Old ruins litter the Mexican countryside from Uxmal to Nuevo Laredo, as commonplace as plastic coke bottles lying in the verges. The former, though, often are picturesque. On a recent walk, I spot a leaning wall lurking in the underbrush.
Farther along, on the same terreno, a strange structure appears. I clamber up its eight-foot height. A round hole in the top suggests it perhaps once supported a flagpole.
I push through chest-high weeds to get a clear view of an old wall. The other three have long been mined by scavengers for building stone.
This must have been a substantial building. The wall is thick, the masonry fine. Sometime after the original construction, a broad-arched portal was filled in to create a proper door. Someone cared about this place enough to improve it.
I ask around. Nobody knows who built it or what its purpose was.
Mexico is full of forgotten structures. How can a building get forgotten? Why would anything so valuable be left to decay? Perhaps it's not the buildings that are lost—but the owners.
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