Pátzcuaro’s Marvelous Mercado and the Plaza Chica

Imagine a dark warren with cracked, uneven concrete, sprawling into adjacent blocks under plastic tarps outdoors. Imagine that it’s one very large square city block, not counting the side streets. Imagine that the aisles are narrow and constrained by products encroaching into them. Now fill those aisles with hundreds of people buying and selling, standing around chatting or examining merchandise (and blocking the aisles), wheeling bicycles or hauling heavily-loaded pushcarts, all trying to squeeze through to their objectives. Add the sound of vendors soliciting customers in Spanish, either at top volume or too low to be understood by this gringa. Throw in a few beggars and slow-moving elderly women in ethnic dress. That’s Pátzcuaro’s mercado.

It's a crowded place!

There’s the old man selling blackberries the size of your thumb, or passionfruit, or plums, standing at the same place every day just outside. Near him is the woman who sells wonderful corundas, a specialty of Michoacán, a sort of “blind tamale” of fluffy masa rolled into fresh corn leaves (not husks) and steamed, served with a righteous green chile sauce and crema, Mexico’s version of crème fraiche. This time of year every stall is piled high with mandarin oranges, 2 kilos for 8 pesos (about 70 cents), which qualifies as almost free.

There are sections for meat, chicken, fish (open air and unrefrigerated, unfortunately), clothes, kitchen items, underwear, hardware, shoes, pirated DVDs and CDs, sweets, beans, rice, nuts, seeds, countless taco stands and food stalls—not to mention all the produce, which is abundant and very fresh, and cheap. Surely I’m forgetting something.

Mark about to eat a large shrimp cocktail

At this time of year there were vendors with Christmas items, including stables roofed with Spanish moss along with the sparkly tree-decorating stuff and strings of lights. Christmas is mercifully restrained in Mexico, but there were still decorations and figurines large and small to buy for family crèches. Electricity is very expensive, so outdoor lighting decorations are modest and turned on only for a few hours a night. Poinsettias originated in Mexico, and they grow into huge bushes in this climate.

Plaza Chica (the small plaza, as opposed to Plaza Grande, the large plaza) commemorates the heroine of the Independencia, when Mexico broke away from Spain 200 years ago. Despite being imprisoned herself, Gertrudis Bocanegra was able to get word to the men who plotted the revolt that they had been betrayed and that they should flee for their lives. They were caught and executed in the end, but not before they launched the successful independence movement. For her part, she was shot by firing squad in 1817, and the crumbling remnants of the tree she was tied to is displayed in the Ex-Colegio Jesuita, a 500-year-old former Jesuit school. She was born here but is commemorated all through Mexico.

Despite a remodeling effort a couple of years ago, the plaza has been filled with more outdoor vendors who sell the same stuff as the folks inside. The town tried to make the plaza more attractive by clearing out the vendors, but until recently (last week) they were still there. We notice now that only a handful of food stalls remain, along the outer edges, and the rest are gone. Where?

Combis and taxis in Plaza Chica

Plaza Chica is also where one catches a combi, VW-sized vans that carry people all over town for 5 pesos a person (about 40 cents). They swarm around one side of the plaza, loading and unloading, cutting off cars and pedestrians, contributing to the total chaos. In Mexico they exist in small towns and big cities, and in rural areas go from town to town. If only we had such a thing in Salida—I’d use it!