Zacatecas:

For a week starting 19th December 2009, Casa Chapulin was invited to become involved in a project initiated by two compañeros of the Casa in a small community called Emiliano Zapata in the desert lying an hour north of the city of Zacatecas. The main aim of the project was the construction of a park in order to provide a communal and public space for the members of the community to meet, play and pass time together. Casa Chapulin, along with other visitors, was invited to lend a short amount of their time and energy into collectively realising this dream, together with the community. This was achieved through not only the physical construction and planning of the park but also through spending time talking, sharing experiences and getting to know a truly beautiful community.

Through a collaboration of men, women and children we all worked together to construct children’s games (including slides, a tyre mountain, a set of swings and a play house), a kiosk, benches and tables, grills, garden patches and a basketball/volleyball court. The majority of the material used was recycled from the local community including plastic bottles, tyres and rocks. In our respective teams we all shared times of excitement, exhaustion and certainly times of desperation! But the difficult times also enabled the realisation that sometimes plans must change and that through simply being a bit more creative in using the material that you have, new and even more exciting ideas can evolve.

This project was a thoroughly collective experience which maintained the dreams and aspirations of the community. As ‘outsiders’ we were fully integrated into the community through this process of joint construction as well as the daily meals with local families and the community activities were we invited to join in on such as a Christmas posada and our farewell party which took place in the park with local musicians playing in the newly built kiosk!

As we reached the end of the week with some areas finished and others almost finished we all went out separate ways for Christmas but we all left with feelings of great attachment to everyone we had met, worked with, talked to and even danced with throughout the week. We definitely have hopes of returning soon to Emiliano Zapata to see how the park develops as a collective space which can be recognised as communal achievement.