Exploring Oaxaca’s Peri-Urban Landscape

by Joseph Heathcott · Published September 15, 2022 · Updated September 15, 2022

Person walking with a herd of cattle down a road

Walking along the dusty road in San Felipe del Agua, we heard the faint sound of cowbells clanking somewhere around the next bend. My spouse Ashley, who had done fieldwork in rural Kenya where cattle are commonly driven along roads, suggested that we wait along the side of the road to let the cows pass by. So we stood there for several minutes on what was once a sidewalk, but had long ago crumbled into rubble. The iron-rich earthen slope behind us was thickly grown with sedges, feather grass, elephant ear plants, prickly pear cacti, bracken, and the gnarled roots of stunted eucalyptus trees. Soon a man came slowly up the road driving half a dozen cattle, occasionally tapping one or another gently on the backside to prompt them forward. We exchanged friendly greetings, waited for the ensemble to pass by, and then proceeded along our way.

While this might seem a quintessential rural scene, we were only seven kilometers north of Oaxaca City’s historic center, walking through what many scholars call the “peri-urban” landscape. While my own work in Mexico is largely focused on urban spatial form in Mexico City, I am interested in the wide variety of landscapes that have emerged within and around Mexican cities over the last fifty years. To this end, I traveled to Oaxaca in 2018 and 2019 in order to study its history, architecture, and urban morphology. During these visits, I made close studies of places characterized by the entanglement of rural and urban forms and networks, such as the Central de Abastos (main wholesale market) and the Panteón General (main cemetery). In this essay, I use photography as a way to think about the natural and human ecologies that take shape in the betwixt and between spaces of Oaxaca’s peri-urban landscape.

History and Structure of Oaxaca’s Peri-urban Landscape

Established by Spanish conquerors in 1521 on Zapotec and Mixtec lands, Oaxaca town spread out slowly from the cathedral and plaza at its historic core (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site). Until the nineteenth century, the edge of town was defined by a stark division as the city grew through the extension of the Spanish grid. After the revolution ended in 1917, however, an ever-increasing flow of new arrivals from rural areas led to the establishment of informal squatter settlements encircling the city, breaking apart the old grid into new forms, fanning out and spreading up the slopes of surrounding mountains.

Informal settlements built on a hillside form a peri-urban landscape in Oaxaca — Informal settlements climbing the slopes around Oaxaca, with the Auditorio Guelaguetza and communication towers rising along the ridge line. Photo by Author, 2019.

As these settlements annealed into more or less regular barrios of the city in the 1970s and 1980s, new suburban developments opened up at even greater distances from the town center. Today Oaxaca (sometimes called Oaxaca City or Oaxaca de Juárez) is a conurbation—an area of densely interconnected urban settlements—of 300,000 people, surrounded by large ring roads, strip malls, subdivisions, big box chains, gas stations, and all the accouterments of a globalizing city.

Once you pass through this outer zone, however, you do not simply fall out into rural Oaxaca—the Oaxaca of communal lands (ejidos), Indigenous villages, smallholder farms, and collective labor obligations (tequio). Rather, you arrive at San Felipe del Agua and similar communities, situated between the expanding metropolis and the distant lands of rural Oaxaqueños. Where the eighteenth and nineteenth century city might have stood in relatively stark distinction with its agro-forested surroundings, over the course of the twentieth century a variety of communities grew up around the city, either as new migrant settlements or as villages swept up in the process of metropolitan expansion.

A view of a white bus parked in front of a yellow building surrounded by blue sky and hills. — A small roundabout and plaza mark the otherwise indistinct terminal of San Felipe del Agua in the foothills below Cerro Yatin (Mt. Yatin). Here, buses wait for half a day or more until there are enough fares to descend into Oaxaca town. Photo by Author, 2019.

The ecology of these areas is best characterized through patches and transitions, where pine-oak and montane forests occupy the higher elevations, giving way to semi-arid meadows and scrub of the lower slopes and flatlands. Many of the forests have fallen to extraction over time, except in nearby conservation zones, where Indigenous Oaxaqueños continue to exercise usufruct rights of gathering wood and hunting. Most of the trees found in these edge zones are not primeval holdovers, but have been planted by farmers and pastoralists, either as a source of fruit and wood or for shade, soil retention, and windbreak along herbaceous borders. These varied natural and human edge ecologies braid together to form unique cultural landscapes.

It is in such places that people work out social, economic, and ecological relations suitable for life in between, for a habitat that is neither urban nor rural and yet both in varied measure. It is a kind of zone of assemblage, where residents research and develop modes of living by drawing together the threads of urbanity and rurality, suburban proximities and natural systems and processes.

