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PORTSIDE CULTURE

STRANGE SOUPS AND BRASS BANDS  
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David Bacon
April 12, 2024
The Reality Check: Stories and Photographs by David Bacon
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_ Soups are made from the traditions of the countryside where people
are used to eating the animals that live there (the rat is a country
creature, not the urban variety) and some think of them even as a kind
of medicine. _

Workers and women shopping for their families sit on plain stools at
the comedores economicos, or affordable eateries, where cooks spoon
the famous goat mole, cabrera, into bowls. , David Bacon

 

A maze of constricted alleys spreads out at the bottom an old stone
staircase that doubles back on itself, so convoluted that Zacatecanos
call this place "El Labarinto", or "The Labyrinth."  Here Primitivo
Romo sits in front of a wall of herbs packed into tiny bags, in a
botanica stall he inherited from his mother when she died a few years
ago.  He inherited her knowledge as well, and now his nephew runs
another stall down a nearby alleyway with the knowledge passed on in
the Romo family.

The stalls are half hidden in the lowest level of the Mercado del
Arroyo de la Plata, or the Silver Canyon Market.  Two more levels are
above.  Stalls on one sell Zacatecan mole, either picoso or dulce,
hot or sweet, from big plastic buckets in front of the candy
display.  On another workers and women shopping for their families
sit on plain stools at the comedores economicos, or affordable
eateries, where cooks spoon the famous goat mole, cabrera, into bowls.
 

Unless you know the cook well, there's no point in asking for two
other famous dishes, caldo de rata (rat soup) or caldo de vivora
(snake soup).  These are soups from the traditions of people from the
countryside, used to eating the animals that live there (the rat is a
country creature, not the urban variety), and some think of them even
as a kind of medicine.  Says Guadalupe Flores, a member of the state
legislature, “Anybody that tries it once is going to love it and it
will become their favorite dish. It is very similar to rabbit – only
much more flavorful.”

Nevertheless, some laugh at these country traditions.  But once in a
while a campesino will come in from the farm, and from his pack at the
back entrance will pull the skinned bodies, along with those of
rabbits and chickens. The meat counters in the market sell the meat
from larger animals - the cows, the goats and the pigs.  For them, a
truck pulls up at the same back entrance.  The driver climbs into the
rear, and up a mountain of meat, to fetch a beef quarter ordered by a
market stall.  Ernesto Serna lifts a several hundred pound piece onto
his shoulders, and walks unsteadily beneath it into the labyrinth.  

Other farmers come into the city with fruit.  Francisco Cordero sells
piles of strawberries, guavas and figs from his Campo Real farm in an
impromptu stall on the sidewalk.  Another country seller comes with
his donkey.  In the wooden saddle on its back it carries the big jars
of pulque and colonche, agave and tuna (nopal) drinks with a little
kick, under leaves to keep off the sun.

The streets of Zacatecas fill with people, selling and buying, walking
or sitting.  Workers paint the buildings next to the Alameda Park. 
A brass band and speeches celebrate the birthday of Benito Juarez,
Mexico's first indigenous president.  Soldiers in the local
contingent of the National Guard, the new police created by President
Lopez Obrador, stand in the hot sun, submachine guns at the ready.

Like most Mexican cities, popular protest is part of Zacatecas'
culture as well.  The women's movement is strong, and a recent march
was met and prohibited by police protecting a government that somehow
fears its own mothers, sisters and daughters.  Activists then went to
the former cathedral of San Agustin, now repurposed as a municipal
gallery.  At the inauguration of a show of paintings of peaceful
landscapes, they confronted the government representatives there to
open the exhibition.  Each held a card with two letters.  Standing
together they read "Estado Terrorista" or Terrorist State.

And tucked away in this city filled with artists is the extraordinary
project of the Fototeca Pedro Valtierra.  Here Carlos gives lessons
in ways to create extraordinary prints from negatives, in a process
invented 150 years ago.  In a vault behind a heavy metal door, aided
by high tech climate controls, Karina Garcia protects the fototeca's
archive of prints and negatives.  The most prized come from Pedro
Valtierra himself, Mexico's renowned radical photojournalist and
native son of Zacatecas, for whom the institution is named.

Today people joke that there are more Zacatecanos in Los Angeles than
in Zacatecas, but this is still a city that remembers its working
class history.  Aldo Alejandro Zapata Villa recalls on Facebook,
looking at a photo of the market, "Memories of my childhood, of
hard-working and entrepreneurial people, offering their merchandise,
in those times when we learned all work has dignity."

* soup
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* Mexican food traditions
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* Zacateca
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