has a roof that functions as a space where coffee beans are dried. Small coffee growers do not have space for patios, so they developed this house type in which coffee beans are dried on planchones28 that then are covered by a light roofing tile with an inclination for water evacuation.

The magic happens when you start walking around the house and you find a very narrow and steep staircase to go up to the roof of these houses. If you look carefully you can easily see how traditional house roofs are made with clay tile, but the part of the house which has access from the stairs is made by light metal tiles. I had never heard of or seen a Casa Elda before, so when Don Marino asked me if I wanted to go up and see the elda I did not hesitate to say yes. He asked me to be careful on my way up and in the most natural and easy way when we reached the top he opened the roof and showed me a couple of cacao beans. He asked me to imagine that those cacao beans were coffee beans, plenty of coffee beans being dried and cared for by Doña Pureza while he keeps picking coffee beans in the field during the three months of harvesting.

This was the moment when Don Marino, a quiet and shy man, talked to me fluently and enthusiastically. He started to remember when he had built that roof with his father; he mentioned that the most important part of the house was the elda. He showed me how the mechanism was simple and built with local wood collected nearby. He opened and closed it for me fast and easily and he smiled, trying not to laugh at me clumsily trying to open it. After our descent Doña Pureza was waiting downstairs, and with a similar smile as Don Marino’s told me how in harvesting times she is responsible for the coffee beans. She is the one who knows how to move to coffee for an equal drying, and she is also the one who separates pasilla29 from the coffee to sell.

Doña Leonor also has an elda. She lives in a bigger house, which in one part has two floors and in another, only one. The elda is located on top of the one floor. When I visited, coffee beans were being dried. She also explained to me how she was the

28 Concrete slabs in the top of houses where coffee beans are dried. 29 Very low quality coffee beans.

43 one responsible for this process and how she cannot imagine a small coffee grower house without an elda.

Guadua and Brick

Eldas are today and have been for decades the way in which small coffee growers have dried their coffee. Eldas still use local materials. However, the use of local materials has not largely endured in houses, as new house composition and typology is similar to older ones but with new building techniques and materials. The two case studies above and another two houses that I visited have old structures, and parts of the houses are built with bahareque30 and clay tile. New houses are built with brick and zinc sheets.

The tradition of building one’s own house still exists. Don Marino and Doña Pureza just finished helping their neighbours build their new house. They were very proud of this, showing me how they painted the bricks in terracotta and the mortar in white, and how they put in a rain gutter in pvc. Zinc sheets and ceramic tiles were used in the whole interior of the house, even though the house is much hotter and it does not regulate inside temperatures. The use of bahareque and guadua, at least in this family, just disappeared. The neighbours talk about the new house and its use of modern materials as a symbol of development.

The old house, still standing in front of the new one, is a typical traditional house of the coffee region, built more than sixty years ago by the father of Don Marino. It is a one floor house with very high ceilings, small colourful windows and doors built with local wood, and clay tile produced locally, all built with guadua and bahareque from the nearest guadual. Don Marino remembers how his father taught him how to work with guadua, how to go early in the morning to El guadual to cut guadua, ready for use two weeks later. He also learnd which guadua to use for structures and which for bahareque and ornaments or objects. Don Marino and Doña Pureza did not talk much about the old house or about local techniques; they were showing me and emphasizing the fact that the house is falling apart, and that the new one is just finished. Doña Pureza also mentioned more than once that the old house is fresher than the new one: that they still open all the rooms every day. I can also say that they still sit in the corridor. Even though the interior is empty the exterior is well decorated

30 A traditional construction technique, where guadua is the main material.

44 with posters and colorful flowers, and they talk with nostalgia about the day that they will demolish it but with pride about the new one.

In the coffee region local materials and construction techniques are disappearing. It was evident not only by visiting houses but also by moving through the landscape. Not only small coffee growers but also workers state that old techniques and materials will remain in the past. The present and future of houses in the coffee region lies in modern and industrialized materials—“materials that last forever.” They say that el comejen31 is out of control, so building with guadua will be a big mistake. The house will not remain on the land as long as one built with imported and industrialized materials.

From Sunrise to Sunset

A given day at any small coffee grower farm starts before six in the morning. Although every day is different and they do not have a strict routine like on Latifundios, coffee growers do wake before six and after taking a shower they have a big breakfast prepared by the wife. Coffee and arepa are never missing at table, and some days plantains or rice, eggs, cheese, and even meat can also be part of breakfast.

At 6:30 each one of the family members starts their day. Women stay home, cleaning each room, window, roof and corner, sending the kids to school, and taking care of the garden and farm animals. She also prepares a snack, normally a refreshing glass of juice, and receives her husband or son around 9 in the morning when they take a 15-minute break to prepare for the next three sunny or rainy hours in the fields. After the men go back to work, women start to prepare lunch. The coffee region dishes are simple and prepared with local products and ingredients. Soups based on plantains, yucca and beans that are cooked at low heat for hours are very common, so the women start a few hours before lunch and leave the soup on the wood stove while they continue cleaning or taking care of flowers. At noon sharp, the soup and main dish, which is meat or chicken and rice, plantains or potatoes, is served with aguapanela, lemonade or guava juice for all family members.

31 An insect that destroys wood.

45 During the rest of the day women continue cleaning, taking care of plants, and preparing arepas and mazamorra, if they still prepare them by hand, and in the afternoon they go to different programs offered by the municipality. Doña Leonor is attending the gardens program and enthusiastically told me that this is not her first, having recently finished one in gardening. She showed me one of her many flowers which was her Mother’s Day gift from her sons in Cali. Doña Pureza does not attend programs but she constantly visits with neighbors.

