It's a dull grey sky in Saskatchewan today but I've got plenty of colour stuffed inside my computer. Here are a few photos taken between 2004 and 2020 from market ramblings in my favourite city in Mexico.
Who doesn't love a Mexican market? Indoors or outdoors, so much vitality and variety, so many luscious fruits and vegetables, so many dead chickens!
I love the hand positions in this photo. The weirdly manicured fingers make me think of dancers rehearsing while they're waiting in line behind the vendor's back. Expressiveness or just fowl rigor mortis?
Coffee shops are where you see foreigners and upper-income Mexicans but Oaxaca's world-famous markets are where you see the people. Indigenous folks travel weekly from surrounding communities to sell their products, like these vendors in Tlacolula.
The chapulines in the baskets below are found in all the markets and are practically a symbol of this area: small, medium or large, whatever suits your fancy. If they look like spiced grasshoppers it's because they are. Salty little creatures that Oaxaqueños love and sprinkle on everything.
How they're harvested in such quantities is a mystery.
I have eaten them but not often. My friend Joanne and I weren't fighting over the little plate piled with grasshoppers in this picture.
I never get tired of wandering the aisles in the markets. It's a favourite pass-time in the life of this retiree and way more fun than buying groceries at the Pioneer Co-op.
Here are six great city markets to keep in mind on your next trip, real or imaginary, to Oaxaca. All are within walking distance of the town square:
- The 20 de Noviembre market is named for the start of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, it's the place to have an inexpensive lunch
- Benito Juarez market is named after Mexico's first indigenous president who happens to be from Oaxaca, it's the place to buy souvenirs
- The neighbourhood markets of La Merced and my favourite Sanchez Pascuas have all the groceries you need, including those chicken fingers above
- The organic market of El Pochote has long communal tables full of snowbirds and tourists enjoying tantalizing lunches and sometimes live music
- The sprawling wholesale Central de Abastos (which tourists generally don't set foot in because it has a reputation for occasional pick-pockets) is a sprawling maze with an aisle for every kind of edible plant and animal created by nature and every useful or decorative object or food produced by man or woman.
This corner stall below at Sanchez Pascuas market is just a few blocks from our apartment, and is known for its breakfast tamales that sell like hotcakes and are always gone within a few hours. I stopped one day in 2019 on my way to Spanish class for a tasty little package of corn masa with bits of chicken and a rich mole sauce wrapped in a banana leaf. A bit greasy, very delicious.
Serious fans of authentic markets can hop on a local bus or a colectivo (or take a taxi in times of Covid) and visit a tianguis in one of the surrounding communities. If you want a handmade rug head to Teotitlán del Valle, if it's Sunday breakfast you want, go to the town of Tlacolula.
Next post.... adventuring outside the city to a tianguis (a traditional weekly pop-up market).
