Cuetzalan Market Essay

The Cuetzalan Market

When we are on the ranch, it is a must to go to Cuetzalan on Sundays, because that is the market day. So we get very early on my uncle´s wagon and we head to town, which is pretty small and beautiful. Almost all of the houses are made of stone. The roofs have wooden bases and are covered with red clay tiles, some balconies are decorated with clay pots or with pots made from the roots of giant ferns that the artisans transform into swans, herons or ducks. The streets are cobbled and are very narrow. The cars can barely go through them, even when the street market isn’t set. There are also steep alleys with stairs, where kids gather to play with tops or cup-and-ball toys.

The main church is dedicated to Saint Francis, patron

That’s where I met Panchita, an Indian woman who is a friend of my aunt’s. She makes embroidered blouses, dresses, and woven shawls and tablecloths in a traditional waist loom among other bric-a-brac. While she waits for the customers to arrive, Panchita works embroidering; the truth is that she makes beautiful things. As the Indian women in the area, Panchita wears traditional clothing, a white blouse with colorful needlework in form of flowers, and animals around the collar – she also sells them - she wears a quexquemet which is a small and light poncho that covers her chest and that it is also used as a handkerchief. Her skirt is white with colored laces and she almost never wears shoes. Panchita speaks a very fluent Spanish but her first language is Nahuat which is the one she uses with her family, with the other local people and with Ramón, who speaks it quite well. This language is very similar to the Nahuatl which is spoken in other indigenous regions in Mexico, but in the Mountain Range the tl isn’t pronounced and so it is called

I love to watch the fruit and flower stands or to pry among the handcrafts. But I prefer to watch the people: the Indian woman who offer their goods and carry their children on their backs in a basket called huacal and which is made by them or that can also be bought at the market. It can be used to carry babies or to carry other things; some even used them as backpacks. The huacales are made by two wooden frames joined together in three of their sides by jonote, which is a very strong thread that is made of the jonote tree bark. Every frame is weaved to form a net and hence a sort of crib. When the baby s inside, the frames come apart and the baby remains lying on the jonote net, but if the huacal is empty, it closes and it is flat, which makes it easy to carry and keep. The huacal has a long handle, wide and resistant, that the women place on their foreheads as a headband called mecapan, so they hold their little children on their backs with their