At five all women return home to prepare dinner, because at six or seven during the sunset all family members meet at the dining table to have a nice meal. Previously without fail this meal would have been beans but today there is also lighter dishes like rice with eggs, coffee and arepa. Before going to bed the family enjoys the sunset and waits for another day in the fields taking care of their crops, or in the house preparing arepas and mazamorra.

Don Marino´s day starts in the same way as Doña Pureza or Doña Leonor, but after 6:30 it takes a different direction as he goes to the land. He weeds, harvests and takes care of his plantation. Then at noon sharp he goes home to have lunch. During the evening he keeps working the land but he also takes care of minor damages in the house like a broken window or a leak in the roof. He takes care of the storage areas and tries to keep all working spaces impeccable and ready for harvesting time.

In harvest time the everyday life of any coffee grower takes a 180 degree turn. They continue to wake up early in the morning but during the day, with the exception of breaks for a snack, lunch and dinner, every single minute revolves around coffee. Men are in charge of harvesting and women are in charge of opening and closing the elda and selecting and separating the good coffee beans from pasilla. If the women have time after taking care of the kids, house and cooking, they also like to help harvest.

At the end of the day, which ends not with sunset but with the conclusion of all labours, having all the beans drying in the elda, the dry ones packed and everything ready and well-organized for another day as intense as the one that just ended. They go to bed tired and they sleep deeply, satisfied at having harvested after nine months of hard work the red coffee beans and tranquil beneath their coffee beans on the elda, which ensures them that no one will take them away.

46 In times of harvest, men also have to go two times per week to the market to sell the coffee. He leaves early in the morning and comes back with not even one coffee bean. Meanwhile the wife stays at home taking care of everything and working harder to cover the daily tasks by herself. Saturdays is also different: the couple goes to the city market to buy the products needed for their daily meals. They also go to mass. During harvest, sunset no longer indicates when the day is over and weekends are no longer distinct from the week. In harvest they work non-stop, Monday to Sunday.

Small coffee growers, except for the harvest season, have flexible days of intense work that they can order and control. As long as everything in the land and the house works well they can control their time. What never changes, no matter what, is breakfast at six in the morning, one snack before lunch and another after, lunch at noon sharp, and dinner just after sunset.

Sense of Community

All coffee growers’ everyday life is strongly marked by a solid sense of community. Only in walking through the landscape and listening to people screaming names from cars with a smile to say hello, and then a few meters later stopping to ask if you need a ride, do you know that in the coffee region neighbours become a family. Small coffee growers never leave the house alone, not because they do not trust their neighbors (neighbors can be in charge of the house for a couple of hours while residents go to the doctor or a nearby city), but because they do not trust a stranger that might pass by. As a result, people are always at home so you can visit your neighbour anytime.

At any house in the coffee region, in all scales and levels, the kitchen and corridor are the most important spaces for gathering with family and neighbours. Kitchens are always shiny and corridors clean and impeccable. It is common to see a visitor cleaning pots or sweeping the corridor. When neighbours visit each other, they do so because they want company, gossip, or someone to talk with. When a guest arrives at any house, they know that the woman and man are busy working, so they start to help with housework or land work without being asked.

In the case of women, they spend the majority of their time in the kitchen cleaning and preparing meals, so when another woman visits she just starts helping in the

47 kitchen. If they are cooking hogao32 or arepas or are preparing the plantain or yucca for lunch, they both know exactly how to prepare the meal so they do not bother asking the recipe or the ingredients. In the case of men the same happens: all men know how to work the land or fix a window, so they do not have to ask how to do it, they just pick up a piece of wood and start fixing the window frame.

Neighbours support each other when someone is sick, needs help in land work, or especially needs construction on their houses. In this region, combite or a group of people that meets to do construction work or housing repairs is very common. In each neighbourhood experts in the use of different materials or techniques can be found. Not all men have the same skills, so they need each other’s skill sets during construction. Don Marino, who built his house in the last year and who lives on the upper side of a steep mountain, hauled his bricks by hand with the help and work of his neighbours, who also helped to construct the whole house.

Neighbours talk about others, the economic and social situation of coffee and about the future of the region all the time. Coffee is always in their discussions and conversations. They are afraid of the future of coffee but they always talk with gratitude about it. They say that they have other crops but that coffee is without doubt what has allowed them to have all that they have and what has shaped that region.

Family Traditions

Don Marino, Doña Pureza and Doña Leonor repeated more than once that the lifestyle of small coffee growers has not changed drastically. They do have cellphones and television but they still meet constantly with their neighbours, still eat arepa, mazamorra and coffee, and still work the fields according to what they learned from their parents and grandparents.

The three of them have a very similar family history; they are part of a big family of coffee growers and they learned how to work the farm and fields and how to take care of the family and house from their parents. Traditional skills and knowledge has been transmitted from generation to generation. Regardless of gender they know how to perform all the labors of producing coffee and other crops. From their early

32 Traditional and very common plate base don onions and tomatoes

48 childhood on, they learned about producing, harvesting, drying and packing coffee, and how to take care of plantains, fruit trees, beans, corn, chickens and pigs.

Don Marino has been living on his farm since he was a little boy. He grew up with his brothers and sisters with whom he learned from his parents how to work the land. He mentioned during my visits some details and memories about his childhood but never as many as Doña Pureza and Doña Leonor. Doña Pureza also grew up in coffee lands, with four brothers and three sisters. She says that she does not know what it is to stop working; she started working with her father when she was a little girl and has never stopped.

