There’s a ritual here in Mexico where the owners of empty lots slash and burn the green space, in order to get ready for the upcoming rainy season. I’ve written about this before.
We have a corner unit in our apartment building and it over looks the lot next door. The lot is an L-shape of over-grown weeds, trees and jungle. Maybe 30,000 sq. feet. Pretty Large. The lot serves several purposes for us: it’s wild trees and shrubs protect us from the incessant sun on the side and in front it gives us a great jungle view. Occasionally we’ll hear a horse in the lot nearby eating grass.
About once a year, the owner of the lot has it cleared. Last year s/he brought in a bulldozer to knock all the large plants down and to generally clear things. We were inundated with dust for a month, dust everywhere. Slowly but surely the ground cover grew back and the rainy season brought everything back to full bloom.
This year, the owner hired a couple of men to burn the lot. This practice is not uncommon, however it is a federal offense, yet the policia don’t do anything about it. The bomberos didn’t even know that it’s a crime. I wouldn’t think anything of it, except that for lots that border houses, burning can be serious stuff. The usual route means clearing the land bit by bit and making small piles of refuse to burn.
The guys next door started burning small piles and we complained to ourselves about the smoke. It’s windy here in the spring and the smoke hit us hard. I’m sure the guys started out being careful, but things soon took a turn for the worse. After about two days of burning, we came home one night to a house full of smoke. the cats were freaked and had thrown up several times. We didn’t think too much of it, until the next morning when I walked on to the patio to notice that the fires had burned at least 50% of the lot. I could see that the fire had grown out of control and spread up towards our apartment building. All of the trees and bushes were piles of ash. The entire upper portion next to our apartment lay in ashes. The trees on our side of the property line had all been scarred and anything that was living or plastic had been burned (garden hose, drainage pipes, plants etc…) It was a mess. After that day, small fires raged on for the whole week, ending just day or two ago. From conversations with neighbors I here that the flames came deadly close to the gas tanks that sit on the side of our apartment building. Two days after the big burn, someone came around and chopped down any tree that was left standing.
And now? The once beautiful lot next door is a burned-out waste land. I really hope the rainy season brings it back. And the worse travesty of all was that on the corner of our patio, there is a banana tree which was growing a patch(?) of bananas. Have you ever seen this happen, up close? It’s better then a nature show. Some of the bananas and leaves got blackened. I hope the fire didn’t stunt the plants’ cycle.
after:
Well, I just happened to read a book about bananas to Anika and it said the branch where all the bananas grow is called a “hand” and the actual bananas “fingers.” Imagine that, who would have thought.
I still don’t get why they have to burn all the greenery down. What would happen if they just let it be?