Everything can change in an instant out here due to weather, and one of the things villagers and visitors like to do is go walking around after a storm to see what artifacts or other kinds of stuff have washed up. There are several places around the village that are famous for turning up points, choppers and other types of tools. On one such walk, Texas State Alumnus, Cynthia Castle, thought she had found some type of chopper. As it turned out, it was just an old piece of shoe leather. Cynthia also found an old suitcase that had washed up. I noticed that she asked the villager who was with us if it was okay for her to grab the suitcase on the way out. As she said, she didn't want to offend anyone, and I thought that this was a good lesson on how to be respectful towards the villagers. So, weather was the first thing that kept me off schedule. Luckily, no one was hurt during the storms, and only 2 windshields were busted from hail.
Another major difficulty of doing this texture shoot is that it is sometimes impossible to see El Cerrito through its years of accumulation of stuff that sits in front of many of the structures. Vegitation overgrowth, melting adobe, junked cars, all sorts of building materials, you name it - seem to be strategically placed to hide the buildings I would like to photograph. I actually heard one of the visitors who has been studying this place for years comment on what a junk-yard the village has become. But as Dr. Brock Brown points out, when you are at 6200 feet in elevation, and there is no infrastructure for trash pick-up, and it takes 40 minutes to get down the bumpy unpaved road, and it would cost big dollars to have anything towed or hauled away, junk just kind of has a way of accumulating over the years. So I just slog along, and take photos of junk that tend to be a little hard to decipher.
The other thing that makes it difficult to get all of the photos that I want for village textures is the undercurrent of village drama that is going on. One of the things that makes El Cerrito unique is that it hasn't really done a lot of changing. Dr. Nostrand calls El Cerrito "a window into the past." When you go to El Cerrito, it is easy to see how life was lived in the past because not a whole lot has changed.
But the traditional village of El Cerrito seems to be slowly dying. There are only 13 residents, and most of them only come in on the weekend, and do not actually reside in the village full-time. Amongst those that DO reside in the village, there is a rift between those who want development and those who do not. Right now the big issue seems to be water rights and water issues. Two years ago, meters were put on all of the houses (even those that have no current occupants). They replaced the old thinner pipe with larger thicker pipe, and now the water-pressure has dwindled to a mere trickle. Since everything operates on gravity, those closer to the water tank have decent pressure (still not very strong), but people further down the line are unable to shower.
The situation was explained to us by one the residents of the village from her point-of-view at the horno fire last night. She is a descendant of one of the original families to live in El Cerrito, and she sees the meters as a way for outsiders to build an infrastructure for developing the area. From her point of view, the well was dug by El Cerrito for the people of EL Cerrito, and why should they have to pay for their own water? She worries because she feels this is just the first thing to happen on the way to full-scale development. There has been talk of installing wind turbines along the tops of the mesas surrounding the village. Other villagers, who seem to be pro-development are buying up land and trying to sell it. She spoke of seeing strangers in town doing measurements and gathering photographs and information, but being unable to get any information out of themas to why they are there.
So, even though everyone knows that Dr. Nostrand's group is in to work on the school house, I am off working alone, taking pictures and mapping out the village. I imagine that I am looked upon with suspicion and wariness as I plod from house to house, prying into the village's life and villager's homes. I start to feel like an outsider, a stranger. And it is a fact that there are some villagers who do not like us coming here. Still, I get what photos I can while I ponder my feelings and question what kind of impact my project will have on these people's lives.
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