A few seconds after Doña Pureza started talking about her family, she invited me to sit and and listen as she calmly related her childhood. She was born on a coffee farm in Quindio, and moved to the Caldas region when she was six years old. She is one of the youngest of her family and all of her other sisters are older than her. Her mother, a sickly woman, never had the chance to share much time with her or teach her traditional women’s work in the fields and house. What she knows about traditional dishes and domestic labors she learned by observing and helping her sisters, and later working in her own home. She did learn how to work the land from her father. She constantly mentioned that her father was often hard to her. He put her to work the same hours as him, harvesting coffee and other crops, taking care of the chickens and pigs, gathering wood, and selecting the best coffee to sell. She told me that she learned to lock the pigs when she was only eleven years old. She not only worked the land, but after working all day with her father she also helped her sisters in domestic labours. How she talks and how she moves easily on the farm shows that she is a hard working woman.

“Hard working woman” is one of the most precise and fair ways to describe not only Doña Pureza but also Doña Leonor. Doña Leonor was born in Caldas coffee lands, and she also learned how to work the land and do domestic work from her mother and father. When she was very young she got married and from the beginning she and her husband knew that they wanted to have their own farm. She remembers that the first years were truly hard. Her husband needed to work as an agricultural laborer on big coffee farms to bear the costs of a house with nine kids. She was taking care of the house, family and a small grocery store that she decided to open in order to help with the family expenses. When they finally were able to buy their own land they both continued working in their current jobs and living far away because they did not

49 have a way to afford building their new home. Finally, they moved to a small first house, which is the house where Doña Leonor now lives and which has visibly been constructed over time.

The story of these three coffee growers is a story of hard work and of learning to work the land from previous generations. It is easy to see that the practices of producing coffee and the everyday life of any small coffee grower has not changed drastically in the past years and last generations. What has changed is the lifestyle and goals of new generations. All of them share one similar idea, which is not wanting their children to live on the farms. They encourage them to move to the city in search of a “better future.” Don Marino and Doña Pureza have two sons that live in Chile and one daughter who lives in Manizales, and both of them say with pride that they are flourishing far away. The same for Doña Leonor, although she talks with nostalgia about the fact that only one of her nine children is taking care of the land. She say that land work is hard, an ungrateful job in which even if it rains hard or not, if is sunny or not, you have to work every day from six to six, from sunrise to sunset.

In minifundios a traditional way of producing coffee and a transmission of skills and knowledge takes place from generation to generation. Small coffee growers rely on the production of coffee, constantly talking about prices, about the past, present and future of coffee. They build their houses and everyday life in order to cultivate, process and sell coffee every year at the time of harvest.

Latifundios

Latifundios in the coffee region are normally family businesses where all family members are welcome to work and participate. Therefore on big farms, as on minifundios, knowledge of how to produce and lead a coffee farm is transmitted from generation to generation. In latifundios the administrative structure and physical composition of farms is perfectly connected and reflected in its formal structure. In general, big farms are divided into different lots and they have different house types that respond to how work is divided. This means that a hierarchy in labor terms is reflected in the landscape structure and in the distribution of houses and buildings around farms.

Normally on latifundios coffee production ends with a mechanized process, which means that working buildings with specialized equipment are also part of the landscape. Before going forward, it is worth clarifying that latifundios are defined as

50 large pieces of land with a minimum area of 500 hectares. Nevertheless, in the coffee region of Colombia the word latifundio references a plot approximately between 30 and 40 hectares and maximum of 60.

The Land

Latifundios are farms consisting of a significant number of lots. Lots receive a name and are delimited by the landscape topography and its natural or man-made elements like a road, river, tree or house. As mentioned in the previous chapter, these names and boundaries were defined decades ago and are so rooted to the culture and place that changing them is almost impossible. Lots not only possess a special name, but also their own production scheme. Normally in latifundios coffee trees have a life cycle of five years. After five years, coffee trees are soqueados, and after a break of one harvesting season they again produce coffee. After fifteen years they are replaced and new ones are seeded. In consequence, farms are never producing at 100 percent capacity, but are normally divided into five sections, of which the section just seeded and the one soqueada have a low to null production. This means that around 70 percent of the farm is producing while the other 30 percent is not. This explains why big farms always have a different appearance, with mature, new, and just seeded trees in different lots.

In the everyday life of coffee families, coffee will always be the main topic. When families meet on farms for Christmas, Holy Week, and other weekends and holidays, it is sometimes a tradition to go before sunset, when the heat and sun are not too strong to take a walk and visit the almacigo33, the newly seeded trees or the coffee trees mas cargados34. Walking through coffee plantations, asking about broca, the last harvesting season, and what is expected for the next one are common topics in any conversation with a coffee grower, not only on the form but also in Manizales over a cup of coffee.

Big coffee farms are normally only planted with coffee; the presence of other crops is not very common. However, in some cases coffee growers decide to test new strategies by planting one or two lots with crops like plantains, oranges, corn, figs or beans. These crops are replaced and changed easily, temporary testing ideas that can be easily dismissed. They do not last in the landscape like coffee and the decision of replacing them is never as hard as one that shuts down a whole lot of

33 Almacigo is where just-seeded coffee plants are located. 34 This is an expression used when coffee trees look heavy and are full of coffee beans.

51 coffee to seed a new crop. Besides coffee trees and occasional other crops, latifundios plant fruit trees for the everyday consumption of workers and owners, as well as guadules, which are a source of local materials for the construction of simple structures and a key element for the preservation of water.

In terms of the land structure of latifundios, as mentioned before, they are divided into distinct lots that at the same time are combined in different zones, one of which hosts the house. In administrative terms latifundios have one head who is the owner and commonly also the administrator. He leads the team and is followed by the mayordomo, who then normally has under his supervision between one and four caseros. Caseros then have under their direction between thirty and forty coffee pickers, temporal workers for the harvest. Despite this division, coffee growers, mayordomos and caseros have usually had a close relationship. They listen to each other’s opinions, suggestions and new ideas. They walk through the lots and the farm looking for solutions to problems and discussing old and new methods.

