El Perro Bailarín

Piñatas

Piñatas on sale in the market Full Image

Dancing Dog takes note of the increasing proliferation of piñatas in the market in these days as Christmas approaches.

D.D. somehow assumed there would be a grand emporium for piñatas, showcasing all the various styles and characters available. But no such central supply could be located. Instead, the narrow walkways through the market serve as the showroom, with the fruit and vegetable vendors, as well as stalls selling candy and dried foods (spices, pasta, etc.), festooned with these gaudy figures.

Piñatas — bulk delivery Full Image

Piñatas have an intriguing history. Marco Polo, that intrepid Croatian explorer of unknown lands to the East, brought the custom back from exotic China to the Italian peninsula, whence it spread westward to Spain, and thence to Mexico in the 1600s with the invasion of Catholic missionaries.

Many of these piñatas will meet their end fulfill their destiny at posadas held in the barrios and around town in the lead-up to Christmas. Although traditionally a re-creation of the journey of Mary and Joseph in search of a place to stay before the birth of El Niño Jesus, today posadas are an excuse to party-down. Streets are blocked to vehicle traffic and bonfires lit on the pavement, fueled by whatever scrap wood could be scavenged in the neighborhood. Families who live on the street bring out chairs to circle the fires and share brandy or tequila or rompope, the Mexican version of eggnog spiked with rum. Ubiquitous boom-boxes blare ranchero music, not Christmas carols.

Late in the evening, the piñatas are suspended from the eaves of a house, and blindfolded kids and tipsy adults alike get a chance to take a swing at the hapless figure. When the clay pot inside succumbs to the final blow and shatters, squealing kids scramble to gather their share of the candies and tiny toys that rain down to the pavement.

Street Auctions — Subastas

Street auction for blankets and towels Full Image To listen to the auctioneer, click on the start arrow below

Dancing Dog is amazed at the tolerance of the local populace for noise. Case in point: the subastas.

Subasta is the name given to a group of itinerent vendors who arrived in town to take advantage of the throngs of visitors from outlying villages who have come for the feria (“carnival”). This year, Pátzcuaro endured hosted at least four of these subastas—two selling blankets and large towels who set up on the Plaza Chica, and two offering housewares (dishes, cooking utensils, pots & pans, plastic containers, and the like) camped out near the Basilica.

Subasta is usually translated as “auction,” but these vendors do not operate in the typical auction format one thinks of, in which a group of bidders compete with one another, bidding on individual lots and driving up the price in the process.

Street auction for housewares Full Image To listen to the auctioneer, click on the start arrow below

Instead, the auctioneer basically replicates the “bargaining” process between an individual buyer and seller that has been the hallmark of souks, bazaars and street markets the world over for millennia, only in the open and in front of everyone. The style is more like a “Dutch auction” in which the auctioneer starts from a high price, gradually lowering the asking price until a willing buyer at that price is found.

Back to the noise. These subastas use gigantic speakers with the volume cranked up to decibel levels rivaling rock concerts (D.D. could only get these pictures after plugging his ears with earplugs). The auctioneer wears a hands-free mike on his head that looks for all the world like a dental appliance, and speaks in a kind of breathless rhythmic chant to announce the product and the price, and urge the crowd of buyers to bite. The subastas are open all day long, but the auctioneers really get going at dusk and continue to 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. at night, with no break! How their voices last, D.D. has no idea...

Papier Mâchè Dolls — Muñecas de Cartón

Dancing Dog has been prowling the street stalls set up in front of the Basilica for the celebrations of the two big feast days of the Virgin Mary—the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8^th, and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12^th.

Among the warren of booths hawking everything from peanuts, fruit and street food to winter clothing and refrigerator magnets, are a number selling traditional toys, including the papier-mâchè dolls shown here. Known as muñecas de cartón, they are a traditional toy for young girls among the poorer classes, along with hobby horses (caballos de palo) for young boys.

