Wooden Catemaco

Tlacotalpan, about 90 minutes away from beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz is a World Heritage site, primarily because its inhabitants tired of seeing their houses burn and instituted a building code prohibiting wooden buildings.

Catemaco is known as the place of burned houses. (Nahuatl language reference). This is possibly a reference to a fairly recent eruption of San Martin Tuxtla Volcano. Since those eruptions, Catemaco's inhabitants happily lived in wooden houses for hundreds of years and never reported a fire conflagration.

Locally it is said that when a Catemaco home owner wanted to move to another location, he simply dismantled his house and reconstructed it in his choice of plot. Noone here apparently heard of insurance fraud.

About 7 years ago, the State of Veracruz did one of those surveys and proposals that the Mexican bureaucracy is famous for, and apparently only found 6 worthwhile items to consider preservable in Catemaco, dating to the late 1890's.

The town may not have visible roots beyond 1890, but anywhere the earth is turned, there are shards of prehispanic occupation. The big shards have magically disappeared.

Photo: one of the few remaining wooden homes