La Maria, La Union, Lusitania, El Bosque, and La Cabana are farms that have been for generations owned by traditional families from Manizales. They all have a very similar structure and even though they differ in some techniques for the production of coffee, land distribution and the workers’ everyday life is remarkably similar. Big coffee producers normally do not buy or sell lots. For years farms have the same distribution and number of lots. If you ask people about some of the farms from La Cabaña, they will know the location and dimensions of these lots but also the owner, his family, and even some personal details.

In each one of them guaduales, different houses, and elements like trees, curves, and paths are known by all people of the vereda. They possess boundaries and a well-defined structure, but they are also accessible to all people from the vereda. Everyone uses these paths, and stories of places are recalled as part of thee collective memory of people in La Cabaña.

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Three Types of Houses and Working Buildings

Owners and administrators from big farms are always visiting and controlling what happens on the land, but normally they only have constant and direct contact with mayordomos who are in charge of the everyday land work. Mayordomos understand the strategies and structure of their farms and they not only follow the calendar for the management and production of coffee, but are also in charge of the caseros, land work, and working buildings. They are the link between owners and the work force. Caseros are responsible for a certain number of lots and the cuarteles, and at harvest time the coffee pickers are also their responsibility.

This hierarchy on big farms is perfectly reflected in the landscape and the different types of houses and work buildings. On big farms a main house or hacienda is owned and occupied by the farm’s owners, who normally visit from time to time. A second house is inhabited by mayordomos who live with their family a few meters from the main house, or in some cases in the first floor of the owner’s hacienda. The mayordomos are in charge of all other work buildings like storage sheds and el beneficiadero that normally surround the main house. Then a varying number of houses, depending on the size of the farm, are spread around the landscape, responding to the administrative division of the farm into different zones. These houses are inhabited by a family in which the man oversees certain lots, its coffee pickers, and some permanent workers. The wife is in charge of the house and the cooking for temporary workers at harvest.

Hacienda

Haciendas, or the main house type of latifundios, are houses located in working landscapes, places where families go to spend a weekend or the holidays but mainly simple houses where owners live while they are working and taking care of latifundios. Haciendas are houses made with the same materials and a similar formal structure to minifundios, or to the houses of the mayordomos and alimentaderos. Their rooms are connected inside with doors and outside by big corridors where families spend time together. They are built with guadua and have colourful windows and doors and clay tile roofs. What makes haciendas different, besides the area of the houses and their location on one of the highest parts of the farm with a stunning scenic view, is that they have ornaments: detailed and delicate cornices, stairs, columns, doors and windows made with local wood.

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Haciendas also have a characteristic that makes them remarkably different from other houses in La Cabaña and El Chuzo, in that experts use traditional materials to build them. Normally in veredas one or two wood workers master the art of building with guadua and doing ornamented windows and door. Owners do know how to fix minor damage in these houses, a broken window, a small problem in the plumbing or a broken tile in the floor. Specially trained women know how to paint the walls bright white and the doors and windows in bright red.

Haciendas also have a very special characteristic in terms of their decoration and furniture. Usually families that own haciendas are families that have been working hard for generations. They do not throw away old furniture or paintings; they bring from the city old things in perfect condition so that haciendas can be well furnished. In the same way, old things from haciendas will pass to the houses of the mayordomos, alimentaderos, or even workers. In La Cabaña and El Chuzo both furniture and houses are built by generations and pass from hand to hand, fixed until they no longer work.

In my study of haciendas I did not have the chance to meet all the owners in person, but I spent long nights talking with my grandmother and listening to her stories about her childhood and my grandfather. She was born in the coffee region of Caldas and with her mother and sisters played on coffee plantations, with dried coffee beans and other kids from the region or workers. She learned form her mother how to cook and sew but she never learned land work. She lived on the farm her first seven years of life, and they moved to the city the day that she first attended school. When she got married, she and my grandfather worked hard to buy their own first farm. They used to go every weekend after working in the city to work on the farm, she in the garden and house and taking care of the kids or helping to dry coffee beans and he in the field, leading the process of coffee production and in charge of drying and packing the coffee. They built together what they have today, in not a very different way from Don Marino and Doña Pureza.

Big landowners, like small ones, work hard on their land, starting with small portions of land and then growing larger thanks to hard work. Only in some cases are big farms divided between siblings when passing from one generation to another. Owners take care of their houses and are in charge of the production of coffee and the field. They have a clear distinction between the roles of women and men.

54 Mayordomo House

Mayordomos are the head of all workers on the latifundios, taking care of caseros, work buildings and coffee trees. They follow what the owner or administrator say and make sure that everyone fulfills their responsibility. Most importantly, they are in the field every day. They have access to and are responsible for machines and agricultural inputs, and are in charge of making sure that alimentaderos and cuarteles are in good working order.

Mayordomos houses are commonly on the first floor of owner haciendas or a few meters from the main house. They are simple houses in formal structure; they normally have two or three rooms, a generous kitchen and a corridor or open area where people meet in their free time or at lunch, breakfast, or dinner. Being part of the main house is not essential, but being in the same building as machines for drying coffee is. Mayordomos have to take care of valuable things like machines, supplies and inputs, but mainly recently packed coffee.

