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Old 07-06-09, 02:11 PM   #1
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Default Mercado Hidalgo

Mercado Hidalgo


Located near the border, the market's web of stalls winds around a parking lot and a small chapel built in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Tijuana's Mercado Hidalgo offers bargains, variety and nostalgia.

By Anna Cearley
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRTIER

They come in beat-up vans and Mercedes-Benzes from hundreds of miles north of the border and squeeze into Tijuana's Mercado Hidalgo's tiny parking lot.

The visitors plunge into the maze of stalls filled with the fragrance of fruits and vegetables, hard-to-find spices, and distinctly Mexican candies and cheeses.

They are drawn from San Diego and as far away as Washington state, some by low prices and others by nostalgia.

"The market has things that you can't find anywhere else," said Rosalba Sánchez, who came from Los Angeles with her daughter and granddaughter. It reminds her of the markets back in the Mexican state of Jalisco where she was born.

Customers come and go, but the people who work here give the market its vibrancy. They weep and celebrate collectively, embracing traditions that span five decades.

The vendor's children who play hide-and-seek among the stalls often form lifelong friendships. Many stay in the family business when they grow up.

And when vendors die, their caskets are often carried around the market before being buried.

"It's like one big family," said Norma Rubio, 23, in the English she learned from watching television and practicing on customers. "Everybody knows everything about everybody."

Located near the border, the market's web of stalls winds around a parking lot and a small chapel built in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The dark-skinned figure is based on the Virgin Mary and is said to have appeared in 1531 before an Indian peasant in Mexico.

Mercado Hidalgo offers hard-to-find foods like pithaya, a magenta-colored fruit.

And shoppers stock up on Mexican favorites, such as a type of acidic sauce dripped onto snacks.

The market also offers the mundane: birdcages, brooms, shoes. Muscular men cradle fluffy, bright piñatas. Custom-made fruit juice mixes are offered at stands brimming with carrots, grapefruit and papaya.

José Campos hoisted a crate of tomatoes onto his back, and weaved his way through parked cars with his wife, Alejandra, and 9-year-old son José. The Santa Ana family drives to the market three times a year.

"It's a familiar place," he said. "And besides, things cost less here. This crate of tomatoes costs $20 in the U.S., but it costs half that here."

Hector and Irma Rivera drive from Salinas, in Northern California, to the market once a month to visit family and stock up on goodies. During their latest journey, they bought a Mickey Mouse-style piñata.

Located near the upscale Plaza Rio Tijuana, and nestled between Paseo de los Heroes and Boulevard Sanchez Taboada, the market takes its cues from customers like the Riveras and Camposes who are looking for inexpensive and authentic goods.

It is rich with tradition and history not found among the sterile, orderly aisles of the supermarket chains of Gigante (now Soriana) and Calimax that have multiplied throughout this city.

In his tightly packed stall, Esteban Casillas Barajas sat on a wooden crate and braided garlic while he let the memories of the market's beginnings stretch and roll through his mind.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Casillas and other enterprising young men crossed the border to buy avocados in Escondido and Vista. They bought watermelons in Arizona and citrus in Orange County. Sometimes they went as far as New Mexico and the Bay Area to collect food.

Two border lines

Then they lugged the produce back to Tijuana and sold it out of their miles-weary trucks.

"Back then there were just two lines at the border,"said Casillas, 73, one of the market's founders. "The agents were very nice, and they would recognize us and wave us on through."

Eventually, Mexican agricultural regulations made it more difficult to import U.S. farm products, and they started buying more foods from Baja California's Mexicali and San Quintin valleys.

An improved road system also made it easier for them to bring in goods from Mexico's interior. These days, few of the products come from the United States, and it is the Hispanic-Americans who do the traveling to the market.

The first formal market was started in the mid-1950s and it eventually established a presence at the corner of Calle 6 and Negrete, a few blocks from Avenida Revolucion.

In 1984, the vendors moved to their current location after saving enough money to buy the land. It is run like a small city, with elected representatives.

That committee discusses safety and parking issues. It also acts as a lobbying group for the market, meeting regularly with Chamber of Commerce members and government officials. Traditions add purpose to the order.

Lasting memories

In December, a market girl is chosen to represent the Virgin of Guadalupe in a solemn procession to a downtown cathedral. She is preferably dark-skinned, and must not be married.

To mark the day of the market's establishment, April 2, the vendors' wives prepare free meals for visitors. A live band plays, and tables fill the parking lot where people gather and eat.

Those kinds of events have created lasting memories for Norma Rubio, who came to the market recently with a friend, Luz Maria Arellano Casillas, also 23.

The two grew up here together. In fact, Rubio's mother was working in a market stall when she met and married her boss. And Arellano is the granddaughter of one of the market's founders, Esteban Casillas Barajas.

These days, Rubio is studying to be a teacher and Arellano is studying business administration. Yet they find themselves drawn to the market in their spare time and during the summers -- like many of the other children who became lawyers, computer programmers and accountants.

The reason is simple, Rubio said: "When you want to feel the warmth of family, it's here."






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