Would you believe 28+ years after the formation of La Yacata there were still no road names? Properties were identified by manzana (block) and lote number. Now for someone like myself, who takes endless walks around the fraccionamiento with Cocoa, identifying isn’t an issue. But as we were moving into the urbanization phase of our community growth, we now needed to buck up and choose some road names.
I suggested that we use plants because, well, duh. I love plants. Super Prez was on board with that, so my husband and I made a list of plants that were found in La Yacata. Some, like cazahuate (Ipomoea arborescens) were immediately rejected as they are also insults. To call some a cazahuate in this area is to imply they are stubborn and unable to be reasoned with.
I sent Super Prez a list of possibilities (with their botanical names because I’m a nerd). He sent a plan with about half of my list, the other half with extremely elevated names (in my opinion) like Maple and Cipres. I said as much and he sent a revised list with the names of more common trees. The road I lived on was to be called Tejocote, the Mexican crabapple. I had some problems pronouncing it, mixing up the j and the c, but it would do.
The owner on the parallel road to me objected to Mesquite and requested Olivo. I thought Acebuche would be more apt as it is the native olive tree, but Olivo was added to the plan. Then, the lady down below didn’t like Frailes and requested Abedul, so that change was made.
We could have saved ourselves the trouble because when we turned in the list to Desorrollo Urbano, they rejected all but two. Then gave us a list to choose from made up of plants and trees. Many of the names just didn’t roll off the tongue and we had gotten attached to the names we had chosen, so we were a bit put out. Not all of them were horrible. I liked Nopal and Copal and Tejocote was still on the list.
Thus, Super Prez submitted yet another list, this time with plants rather than trees, and our road name changed to Trigo (wheat); the three other main roads became Maiz, Centeno, and Amaranto. The upper roads were aromatic and medicinal plants like Romero and Melisa. I have to admit that I was a little jealous. Trigo didn’t seem as pretty to me as some of the others, but as long as our road has a name, I’d find a way to deal with it.
However, the road name approval process seemed long and drawn out when it wasn’t an outright rejection. It could have been that the person we’d been dealing with in Desarrollo Urbano (Planning) was moved to another department because he’d had issues with the brother of the mayor or something. So this new guy was taking forever and a day for simple paperwork, perhaps at the behest of the powers that be.
We went ahead and started using the names even if they weren’t official. However, at some point, we would need the official numbering and street names so we could have an official address for the electric bill. We got around the requirement with the initial 43 installations since the applications had been taken directly to the main CFE office in Guanajuato, and we didn’t have to go through the local office.
Not having official numbers really set off the regional CFE office and prevented additional colonos from having electricity installed when they applied. It was also necessary for the neighbor’s store permit, and boy, did I want a store in La Yacata.
The powers that be in the Presidencia said they couldn’t issue the official numbers until the cambio de uso de suelo (zoning change) was done. That paperwork had also been submitted months ago, and although several of the required departments had finished their studies, we were still waiting on the environmental impact study.
Anyway, somewhere along the line, Desarollo Urbano suggested the Super Prez create the numbering system. After all, up until a few years ago, he had his own road paving company and knew the procedure, which involved measuring distances from the corner with a rolley measurer thing. So he did.
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Want to find out how it all began? Check out La Yacata Revolution: How NOT to Buy a Piece of Heaven in Mexico, available on Amazon.
Surviving Mexico 