Ernesto, a man in his fifties who worked with my grandfather and today, after more than twenty-five years, is still working with my family, was my partner in my weeks in the coffee region. He is today a mayordomo and well known by everyone in La Cabaña. He knows about coffee and guadua, and about everyone in the vereda. He is still one of those men who cannot imagine living away from the coffee region, who talks about it with passion. The same is true for Jose Jesus, the mayordomo from La Union, and Octavio from La Maria, a man who knows how to fix a broken piece of any machine or house, how to detect coffee diseases, and most importantly how to find qualified coffee pickers for the harvest.

The everyday life of any woman or man working as mayordomos is not different from that of small coffee growers. They do not have the same freedoms and do not own their own land, but they wake up and eat at the same time. Woman have a similar routine, cooking the same dishes, taking care of the house and kids, helping in time of harvest. Men are in charge of the land, working in the field and taking care of coffee and workers. They learn how to fix windows, doors, and small machines, and they are the ones who go to the market on Saturday mornings, to buy groceries but especially to pay the workers and find new ones.

55 Yorladys, who is Ernesto’s wife, always welcomed me with a glass of orange juice or lemonade from fruit trees located beside her house. She cooked every day for us and spent long hours telling me stories about her life on farms and her work in alimentaderos. She learned from her mother how to take care of the house and help in the harvesting season, similar to Doña Leonor’s stories and all women from alimentaderos.

In the houses of the mayordomos gardens always have a space, and it is normal for owners to give them a place to raise crops and even chickens. In recent years, however, this tradition has been changed, especially by women. They no longer have their own garden or chickens; they no longer treat the land as theirs. Mayordomos said more than once that they cannot imagine themselves living in the city, but they want their next generations to work away from the coffee region.

Alimentaderos

In alimentaderos peoples’ behaviour, the functional structure of their houses, and their everyday lives are amazingly similar to the stories of the eight families of the alimentaderos that I visited. Alimentaderos are always inhabited by one family; the man is in charge of the land work and the work of coffee pickers in harvest while his wife takes care of the house and the cooking for all workers.

In terms of their formal structure, alimentaderos function in the same way on all farms. They have one private space where the family lives and one or two cuarteles, which are big spaces with cabins where temporary workers live and sleep during the three months of harvest. In addition, they have one communal space where they eat and share their free time: the corridor. However, kitchens are the heart of alimentaderos. They are not only located in the center but are also the connector between the other two areas. Here women prepare around 120 plates per day at harvest. The woman of the house also prepares the food for her children and family and receives nearly all her visitors here.

The alimentadero´s gardens, corridors, furniture and especially the kitchens are bright and clean; everything looks perfectly arranged. In any alimentadero a visitor is welcomed with a glass of orange or guava juice, a lemonade or a cup of coffee. Lucy and Adriana, two women that have been working in alimentaderos for years, mentioned more than once that the pots and pans must be shining as if they were

56 new, like a mirror, and everything must be perfect in case the owner comes. “You don´t want the owner to come and see his house like a mess, it will be a disrespect.”

In alimentaderos days do not change; the everyday and week routine is always the same. In the words of Lucy, a mature woman, it has been the same since her mother used to work in an alimentadero when she was a little girl. The alarm always rings at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning, and instantly the coffee, hot chocolate or aguapanela are on the stove. Meanwhile the woman takes a shower and gets ready to receive her husband and a few workers in low season; in harvesting times, between 30 and 40 temporal workers, for the first cup of morning coffee. By six sharp they have finished their drinks and are working in the field. Immediately after the men depart, the woman washes every single glass and starts to prepare breakfast. Every Monday Lucy prepares meat, potatoes, rice, arepa, and cheese, and Adriana also mentioned that Monday’s arepa, rice and hot chocolate could not be missing at table. At eight in the morning all workers come back to have their breakfast, then spend four more hours working the land. In those four hours the woman cleans the corridors, windows, and every corner of the house and starts to prepare lunch, which always starts with soup followed by meat and rice, potatoes or plantains and a big glass of juice—the same as lunches in minifundios and mayordomos houses. After lunch, the woman cleans the house and takes care of the kids while preparing the most traditional dish from the coffee region, beans, for five in the afternoon. In the case of men, they also have the same routine every day, which also starts at six and involves taking care of the lots from their section, fertilizing, weeding, harvesting, checking for infection or disease in the coffee plants, and taking care of cuarteles to be sure that they work and are in the best possible conditions.

Nevertheless, families from alimentaderos differ drastically from previous generations. In the words of Adriana, “we don’t want to settle down because this is not our home.” They no longer have gardens with herbs and crops, nor do they take care of fixing the house. Previous generations, according to almost all caseros, mayordomos and owners, used to establish a very close relationship with their employers. They used to feel like they were in their own home, they took care of everything, and they were motivated to live in a similar way as the small coffee growers, at one point even sharing profits with the owners.

Ernesto mentioned more than once that “today the problem is that people don´t love the land, they dream of going to the city. Before they used to love working in the

57 coffee region, they worked ‘con cuerpo, alma y corazon’ but today we just fulfil the duty.”

Eight Hours per Day

All families that work in latifundios were born and have lived in the coffee region their entire lives, some of them on big farms where their parents used to work and others on minifundios owned by their parents. I cannot remember one who did not learn how to work the coffee land from their families and in their childhood. They all live in a similar way to small coffee growers, but the fact that they do not own the land and today want younger generations to live in the city makes them less attached to the land than previously.

Nevertheless, just as on minifundios they talk with gratitude and passion about coffee, and speak with authority about the farms where they work. On latifundios as well as on minifundios workers follow a routine for the eight hours each day prior to harvesting season. In times of harvest their routine changes drastically, working until coffee beans are packed and ready to take to the city. They work seven days per week and women cook 120 meals in alimentaderos for forty temporary workers per day.

