Festival on the Plaza

I wrote in an earlier post that an exposition was being held on the Zócalo, Mexico City's main plaza.  It was the Festival of Indigenous Cultures.  The enormous plaza was filled with tents where vendors were selling native food and handicrafts.  You may remember that I had gone downtown to see the event on opening day, but they were not going to open until much later that afternoon.  Fortunately it was scheduled to continue for a couple of weeks, and I planned to see it at a later date.  When I told Alejandro about it, he said he wanted to see it too.  So last Saturday the two of us went downtown.  

This past weekend was the "Buen Fin", the start of the Christmas shopping season when all the stores have special sales.  We knew that downtown was going to be a madhouse, so rather than try to drive, Alejandro called an Uber.  Traffic was horrendous everywhere, and it took more than hour to get downtown.  We had the driver drop us off some distance from the Zócalo, and we walked the rest of the way.  Madero Street, the pedestrianized avenue that leads to the plaza was jammed with shoppers.

We finally reached the Zócalo and the festival.

The first couple rows of tents along the Cathedral side of the plaza were devoted to typical foods.

There were numerous stalls selling "tlayudas", a Oaxacan dish that is somewhat similar to a pizza.  A large corn tortilla is covered with a variety of toppings.

Artisanal candies

Pastes and powders for making a variety of "moles", the complex sauces that are served on top of meat or poultry

The "mole" of apple with almonds in the lower right hand corner sounded very interesting.

"Tepache" is a mildly fermented drink made from the rinds of pineapples.  I've tried it before, and it is really quite good.

The rest of the tents had handicrafts for sale... although I would not classify all the merchandise as handicrafts.  There were plenty of tee shirts and other tourist junk.  There were, however, many items created by true artisans, and I bought a number of things for myself and as gifts.  There were probably hundreds of vendors.  At first we were looking carefully at each stall, but after a while we were walking down the aisles stopping only if something caught our eye.

This vendor from the state of Chiapas was selling clay figurines of jaguars, a specialty of his town of Amatenango.

There were loads of stalls selling the traditional rag dolls which are a specialty of the town of the Otomí people that live in the area of the town of Amealco in the state of Querétaro.

There was lots of colorful clothing.

There were several artisans from the Huichol tribe who were selling their handicrafts,  painstakingly made with intricate designs of colored beads. 

There were artisans from Oaxaca selling their "alebrijes", the colorfully painted wooden carvings of fanciful creatures.

This fellow from Oaxaca was selling chocolate bars.  He ground the chocolate himself by hand.  He is holding a cacao pod, the source of chocolate.

There was a stage set up at one end of the plaza, and there were performances of traditional dances.  Honestly, from the little bit that we watched, they were not nearly as good as other folkloric dancers that I have seen.

We were getting tired, and it was getting late.  We headed back down Madero Street which was still crowded with holiday shoppers.

Trying to get an Uber or a taxi was impossible.  After walking more than a mile we finally got on the Metrobus heading toward Alejandro's part of town.  We got off well outside the downtown area.  Alejandro was then able to get an Uber to take us the rest of the way to his house.  It was after nine o'clock before we got home.