Rosy pink and red houses built into the hillside in a peri-urban landscape in Oaxaca. — A road in San Felipe del Agua. Urban houses are set into the earthen contours of the landscape, amid a disturbance ecology formed after long-term clearing of the pine-oak and montane forests made room for cultivated and volunteer species. Photo by Author, 2019.

Edge Geographies

The Greek root “peri-” denotes something near or around, as in “perimeter.” Peri-urban is one of the key terms in the lexicon of urban ecology. Scholars use it to describe particular la ndscapes, environments, or geographies either on the proximate margins of, or entangled in relations with, large cities and urbanized regions. However, the term is problematic because it is both ambiguous and teleological: it denotes the spatial condition of a place only in terms of its relation to something else—in this case to an urban agglomeration. Such places could just as well be called “peri-rural,” for their connections to agricultural, pastoral, and less inhabited hinterlands. Of course, this term is just as problematic as “peri-urban.”

In many respects, the road we walked in San Felipe del Agua was neither urban nor rural, but a mix of both, and something altogether different, hard to define. Here, landscape, habitat, and ecology take on forms that overlap with but also diverge from those of the city. Even the dust-coated plants that surrounded us on the side of the road comprised a mix of native and imported, cultivated and volunteer species forming a ruderal, roadside ecology. The remnant sidewalk on which we stood reflects a valiant effort at infrastructure building on an urban model, but its crumbled state announces the limits of such efforts. Clearly, this setting is neither city nor country, nor is it simply one of the many suburban developments surrounding Oaxaca, made by the outward push of the urban macroform into regional space.

It is in such places that people work out social, economic, and ecological relations suitable for life in between.

While it is tempting to describe places like San Felipe del Agua as exhibiting simultaneous modes of urbanity and rurality, this implies the existence of a kind of smooth gradient along which the urban flows into the rural. Walking through such places, however, reveals a mosaic of landscape forms characterized by juxtapositions, abrupt distinctions, and blended forms of architecture, settlement, and ecology. The entanglements of urban, rural, suburban, and natural forms create distinct kinds of places, however temporary, fragile, and changing. This also holds for locations at varied distances from the center, whether in a proximate settlement like San Felipe del Agua or a more distant village swept up into social and economic relations with the city. While the term peri-urban suggests geographic adjacency or proximity, it is better understood as an index of spatial relations between nodes and networks, where locations become entangled at a distance based on the frequency and salience of their (often unequal) material, social, and metabolic exchanges.

In the photographs that follow, I explore this peri-urban mosaic in several locations around metropolitan Oaxaca. Most of the locations we encountered at random by taking regional buses as far as they would travel, heading to the north, southwest, and east of the city center. In each location, I took photographs of landscape forms and elements that reflect the entanglements of human and natural conditions. While I draw on traditions of documentary photography in my work, I do not consider images to be straightforward instruments of truth telling or windows into some unmediated reality. Rather, I use photography to explore the contingent, multifaceted, and always-unfinished relations among people and the landscapes that they create and inhabit.

An intersection crowded with buses next to a green building. — Heading into and out of Oaxaca. This image shows the crowded bus stage along the Periférico near the Central de Abastos (main wholesale market). Thousands of people converge here every day, traveling from villages, farms, and towns in order to shop for provisions in the city. Transportation stages and large markets play a crucial role in knitting together an urban system that extends well beyond the geographical boundaries of Oaxaca City.

A grassy area in between concrete retaining walls. — The Jalatlaco River, shown above, runs through Oaxaca City into the periphery. Within the city limits, the river is covered by the Calzada de La República, a major thoroughfare. However, here in the peri-urban zone southeast of the city, the river remains exposed, though heavily channelized and contained. The river was once an important source of water for Indigenous Mixtec people, as well as for the harvesting of crayfish, snails, and reeds. Today it serves a different function as a drain for sewage and heavy rainfall, and attracts plants adapted to growth in nitrogen-rich, oxygen-poor soil that has built up through silting.

A white and red church with a large fenced churchyard. — The Templo de San Felipe Apóstol. The old village of San Felipe del Agua presents a small remnant Spanish grid of a few blocks around the church plaza, while the rest of the village stretches out along either side of the road into Oaxaca City. The land surrounding the village was once primarily agricultural and pastoral, with a large ejido (communal land) devoted to the cultivation and harvesting of agave for mezcal production. Today, the land serves a mix of functions as the area has been incorporated into greater Oaxaca.

three images of new housing built on hillsides — Rapid growth in San Felipe del Agua. Because of its proximity to the center of Oaxaca City, land around the old village of San Felipe del Agua has become increasingly valuable for new residential construction. The relatively steep topography requires builders to grade the slopes into terraces. As a result of new subdivisions, farm and pastureland has been broken into smaller and smaller pieces, interspersed with housing developments. Any traces of the old moraine forest are largely gone at this latitude, though ecological preserves can be found higher up in the surrounding Sierra Madres.