Workers’ Villages

Caserios or workers’ villages are commonly constituted by ten to thirty houses, where the working force of institutions like schools, medical centers, police stations, fondas, or willys live, as well as the permanent workers of big coffee farms. Caserios are commonly located in strategic places near big farms so that people can walk to work. Their houses are small and simple and people do not have portions of land big enough to have their own plantations; they normally have some chickens and one or two coffee trees or plantains. What caserios do have in abundance is a strong sense of community and very strong traditions that have shaped their everyday lives.

The Land and the Path

La Pava is the name of the caserio that I studied and visited. It is a place with twenty- seven houses on a steep mountain surrounded by coffee plantations and guaduales. In La Pava houses are small and very close to each other. One can say that La Pava

58 is one big group of different houses that depend on each other and that can only be understood as a whole.

La Pava is located in a very strategic place. It is near a number of big farms, where the majority of the people living in La Pava work. It is also located near the node where an elementary school and medical center is situated, not far from the main road of this vereda which has recently been paved. La Pava is a colorful and attractive group of houses that appeals to your eyes while moving around the landscape. But when you look carefully, it also presents the question of how to get there? How to be in front of one of La Pava´s houses?

Access to minifundios and latifundios is normally through dirt, wiggly and narrow roads, but access to La Pava is after the end of one of those roads, where one goes by foot through very narrow and steep paths and stairs. To get to La Pava you can take one of the many paths that go through coffee plantations but also two “main” entrances. The first one is at the top of the mountain where the caserio is located and the second one at the bottom. The one on top welcomes people with a space where willys are washed and parked. There is also a first house owned by Don Jaime, a man who worked his entire life on big farms but who, after retiring eight years ago, decided to open a store where people can buy some vegetables, groceries or beer before going home. The other entrance, the one at the bottom, welcomes people at the right side with two big guaduales that have been a source of water and guadua for the construction of their houses for decades. On the left side is a water storage tank used in times of drought.

I arrived at La Pava with Ernesto, on the back of his motorcycle embracing him to ensure I did not fall down and asking him on every curve to go slower. We arrived and he in the most natural way parked his motorcycle along the roadside and left his helmet on top of the seat. After laughing at my expression of surprise, he told me that “everyone here knows this is Ernesto’s motorcycle and helmet, I can swear no one will take it away.” (2016)

A few meters after entering La Pava by the top path and walking through some floral trees, a first house followed by a wood stove is surrounded by three other houses full of colors and flowers. Behind them is a scenery view of the coffee region’s mountains, guaduales, and blue sky that welcomes you. It also gives you in the first minutes and meters of your visit a clear and complete idea of the sense of

59 community and way of life of people in La Pava. Houses in La Pava are organized on both sides of a circular path of narrow and steep stairs and ramps. In the middle of that path, small nodes surrounded by corridors and balconies and with wood stoves shared by the inhabitants of two or three houses are located.

In La Pava houses are amazingly close to each other. By walking the path that connects them the interior of some of the rooms, if the doors are open, can be seen. You can see the beds, televisions, and posters or paintings hanging on the walls, as well as people sitting in the corridors or taking a nap after lunch, before going to take the willys or bus to Manizales for a medical appointment. Houses in La Pava appear as small roofs with two or three rooms where people sleep, organized along one cheerful and lively big path that is surrounded by corridors and balconies that welcome neighbours for long talks. The heart of La Pava is not the houses but the path with corridors full of people talking, working, fixing a window, cooking, doing the laundry, or just playing.

The Houses

Houses in La Pava have a simple formal structure and composition. Normally they are one-axle houses or houses in L-form with corridors facing the scenic view that they all share from their fronts. All houses in La Pava are small, normally with two rooms and one kitchen connected by interior doors and exterior generous corridors or balconies of chairs, small tables and flowers. Corridors are located a few steps from the main path that connects all the houses, which makes them private spaces with a collective purpose. A person passing by is always welcome to sit for a spell before going home.

Houses in La Pava have been built for generations. People build their own houses or they make modifications to older ones to make them bigger or to change old materials for newer ones. It is easy to know if a house is new or old, not only because of the use of new materials but also because old houses have one or two additional rooms and even a living room. Don Ruben, a man in his seventies who is a master of work in guadua and who has been working on coffee plantations his entire life, has one of the biggest houses in La Pava. He showed me not only more than one room, a kitchen and a living room, but also a space on the first floor for his daughters, sons, and grandkids.

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At the beginning a limited number of houses were located in La Pava but with time original families grew, and new houses appeared in the village. I had the chance to visit a significant number of houses and families in La Pava that have experienced this growth and development. The house of Don Pablo, a coffee worker, was inherited from his grandfather. Don Pablo started working coffee lands after finishing elementary school. Today another three houses that belong to his daughters and sons who live with their families surround his house. A second group of houses belong to Doña Judid and her brother. Doña Judid is a woman in her forties who has lived since she was a little girl in her current house which used to belong to her parents but today belongs to her and her son. In front it is her brother’s house who lives with his family. A third group, similar to the previous one, is the house of Don Mario, a man who lives with his nephew beside his sister’s house and in front of another sister, whose house is under construction.

Don Mario´s house is not only an example of a house that has been inherited from generation to generation, but is also an example of a common phenomenon that occurred in the coffee region, which is the support of the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros for small coffee growers and workers. As explained in a previous chapter, small coffee growers and workers in times of the coffee boom in Colombia had the support of different heads of the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros who helped them own their own house and land. Without going into much detail, some houses from caserios and minifundios were built under those programs and are today a palpable legacy of the important contribution of the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros to the development of the coffee region. In this regard, in La Pava all houses are built by their inhabitants and have a similar formal structure and composition, but some of the houses have a stamp not only in their design and appearance but also literally in one of the floor tiles in their corridors that shows that the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros financed them.

