Walking the Malecon, visitors come upon palm branch topped beach shelters that provide protection from the sun and are places to gather. The shelters line a sea wall and their tops look like giant Chinese coolie hats.
This morning a crew of workers are re-thatching a roof on one of the palapas. A helper on the beach hands a palm frond up. A hatted worker on the roof takes and positions it across the joists of the shelter’s roof, careful to overlap other branches already laid down. Then he uses wire to tiie the palm leaves to the joists. As the project is completed the bones of the shelter roof disappear and it shows a new thatch of green hair that will turn brown in time, like the older ones.
Other workers are erecting huge statues for a Mazatlan Carnival in February. That is the event that has pushed this thatching to top priority.
Work occurs here each day.
It winds its way through all lives here and ties people, weather, time and space together.
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