Being in San Cristobal de las Casas is a very different experience than being in Mexico City. Mexico City felt like everything was moving fast, not just because we only had one week there, but because of the amount of people there and things going on. However, unexpectedly, I love being in San Cristobal more. I feel a lot more comfortable with the pace of things here even though I haven’t really been able to talk with the locals as much as in Mexico City.
Event the art style and colors of the buildings here are very different from CDMX. A lot of the art here was made to reflect the indigenous communities.
View of the rural community of San Cristobal from the apartments.
Although we did do some fun activities here like going on a tour of the area we’re staying in (but lowkey we already walked most of the places the tour brought us but it was still really cool since we had drinks included!). We also explored some really cool waterfalls and although a lot of hiking was involved, swimming at the end was worth it! Some of us also learned how to party with the locals and as of right now I’m not sure if San Cris really gets down like CDMX but we still have time to learn.
The art in these discotecas are really cool and unique!
View from discoteca #2
Karaoke with the girls (and Gabe!)
Us walking to one of the five waterfalls at the park!
A close up view of one of the waterfalls we saw!
Last week we met with Isla Urbana, and this week we met with Cantaro Azul to learn about their goals and work with water in Mexico. Surprisingly to me, during our visit to Cantaro Azul, I learned that both of these organizations actually have done some work together to help out the different communities in Mexico. Isla Urbana primarily works in harvesting rainwater and treating it to provide clean water to select people/communities. Cantaro Azul also does some work in harvesting rainwater, but one of their main focuses is on finding proper solutions to filter water in general for rural communities in San Cristobal, Mexico. One thing that stood out to me from these groups is both of their efforts to make sure that the community is a part of each experience when they use their products so that overall they can have autonomy and help themselves out during times of need.
I know that in the future I want to have a chance to design a product that will help a specific community in need, and visiting these organizations and speaking with them helped me learn how to approach this plan. What stood out to me most from them was that they created designs that would allow the people using their products to be a part of the product to help them out, as I had mentioned previously. I just think this is very important, as it makes it so that they are more involved in the solution and not just relying on the designer completely.
For one of the classes, my task is to work with a partner to reverse-engineer a water-filtering device, and this is mainly to help understand the manufacturing process. My partner and I chose to work on a bag “filter”. It is actually not a filter but is used to actually to destroy any heavy metals present in the water placed in the bag. What I’ve learned about myself during this process is that I really enjoy assembling and disassembling parts together, but I also kind of already knew this. But I found this to be a really cool experience. But this helped me learn about how meticulous a manufacturer and assembly instructions should be so that everything works well.
For design/building in Mexico, it is also really necessary that designs are made specific to work with the location. For instance, if designing a water system for a community with little to no rain, it would likely be better to find an alternate water system to implement other than rainwater harvesting.
During our walk to the site where we will be collecting water and treating it for our course it rained on us bad. But we were able to see the possibilities of what could happen during a water collection process. We were also able to see the impact of rain on the community. This was not the first time it rained since it’s rained everyday we’ve been here.
From all of these experiences, I’ve also learned the importance of not just coming up with solutions for people without even really speaking with them to know what they actually believe they need the most. When we don’t do this type of communication, we may end up finding that we are not even solving any problems. So when I begin designing my own projects, I know what to do moving forward.