In La Pava houses are simple in their composition and formal structure but have to overcome a big challenge, not in their construction or access but their topography. They are situated in a region of strong earthquakes and steep mountains. In La Pava, which is located on a very steep mountain, some of the houses rest in a guadua frame made by hand that supports the corridors and house main floor. This makes the houses fresh and light but more importantly allows them to move and not fall apart in strong earthquakes. Although new materials and techniques are

61 becoming more common in new houses, in situations like the one previously mentioned, the use of local material and techniques improved for generations make people from La Pava not abandon them but instead rely on them.

A Visit to El Guadual

In La Pava almost all men from previous generations and still some from the most recent ones know how to build a house and work with guadua. They also become experts in the work of one material or discipline. Some of them know how to fix willys, others know how to build roofs, and still others are experts in construction with guadua and local wood. In La Pava, as in minifundios, people build their own houses and live in communities that are as self-sufficient as possible. They build and repair their own houses and learn to trust and cooperate with each other so as to not depend on external sources.

Don Ruben, a man in his seventies who has been living in La Pava since he was seventeen years old and who has some of his sons, daughters, and grandkids living in this same village, is known as an expert in the use of guadua. He is known as a wise old man who not only knows how to work the land, but who also knows how to work with local wood and guadua. The first time I visited him, he was sitting on his sofa listening to the radio in his brick and zinc-tiled house. At the beginning he was distant and timid, but after some minutes of talking he became a very lively and cheerful man. He talked to me about his childhood, how he learned to work on coffee plantations when he was eight years old and how from workers and his father he also learned how to work with guadua. He constantly said that he could not remember one day of his life without going to coffee plantations to weed, harvest, seed or fertilize. He cannot imagine his life without coffee.

Before Don Ruben started to share his experiences and life on coffee plantations, he asked me with a smile what I was doing, visiting an old coffee worker in a remote place like La Pava. After I told him about my research he looked at me with big eyes and started talking about wood, guadua, and construction techniques. A few minutes later, when I said to him that despite my being an architect he was the one who mastered the art of building with guadua and that I had no knowledge of it, he laughed and asked me to come back another day to visit La Pava’s Guadual so that he could show me and talk to me about guadua. Before leaving I asked him about his

62 house. Why did an expert in the use of guadua lives in a house made with brick? Without surprise he answered that nowadays guadua is the main source of food for insects, guadua disappears in front of your eyes eaten by weevils. “If you want a house that will last for generations it has to be built with modern and new materials, with brick and metallic tiles.”

The day of the visit to El Guadual, before living the house Don Ruben looked for his hat and machete. He said that before going to El Guadual you should never leave the house by yourself, and you also have to go with those two things. While walking he explained the main steps to build a house, from the foundation to the roof. The foundation is not profound and is made with rocks and wooden beams. These beams are always made with strong wood, a stronger wood than guadua like nogal or cedro. After placing and levelling the foundation, the four corners are lifted and diagonals are placed to strengthen the structure. Then walls are built with esterilla, and the floor is finished with strong local wood. The roof is built with guadua and on top clay tiles are placed. Don Ruben finished by mentioning that it was a very simple process, a process with no science. But this is definitely a process that can only be understood by being part of it. Small details are normally ignored in the telling of any story. Techniques learned from childhood that have been adopted and improved by people for generations can be taken for granted, done naturally and unconsciously. Seeing and documenting the process of construction of houses with guadua is the only way to deeply understand it.

I did not have the chance to be part of building or dissembling a house, but I did visit El Guadual with Don Ruben, which gave me an idea of the complexity and knowledge that is behind a construction method that has been used and changed for centuries.

In going to El Guadual you first need to walk on paths built by people with improvised and short-lived bridges for the rainy season. Guaduales are normally humid ecosystems, full of leaves, water, bugs, and guadua pieces on the ground, which makes the soil full of different layers. In guaduales you have to be very careful not only in not touching a rough stem but also where to put your feet. In our walk I noticed that both Don Ruben and Ernesto were anxious and constantly looking after me. Guaduas have solid, pointed, and sharp spines that will easily pass through your foot. Experienced villagers learn to see, walk and move in guaduales even with flip- flops. But when you do not know how to walk and where to put your feet, it is a

63 matter of luck to end the journey without being hurt. Don Ruben and Ernesto both learned after their first visit with their father to El Guadual when they were eight years old that guaduales are places that must be respected as important sources of materials and water, but also as natural places that you must learn to manipulate.

Don Ruben never stopped saying that a night of waning moon means a morning in El Guadual. One of guadua´s biggest enemies is the weevil, but in the coffee region it is well known that going the right morning to El Guadual can make a big difference in not having future problems with that insect. Between five and six in the morning men wake up and go in groups of two or three to cut guadua. They go after spending one or two afternoons looking for the perfect guadua to cut. It has to be gecha and in a place easy to move, because moving and manipulating six meters of guadua under the moonlight is not only difficult but also dangerous.

At five in the morning when men arrive to El Guadual, they know exactly how to start. They start hitting the plant slowly and in circles between 65 and 80 centimeters from its base. They do it in circles so that they can control the moment when the plant breaks and touches the floor, and they leave 65 to 80 centimeters so that a new one can grow again. After laying the plant on the floor, they cut it in the pieces that they need and leave it for fifteen days under El Guadual. They then go back home before eight in the morning, confident because they will have construction materials in fifteen days to start building a new house or structure. They are also sure about not having problems with the aloe that starts traveling upward from the roots after sunrise, around seven or eight in the morning.

