A Village for Mexico: It’s the Ultimate in Recycling : VILLAGE: Recycling of School Buildings

When San Juan Capistrano Unified School District officials looked at their old storage buildings and stockpile of outdated school equipment, all they saw was junk. John Pierce looked at the vintage Quonset huts and battered furnishings and envisioned a new way of life for a Mexican village.

He invested $40 in the property and embarked on a “longtime dream” to transform the tiny thatched-roof village where his wife was born into a full-scale town.

Pierce, 51, a former tile setter who lives in San Juan Capistrano, had mentioned to friends in the school district that he would be interested in one of the huts, if the district ever decided to get rid of them.

“When I was in the Marine Corps, I lived in one and have quite a fondness for them, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do with this one,” Pierce said.

“I ended up with four Quonset huts and enough material to completely build a small town,” Pierce said proudly.

Over the last 3 1/2 months, Pierce has been dismantling the huts, once used as classrooms and later as warehouses, bolt by bolt. He stacked and numbered piles of wood, windows, metal, and tubing that all together look like little more than a giant scrap heap.

“I have 500 school desks and chairs, blackboards, pencil sharpeners, teachers’ desks, 25 typewriters, ceiling-mounted wall heaters--everything we’re accustomed to in our schools in the United States,” Pierce said.

In a couple of months, Pierce and his wife plan to move to Mexico and start reassembling the huts in San Miguel del Rio, where her family still lives. The village of seven families--about 20 people--in the state of Michoacan lies about 25 miles inland from the Pacific and about 250 miles west of Mexico City.

“I’ll have a house to live in, a farm to farm, and a nice river to fish in,” Pierce said.

Although Pierce initially envisioned a nine-unit complex, he believes he has enough material from the Quonset huts to build 21 units--including a school, clinic, church and community center. Pierce plans to build public restrooms and a laundry facility, providing hot water with a discarded solar panel.

“I also have stools, kitchen sinks, four refrigerators and enough fluorescent tubes to light up the whole town,” Pierce said.

The community center and park will have volleyball equipment, two picnic tables and a table tennis table.

Water Purification System

Also on the drawing board is a water purification system, which Pierce plans to assemble from an old swimming-pool water pump. Villagers now take baths, do their laundry and haul their water from the nearby Coahueyana River.

And late last week, Pierce began checking into the possibility of establishing a goat farm in San Miguel del Rio with 300 of the wild goats that the U.S. Navy is trying to get rid of from San Clemente Island.

For San Miguel, it will be a big change indeed. The village now has electricity but no running water. Its inhabitants harvest peanuts and corn on land loaned to them by the government.

“I hope it will draw more people to the village. The more people who come to work the land, the easier everyone’s life will be,” Pierce said.

Pierce is a man of modest means to be building a town in Mexico. He was born in a small farming town outside Lawrence, Kan. Part Wyandotte Indian, he grew up on reservation lands in a dirt-floor home and learned farming, construction and tile setting from his father.

He served as a communications instructor in the Marines from 1954 to 1956. While stationed at Camp Pendleton, he worked at his tile-setting trade on weekends.

After leaving the service, he continued tile setting until 1976, when he moved to Mexico to open a tile factory. While he was there he met his wife.

Business Failed

The business failed in 1978, however, and Pierce returned with his wife, Elda, to the United States. For a time they lived in a garage in Spring Valley in San Diego County.

Now they live in a small apartment from which they operate their own ceramic business. Penetrating the Mexican bureaucracy has been more challenging for Pierce than taking apart and reassembling all the buildings.

With help from the office of Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), Pierce is negotiating with the Mexican government to allow his “village” across the border duty-free, and to arrange for government transportation of the equipment to San Miguel del Rio.

Pierce has agreed to distribute surplus material from the village to other parts of Michoacan. An extra water pump, for example, will be used for a water purification system in Morelia.

Pierce estimates that it will take at least five 18-wheeler trucks to cart the materials the full 1,760 miles to San Miguel del Rio.

Ricardo Enriquez, who represents the state government of Michoacan in Mexico City, said he plans to do a documentary on the Pierce family for Mexican national television.

“This is the most important project of this kind that we know about,” Enriquez said. “The government is grateful for the donation, especially for the school supplies. We will call the documentary ‘El Regreso’ (The Return), symbolizing the Pierce family’s loyalty to its roots.”

Nancy Walker, an aide to Packard, said she didn’t know what to make of Pierce’s request for assistance initially.

“I’ve worked in congressional offices and with the State Department for 20 years,” she said. “I’ve never had anyone ask me to help move a whole city across the border. It’s a remarkable story.” And San Capistrano Unified School District officials are delighted about the use of their surplus materials.

Said school board member Ted Kopp: “We were just glad someone took them off our hands.”