Carrizo, from the Latin carix, is a reed grass of the genus Phragmites. Some folks call it ditch reed. Not elegant, but accurate. Carrizo sprouts from a tuber that looks
so much like a sweet potato on steroids that they call it a camote. Carrizo is irrepressible. If you dig out a camote and leave even a tiny fragment in the ground, two weeks
later you have a sprout, a month later it is waste high, and before you can
turn around twice you have a forest. A full-grown carrizo cane stands about 6 meters high, and its stem, segmented
and hollow like bamboo, can be 10 centimeters thick. On the banks of the
irrigation ditch that is the north boundary of the property we bought here in
Santa Cruz Etla, the carrizo grew so
thick that when we did the deslinde
last year, the alcalde had to cut
down fifty or sixty stalks just to be able to measure the boundary.
In the
‘waste-not, want-not’ world of rural Mexico, carrizo has infinite uses. You can cut it, dry it, and use it for
fences. Or for a door. Or for roofing material, as a base for terracotta tiles.
Laid over a wall, it is good for sound-proofing. You can lash thin ones
together to make a rickety stand for pinwheels of fireworks, or thick ones to
make scaffolding for construction. Planted along a boundary line, carrizo shields you from your neighbors.
It makes good shade. When the wind blows through the leaves, it sounds like a
waterfall. A length of carrizo makes
a good cane. You can beat off dogs with it. You can pound it into the ground
and tether your burro to it. Selected for hollowness and cut
to the proper lengths, carrizos will
do for a marimba. You can weave it into a lattice and train your chayote vines to climb it, so that
pretty soon you can just reach up and pick the hanging chayotes to flavor and thicken your stews.

A couple of
days ago on my morning walk with Kalba, I ran into a neighbor who was heading
out into the Santa Cruz communal land with his machete.
“Going out
for some firewood, eh?”
“No, no;
I’m going to cut carrizo. To make
cups.”
“Cups?” As
I asked I realized how dumb the question was: cut a carrizo below the joint, and again below the next joint, you have a
hollow segment stoppered at the bottom and open at the top.
“This
weekend is the mayordomía of La Juquilita,
the Virgin of Juquila.”
“I thought Juquila
was December 8.”
"It is, it
is. But the mayordomía changes every
year. We do the change two weeks later. I’m this year’s mayordomó. And the man who will be in charge of keeping the chapel
pretty, you know, repainting it, cleaning it, fresh flowers on the feast days,
that is my cousin. He’s coming down from Mexico City.”
“And the
cups are for mescal . . .?”
“Of course!
¡Claro!” Meaning that I might as well be asking if the sun comes up in the
morning. Duh!
What Lalo’s
men are going to do with carrizo is
roof the front and back terraces of the casa and our two studies. It sounds
easy but, like everything else connected with building with traditional
methods, it has its complexities and nuances.
We ask if
we are going to use the remaining stand of carrizo
that grows along the zanja ditch.
I figure we could cut 50 or 75 canes from it without seriously depleting the
patch.
“Maybe
we’ll cut a couple; but we will need at least 2,000 canes. Maybe 3,000.” Lalo
disabuses us of the dream of self-sufficiency. “We’ll have to buy the carrizo, but it’s not all that
expensive, and we’ll get good quality. We won’t need it for another month and a
half, but we have to buy it now.”
We are a
couple of days before Muertos. “Buy it now because . . .”
“It has to
dry. It has to be sized and peeled. And the full moon is November 6, so this is
a good time to order it. You have to cut carrizo
at the full moon. Otherwise it won’t last.”
“I don’t
understand. It won’t last . . .?”
“It dries
out. Turns to dust, starts to flake. If you cut the carrizo at the full moon, it won’t do that.”
I look
quizzically at Cynthia, but she quickly confirms what Lalo has said. “That goes
for lumber, too. For the beams: they’ll have to be cut at the full moon.