If you ask men how to cut guadua they will only say that you have to go at five or six on the morning of a waning moon. To understand traditional techniques and construction methods, looking with your own eyes and being part of the process is the only way to deeply understand. Only by visiting El Guadual and seeing small details and hearing stories of Don Ruben and Ernestos did I understand the full harvest process. This means that building a house is a complex and rich process that takes days and years to be understood.

A Cup of Coffee with Guava Juice

Getting into La Pava, there are no doors or a real entrance, but the feeling of being in a private and collective space is something that accompanies you. Residents

64 welcome neighbours with a smile, a warm expression in their face or greeting. They know perfectly well who lives near or far and who is a stranger. They protect their houses, their neighbours, and their community.

In moving around La Pava, small conversations with people in their corridors and windows happen all the time. People easily ask you to come in, to sit with them. But it is only after they offer you a cup of coffee or guava juice that you know they like you, that they want to help you and that you are welcome to go into their house.

In some houses it takes five or ten minutes of conversation to reach this level, in others almost one hour. But after drinking that glass of juice or coffee you know that you can go back, call on them and visit any time. People in La Pava are enormously generous; they will look for the best cup to serve their coffee and the freshest guava to prepare the juice. They will definitely do their best to make you feel welcome, and after that first drink unexpected visits are perfectly normal.

Sense of Community and Traditions

The sense of community and community life in La Pava is what shapes their way of living. They all take care of their kids, their plants and animals, and their neighbours if they are sick. In La Pava not more than seven original families form today’s community. These families grew up together and can be considered one big family. In La Pava combites for the construction of houses are common. There are also fiestas at Christmas, New Year’s Day, and birthdays, and for all celebrations music, aguardiente and food cannot be missing.

In this regard caserios are not much different from minifundios, as they rely on each other for the construction of houses and as a community they are self-sufficient. They do not forget that it is coffee that connects them. In La Pava conversations will always touch on where to work and the working situation at that moment. They ask each other which big farm is looking for a coffee picker, casero or lady to help in the kitchen at harvest time. They all look forward to the harvest season and they help with the fertilization and weeding during the other nine months. They learn from their childhood how to work the coffee land and how to live in the coffee region. They say that they feel como perro con gusanos—literally, like a dog with worms—in the city, which means out of context.

65 Doña Judid is a woman who was born on coffee land. She has lived her entire life in the coffee region and she learned how to harvest and work on coffee plantations from her mother and father when she was eight years old. She remembers playing with her eleven siblings in plantain leaves, and in the tank with coffee beans. She also remembers the day that electricity and drinking water came to the village and when they started to have radios and television. But what she did not stop saying is that the only thing that she knows how to do in life is to work on coffee plantations. She enjoys the process of picking coffee, of cooking and working in alimentaderos, and she is delighted when big coffee growers call her to help in delicate tasks like the selection of the best coffee.

She talked like people in the minifundios and latifundios about change over time, about young people not wanting to work on coffee plantations. She spoke about her son who works in a call center in Manizales, and the use of new techniques and materials for the construction of houses, and the social crisis that the coffee region is experiencing today. But she emphasized that all people from La Pava depend on coffee: they all work on coffee farms, they live near them because that is their source of work, and they know all the mayordomos, caseros, and big farms owners because they work with them every day of the year. They rely on coffee and their everyday life is shaped by coffee.

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Conclusion

Cultural Landscape studies in architecture help us to understand the build environment and peoples’ everyday lives in their cultural and socio-economic contexts, which are shaped by the balance between human and natural forces. In this research I have attempted to understand La Cabaña and El Chuzo vernacular architecture and everyday life and its intimate connection with the process of coffee production.

To have a basis and starting point from which to understand the region’s vernacular architecture and everyday life, an understanding of the coffee region’s background and the influence that Quimbayas peoples, the Spanish, Colonizacion Antioqueña, and the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros had was undertaken. The origins of the use of local materials and traditional techniques, the formal style and aesthetic of its architecture, the structure of land ownership and the development of the coffee region in terms of its infrastructure and socio-economic structure was analyzed to then comprehend La Cabaña and El Chuzo coffee cultural landscapes’ vernacular architecture, identity, patterns, and cultural values.

Furthermore, a study of the two economic systems for the production of coffee in La Cabaña and El Chuzo was undertaken to understand how they shape the way of life and everyday architecture. Of the latter, three types of settlements and houses of the two regions was detailed. Differences in formal structure, construction techniques, the use of local and industrialized materials, and residents’ everyday lives were demonstrated, even as a shared set of patterns and place character emerged. The vernacular architecture and everyday life of the coffee growers and workers from La Cabaña and El Chuzo transcend the region’s socio-economic and physical organization and reveal a single set of patterns and spirit.

Tangible and intangible elements, such as materials, colors, building fabrics, or details like the time and type of food eaten by coffee growers, workers, and families, reveal a heritage and continuity in a way of life and its vernacular architecture. Intangible elements like the region’s social life, traditional knowledge and skills inherited from one generation to another, social organization, community behaviour,

67 and local orders, all shaped by the process of coffee production, reveal patterns that have been shaping this region over time at all scales and levels.

However, the change that has wracked this region over time in tangible and intangible elements, such as the use of industrialized materials or the lack of interest among new younger generations to work coffee plantations, reinforce the notion that everyday architecture and life is not frozen in time, even as they illustrate how cultural landscapes are reinvented and rethought over time.

The cultural landscape and vernacular architecture of La Cabaña and El Chuzo has been a collective project of many generations that still has a distinctive character and socio-economic structure and culture, deeply shaped by the process of producing coffee. It is an architecture and landscape that not only reveals the history and evolution of coffee but also the way of life of a community, which is in constant development but also deeply rooted in the tradition of producing coffee.

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