Tag Archives: mexico

Lately I’ve been having trouble focusing on blogging – which is ironic because it’s one of my favorite projects. Between travel and my jewelry brand, I haven’t made the time – and I apologize to my readers – an effort will be made to get back on track here!

It had been 10 months since I last visited Mexico City. I’ve had a hectic year – moving from Miami to NY and traveling constantly I think in an attempt to “find myself”.  I really needed a good dose of home – and Mexico City will always be home for me, no matter where I go.

Now, 8 years after I left, every time I go back I look at the city with fresh eyes. I get excited about the smallest things, like visiting my favorite ice cream place, or eating at Klein’s over and over again. I appreciate things I would have overlooked before – kind of like a tourist. You know how there’s a very particular excitement and thrill about visiting a new country – so you walk around, taking in the culture, the architecture, the smells, and the colors with a high level of awareness, really taking it all in? Well, that’s what it’s like for me when I come back to Mexico now. Nothing is really new to me – yet it feels like it is. Experiencing Mexico City as a local and a tourist is a beautiful thing.

One of the cool things about being a tourist here is that I actually make it a point to visit places most locals don’t think about anymore – and that is how I ended up at the Central de Abasto, a place I’d been anxious to visit for quite a long time.

The Central de Abasto is the largest wholesale market in the country, and possibly the world – covering over 300 hectares, street signs signal to different sections of the market (produce, meats, other products); it receives around 300,000 visitors a day and has an approximate annual turnover of 9 billion USD. Activity here affects the food distribution chain for the entire country.

It is, simply put, damn huge.

You can find anything here – candy, cereals, meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, you name it. My cousin (he was the only person who was up for waking up at 4 AM in order to do this) and I were there for over 2-3 hours and we just covered a tiny section of the Central!

We arrived around at 5:30 AM – it was still dark out. We could smell the produce from the time we got out of the car – literally. Activity starts in the early hours of the day – 1, 2 a.m. – and by the time we got there the hussle and bussle was at its peak. Let me say that I’ve been to many markets, but I have never in my life seen so much movement in one – well, maybe the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, although that is not only a food market.

An immense distribution network is set up through the Central – supplier trucks arrive at the warehouses, where they sell to vendors, which then sell to individuals like us. Men carry huge sacks of onions and potatoes on their back or their head, and others push their “diablitos” (pushcarts) loaded with kilos of  lettuces or garlic from one place to the other. Mounds of the tiniest and cutest mangoes and avocados in varieties you can’t even imagine line the corridors. The way produce is stacked and organized blew my mind – mountains of carrots, lettuce, green beans were taller than my cousin, who is 6’2″ – all with clever signs like “potatoes with superpowers”, “as seen on TV” or “cheaper than Wal-Mart”.

The Central is located in Iztapalapa. The neighborhood and the market itself are said to be huge organized crime hubs– there’s robberies, prostitution, drug trafficking and kidnappings. In theory, about half of the merchants have been victims of insecurity, robberies, extortion and such.

However, I felt very safe there. I was surprised at how nice and helpful people were. The only moment where I grew a bit concerned was when a lady warned us to preferably stay away from the “bodegas” or warehouses – specially because of the camera I was carrying. Many vendors dislike cameras – specially if they’re involved in some kind of crime – and photographers have been asked to leave if they didn’t have the necessary permits to shoot there – but people were actually excited about my shooting.

To be honest, if I’d known about this before visiting, I may have changed my mind about going.

Thankfully, I didn’t.

It was funny how people thought we were part of Televisa, Mexico’s largest mass multimedia company. They kept asking “what channel do you work for?” and workers yelled at one another remarks like “comb your hair!” when I took a picture of one of them.

It was a very fun, Mexican experience.