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...

Comments

[pablo]

the tolerance does not extend to those living within ear shot of such noise...repeated efforts to relocate the subastas and the carnival perished on the shoals of pesos offered by the organizers to the ayuntamiento
nice writing¡