El Porvenir means "the future" in Spanish.

This is a city in the making. These photographs were taken in 1968 when Mary Jane Cotton (my first wife) and I visited El Porvenir to conduct research for my Harvard Ph.D. thesis. We have not returned - but I would guess that by now the settlement must stretch to the distant mountains and these simple adobe houses are probably all built of "material noble" - brick. The families who lived here in 1968 had moved down from their homelands in the high mountains - seeking new jobs and education for their children - seeking "el porvenir" in a modernizing and industrializing nation.

Settlements like El Porvenir are literally carved out of the desert by the sweat of their residents. The vacant land is taken by squatters in an invasion, usually of a few dozen families at a time. In a sense, these are "new towns" - as architects like to call such places - but they are created not by architects and planners and bureaucrats - but by the people who live in them.

At the time of our one-and-a-half year residence in El Porvenir, many regarded these settlements as lawless slums. We found the opposite - a well organized community in which people went about their daily lives without unusual fear of crime. El Porvenir was a place of established and loving families, of industry and hard work.

 

A view of the town from our home atop a slight rise.

 

 

The people of El Porvenir work at various jobs, usually six days a week. Celso Gutierrez (left) is a zapatero - a tailor who works in his home. Alfredo Vasquez Jara (right) is a waiter at El Gallo Rojo, a Chinese restaurant in the nearby city of Trujillo.This photograph was taken on a Sunday - a day of rest and, often, of singing and social drinking.

 

 

This is a more typical photograph of Celso - working at his craft with a sewing machine turned by a foot-operated treadle.

 

More Photographs to come - this section of my web site is under construction.