Otherwise . . . “
I ask our
once-a-week gardener, Lázaro Solís, if he has ever heard this. By the way,
Lázaro has just been elected mayor of Santa Cruz Etla. A great honor. I
extended my condolences.
“Yes, it’s absolutely
true. Cut at the full moon. I don’t know why, but everybody who works in
construction knows it.”
Two days
later, on a bird walk with Bill Stitcher, I ask him about it.
“It’s
common wisdom. But I don’t have any idea.” A few moments and a half-dozen
species later he adds, “Maybe there’s a
night insect that lays it’s eggs in freshly cut wood and the light of the full
moon scares it off?”
I guess
that will have to do.
November 8
a pickup truck deposits a mountain of carrizo
stalks down near the stairway to the street, alongside the new carrizo door that Lalo has knocked
together to keep the dogs our (or in, depending on whose they are). Two days
later, another load. Three of the workmen are dispatched to prepare it for use.
Cane by
cane they shave off the leaves with their machetes, scrape off the loose skin
with the back of their machete blades, lop off the leafy top of each cane with
one quick chop of their machetes. All-purpose tool meets all-purpose building
material. They pile the leafy tops to one side, lay the peeled canes out to dry,
and a few days later bind them loosely into bundles of 80.
A few days
before Christmas they carry the bundles up to the construction site. The walls
on Linda’s study, my study, and the back terrace are complete. The front
terrace verticals are nearing completion and the notching of the heavy pine
crossbeams is underway. The roof beams, the morillos,
presumably all harvested from the forest by the light of the fullest of moons,
have been smoothed, insect-proofed, and fitted into place.

An anchoring cane
has been lashed into place alongside each of the morillos. In teams of three, the workmen start laying the carrizo crosswise onto the morillos, lashing each new cane with a loop of string onto the anchoring
cane. It is meticulous, painstaking work. The strings hang down from each of
the morillos like fishing lines dangled into a stocked pond on the first day of bass
season. Gradually, from the lowest edge up the slope to the roof peak, the carrizos are lashed into place. When
they have finished, over them will be placed a layer of waterproof insulating
material, and over that the overlapping rows of terracotta roof tiles, called tejas.
Cultural
aside having nothing to do with carrizo.
The sound now written with a ‘j’ used to be written with an ‘x’, and the clay
on the north side of the lower Río Grande was so suited to roof tiles, that
Mexicans began referring to the whole area as roof-tile-place.
Second
cultural aside, only tangentially having to do with carrizo, and yet a marvel of coincidence.
(a) A
couple of meters above the river bank, in the sun-drenched meadows bordering
the Río Grande, grows a sticky-leafed plant bearing clusters of small yellow
flowers. It’s called chamiza. Its
dried stems, in the absence of more suitable firewood, can be burned as
brushwood. At El Paso, the scrubby island in the middle of the river, long disputed
between the two countries, was by treaty turned into a cultural park called “El
Chamizal.” The American half is a performance space that sponsors, among other
things, a Spanish Golden Age Theater Festival, to which has adhered an academic
conference focusing on Renaissance theater. I was one of its founders and sat
on the board for a couple of decades.
(b) The sticky-leafed
yellow flower grows in Oaxaca, too, and the piece of land we bought is known
locally as “El Chamizal.”
(c) I had a
sciatica attack last week, was in considerable pain, and could barely
straighten up. Sill am; still can’t. Several folks recommended a poultice of
the sticky chamiza leaves bound
tightly to the back: “chamiza and a
good night’s rest will set you straight.” Lalo brought me an armload of chamiza. OK. We peeled off the leaves,
stuck them to my back, bound them with a towel and a length of rope, put me to
bed, and instructed the neighbor’s eight dogs to go gentle with their usual
dawn serenade. I slept well despite the toweled lump in the middle of my back.
The dogs ignored my instructions and at 5:45 I got up, untied the rope, peeled
off the chamiza, and made coffee. I
guess I’ll stick with the chemical anti-inflammatories and another of Elizz’s
muscle-probing massages.