An open air restaurant typical of the peri-urban landscape of Oaxaca with cement floors, red, plastic tables, and rugs hanging from the walls — Restaurant, Teotitlán del Valle. This canteen-style restaurant is typical of peri-urban areas such as Teotitlán del Valle, a village located some 20 kilometers from the center of Oaxaca City. The restaurant is simply but elegantly designed, with an open-air plan that takes advantage of cross-breezes during the hot days, and a sloped roof for drainage during the rainy season. The kitchen in the back serves double-duty for both the restaurant and the household. The proprietor belongs to a rug weaving cooperative, and displays their creations on the walls.

A house's interior open air courtyard typical of Oaxaca's peri-urban landscape, serving as a workshop and storage and filled with supplies like buckets. — Household workshop, Teotitlán del Valle. In Oaxaca city, courtyards serve as leisure space or places for parking cars. In rural areas, families have room to spread out on surrounding grounds, and tend not to build courtyard homes. But in peri-urban areas, courtyards are often used as workshops for production of goods intended for urban markets. Since the grassland ecology on the mountain slopes around Teotitlán del Valle is good for pasturing sheep, residents produce high quality wool for knitting and weaving in their household workshops.

A compound around a brick house, with trees, building supplies and hanging laundry. — Enclosed compound, Teotitlán del Valle. Another peri-urban dwelling form is the enclosed compound. Instead of a house surrounding a courtyard as in the previous figure, the house is set into the yard, which is encompassed by a wall. The yard is then given over to household production and reproduction, including spaces for cooking, laundry, carpentry, kitchen gardens, storage, and weaving or pottery making. Many families also raise chickens, rabbits, pigeons, and other animals that do not require a lot of space to move about.

Two cows in a wooden pen next to a building — Livestock pen, Teotitlán del Valle. Because land is more limited in peri-urban landscapes, families who keep livestock often make use of pens. Here they can feed pigs, sheep, or cows without having to pasture them daily. Some households may have access either to communal land or property that they or their relatives own. If the land is nearby, they can drive their livestock to the food source. If it is too far, but still accessible, they might grow their own silage for feed, but keep fewer animals. Many households, however, do not have access to sufficient nearby land, and so keep only enough livestock in their courtyard or compound that they can afford to sustain with purchased feed.

A large loom with several large bundles of yarn in several shades of blue. — Loom at Santiago Ixtaltepec. Santiago Ixtaltepec is a village located about 15 kilometers east of Oaxaca City, just off the main highway. With the decline in agriculture in this region, many of the residents now specialize in one or another stage of wool production, from pasturing sheep to spinning and dying wool to weaving rugs and wall hangings for sale to shops in Oaxaca City. Such operations bring in much-needed cash to purchase household goods, tying these areas increasingly into urban and even global economies. The loom in the image above is one of three set up in the family’s courtyard.

A street lined with telephone poles, trees and meadows typical of the peri-urban landscape. — Street in San Antonio Arrazola. San Antonio Arrazola is a collection of houses, workshops, and small stores, all interspersed with patches of meadow and open fields. It is located within the greater municipality of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán, just to the south of Oaxaca City on the lee slopes of Monte Alban. As in many of the peri-urban landscapes around Oaxaca, San Antonio Arrazola attracts a variety of animal species optimized for exploiting edge ecologies between stands of trees and semi-arid scrubland, including Coyote, White Tail Deer, Vultures, Eastern Spiny Lizards, and Lesser Roadrunners.

A composite of four images of colorful painted storefronts — Shops around Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán. The shops in these photographs reveal a mixture of rural and urban elements that characterize Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán. At top left, the household goods store sells hardware, utensils, and food behind a barn-like enclosure. At top right, the Vasquez family’s business is close enough to the main road to offer internet connection, black and white photocopies, and X Box stations. Another family sells tlayudas out of this corrugated metal shed with bright, Indigenous-themed murals on the lower left. To the right, a family opened this small shop next to their garage, selling cards, gifts, and telephone service.

A grassy field in the foreground with houses behind it. — New construction in Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán. Throughout the municipality of Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán, the once mixed agricultural and pastoral communities are undergoing significant and rapid change. Areas like Colonia Buena Vista, shown above, are home both to older villagers as well as suburban commuters who have built many new houses in the area, drawn by the availability of relatively cheap land and close proximity to Oaxaca City, which is only 10 kilometers to the north. This outmigration of urban dwellers has led to increased inequality in the peri-urban landscapes.