These articulated dolls are painted in gaudy water-soluble poster paints (and hence, are said to be “allergic” to water). They are traditionally purchased by grandparents to give to their grandchildren or great-grandchildren, and are held in a kind of aura of nostalgic affection by the adult Mexican women in D.D.'s neighborhood. Regretfully, they are now being displaced by the ubiquitous plastic Barbies...

Click on an image to enlarge...

 
 

The Carnival— La Feria

Dancing Dog's street, the widest in Pátzcuaro, has been besieged by a traveling carnival. My neighbors call it la feria, which translates as “the fair,” but to D.D., it's a typical carnival with a variety of rides and carnie games, and, of course, people, people, people. The rides are set up along one side of the street, creating a kind of midway. Vehicle traffic is constrained to a single lane, and D.D. has had to defend his turf in front of his garage door to keep from being permanently blocked in. On weekend evenings, the street is impassable with the throngs of locals and visitors from the outlying villages gawking at the bright lights, and eating street food and drinking ponche (a fruit based “punch”).

The roustabouts look, well, mean. D.D. can tell immediately they are not from around here. Today, in the late afternoon, as D.D. traversed the outer precincts of the Basilica immediately across from the long row of carnival rides, a dozen or so of these young toughs tumbled through the side gate in pursuit of another who was indistinguishable from the pursuers. A confrontation began to unfold, involving a rather large crescent wrench wielded as a weapon, and complete with angry words and threats, feints and retreats, and more pursuit. A tense time for the participants and bystanders alike. The weapon was not used, as it turns out, and D.D. later learned that the rogue being pursued had tried to steal monetary proceeds from one of the rides.

The feria doesn't get going until 6:00 p.m. when the twin 15,000-watt diesel generators mounted in a truck trailer are cranked up to power the rides. Electrical cables snake along the street behind the rides next to the sidewalk, and even through the trees for electricity pirated from the overhead lines of the Comisión Federal de Electricidad, the CFE, Mexico’s national power company. The noise from the generators, combined with the rhythmic squeals of the young people on the rides is...well, distracting. Fortunately, things begin to wind down by 10 p.m., and all is quiet an hour later.

Click on an image to enlarge...

Taxis

FART taxi at its stand near the Basilica Full Image

Dancing Dog thinks it's time to inject a bit of juvenile humor into this chronicle.

Taxis are ubiquitous in Pátzcuaro, readily available and relatively cheap: a flat 18 pesos (about US$1.60) anywhere in the city, 20 pesos (US$1.75) from the Plaza Grande to the Lake (2–3 miles).

Several taxi groups compete for your business, including the Monarca and the FART pictured here. Each group has its own stands scattered at strategic locations around the city. The FART stand is in front of the Basilica, not far from D.D.'s house.

The Monarca logo is styled after the monarch butterflies that winter in the mountains of Michoacan Full Image

FART, by the way, is an acronym for Federación Agrupaciones Regionales de Transportistas (“Federation of Regional Carrier Associations”).

The FART drivers are aware of the alternate meaning of their association name in English and are good-natured about it. Their taxis are clean, and the drivers courteous and efficient. Interestingly, taxi licenses are an inhertible commodity, passed from father to son.

Christmas Ornaments — Adornos Navideños

Straw Christmas ornaments from Tzintzuntzan Full Image

Dancing Dog espied signs of the impending Christmas holidays today. Ornaments of various types have begun to show up for sale at stalls in the street market.

The strings of straw and ribbon ornaments are from the town of Tzintzuntzan, a 30-minute drive from Patzcuaro. The wheat straw comes from the surrounding area and villagers weave the individual shapes entirely by hand at home, assemble them into tiras (“strips”) and sell them through an artisans' cooperative in the town.

Full Image

Several colors and shapes are available, including coronitas (“rings”), caracoles (“snail shells”), bastónes (“canes”) and velitas (“little candles”).

Traditional blown glass ornaments are also showing up for sale in the market. These are machine-made rather than hand-blown...