San Miguel de Allende, The Early Years
Early Rising
San Miguel de Allende, Aldama Street
During one of my halting conversations with Roselia, looking up words in my Spanish-English dictionary as fast as I could go, the subject of early rising came up. Roselia told me that most Mexican women got up before dawn, at four or five, to go to the molinos to have their corn and lye mixtures (grains of corn are soaked overnight in lye water to soften them up) ground up into masa, corn dough, to make the day’s tortillas.
They then have to make their way home again carrying the heavy buckets, and make the actual tortillas. Slap, slap, slapping them between their hands shaping the masa into round flat cakes and then baking them on large flat round pieces of tin, a comal, over a wood fire.
Well, I had to see this so I got up the next morning at four, put on my heaviest sweater against the cold, and went out into the street to see this phenomenon. Sure enough as I walked around town I spotted lots of women bundled up in sweaters, with rebozos covering their faces right up to the eyes, carrying large zinc buckets covered with kitchen towels. Right through the darkness of night they scurried this way and that, each one headed for their favorite molino where I saw them standing in
silent lines waiting their turn. They would hand over their buckets of corn and lime and would be given big globs of corn dough weighing just what they should for the amount they had given.
The night sky was full of stars, very clear in the absence of any real light from the city. The only street lights were forty watt bulbs in wrought iron lanterns hanging over a few of the street doors of the houses. Dogs were barking from some of the nearby rooftops, and when they stopped I could hear a thousand more from every direction. The night was filled with the sound of them barking. Some, I could tell, were from far, far off in the distance.
During my wanderings I observed pairs of policemen, called sirenos, completely covered in blankets walking the streets, huddled in doorways, and blowing bosins mate type whistles every so often. “Buenas noches,” they would murmur. Their whistling would bring responses from other nearby twosomes. An “all is well?”
I wandered up to the market that at the time was located on the corner of Mesones and Colegio Streets. It was a beautiful old cantera stone building with carved stone columns and arches. The
Mesones side had stone steps up into the building that was lit up bright as day. The sweet smells of ripening fruit and spices wafted up and swirled around the colorful display piles of bright colored oranges, bananas, peppers, and pears.
Out of the dark, cold night I walked right into the heart of the bustling crowds of early morning shoppers. I was jostled from one side and then the other by men and women buying the days meat,
fruits, and vegetables. (There was no refrigeration remember, so most everything had to be bought and consumed daily. The butchers had to sell every piece of the slaughtered cow or pig every day
or make longaniza sausage cured in brine with what was left.)
Around the back side of the market and down two flights of stairs (the front side was higher than the back) and then back inside were the fondas, where one could eat sitting on long benches at picnic-like tables. Tortillas were purchased from the farm women seated on the flagstones outside and you carried them in to the tables and ordered from the huge clay pots of food cooking over wood or charcoal fires.
The tables were nearly full of early morning workers. Day laborers, stevedores, masons, and milk men sat side by side shoveling in large quantities of steaming hot food, stoking their “stoves” for a long hard morning’s work. Dressed in their worn work clothes, which were, without exception, clean.
Eggs were cracked into scalding hot pans of smoking oil that was then spooned over them frying them almost instantly. Served over a plate of Mexican rice with a generous helping of fiery tomato/chili
sauce and freshly made tortillas. Oh, mama!
Roselia was right, this was an active, working city, and the Mexican people were certainly an early rising, industrious lot.
(That beautiful old market, that in reality only needed a new roof, was dismantled stone by stone and carried off to God knows where by the Mayor at the time, and a new one was built further down Colegio Street where it remains to this day. A concrete and steel structure without charm or style. This same man was, a few years ago, blown to bits by a gas leak when he entered his hotel’s boiler room with a lit cigar. Poetic justice?)
On my way home through the quiet streets still empty of traffic I could see men dressed in coarse linen clothes wearing broad-brimmed hats leading burros loaded down with metal milk-cans strapped to their sides. They would stop here and there and tap on the wooden doors with their steel tumblers. Tap, tap, tap, and their rapping would be answered by hurrying housewives thrusting all manner of clay or enamel pots out to them to be filled with the frothy white liquid. Their chatter and laughter filling the cobblestone streets with life, with an occasionally complaining burro punctuating their conversations. (All milk was brought to a boil in those days to purify it, there was no store bought milk.)
The sun was up, but it was still chilly as I walked back toward my apartment warmed with a good hot breakfast. I went through the Jardin that like the market also bustled with activity. The street sweeper gangs from the drunk tank were busily sweeping the streets and the plaza with their rough brooms made of small tree branches tied in a bundle, their guards leaning against sun drenched walls,
warming themselves. They had old Springfield rifles slung casually over their shoulders. I asked one of them if he had any bullets for his rifle and he proudly dug into his jacket pocket and came up with a
single cartridge, grinning at me happily.
A garbage truck was parked in front of the paroquia and the plaza’s gardeners were helping to empty the various trash barrels into it. Their laughing voices filling the verdant space with joy, and a sense of tranquility filled me, and forced a sigh of contentment from my throat.
San Miguel de Allende, Old Market
Living and Writing in Mexico 