A corrugated metal fence forms the boundary of a house's compound along a dirt road — Colonia 21 de Marzo, Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán. On the one hand, the colonia is organized on a small grid with street signs, electric and telephone service, and other urban elements. On the other hand, roads remain largely unpaved, corrugated metal fencing and roofing is common, and houses are interspersed with open land. Many families in this colonia split their economic activity between local work as farm laborers and household producers (raising chickens especially) and jobs in Oaxaca City as drivers, kitchen workers, and street vendors.

A painted cement wall forms a cemetery boundary along a road showing the mosaic of rural and urban elements that make up the peri-urban landscape — Wall of the Panteón General. Here at the southwest corner of San Antonio Arrazola’s main cemetery, graveside flowers and grass clippings accumulate and decay next to a massive Tule tree. Cemeteries in peri-urban landscapes are under increasing pressure to accept burials of people from Oaxaca City, particularly if they have family ties to the area. Land is at a premium in town, and urban cemeteries full to bursting. Since cremation is not a popular option among traditionally-minded Catholic families, there is escalating demand for space to inter the dead.

Middle distance view of the comenents of the peri-urban landscape with roads, phone lines, trees and grass. — Peri-urban landscape. This scene from San Antonio Arrazola reflects a combination of elements found in many peri-urban zones in Oaxaca, with a mosaic of village clusters, suburban houses, farm fields, pastures, meadows, and open scrubland. Sinewy asphalt roads give way on either side to gravel and dirt streets, and one neighbor’s concrete block wall butts up against another’s wooden fence. Electric and phone wires follow main roads to distribute services, but unevenly. While a few of the trees might be remnants of the pine-oak/montane forest ecosystem, most have been planted by local families as part of their agricultural and pastoral operations. It is this woolly, patchy, uneven, imbricated quality that best characterizes the peri-urban landscapes of Oaxaca.

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The Peri-urban Landscape, Betwixt and Between

The mosaic landscapes often called “peri-urban” gives rise to their own kinds of communities and forms. Here people devise relationships to nature and ecology that differ in important ways from both town dwellers and rural agriculturalists and pastoralists. A family might keep a small number of cattle, but also work in town driving trucks or cleaning houses or selling goods in the wholesale markets—jobs too distant for rurales to access in any regular way. They might have a small plot of land where they grow corn in back of their shop on a busy road. Restaurants are more like cantinas or camp mess halls, lovely in their own way, open to the country air. Churches sit comfortably in their own grounds, uncrowded by the block densities found in Oaxaca town. Households are sites both of production and social reproduction all in one; there is not land enough to sprawl out into big yards, but there is enough to store materials and machinery and carry out enterprises connected to urban proximity, such as textiles, food preparation, cabinetry, and so on.

The road we walked in San Felipe del Agua was neither urban nor rural, but a mix of both, and something altogether different, hard to define.

These places have their own register, their own rhythm, their own sensorium that are not adequately captured by terms like ‘peri-urban.’ Of course, they are frequently drawn into exploitative relations with cities, but identifying the socio-spatial liniments of these relations can be challenging, except in obvious situations such as pollution, dumping, extraction, and other highly visible metabolic externalities. More often, the forces that connect these landscapes to rural and urban processes are occulted and obscured, difficult to discern on the ground. Omnibus terms like urban, rural, and peri-urban are inadequate to capture the nuances of these relationships, heavily freighted as they are with meanings forged in Eurocentric planning and development visions of the world.

landscape view of a hillside town with low buildings, a church, scrubby trees and mountains in the background — View of Teotitlán del Valle, a village 30 kilometers from Oaxaca town. Located just off one of the main highways of Oaxaca state, the village is a center of red clay ceramics production for the urban market.

Walking through San Felipe del Agua, you might hear birdsong, a braying donkey, a rooster crowing, or the gentle lolling of cows. It is quiet enough to hear the wind blowing through trees and bushes. At same time you might hear the staccato rap of hammers and the whine of circular saws from a nearby residential subdivision under construction, or the grind of gearboxes from school buses and water trucks and parabuses. The pop of gravel under tires alerts you to an oncoming vehicle. The faint cry of a siren from a main road is near enough to be heard. Electric wires whine in the wind overhead, and the sweet smell of cow dung hangs in the air. This is peri-urban Oaxaca, betwixt and between, and very much its own place.

Featured image: Waiting for cattle to pass in San Felipe del Agua. Photo by Author, 2019.

Joseph Heathcott is Chair of Urban and Environmental Studies at The New School in New York, where he teaches in Parsons School of Design and the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment. Website. Instagram. Contact.

Exploring Oaxaca’s Peri-Urban Landscape

History and Structure of Oaxaca’s Peri-urban Landscape

Edge Geographies

The Peri-urban Landscape, Betwixt and Between

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