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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — ^PUBLICATION NO. 11 



surround the town and extend inward in scattered 

 lots to within two blocks of the center of town. 



The appearance of the streets in the central part 

 of town is clean and neat. The ayuntamiento 

 hires a man who goes around with a mule-drawn 

 two-wheeled cart and cleans up and hauls away 

 the trash from these streets. On all the main 

 streets and on a majority of the other streets the 

 houses are built flush with the street or with the 

 narrow sidewalk. There are no open spaces or 

 yards in front of houses excepting in the periph- 

 eral suburban areas where the house may be 

 built a rod or two back from the street, but this is 

 decidedly the exception. In the majority of the 

 occupied blocks the houses form an unbroken wall 

 or front around the entire circumference. On 

 occasion it is difficult to distinguish the individual 

 houses, but a number of criteria usually allow the 

 determination of ownership, construction, or 

 dwelling units. Roof pitch, height of exterior 

 front wall, and material are uiueliable criteria; 

 however, at one time or another most of the houses 

 have been whitewashed, and the units can be 

 determined from the age or weathering and general 

 condition, the shade or hue, and the decorative 

 lines or designs. Of the 725 structures in Quiroga, 

 566 have been whitewashed with a lime mixture, 

 20 have a brownisli mud-plastered surface, 8 

 have a cement stucco or an oil-paint surface, and 

 131 houses either never have been whitewashed 

 or have lost all traces of any surfacing. Commonly 

 the front wall will have one or more horizontal 

 lines (usually in blue or red) which extend the full 

 frontage of the house (excepting on the door or 

 doors) at a height of between 2 and 5 feet above 

 the street or sidewalk. These lines or bands 

 serve to break the monotony of the white front, 

 and also they commonly set off the lower mud- 

 splattered zone from the higher and wliiter zone. 

 Practically never will two adjoining houses 

 coincide in the height, color, design and spacing 

 of the decorative lines. Quite often, on careful 

 inspection, it is possible to note the position of the 

 joining crack between two houses even though it 

 be covered with whitewash or plaster. 



Although there are only four signposts in 

 Quiroga (at the three highway entrances and at 

 the central intersection), and no billboards, a 

 considerable number of paper posters have been 

 affixed to the walls (especially in the central 16 

 blocks). These are commonly massed at the 



corners and constitute an illegal disfigurement 

 since there are scattered statements lettered on the 

 walls warning people not to post signs or adver- 

 tisements {"No anunciar," etc.). The greatest 

 variety of such advertisements is to be found in 

 the signs proclaiming the virtues of various patent 

 medicines, especially those presumably good for 

 colds and headaches. In this group a rough 

 count gave 89 Mejoral, 20 Pildoras Ross, 20 

 Roberina, 16 Cafiaspirma, and about 12 more 

 representing five other tonics. In second place 

 were the cigarette signs, all but four of which 

 advertised Cumbres (60 posters). In addition 

 there were 11 Coca-Cola posters, 2 of Carta Blanca 

 beer, and 1 of Chiclines chewing gum. There 

 were no signs advertising automobiles or tires, 

 refrigerators, or any other kind of "hard" goods 

 or expensive items. On occasion an ephemeral 

 poster would appear advertismg a circus, bull- 

 fight, or football (soccer) game m some neighboring 

 town such as Morelia, Patzcuaro, or Zacapu. 

 Many of the houses also carried small printed 

 posters on the door which stated that" Est ehogar 

 es CATOLICO; repudiamos la propaganda PROT- 

 ESTANTS" (This is a Catholic home; we repu- 

 diate the Protestant propaganda). The only 

 other signs commonly found on the building 

 walls were the occasional cuartel-manzana-caUe 

 signs mentioned previously and house numbers. 

 More than a third (262) of the houses had no 

 numbers. Nearly every house had one or more 

 sets of crossed sticks or slats above the doorway, 

 which had been placed there on some festive 

 occasion to hold colored paper streamers or other 

 decorations in place. A number of houses in the 

 outskirts (probably not more than 20) have two 

 muleshoes nailed above the doorway with the 

 calks or ends pointed upward in the traditional 

 form to insure good luck and fertility. Nearly all 

 recently erected houses, as well as many of the 

 others, have 2 or 3 wooden crosses erected along 

 the roof ridge or main axis (1 at each end, and the 

 third in the middle). The crosses invoke a 

 blessing on the new house, and are also considered 

 by some individuals to be effective in keeping 

 rayos or thunderbolts from hitting the house. 

 Most of the places of business (shoe-repair shops, 

 grocery stores, yardgoods stores, etc.) occupy 

 one or two front rooms of the same house in which 

 the proprietor and his family live. At one time 

 aU of the larger business places, as well as many 



