Paper short abstract:

Architecture of remittances have changed indigenous Guatemala's landscape, marking it with the contradictory signs of conflicting desires. The migrants' newly built houses speak of their will to return and settle while at the same time fostering expectations of modernity and movement.

Paper long abstract:

The landscape of Todos Santos, formerly a lowly populated village of scattered adobe houses and milpa fields, transformed into an ever-growing improvised metropolis. This change occurred in the last twenty years due to the mass migration that brought one third of the population of this Guatemalan indigenous municipality to the United States. Remittances have quickly become the main source of income of a transnational town where roughly every household has one person residing abroad. Besides everyday expenses, dollars coming from the North are mainly invested in building houses. New multiple-story concrete building, often exhibiting the flag of the United States, are replacing the traditional Maya adobe houses, giving form to an urban environment that doesn't follow any established plan but local rules of prestige. This architecture without architects focuses on the facade, which is overly decorated and reproduces the housing models seen and experienced during migration. The widespread use of shiny and polished material, like reflective glass walls, gives a intended impression of impersonality, mimicking the aseptic style of banks, malls and airports. Despite their ambitions of grandeur, the new buildings are often left unfinished, integrated with traditional elements and used for storage of food and objects. They look like out of place non functional elements into what largely remains a rural environment.

Are they the proof of Western hegemony or a caricature of it? Are they monuments to mobility or the solid form of a desire of immobility? This paper aims to dig into this contradictions.