Guanajuato and the Mercado Hidalgo

It’s been a couple of weeks since I left the city of Guanajuato, the eponymous capitol of the State of Guanajuato in Mexico (and over a month since I’d arrived). My film photos have taken a while in developing and processing (and of course waiting until I arrived back in Mexico City to start the process in the first place), so I’m just now seeing some images I took during that visit to Guanajuato. Such is the analog life, especially as there is no room in my pack for a developing kit, let alone a scanner.

But they are ready! These photos include some that I took on my souvenir-journal walk through the city, a walk which began at the Mercado Hidalgo (which was also where I purchased the journal.)

The market’s namesake is Miguel Hidalgo, a Catholic priest born in the state of Guanajuato in the 18th Century. He’s known as the “Father of Mexico” for his role in leading the early stages of Mexico’s War of Independence beginning in 1810. In that way, he’s kind of like the USA’s George Washington - although it’s not exactly a fair comparison, since Hidalgo was executed by the Spanish before independence was won (and he also, to my knowledge, never had a set of dentures made from slaves’ teeth).

The comparison holds, though, in that, like Washington in the US, Hidalgo has stuff named after him all over Mexico, and especially in his home state - including the City of Guanajuato’s central market.

The market is a huge structure, with an arched metal roof interspersed with skylights that my Lonely Planet guidebook tells me was designed intentionally to resemble a train station in Paris. I’ve never been to Paris, but my experience with other European train halls made it easy to see the resemblance.

Instead of rows of tracks, the floor of the Mercado Hidalgo is lined with rows of vendors. Most of the stalls sell food of some sort, and there are little ‘districts’ within the vast vendor grid too. For example, almost a dozen carnitas counters all cluster around each other in one corner, whereas sellers of dry goods (beans, herbs, etc) line the wall on the opposite side. I ate carnitas there twice, at different booths - the first was fine, the second made my top-three lifetime carnitas experiences list (the other two are a homemade version from a friend in Denver, and, quite coincidentally, a Mexican restaurant in Urbandale, Iowa also named Hidalgo).

On the second floor, which is a platform ringing the edge and open to the center, are mostly souvenir and craft stalls. This is where I bought the journal. This is also where the shrine is - most every public place in Mexico will have one. I took my time meandering the second-floor walkway, snapping photos with my Nikon FM2 balanced on the rail so I could use a slower shutter speed.

The market reminds me of Reading Terminal in Philadelphia, where I lived for a number of years, and to a lesser extent Lexington Market in Baltimore, where I lived for a number of months. I remember Reading Terminal being a shock to me on my first visit. I was a college first-year, fresh from suburban West Michigan, and don’t recall having previously food-shopped anywhere that wasn’t a privately-owned grocery store or supermarket. I grew to love Reading Terminal pretty quickly though, and am finding markets like Hidalgo to be very welcome features of the places in Mexico I’ve visited so far.

The Mercado Hidalgo became a frequent lunch or coffee stop during my weeks in Guanajuato, when I would descend the hill from my housesit to explore the city. I’ll have more posts in the coming days about Guanajuato (and more about Hidalgo too), and for now, I’m tacking on a few of my other favorite shots from the roll that the market photos came from. (for those of you keeping score at home, it’s a roll of Kodak Color Plus 200, developed and scanned by Foto Hercules of Mexico City, with some additional color/exposure correction and cropping by yours truly)

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Hasta pronto!