A morning at Mercado Merced, and being a tourist again

Mercado Merced is one of the biggest markets in Mexico City. Up until recently, I wasn’t a fan. I did my shopping as quickly as I could and got the heck out of there, before the crowds could swallow me up. The place felt like the subway during rush hour. Except with offal just a few inches from my face.

Penny said she wanted to visit Merced for her photography workshop, the one I was helping her with as her guide and fixer. I tried to dissuade her.

“I’m overwhelmed every time I go, and I live here,” I said.

“I think it’ll be okay,” she said.

I still wasn’t convinced, but Penny enticed me with conchas at El Popular. So off we went one Saturday, after breakfast, the five of us, all women: Cindy, a photographer from San Francisco; Susan, a photographer from Washington state; Penny and I, and Averie, a blogger from San Diego.

At 8:30 a.m., Merced was the quietest I’d seen. The dude advertising anti-fungal medicine was there on the Circunvalación, blaring his ad full blast. (“Do you have problems with fungus? On your fingernails? Elsewhere?”) People bustled about the streets, getting on and off the peseros. The clothing and shoes vendors, the ones directly in front of the produce building, hadn’t opened yet. That meant we could walk in peace. No loud music, no taco vendors yelling about diez por diez, and nobody heaving gigantic bags of merchandise into our elbows and shoulders.

Mercado Merced is not just one market. It’s a complex of several buildings ringed with dozens (hundreds?) of open-air stands. These vendors sell anything from blenders to scrubbing brushes, to strainers for your tomato caldillo. To get to the meat and produce, you must walk past these vendors first. Or you can take the metro, which exits directly into the fruit-and-vegetable building. The most confusing thing to do is to take a cab to Merced, because it’s impossible to see anything but a sea of tarps. (We took a cab, but only because I knew where we were going.)

I hadn’t looked at Merced with a tourist’s eyes in a long time. The market awed me when I first moved here, with its dried chiles stacked over my head and its energy. I wanted to bring my camera several times. But that urge gradually faded away. I wasn’t a gringa tourist anymore, I was a chilanga who actually bought her dried corn and tamale flour here.

Since I had to leave fairly soon, Penny offered to walk around with me and help me with my camera settings. This meant I had to take photos and look for moments — moments meaning people. The idea scared me. What if the subject got mad and yelled? What if they glared at me? Penny said that if anyone didn’t want their picture taken, no pasa nada, I should just move on.

After a few minutes, I found my first moment: a guy tearing banana leaves off the plant’s long stalks. I liked that he was framed by bunches of plants that he’d already cleaned. I took out my camera and hesitantly started taking a few photos.

“Get closer!” Penny urged.

I got a little closer, and the guy gave me a funny look.

“Keep going. Stay there. Ignore him,” Penny said.

I stayed where I was and kept snapping.

The pictures were not particularly fantastic. But I felt like I’d crossed a line. It was like that first time I rode across Chapultepec Avenue on my bike, pedaling furiously, worried that someone would hit me and I’d get in an accident. Halfway across I realized it was a beautiful, breezy day, and all I had to do was forget about the traffic and relax and feel the wind in my hair. The banana-leaf guy probably thought I was a weirdo, but once I stopped thinking about him, I could concentrate on what he was doing: running a knife down a smooth, green leaf, folding its ends over each other, quickly, expertly. Watching him without fear — this is where the magic was.

My heart pounding (I took a picture of this guy and he didn’t get mad at me!) I told Penny I wanted to hit the meat market. I’d wandered around there on a recent shopping trip, gawking — I know I’m supposed to be a chilanga, but I couldn’t help it — at the chicharrón prensado stacked up eight and nine rows high. Do you know how insane that is? Mountains of chicharrón prensado, destined for the city’s gordita stands. The meat market stood for so many things I loved about Mexico City: the chaos, the absurdity, and all of its glorious pig parts used in so many different ways.

This time I was a little more bold.

In all, I spent about 40 minutes in the market before I had to leave. But it was enough to make me feel giddy — and just the teensiest bit guilty. Where had I been this past year or so? Why hadn’t I taken more pictures? I lived in one of the greatest food cities in the world, and I have all of this at my fingertips. I needed to remember that more.

For some amazing pictures of Mercado Merced, and Mexico City street food, you should visit Susan’s blog.